Lost Luggage (14 page)

I don't know what Gabriel and Bundó thought about my getting off with the high-class ladies. In terms of complaining, well no, they never complained about it—maybe because, right from the start, Senyor Casellas had made me their boss—but I don't think they saw me as a model of behavior either. In amorous matters, it was each to his own. Those two also loved the sweet moments just before the door of a new home opened, though their motivations seemed kinkier to me. Once inside the house, Bundó only had eyes for the objects that were going into the truck. He took charge of supervising the packets, appliances, and furniture, checking to make sure the boxes were properly closed and working
out the order in which we'd take it all down to be sure that the weight was properly distributed in the trailer. He used to get well and truly carried away when he was organizing things (while I was doing my bit, wrapping up the lady of the house with my preliminary questions). With the excuse of only having limited space, he opened up boxes and suitcases to peek inside and redistribute things. Covetousness and love were the ruin of him. Basically, he was a harum-scarum (not that we have any right, all these years later, to criticize him for that, understood, boys?). Gabriel and I were always breathing down his neck to make sure he didn't break our rules of thievery: The three of us had agreed to choose the box, package, or suitcase by chance, right at the end, without knowing what it contained. That was part of the game, and it was against the rules to mark it beforehand because it contained some valuable or especially desirable object. We also had to be discreet.

Bundó's obsession only got worse as the years went by and caused us more than one headache. The reasons behind it have a woman's name—Carolina, or Muriel if you like—and we really shouldn't try to sum up this part of the story in a few words because it was very important for all of us later on. I mean, we could go into a lot of detail but it'll have to be some other time, if you don't mind. As for Gabriel, I hope I'm not disappointing you, but I could never understand what kind of kick he got out of it, what it was that turned him on when we rang the doorbell of a house. Well yes, I've got a vague idea based on a few intuitions. Gabriel never seemed to get worked up over carnal needs like Bundó and me. I see him more like a vampire. He'd get into people's houses and suck up the atmosphere, that presence of life you could still detect in an apartment just before starting the move. Smells, shadows, laughter, chills, silences . . . Maybe that's why he liked to start the move by getting to know someone who'd lived in the house so he could construct his theories more exactly. With every object and every bit of furniture he lugged, he also seemed to be studying the traces they left behind in those empty rooms. He raised blinds and opened windows, claiming that there wasn't enough light, and looked out over the street to contemplate the view while
he smoked a cigarette. As if it was part of the job, he used to start chatting with the person who was keeping an eye on us. “The siestas on this couch must have been wonderful, isn't that right, Senyora?” “I'm sure the whole family must have got together for more than one Sunday lunch on such a lovely veranda.” That's my version, but I'd say that his fantasies about other people's lives—which he later projected with the same enthusiasm onto the place where we had to unload as if it was a blank canvas waiting to be painted—helped him to breathe better. He absorbed it and stored it like oxygen for when he returned to the boarding house and its fragile comforts. Proof of this compulsion is that, when he got to know your mother—your
mothers
—and you lot were born and he could finally taste family life in small doses, he lost interest in empty houses. All the moves we did after that were simply an excuse to travel closer to where you lived so he could visit you.

In the early seventies, I think it was, when Bundó had just moved to the apartment in Via Favència and three of you already existed—only Cristòfol was still to arrive in Barcelona, if I'm not mistaken—I took Gabriel aside more than once and insisted that he should leave the boarding house and go and live with someone. I asked him to do me a favor and change his way of life and maybe even—and why not?—his country.

“I wouldn't know how,” he answered. “In the orphanage they taught me how to survive like this: alone, yet surrounded by people. Anyway, if I decided to change one day and settle down for good, which family would I choose?”

His question gave me goose pimples.

Number 104. Barcelona-Manchester.

September 10, 1967.

One old wooden box, still with a lid. Once it held French wine. We know that from the half-torn label (Château whatever it's called) and the smell when we opened it. There were three the same and we picked this one. It's got some bathroom things in it but it all seems to be for a summer vacation place.
Petroli will keep the brushes and combs, still with tangles of wavy blond hair from the lady of the house, an almost-used lipstick, and some vampish mascara. Maybe in his spare time he has strange fancies about being a transvestite in the Barri Xino [the last few words are crossed out with red lipstick, probably by Petroli]. We'll also let him have a bottle of English aftershave that smells very masculine. There are two bottles of French lady's perfume, very expensive we suppose. They'll go to Carolina, via Bundó. By the way, no one believes that Bundó hasn't planned this [there's a note in the margin, in red and Bundó's handwriting, that says “Lie!”]. The hairnet and brilliantine that must have belonged to the future consular attaché in Manchester are Bundó's. The talcum powder is for him too. He often complains of chafing on his thighs because he sweats so much. We'll keep the bottle of peroxide, the lotion for mosquito bites, and the flask of Mercurochrome inside the cab, just in case. The portable first-aid kit goes to Gabriel. It contains a plastic syringe, a rubber tourniquet, gauze squares, and adhesive tape. Aspirins. One unopened stick of Termosan local analgesic. Cough lozenges, past sell-by date. A packet of Band-Aids with a smudge of dry blood. Gabriel will also take a real stethoscope: Some village doctor must have forgotten it, and now a little boy can play with it [Christopher confirms that he got it a couple of years later]. There's a calendar from last year, which is for Gabriel: It's got pictures of racing cars on Montjuïc, and, on the page for July, there are ten days marked with a cross and, underneath, the name of some kind of medicine. No one wants the enema bulb.

The trips abroad marked the beginning of the meteoric rise of the La Ibérica moving company. From one day to the next, without having to fork out too much or take on too many new workers, Senyor Casellas's business started crossing borders, and this made
him even richer. The plan—or conspiracy, as we used to say—was hatched in an alliance of offices and churches. Carnations and cigars. One of Senyor Casellas's daughters, the young one, married a boy from an upper-class family that ran the Banco de Madrid, I think it was. (We La Ibérica workers, of course, had to scratch around in our pockets to buy them a gift.) Among the many other stuffed shirts that attended the wedding, there was a certain Ramiro Cuscó Romagosa, a very well-known Franco man in those days and a relative of the new son-in-law. After that, it was like a game of snakes and ladders, but it was ladders all the way. With a good throw of the dice, Senyor Casellas shot up to land in the office of José María de Porcioles, the Lord Mayor of Barcelona. Two plus two equals four. A year later, when they baptized Casellas's first grandchild at the Sant Gregori Taumaturg church, Porcioles was at the party, carrying on like the chummy old uncle you found in all the pro-Franco families. Juan Antonio Samaranch—who people know about nowadays because of the Barcelona Olympics—was also there among the guests. He was shyer and more reserved then and had some job concerning sports at the Town Hall, but he was obviously aiming higher and they had a very good opinion of him in Madrid, right at the very top, in the El Pardo Palace. Casellas knew how to soft soap him. Four plus two equals six. Of all the wheeling and dealing among the Falangists in those golden years, it's quite likely that La Ibérica only got the dregs. It's also a good bet that Casellas, with his piggy voice and pachyderm waddle, often played the part of buffoon, amusing them with his stories of domesticated communists and immigrants from Murcia—after all he had the dubious privilege of dealing with them on a daily basis.

In less than two months Casellas's good connections began to kick in. La Ibérica got the monopoly on all the diplomatic moves to France, Germany, Switzerland, and Great Britain. Six plus two equals eight. The ambassadors, consuls, vice-consuls, and people in other cushy jobs schemed. Franco nominated. The machines of power did the wheeling and dealing. The game of musical chairs got going. At the end of the chain, three flunkies loaded up a truck
for the trans-Pyrenean route, and the big boss pocketed wads of cash. It might have been peanuts for some of them but eight plus two equal ten. In those years, the sums always came out right.

In the summer of 1960, when word got around that La Ibérica was going to do international moves, all the workers started to dream, each one of us imagining he'd be chosen. Nobody had ever been out of the country, and it was about that time when the first Swedish tourist charter plane landed in Málaga airport. A picture emerged of a modern, idyllic Europe. We saw the Nordic and Central European countries as having a more advanced civilization. Soon we were all going to be some kind of Alfredo Landa—you know who I mean, don't you?—that film actor drooling over the striped bikini of some uninhibited blond foreigner. We were so green that we thought working with a truck outside Spain meant unloading furniture at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, with three sexed-up Brigitte Bardots waiting for us to finish so they could give us a massage, and the reality—I'm sorry to say, Christophe—is that, in ten years of moves to Paris, we never went up the tower. We could always see it there on the horizon, but that's as far as it went. In the end, Senyor Casellas chose us three for practical reasons, which he dressed up as a matter of family conscience when his workers were informed. For better or worse, Bundó, Gabriel, and I were footloose bachelors. We didn't have a family to feed or kids to educate. No one was going to miss us on weekends.

From the very start you could see that the European moves were a godsend for La Ibérica. In no time at all Senyor Casellas did up the offices, took on a qualified secretary—Rebeca, with the legs and waist of Cyd Charisse and the patience of a saint with that army of blowflies she had to put up with every day—bought the premises next door to expand the garage in Carrer Almogàvers, and had a map of Europe painted on the façade. The painter obeyed the boss's orders and produced a grossly inflated Spain. It looked as if it had elephantiasis and it was shooting out red arrows that disappeared into different parts of the continent. Those arrows were supposed to represent the trail of speed and good service delivered by our trucks. Supposed to, I say. The reality
is that the first vehicle lasted a year and half, and it wasn't fast and it wasn't safe. But we had a soft spot for it. It was a second-hand Pegaso Barajas, really uncomfortable when you had to fit three people in the cab and, when it rained, the water came in from ceiling and floor (a rust hole near the brake pedal left the right leg of your trousers good and muddy). Then we wore out a few other models, always second-hand, and, after we'd been driving around for a few years, Senyor Casellas got fed up with our complaints and paying repair bills so he dipped into his pocket and got a brand-new flying horse, the Pegaso Europa 1065. That one, yes, that one went well. It seemed to be tailor-made for us. A two-axle chassis, a 9100 engine, 170 hp, a very wide windshield like cinemascope, and, at the back of the cab, a narrow bunk if you needed to rest. The trailer could handle a maximum cargo of twenty tons, and, sometimes, when we loaded it up chockablock, the engine rumbled away, happy and purring like a cat that had got the cream. “The beast's got a full belly,” we used to say.

As you'll understand, it's impossible for me to recall all the words and silences that filled the cab when we were on the road. I'm talking about ten years, and, in ten years, the stories mount up. Your mind goes back, as if it's leafing through old tabloids and, from time to time, it stops at a page that grabs its attention.
MURIEL STEALS BUNDÓ
'
S HEART IN A ROADSIDE BAR
, one headline screams. The story titled
TWO TRUCK DRIVERS STAKE THE WHOLE LOAD THEY
'
RE CARRYING IN A GAME OF CARDS AND LUCKILY THEY WIN
takes up five columns.
SPANISH TRANSPORT ENTREPRENEUR USES DRIVERS TO STASH FUNDS IN SWITZERLAND
is news too. Read like that, any old how, these statements take on an air of prophecy that you shouldn't underestimate. In any case, I suppose you'll follow them up yourselves. But there are other kinds of things, too, little anecdotal things that refuse to die. They keep coming back to me, cheekily popping up out of nowhere. Bundó's brusque movement when he was changing gears, as if he was throwing every muscle of his body into it. My habit, which those two hated, of eating sunflower seeds and throwing the husks out the window: If it was windy they stuck to the glass outside, and they thought that was
disgusting. The interminable arguments about which were the best service stations, the French or the German ones. The even more interminable sessions when we started telling jokes we already knew, for the simple pleasure of laughing together all over again when we repeated them. Then there were times when we all got hooked on repeating some expression or other over and over again: “Well, fuck me,” “What's with you, bugaboo,” “Veteranoooooo brandy, a splash would be dandy.” Our different musical tastes, as varied, contradictory, and vulgar as those shelves of cassettes you find in service stations. Gabriel's flair for finding the international service of Spanish National Radio on the days when there was soccer, which was only comparable with Bundó's talent for detecting engine problems by putting his ear against the hood. Or the different ways of driving, for example. Bundó, with his fantastic sense of direction and maneuvring skills, was the one who took us in and out of cities. When we were coming up to a border post, Gabriel took the wheel since he got on best with the police: He made good use of his peculiar mastery of languages to deal with them without misunderstandings and thus avoid wasting more time than necessary with the inspection of the load. I asked them to let me do the night shift because the darkness and the monotonous lines on the road relaxed me and let me think. Gabriel, by the way, was the safest driver. Bundó and I were quick-tempered, but he never swore out loud—well, he moved his lips like he did when he was reading, but that's all—and he never tried to get back at reckless drivers by leaning on the horn. His way of driving was calm and contemplative, and, sometimes, trying to wind him up, Bundó used to get cynical and he'd say, “If we have a real accident one day and if we're going to die I want you to be driving, Gabriel. You're so on the ball you'll give us plenty of time to see our lives flash before our eyes before they close for good. Isn't that what they say, that in your last seconds you see it all running before you in images, like in a film? Well, I want those seconds to be very long so there's time for everything.”