Southern Seas (16 page)

‘No. I’ve never seen this gentleman.’

‘Is there a smarter restaurant in the area?’

‘Smarter, yes. But I don’t think you’ll eat better there. The food here is simple, but it’s good.’

‘I’m sure it is. I was just thinking that my relative might have gone to the other one. People like variety.’

The air smelt of coffee laced with Fundador brandy. Young workers were laughing, talking in loud voices, pushing each other, threatening to crush each other’s balls, or arguing over who was the better wing-forward, Carrasco or Juanito. The older ones were stirring the sugar in their coffee with the air of connoisseurs. They took the photo, held it at a distance from eyelids dusted
with cement, and fingered it a little as if in search of some clue. The answer on the face of the collective was a consistent ‘no’.

The landlord was loth to waste time that could be used to ring up another two hundred and fifty pesetas for two set meals. He glanced at the photo over his shoulder and shook his head. His wife was peeling potatoes with one hand while pouring coffee with the other and simultaneously giving her daughter a tongue-lashing. The girl, who had spots on her face and beads of sweat in her armpits, proceeded to clear the tables at the speed required by her mother. The next-in-line to inherit the business, a potato-nosed John Travolta, was meticulously pruning his fingernails. With his denim legs crossed and his small buttocks gently propped against the refrigerator, he was totally immersed in removing a tiny particle of flesh from the little finger of his left hand.

‘Best wines from Jumilla.’

Carvalho went into the wine shop, which was architectually no different from any restaurant, chemist or dry-cleaner’s in the area, and asked for a bottle of white Jumilla. The owner was a hundred and fifty kilos of white-skinned humanity whose pallor was relieved only by a dark pair of creased rings under his eyes. He and Carvalho were the only people in a shop dominated by a huge cold store. As its wood and chrome door swung open and shut, the noise reminded Carvalho of the refrigerators in the bars and taverns of his own end of town. It was a huge reproduction, built on the scale of its owner and lined internally with green tiles. The man sought to penetrate the zone of silence surrounding Carvalho.

‘What a ridiculous situation! A disaster! I’d set them to work
with a shovel and pick. And as for the rest of them—up against the wall! We’re sixteen million too many. Not one more and not one less. It’ll take a war to sort it out.’

Carvalho downed another glass and nodded without enthusiasm, but just sufficiently for the hundred and fifty kilos to shuffle over and spread themselves on the chair opposite.

‘Do
you
think it’s right? Obviously not. I’m a man who likes to get things straight. I like to be treated right. See the wood for the trees. But to be strung along by some smart-arsed talker. No sir! That’s not for me. Like I say, there are sixteen million too many of us in Spain. Nobody’s got the answers.
He
knew how to keep us knuckled down. If anyone stepped out of line—whoosh! Off with their heads! I never tire of saying it: I prefer to be told things straight. I like to know the truth. If that’s the way you want it, OK. But don’t start dressing it all up and pussy-footing around. No. That won’t wash. As far as I’m concerned, they can all take a running jump. I’ve always spoken my mind, just like I am now. And I’ve had all I can take. Do you see what I mean?’

Carvalho nodded.

‘Just the other day, we were talking about what needs to be done. You do this, I do that. Fine. We agreed it. But would you believe it—an hour later, everything was up in the air again. And he still went on laughing. So much that I thought fuck it, and gave him a kick where it hurts. Do I make myself clear?’

Carvalho emptied the bottle and deposited a hundred pesetas next to ten kilos of forearm.

‘Stick to your guns, friend. Otherwise they’ll walk all over you.’

‘They don’t know who they’re messing with.’

The man barely lifted his eyes from the ring of wine that Carvalho’s glass had left on the formica tabletop. Carvalho went into the street and entered the fanciest barber shop he could find. The walls were hung with photos of hairdressing models, over which was displayed a sign from the old days:
We sculpt your hair
. He
asked for a trim and a shave. He kept a careful eye on the barber’s hands—a habit he had acquired in prison, where the most one could hope for was a tolerable level of hygiene, and where the job was always performed by a convicted murderer.

Carvalho recounted the story of his missing relation, and held out the photograph. The barber viewed it rather than studied it, as if it comprised part of the visual field that he was slicing with his other hand.

The picture passed from one customer to the next, and then back to the barber. He studied it more closely.

‘His face reminds me of something … But,’ he added hastily, ‘I don’t know what.’ He handed it back to Carvalho.

‘Keep it and give it a look now and then. I’ll pass by tomorrow.’

‘I’m sure I’ve seen that face before, you know.’

Carvalho passed the Wines-from-Jumilla
bodega
again. The proprietor was taking the air. He was muttering to himself.

‘Same as before?’

‘Worse.’

‘Don’t give in.’

‘I’d sooner die.’

Carvalho left him to his thoughts and continued his perambulation. The only dentist in the whole of San Magín had seen neither the face nor the teeth of Stuart Pedrell. He learned no more from the two doctors, either, whose waiting rooms were filled with toothless pensioners chewing over softly spoken words. He called into dry-cleaning establishments, and visited a boutique where silk ties jostled men’s underwear. He left no chemist’s shop or newspaper kiosk unturned. Occasionally the photograph seemed to stir a flicker of recognition. But only a flicker. Nor did anyone know Stuart Pedrell in the two night schools, managed by a couple of brothers who were teachers from Cartagena. His heart was slowly sinking, and only his previous investment in walking and talking persuaded him to pursue this suicidal investigation.

‘Come to a mass rally this evening! Organized by the Socialists of Catalonia. Workers, if you want a San Magín in which
you
feel at home, and not the speculators, come to the Socialist rally at the Creueta Sports Centre! The speakers will be Martín Toval, José Ignacio Urenda, Joan Reventós and Francisco Ramos. The Socialists have the answer!’

The voice was coming from loudhailers attached to a slow-moving van. The communication aroused little excitement among the local population—evidently aware that they should vote Communist or Socialist as some kind of bio-urban necessity, but not as a matter of great enthusiasm. A few children stuck their heads through the van windows and asked for leaflets. But they soon returned to their game: the UCD ones had been prettier. A cooked meat wholesaler put the photo down beneath a hanging leg of cured pork, and a heavy gob of Trevélez ham-fat splattered Stuart Pedrell’s features. The wholesaler compounded his offence by wiping the photograph with his sleeve, so that it suddenly seemed to acquire the dark glaze of twenty years in an album.

Carvalho left the shop and began knocking on doors where the janitor’s function had not yet been replaced by an entryphone. Old janitors, bleached white by years spent in gloomy interiors, appeared down dark passages lit by flickering TV sets. No, they said, they had never seen the man. One block. Two. Even if it takes me two weeks, he said to himself. But he was already thinking that as soon as night fell, he would flee San Magín and follow the logical thread in some other direction. It seemed like it was always the same janitor … always the same doorway … after a while they became indistinguishable.

Suddenly he realized that the pavements were full of children. The onset of dusk seemed set to greet their shouts and bustling laughter. Someone had given the order for pregnant women to appear, and they picked their way along the pavements like unsteady ducklings. He went up to the church that stood on a neat
little hillock overlooking the built-up slopes of San Magín. It was a functional church, whose crumbling fabric had borne the full brunt of wind, rains, blazing suns across treeless landscapes, and the vile vapours of industrial effluent rising from dank reedbeds that hinted at the one-time presence of a stream long since extinct. The priest’s sacristy was littered with out-of-date posters calling for official amnesties. There was also a poster in Italian advertising the film
Christ Stopped at Eboli
. The priest himself sported a beard and a 1975 vintage Camacho pullover.

‘I’ve seen this face, but not recently. It was some time ago. I really couldn’t say when or where, though. Is he a relation of yours?’

All his revolutionary mistrust glinted from one eye that was more open than the other. Carvalho left under his watchful gaze and had to decide whether to plunge back into the labyrinth of the satellite town, or to head for a brightly lit hall from whence issued the sound of music. Above the door, a sign said:
San Magín Workers’ Commissions
, and inside, someone was singing a sentimental song by Víctor Manuel about love between two mentally handicapped people. He showed the photo to the caretaker, who was using wood-shavings in an attempt to light a stove in the middle of the room. The room was furnished with two dozen assorted chairs, a small fridge, a blackboard, a bookcase, and several noticeboards displaying political posters and notices of various meetings.

‘Of course I knew him. He used to come here, a few months ago, soon after the club opened. He came quite often.’

‘What was his name?’

‘You should know! I thought you said he was a relative of yours! Here everyone called him the Accountant. No. He never actually joined, but he used to come quite a lot. Then suddenly he stopped coming.’

‘Was he very active? Was he a good worker?’

‘No idea. I don’t know what he was like at work.’

‘No. Here, I mean. Did he put in a lot of work here?’

‘No. He came to meetings, but he didn’t really join in the discussions. Sometimes he’d stand up and make a point, though.’

‘Was he very committed?’

‘No. Only so-so. We get all sorts here. Half of them want to make the revolution overnight. But he was a moderate type. Obviously well educated, though. Very careful. He didn’t say a lot, so as not to offend people.’

‘Would you happen to know his proper name?’

‘Antonio. His name was Antonio, but everyone called him the Accountant because that was his job.’

‘Where did he work?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Didn’t he make friends? Didn’t he ever come with anyone else?’

‘Yes, he did.’

A smile played round his lips.

‘With girls?’

‘One in particular. A metalworker from SEAT. Ana Briongos.’

‘Does she still come here?’

‘No. Or rather, not very often. But she’s very, very radical—the kind who got all worked up about the Moncloa Accords, and I’m not sure that she’s calmed down yet. Some people think everything’s going to change overnight just because they want it to. They haven’t got the years behind them. The experience. Like the civil war. That would have given them something to think about. Man is the only animal that trips over the same stone twice, you know. She’s a real working-class girl, Briongos. Real guts. As committed as they come. But too impatient. I’ve been in the thick of it since ’34, and I’ve been through many things, I can tell you. You win some, you lose some, that’s what I say. But don’t expect
me
to go round setting fire to letterboxes. Do you think that’s the way forward? Have you ever heard Solé Tura speak? I heard him once say something that made me think a lot. It went something like this: the bourgeoisie took four centuries to come to power, and
the working class has only had a century of historical existence as an organized movement. Word for word. I’m quoting from memory. It’s obvious that it’s not going to be easy. Some people seem to think that we can just turn up at the Winter Palace with our union cards in our hands and say: “Out you go. We’re in charge now!” Do you see what I mean? There are plenty of people like that. But we’ve got to be patient. If we just start lashing out, we’ll bring the whole works down on top of us. Because they’re not blind, you know. Far from it. They’ve got eyes like hawks.’

‘Where can I find Briongos?’

‘That’s not up to me to tell, and no one else here will tell you either. Talk to the guy in charge if you like, but nobody ever gives their addresses here. It’s a responsibility, if you see what I mean.’

‘And you don’t know where the Accountant worked?’

‘Not really. I think he worked by the hour, doing the accounts for some fellow dealing in glassware—bottles, lab equipment and so on. Somewhere around Block Nine, because that’s where I used to see him. Always very stiff. This is how he’d walk. Very stiff. We didn’t trust him at first. He seemed out of place, and no one knew where he’d come from. But the fact that he was going around with Briongos was a kind of guarantee. A real fighter, that one. She was in the Modelo Prison before she was out of pigtails. Her father went there to give her a telling-off, and she told him to go take a jump. Too many people like that just get tired though, and then they just dump all those years of work and effort. Now she goes around saying that she’s through, and that the bourgeoisie’s got everything under control. All that kind of rubbish. Just look at me. Do you think the bourgeoisie controls me? What the hell has the bourgeoisie ever given me?’