Southern Seas (5 page)

‘Do you know who I’m looking for?’

‘It’ll be Francesc. No one ever comes to see me.’

The old man disappeared into a little cubby-hole carved out of the vastness of the artist’s atelier. Carvalho advanced a couple of steps, and found Artimbau engaged in painting a girl in the act of removing her jumper. The painter turned round, surprised, and took time to read the past in Carvalho’s face.

‘You! Well I’ll be damned!’

The dark, babyish face, circled by a black beard and a receding hairline, seemed to emerge from the tunnel of time. The model
had lowered her jumper to conceal her white, waxen breasts: two firm, solid hemispheres.

‘That’s all for today, Remei.’

The painter touched Carvalho for a moment, and then clapped him on the back, as if he had just rediscovered a part of himself.

‘You’ll stay and eat. If you like my cooking, that is.’

He pointed to a covered earthenware casserole simmering on a butane cooker. Carvalho lifted the lid and was assailed by the aroma of a strange, potato-less stew in which vegetables vied with meat.

‘I have to watch my weight, so I don’t put in potatoes. And hardly any fat either. But it tastes OK.’

Artimbau patted his paunch, which jutted out from his relatively slender body. The model murmured a goodbye and cast a long, slow look at Carvalho.

‘I wish I knew how to paint that look,’ laughed Artimbau when the model had left. ‘Nowadays I busy myself painting gestures. Body movements. Women dressing and undressing. I’ve gone back to the human body after spending a lot of time on society, social things … Spending time as a painter, I mean. I’m still in the Party. I go out and paint murals before elections. The other day I did one at the Clot. What about you?’

‘I don’t paint.’

‘I know. I meant are you still involved in politics?’

‘No. I don’t have a Party. I don’t even have a cat.’

It was a stock reply which once upon a time might have been true. But not any more, Carvalho thought to himself. To start with, I’ve got a dog now. Am I going to end up with as many things as other people? Artimbau had things. He was married, with two children. Maybe the wife would come and eat with them, and then again maybe she wouldn’t. Artimbau showed him his paintings, and a book of drawings on the death agonies of General Franco. No. He knew that the climate still wasn’t right
for it to be published. He tried to get Carvalho to reciprocate with some news about his own life. Carvalho summed up his last twenty years in one short sentence. He’d been in the United States, and was working as a private detective.

‘That’s the last thing I’d have expected. A private eye!’

‘In fact I’ve come to see you about a case. A client of yours.’

‘Somebody complaining that I’ve plagiarized a painting?’

‘No. He’s dead. Murdered.’

‘Stuart Pedrell.’

Carvalho sat down and prepared to listen. But the usually talkative Artimbau became rather reticent. He laid plates and cutlery on a little marble table and produced a bottle of Berberana Gran Reserva. As always, Carvalho was happy to discover a new example of gastronomic corruption. The painter carefully removed the casserole from the stove. Then he phoned his wife. She wouldn’t be coming. He filled the plates with the low-calorie stew and was plainly delighted at Carvalho’s favourable comments.

‘It’s excellent.’

‘The green vegetables—artichokes, peas and so on—give off their own moisture, so you don’t need so much oil. The only dietetic heresy is the glass of cognac I added. But the doctors can get stuffed.’

‘Yeah, stuff the doctors.’

Carvalho did not press his business. He hoped that Artimbau would return to the subject of Stuart Pedrell. The painter chewed slowly, and advised Carvalho to do the same. That way, you digest your food better, you eat less, and you lose weight.

‘It’s always tricky talking about a client.’

‘He’s a dead client.’

‘The wife still buys some of my work. And she pays better than her husband used to.’

‘Tell me about her.’

‘That’s even trickier. She’s a living client.’

The bottle was already finished, and the painter opened
another. In no time at all, this too was half empty. Their thirst was well served by large glasses designed for mineral water.

‘The wife is quite a woman.’

‘So I’ve seen.’

‘I offered to paint her in the nude, but she wouldn’t have it. She’s certainly got class. More than him, I’d say. Both of them were made of money. Both had an impressive education, and their different connections gave them a very varied life. I was his court painter, I suppose. One day they could be sitting where you are now, eating one of my concoctions with me and my wife. And the next day, they might have López Bravo or López Rodo round to dinner—or some minister from the Opus Dei. You see what I mean? That should give you an idea. One day they’d be skiing with the king, and the next they’d be smoking joints with left-wing poets at Lliteras.’

‘Did you paint the mural in the end?’

‘Ah, you’ve heard about that. No. We were still discussing terms when he disappeared. We never agreed anything concrete. He wanted me to paint something very primitive. The faux-naif style of Gauguin’s Canaques period, but transposed to the native life of Lliteras. I did a few sketches, but he didn’t like them. I was still into realism, and maybe something a bit too militant slipped in. The peasantry and suchlike … To be honest, I wasn’t really all that interested in the idea. Between you and me, he was a bit of a loudmouth.’

By now, the two of them had disposed of the second bottle.

‘A loudmouth?’

‘Yes. A loudmouth,’ Artimbau repeated, as he went in search of a third bottle.

‘Well, maybe I went a bit far, writing him off as a loudmouth. Like anyone else, he both was and wasn’t what he was.’

Artimbau’s eyes, half buried in a forest of hair, gleamed with satisfaction. Carvalho provided the perfect audience, as if he were a blank canvas on which the artist could paint his image of Stuart Pedrell.

‘Like any rich man with angst, Stuart Pedrell was pretty careful. Every year he would get dozens of proposals asking him to help finance cultural ventures of one sort or another. Someone even suggested the idea of a university. Or maybe he was the one who suggested it … I can’t remember. There were publishing houses, magazines, libraries, foundations, all kinds of projects … You can imagine what it was like, as soon as people smelt that there was money around attached to cultural angst. After all, there’s not a lot of money round here, and not much cultural angst among the rich either. That’s why Stuart Pedrell always took a long time before coming to a decision. But he was also a bit of a dabbler. He would get interested in all sorts of projects and give them money—then he’d suddenly come down to earth and leave them in the lurch.’

‘How was he thought of among the artists and intellectuals?’

‘They all thought he was pretty weird, really. Artists and intellectuals didn’t value him too highly—because they don’t value anyone highly. If that ever changes, it’ll mean that our egos have collapsed and we’re no longer artists and intellectuals.’

‘The same thing happens with butchers.’

‘Yes, if they own their own shops. But not if they’re just employees.’

Carvalho attributed Artimbau’s social-Freudian demagogy to the third bottle of wine.

‘Rich people had respect for him, because in this country they
respect anyone who’s made a lot of money without too much effort. And Stuart Pedrell has certainly done that. He once told me the story of how he got rich, and it was enough to make you wet yourself laughing.

‘It was in the early 1950s, when there was that sudden block on imports. Raw materials were coming here only in a trickle, or via the black market. By then, Stuart Pedrell had finished studying to be a commercial lawyer. His father had already marked him down to take over the business, because his brothers had struck out on their own. He was still unsure of himself. He investigated the raw materials market and found out that there was a shortage of casein in Spain. Fine. So, where was casein to be got? In Uruguay and Argentina. Who wanted to buy it? He drew up a list of potential customers and visited them one by one. They were willing to buy from him if the ministry gave import permission. Easy as pie. Stuart Pedrell mobilized his contacts, who included government ministers, and they opened doors at the Ministry of Trade. The trade minister himself thought the whole project was very patriotic, because that was how Stuart Pedrell presented it to him. What would Spain do without casein? What would become of us without casein?’

‘I hate to think.’

‘Stuart Pedrell flew to Uruguay and Argentina. He talked with manufacturers. He went to meetings. He danced the tango. He even got into the habit of telling jokes with an Argentinian accent. He used to do that when he was on a high, or feeling down, or when he was playing the piano.’

‘In other words, all the time.’

‘No, no, I exaggerate. He got the casein at a reasonable price, a third or a quarter of the price that had been agreed in Spain. Everything went according to plan, and he used his first millions to make more. That’s not the best way to put it, of course, because he was clever enough to associate himself with businessmen who could make up for his personal aloofness. You could say that he
was a Brechtian entrepreneur—the kind with the best prospects for the here and now. An alienated capitalist won’t have much chance in the social-democratic future that faces us.’

‘Who were his partners?’

‘There were two main ones: Planas and the Marquess of Munt.’

‘Sounds like big money.’

‘Big money and very good connections. For some time it was said that the mayor was also in on the act. Not just the mayor, but various banks and religious and semi-religious sects as well. Stuart Pedrell would put up the money and then take a back seat. In a way, I suppose, he was schizophrenic. The world of business was one thing, and his intellectual circles quite another. When he’d made enough money to assure the future of four generations, he went back to university and studied philosophy and politics in Madrid. Later on, he enrolled at Harvard and the London School of Economics. I know for sure that he wrote poems which he never published.’

‘Did he ever publish anything?’

‘Never. He used to say that he was too much of a perfectionist. But I think it was because he couldn’t find a style. That happens to a lot of people. They have everything that they think they need in order to create, and then they find that they haven’t got a style. So they bring literature into their lives, or painting into their wardrobes. Some rich people decide to buy up magazines or publishing houses instead. Stuart Pedrell was involved in financing a couple of small publishers, but he never gave them a lot—just enough to cover their annual losses. The money was a pittance for him.’

‘What about his wife? Why is she called Mima?’

‘From Miriam. It’s quite normal. All my clients are called Popo, Puli, Peni, Chocho, Fifi or somesuch. These days it’s chic to be “tired”, and nothing tires you more than having to say someone’s full name. But Mima was rather different. She seemed to be just an appendage of Stuart Pedrell at first, the typically
cultured and affected wife of a rich and cultured man. She never dropped her social airs, even when she was sitting here. But she never gabbled. She’s been a different woman since her husband disappeared. She’s brought so much energy into the business that the partners are even getting a bit concerned. Stuart Pedrell was easier to work with.’

‘And Viladecans?’

‘I only see him when he has to pay me. He’s the typical smart-arsed lawyer who helps the boss keep his hands clean.’

‘Girlfriends?’

‘That’s a very delicate area. What are you interested in? Past, present, or more wine?’

‘Wine and the present.’

Artimbau brought another bottle.

‘It’s my last one of this vintage.’ He spilt a little as he filled Carvalho’s glass. ‘The most recent one is called Adela Vilardell. She was more or less permanent. But there were also plenty of short-term relationships—younger than most people would think acceptable. Stuart Pedrell had passed the fifty mark, and he favoured the classical style of erotic vampirism. I can set you on the trail of Adela Vilardell, but not of the one-nighters.’

‘Did you know him well?’

‘Yes and no. A painter can get to know these types quite well, especially if they’re clients. They bare their souls … and their pockets. It’s a revealing dual operation.’

‘The South Seas?’

‘His obsession. I think he’d been reading a poem about Gauguin, and he started to pursue the myth. He even bought a copy of the George Sanders film—
The Moon and Sixpence
I think it’s called—and screened it at home.’

Carvalho handed him the sheet of verse that he had found among Stuart Pedrell’s papers. He translated the line from
The Waste Land
.

‘Do you know where these lines in Italian could come from?
Can you see any hidden meaning? Maybe something Stuart Pedrell said to you?’

‘I often heard him say: “I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.” It was his pet phrase. The Italian doesn’t remind me of anything special, though.’