Bit by bit, like the late blooms of a cement springtime, slogans appeared on the most down-at-heel walls of the city. They were words of struggle or desire that clearly demonstrated how, beyond officially recognized reality, other clandestine ways of thinking existed and sooner or later were bound to surface. Quite wrongly, Slim was of the view that the leftwing ideology dissidents generally espoused automatically excluded charity as a valid means to redistribute wealth and dictated hard toil and the sweat of one’s brow as the only route to perfecting humanity. He was by now of an age when he couldn’t contemplate adapting to any new crap that life hadn’t sent his way till now, so all those burgeoning freedoms made him see red. “I’d send these buggers off to another Valley of the Fallen to spend the rest of their lives breaking rocks rather than painting the walls with all that shit. The sov-er-eignty of the peo-ple comes from the strug-gle,” he exclaimed, ridiculing the graffiti syllableby syllable. “Fuck you, the only sovereignty they’re getting are the bullets that’ll do them to death, and that’s what we should be doing to that rabble now,” and he’d spit at the wall in a real fury, and whenever he did so, the green gob would hit his target of the sickle, in the middle of the hammer. But the day-to-day side of our life wasn’t simply sustained by charity. It was also about pickpocketing, taking loot from workers, or snatching stuff in big, mass public gatherings. It was a real joy to see One-Eyed snaffling wallets in the full light of day. With his guile and the luck that always came his way, I’d have sworn he’d never meet the bad end he did, but things happen as Providence decides, and one can do little or nothing to keep its whims at bay. We went to other pagan shrines for such ends: to the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, where people worshipped a ball in a distinctive display of white magic; to the Atocha station, a genuine sanctuary for the hapless flock from Hispanic territories; or to the Las Ventas bullring, cathedral par excellence of toreros and an exceptional place for thievery and other jiggery-pokery. There, when I’d slipped in through the dead bulls’ corral, I saw Paco Camino cross himself on some of his best afternoons — fantastic flourishes with the first cape, rock-firm mettle at the moment of truth, the red cape to the fore to meet his fate, despondent as a god feeling sorry for himself, until he slowly completed the task with a single, pristine thrust of his sword. Any rally swarming with people, any flux of humanity sufficed for our presence to be felt: rush hour in the metro, the Three Kings Day parade, sales weeks in department stores, and later in the decade, when the transition — still not described as such — was creeping into the consciousness of the citizenry like a stupid, catchy hymn (freedom, freedom, no fury, keep your fear and fury to yourself, because now we’ve got freedom, and if not, we soon will have), political rallies and demonstrations authorized by the civil government. And no doubt there was, at least for me — just hear me out — not the cardboard, flimsy freedom that’s so vaunted and that the man on the street mistakes for the line to the ballot box, but that other, absolute freedom, the one granted by that fine perennial truth known as money. Deny me that now with death, if you like.
Francisco Franco Bahamonde, Caudillo de España by the grace of God, was a corpse stricken by phlebitis who only breathed thanks to a ventilator, a paltry scrap of flesh with tubes everywhere and cables hanging from his nostrils like latter-day umbilical cords frantically attaching him to this life in a foiled bid for immortality. While he was dying, One-Eyed and I totted up the proceeds from our thieving and splashed it on a twilight drop of wine or anisette, as the mood took us, and, if that mood was the horny kind, on the ladies, too — never the pricey ones, only the sort who work with the tips of their fingers or the edges of their mouths; after sorting his setup with the nun, One-Eyed was always up for a little body-to-body contact — shady ladies on the Calle Jardines or Montera, frequently beset by gastrointestinal odors and itching with thrush. We were fond of various dirty dives for alcoholic pleasuring, where lovely gobs of wine stained the sawdust crimson; however, the haunt that Slim undoubtedly preferred was La Copa de Herrera, on the Calle Carnero. Señor Antonio, an easygoing old fellow with a gleaming baldpate and built like a farmer, poured us a crystalline anisette, when he was in the mood, one he received from the Sierra Morena in raffia-wrapped glass bottles. After a hard day’s grind, we’d sit in front of the altar of our glasses, and when we felt like it, we’d take the plunge in that bitter alcohol that so loosened One-Eyed’s tongue. While he was drinking, Slim did business with the locals who came there to give him his percentage or trade in tip-offs that he sold on to the highest bidder in the upper echelons. One day, he was tipsier than usual and told me about one of the latter. “Dwarfy, I’ve heard that Franco is dead and gone. They’re only waiting for November 20 to tell the country, so the date coincides with the execution of José Antonio.” Slim belched solemnly. “I’m kept in the know,” he continued mysteriously, “by an important guy in the hierarchy of the Movement who I’m on good terms with, by the name of Esteruelas, and you’ll soon get to know him. We’re going to do a little job for him. I can’t give you any details yet, but it’s a tricky, dangerous business. We’ve got to work out a way to give him what he wants without anyone suspecting what we’re doing. It would be better if I’m not implicated, especially with the storm that’s about to hit us. You can be my messenger boy. Nobody notices you except to avert their gaze or give you alms. You’re ideal for the job.” When I heard that name, my body shivered and shook. Suddenly the memory bubbled up of the way Esteruelas had looked at me when he took Gurruchaga prisoner, and the same nasty scowl he rehearsed years later when he carted handsome Bustamante off to jug, knowing full well he was an innocent man. Slim registered my unease. “Something wrong, dwarfy?” he asked. “Aren’t you interested in what I’ve got to offer?” “Maybe not,” I replied, going cold on him. My attitude seemed to bother him. “If you don’t want to come in on this,” he said threateningly, “you’d better say so loud and clear.” He stared deep into my eyes with the relentless confidence of a man who knows he wields power, as he held out his hand to shake on it. “Are we still comrades?” I replied that we were, simply so I didn’t have to suffer the steely-sharp gaze from his single eye, although at the time I didn’t realize that my survival was at stake. “Great, dwarfy, you’re in; you just see how we’ll disinfect the fatherland against the lice now infesting it. You keep your eyes open, watch what’s happening, and take good note of everything. Difficult times lie ahead, but that’s when the valiant show their mettle. Just do what I tell you, and you’ll have no regrets.” And so I decided to go along with him, at least as long as the fun and games brought me some cash; if not, I’d soon find a way to jump ship. In any case, if the job came from so high up, as One-Eyed had claimed, there’d be no harm in giving it a spin to see if I could get a leg up, even if only for a moment. I swallowed and looked at the wall. They’d just broken off the program on the black-and-white television hanging from La Copa’s ceiling to broadcast the first official bulletin on the terminal condition of the Generalísimo. The headline breaking the news carried a black dot, as if mourning would very soon be in order.