“What am I doing here?” he mumbled.
There was no time to waste in response, which consisted of a sure blow with the machete, leaving the instrument embedded in his head just above an ear. He died instantly, with a great spasm but without unnecessary suffering. I’m a good guy: I don’t like to drag out anybody’s agony. When animals suffer too much, they get poisoned with adrenaline and then don’t taste good.
That morning at the Delicias bar, reading about Pascal Henry’s disappearance, I decided to give Maruja another chance. To celebrate the end of the betrayal and rivalry with the Colombian, I invited her to dine with me at Can Fabes, the famous restaurant owned by Santi Santamaria, which was much more accessible than El Bulli. On the back page of La Vanguardia, I had read an interview by Ima Machín with one of the survivors from the plane crash in the Andes, a guy who rebuilt his life by creating an ostrich ranch in the Pampas. When they asked him why ostriches and not cattle, he said that, to his surprise, he found ostrich meat much closer to human flesh. Both were sweet, almost porklike, and very, very tender.
That same night, sitting at a table in Can Fabes, I wanted to try an ostrich filet. The waiter was quite taken aback with my demand but decided to ask in the kitchen if it’d be possible to satisfy my caprice. After a few minutes, all the waiters were staring at me as if I’d killed someone. Maruja got tense and asked if we could leave, but it was too late: we were already sitting under Santi Santamaria’s round shadow with carving knives in our hands.
“I understand that you’d like a dish of exotic meats,” a raspy voice whispered a few centimeters from my wrinkled nose.
“It’s okay, just bring us the degustation menu,” I said apologetically.
“Why don’t you try my râble cuit au moment with cocoa sauce? If you don’t like it, no problem at all...”
“Ah, well, unfortunately, I’m allergic to cocoa.”
The chef lifted his own carving knife in a compulsive gesture while muttering terrible threats in a barely comprehensible Catalan, as if he were the witch doctor in an African tribe about to stuff a careless explorer into the pot. Finally, he bellowed: “Get out of my restaurant! Go home, cut your own leg off, and have some pig’s feet!”
No other phrase could have suited me better. I took it as culinary advice from a master on the subject, and also as proof that Santamaria must have engaged in some kind of ritual cannibalism. I left smiling, but Maruja was very upset that we’d been kicked out and misunderstood my quick retreat as an act of cowardice. I drove home as fast as I could and dropped her off without paying any attention to her recriminations or insults and offering no explanations. Once alone at the butcher shop, I grabbed the best of my slicing knives, opened the industrial freezer, dropped the Colombian’s semifrozen cadaver over my shoulder, and deposited him on the chopping block. With an expertise that’s totally mine, I managed to cut off a leg without much blood splatter. Then I lit the stove, put a pot over a low flame, deboned the limb, and cut up a bit of onion. I sliced the meat in uneven pieces, dropped them in the water, and set it to boil. With a bit of butter and cream, I poached the onion and added it to the meat and its broth. After twenty minutes over the fire, I ran it through the food processor until I got rid of all the lumps. Later, I heated up the croquette mix and put the mass in spoons which I’d dipped in alginics. I fried up some bread crumbs and battered the croquettes. Finally, the result of all of my sacrifice was there before my eyes, challenging my palette, saying, Eat me. And so I did: I ate three in one shot! I couldn’t believe the results: the croquettes exploded in my mouth, filling all my taste buds with a torrent of flavor. I’d found the star chef’s best kept secret!
Energized with curiosity prompted by the Swiss gourmet’s disappearance, I began outlining a new strategy to get a reservation at El Bulli. This time, I pretended I was a respected German gastronomist on vacation in Spain. I thought the Henry case might have caused a rush of cancellations — no diner wants to think they could die at the table — and two days later I received a call from Cala Monjoi.
“Mr. Jürgen Klinsmann?”
“Jawohl! ”
“We have a free table on Thursday.”
Maruja was very happy that I was finally taking her to dinner at the most distinguished restaurant in the world. She was radiant that night in her ethnic dress and bead necklaces. She looked like a Spanish-gypsy version of the Queen of Sheba.
“The Klinsmanns, I presume,” said the kindly maître d’ when we arrived at El Bulli.
“No,” said Maruja.
“Yes,” I said.
“Who is Klinsmann?” she asked as they led us to our table.
“A literary pseudonym.”
There was no more conversation that evening. Maruja didn’t know how to even begin eating those spherified yogurt knots with ficoïde glaciale, and I couldn’t wait to taste the famous liquid croquettes. When the sacred moment of communion with the master finally arrived, my hands were trembling with excitement. But everything fell apart with the first bite — not a trace of Pascal Henry in that toasted bread crumb! No matter how hard I concentrated, I could not find the characteristic porklike taste of human flesh in the liquid croquettes or in any of the other dishes I ordered from the degustation menu.
This being the case, where was the gourmet? Who had eaten him? Santi Santamaria probably kidnapped him, I thought as I descended into this new abyss of depression. He probably ended up in the pots at Can Fabes. Pascal Henry had dined at Can Fabes exactly two nights before his disappearance from Cala Monjoi. Santamaria’s calculations would have been as simple as they were perverse: wait for the gourmet to leave El Bulli before striking like a bird of prey — I wondered if he’d sent some underling from the kitchen or if he’d kidnapped the man himself. The consequences would fall on his competitor: a media frenzy, clients vanishing, perhaps a city inspection that would unveil a dangerous arsenal of chemicals and gels...
Upon arriving home that night, only one thought hammered at my temples: to slice Maruja’s neck with the ham knife to quiet her constant recriminations. She was going at me the whole way home. “You didn’t say a word during the entire dinner; I’m sick of your bored and boring personality; your lack of consideration has no limits.” To be honest, I was used to her criticisms. What really enraged me was that she asked for a divorce. And all because of that asshole Colombian and his book.
After I took my shoes off, I quietly opened the box of kitchen utensils where I’d hidden the weapon and, with cold blood, went looking for my wife. She too had taken her shoes off to snuggle up with the cushions on the couch and surrender to the final pages of Andreu Martín’s Prótesis. She never got to the end. So absorbed in the book, she only realized she was going to die when she felt the traitorous blade on her neck and I whispered: “No more reading at home.”
As I wrapped her up in plastic and cleaned the stairs that went from our apartment to the butcher shop, I mused how the next day I’d take all her damn detective novels to the San Antonio market and see if a bookseller would give me a decent price for all of them.
I decided to begin by cutting off her head, since part of the work had already been done. When I managed to separate it from her neck, I held it high, in a kind of Hamlet pose.
“No more cheating on me with some South American!” I yelled, and I laughed with all my might.