‘Stop!’ shouts Santos. ‘Police!’
Ren gets out of the car, but his behaviour is unusual. He gestures towards the dark, in the direction of the yacht club and House of Pilots, from where ambushed guards emerge. He gestures for calm, for them not to intervene.
Santos again tells them to stop. Measures the distance. If they don’t heed him, and it looks as if they’re not going to, he won’t be able to reach them before they get in the car. He looks back. Come on, Santos, what’s happening? You’re the only one running after the fugitives. You should stop and think. This is what he does. He stops. His heavy breathing has more to do with the sudden agitation in his mind than with physical effort. As Chelo Vidal and the other fugitive get in the car, Paúl Santos turns around. Mancorvo hasn’t moved. He’s still at the wheel. The judge is on the ground, petrified, a white cravat around his neck like a luminous noose. Ren stares at him, at Paúl Santos, and nods mockingly when he gestures for the car to start, to follow him. Ren climbs in. The fugitives’ car has already gone through the gears and is moving swiftly away, with a screech of tyres as it twists between the cranes, heading for the eastern exit.
The chase is on.
The car with Ren and Mancorvo, which has left the judge behind, approaches. Santos puts his weapon away and prepares to climb in. He won’t be able. As they’re passing, Mancorvo lowers the window. Says, ‘It’s our turn now, Mr Scientist!’ Accelerates. He’s grounded. Surrounded by blue mist.
His office is open. He’s dozing with his head on the table. The night’s dozing as well, on the blinds, the indirect sea, the collage of shadows in the city on the other side of the window. Finally he hears them arrive. They’re greeted by the duty officers. Ask for a cigarette. It’s as if he can hear everything. Including the sound of the smoke. Which is why, when Mancorvo starts typing and discussing the terms of the report with Ren, their voices and the sound of the keys reverberate inside his head.
So it was he learnt:
The driver of the vehicle being pursued performed a reckless manoeuvre on Hervés Hill, the car overturned on a bend and fell down the side. As a result of the accident, two occupants died: a woman identified as Consuelo Vidal Míguez and a man, the driver, as yet to be identified. A third person, also unknown, managed to escape, no doubt badly injured, judging by traces remaining on the scene.
And then:
The orders are, until further notice, not to provide any public information about these events, to avoid them being disseminated in the media, orders that will be duly passed on to the censor’s office.
He could hear everything. Drying sweat, Mancorvo’s handkerchief sounded like a paper blade, Ren’s like the crackling of elytra in a light trap for insects.
‘Where’s Mr Scientist?’
‘He’ll be here somewhere. His door’s open.’
‘Give him time,’ said Ren. ‘He’ll soon find out birds don’t suck and pigs don’t fly.’
The Arrest
IT’S A HOT morning. Santos, the policeman, heads for the Tachygraphic Rose academy and finds it closed. A few pupils are standing around in confusion. It’s the first time this has happened. ‘Closed Owing to Bereavement’. They expect some such sign. But suddenly the door opens and Dr Montevideo comes out. It was he who opened. The one who was bedridden. Something extraordinary must have happened, something terrible or supernatural. The man exiled in his own room since he returned from his other exile ten or so years previously. They gaze at the ghost. Perhaps it’s only a shell, empty on the inside. They’ll soon find out when he turns around to lock the door. But no. On the contrary, he’s very robust, not astral at all. A body, the memory of a body, wearing a coat and the coat’s memory. When he entered the house, intending not to reappear, it was winter. This helped him. He entered like a shepherd driving a flock of dry leaves. Now the sea-blue coat gives him the air of a sailor emerging from a boat-house in another hemisphere, another season. He looks at the plaque: ‘The Tachygraphic Rose, 2nd Floor’. Wipes the brass with his sleeve. ‘The best polish for cleaning metals is and always will be Love. Love Polish.’ An advertisement he remembers from his childhood. Another one, important for a reason that’s become obscured, is the definition of Portland cement. The relationship between poetry and publicity is paradoxical. A verse quickly grows old when it takes the form of an advert, but a slogan that’s presented as a poem lives on. For example. . No, now is not the time to institute such proceedings. He wipes the plaque with his sleeve, a sea cloth. Says, ‘Go back to the jungle, children. Classes are suspended.’
‘Why, Mr Montevideo?’
The doctor looks back. His eyes rest on the policeman Paúl Santos. Speechless, shocked, suddenly fully aware of the outcome.
‘What is it, Mr Montevideo?’ asks Stringer.
‘Nothing you can publish,’ replies Héctor Ríos. ‘A man descended into hell.’
Having said this, he heads quickly towards the pedestrian crossing. The road is flat, but he views each step as if it’s an uphill climb.
‘Has something happened to Miss Catia?’ Stringer manages to ask out loud. He’s conscious by now that the fact of asking could not only reveal a truth, but worsen it.
‘She was arrested last night. They’ve taken her, Balboa.’
Stringer reiterates a long forgotten question, ‘Why?’
‘They say they arrested someone who had a photo of her. They searched his house and apparently found a photo of Catia with the name ‘Judith’ on the back. Nonsense. They then came here and turned everything upside down. They even tore my mattress and confiscated my papers. A Dramatic History of Culture. To see what it said. I told them I’d written it. They wouldn’t listen. I was of no interest. They didn’t want to arrest me, I think they thought I was too old. One kept looking at my teeth. I told him I had a new set which I’d lent to a friend working as a second-hand car salesman.’
He points across the road. ‘For further information, ask the. . lawyer.’ Stringer turns to look at Paúl Santos, who’s typing inside, has a problem, he’s hit two different keys and the bars are entangled.
Popsy’s Delivery
PINCHE WAS WATCHING TV. The owners had gone on holiday, so he was living like a king. All he had to do was keep the house warm. Those were his orders. He’d light the fires and then sit back to watch TV. That horse that could speak. Black Beauty. He understood everything after a few months. Spoke perfect English, like the horse. Who wouldn’t? But as for me, I had to do the rest. The dogs. Look after the dogs. Besides watching that horse on TV, he could have taken care of the dogs. He said he would but, when it comes to dogs, who’d believe him? The only animal deserving of his attention was Black Beauty. So better to forget about Pinche. I like animals. When I told the lady of the house my mother had a donkey to carry the clothes called Grumpy, she almost cried with emotion.
‘Grumpy!’
‘That’s right, madam. Grumpy.’
What I wanted was for her to talk to me in English, since I wasn’t around for Black Beauty to teach me, but what she wanted was for me to talk to her in Spanish. She was an actress and had always dreamed of one day speaking Spanish. Sometimes, when Pinche and I spoke Galician, she’d listen in to our conversation. She obviously thought something funny was going on and we were trying to wind her up with a secret language we’d invented. She didn’t know this language existed. She knew about Catalan and Basque. I explained it was a poor person’s language, how could she know? But it wasn’t something we’d come up with to annoy her. Thing is I couldn’t talk Spanish to Pinche, it made me laugh. What, Spanish? No, Spanish didn’t make me laugh, what made me laugh was talking it to Pinche and Pinche talking it to me. To her? No. Talking it to her didn’t make me laugh. Why should it? ‘All right, madam, you talk English to me in the mornings and in the afternoons I’ll talk Spanish.’ It seemed a good deal. She was almost always out in the afternoons. But, after that, she stopped going out. When the weather was good, we’d sit outside, chatting away. If I got paid for talking, I’d be rich by now. In the mornings, however, when she was due to speak to me in English, she’d fall silent. I’m not saying she wanted to save her words, keep them to herself. Though it would have been better for her if I spoke English well, then we wouldn’t have had a problem when she asked me to ‘clean the corner’ and I understood cona or ‘fanny’, went all red, somehow managed to stop myself saying, ‘Clean your own!’ And she came up to me, what was wrong, was I offended? We laughed a lot after that, when I explained. Same thing happened when she asked me to ‘collect the gateau’. What did she mean, collect the gato, the ‘cat’? Ah, nonsense. After a while, you joke about it. Words like to play with us. The more serious we look to them, the more they play. I knew very well if she didn’t speak much, it wasn’t to save her words. No doubt she was outgoing enough in her time. She’d been an actress. They once showed a film on TV she’d worked on. A film a dozen or so years old. There we were, the four of us — her husband and her, Pinche and me — and it was all very funny to start with. She was good. But it faded after a while, as if the light on the screen had dwindled. No, she wouldn’t talk much in the mornings. She’d hang anxiously around the phones and, if one rang, it was as if the cuckoo had sung after a long winter. She could be on the phone for hours.