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The old man didn’t ask any more questions, but the next day the director of the hospital called the young man to his office and on going up there he discovered to his surprise that the old man, Ebenezer J. de la Salle, who was 87, wanted to adopt him as a son, and that he was being asked to sign a series of documents the old man’s lawyers had prepared. The one condition was that he had to change his surname immediately, and Freddy agreed without any hesitation. The lawyers and an attorney-at-law held a simple ceremony, with Freddy and the old man sitting side by side. Then old Ebenezer Jeremiah de la Salle asked, now that you’re going to change your surname, would you also like a new first name? and Freddy replied, you choose one, Father, I assume that if you wanted to have a son you must also have thought of a name, and the old man said, yes, you’re right, I want your name to be Walter, Walter de la Salle, which was my father’s name, and there and then they recorded that and so in that office the young man was baptized for the second time, with the name Walter de la Salle. As those among you more accustomed to stories may already have guessed, three weeks later they put a date on Ebenezer Jeremiah’s death certificate, the old man checked out in his sleep, gave up his ID and passport and handed over his soul to the Boss, the Big Enchilada, the Man Himself.

Then the lawyers came back to the hospital and told Walter that his new father had left him an inheritance of seven million dollars, plus a couple of properties: a house by the sea, in Coral Gables, and another one, a stately home, in the city of Charleston, which was where the de la Salle family came from, and so young Walter, thanks to his natural goodness, turned from being a spawn of the streets into a rich young man with a French surname, how does that grab you, eh? It’s the carnival of life, my friends, some people start off with a lot and others gain as they go along, but what’s really unusual is to go straight from the sewer to the tearoom with no stops in between. And that was what happened to him.

So begins Freddy’s second life, or the appearance on earth of Walter de la Salle, which was the name he used most, as I forgot to say that before going to the hospital, when he was first preaching the Gospels to the underclass, they called him José de Arimatea, or he called himself José de Arimatea, but he’d long since left that name behind, and there aren’t or weren’t any witnesses, as far as I know. Walter was the name he used most, and how could it be any other way when he’d been so well provided for by old Ebenezer J.? An old man who, by the way and as far as Walter was able to establish some time later, had been the end of his line, the last member of a rich, industrious, and influential family, with important ancestors all painted in oils, and, as is typically the case with dissolute members of the idle classes, had also been a faggot and a cocksucker, which was why all he ever did was cultivate family hatreds and resentments, and also hatreds and resentments among his boyfriends, who did all they could to cheat him out of parts of his fortune, but old Ebenezer J. wasn’t stupid and none of the pillow chewers who attacked him managed to get even a cent, quite the opposite, in some cases it was the old man who took them to court and screwed every last penny out of them, taking everything from them, even the dead cells in their foreskins, do you follow me?

Freddy’s natural goodness was apparently the determining factor in the old man taking that transcendental decision, as well of course as the very human desire for his name to stay on earth — on the planet Earth, I mean, because obviously he was going to stay in the earth of the cemetery anyway, pushing up daisies — those were the reasons, although it can’t be ruled out that Freddy was the old man’s last great passion, all concealed behind that wrinkly face, of course, but passion all the same, and maybe even love. Old age loves youth, just as decay and ugliness love beauty. God knows, Freddy was young and beautiful enough.

What happened next, and was only to be expected, my dear friends, is a demonstration of the saying that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, which is that one of Ebenezer J.’s gigolos suddenly showed up, an Irishman with straw-colored hair, ears and complexion as pink as a pig, and as big a faggot as you can imagine, and accused Walter of having drugged the old man and made him sign a new will, canceling the previous one that had favored him; to give his petition greater credibility he bribed a doctor to certify that Ebenezer J.’s death had been caused by a cocktail of morphine and stimulants, which was a terrible thing to say. What the Irishman asked in return for calling a halt to the legal proceedings was, of course, the annulment of the will, so that he would end up with everything, claiming that he’d lived with the old guy for more than five years, and so was entitled to seven million dollars and all the properties, he was no idiot, anyway, he threatened Walter with a lawsuit, but young as Walter was, he didn’t break a sweat, plus he had a real piece of luck, which was that old Ebenezer J.’s two lawyers, the same ones who had signed the adoption papers, agreed to continue with him and defend him, and that was what saved him, because they were two Italians with thicker hides and colder blood than a regional boss of the Mara Salvatrucha, who could find shit under the cleanest toilet seat. They put their feelers out and discovered that the Irishman had not only had various run-ins with the IRS, but had also once been accused of having sex with underage Asian boys, an accusation that, by one of life’s little ironies, had been put on ice thanks to old Ebenezer J.’s money and influence.

The Italians also went to work on the doctor who’d signed the statement about the supposed poisoning, which was the basis of the accusation. To soften him up, they mounted a really spectacular operation and finally managed to photograph him banging a black girl from the Dominican Republic in a highway motel, and then, once the film had been developed and they saw the pictures, which were really artistic to look at, they went to see him in the cafeteria of the hospital, gave him the envelope and said, dear doctor, help us to clarify a few things, does your blonde white wife know that you like it African-style? what do you think your respectable Peggy Sue will say when she sees this photograph, take a good look, where a version of Harry Belafonte, only with tits and cunt, is swallowing your reddened cock to the root? and that little bag of white powder next to the condoms and the Jamaican rum, what is that? such interesting photographs, don’t you think? and very successful, really, this one where she’s massaging your prostate with a gherkin is my favorite, my God, just like a pre-Raphaelite painting, the photographer’s quite a promising talent, don’t you think so, doctor? The Italians said all this to the doctor, and although the poor man insulted them and told them their methods were illegal and amounted to entrapment, and threatened to fight back in the courts, in the end he gave in and Walter was able to take possession of his inheritance.

The house in South Beach, Miami, turned out to be a mansion overlooking the sea, with seven bedrooms, its own jetty, and an extensive wooded garden, a real tropical paradise, a miniature Caribbean, if you don’t mind me saying so, the kind of house that people look at from the outside and wonder what kind of bastard can afford to live in a mansion like that, and can’t even conceive that all that could belong to one person.