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Authors: Manuel Vazquez Montalban

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Hard-Boiled, #Mystery & Detective

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‘Observe the infinite patience of the pure-bred Aryan.’

Rhomberg seemed to be trying to explain something, and the Chicanos were listening with puzzled interest. Rhomberg’s hands waved in a more or less easterly direction, and then tried to trace a shape in the air. The Chicanos repeated his gestures.

‘He looks like an explorer trying to enlighten the natives.’

Judging by the flora and the openness of the countryside, Carvalho concluded that they had traveled a fair way south, and were probably approaching Carmel.

‘Is it far to the beach from here?’

‘No. I’d quite fancy having lunch there. Dieter! Dieter! Leave them in their state of ignorance and let’s get a move on.’

Dieter shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of didactic impotence and returned to the car.

‘What were you talking about?’

‘They were asking me where Europe is.’

Rhomberg had an air of resignation tinged with irritation that seemed to strike Jauma as funny. He laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks.

‘I don’t see what’s so funny. They asked me if I was in the movies, and I told them that I was from Germany. They asked me where Germany was. I couldn’t believe it! “Didn’t you go to school?” Yes, yes, they’d been to school. “Fine. Didn’t they teach you where Germany was? “No.” “It’s in Europe.” Well, they’d heard of Europe, but it could have been in the Indian Ocean or the Arctic Circle for all they knew. “Germany, Germany!” I said. “Brandt. . . ! Adenauer. . . !” Nothing doing. “Hitler” —oh yes, they knew that Hitler was something to do with Germany. Then they asked me whether Germany is smaller than Mexico or the United States. I ask you! What kind of geography do they teach in this shit country?’

‘Rhomberg’s indignation reminds me of the eminent geographer Paganal in
The Sons of Captain Grant
, when he discovers that the British colonial teachers had taught their geography in such a way that the natives believed that the whole world was British. The viewpoint of the colonizer and the viewpoint of the colonized. When you work for a big multinational, the world takes on quite different geographical divisions. I could draw you a map representing Petnay’s growth over the years, which would stretch over four continents. One of the managers of the British section described it to me one day, as follows: when a Petnay executive farts in Calcutta, the smell can be smelt in Chelsea. I thought it would have been the other way round. When an executive farts in Chelsea, it’s a dead cert they’ll smell it in Calcutta. You have no idea what goes into a company like Petnay. They gather more information than most governments, and they’ve got as much political pull as the State Department. The Petnay Empire. Capital: San Francisco.’

‘I thought Petnay’s headquarters were in London.’

‘That’s just for show. The real HQ is in San Francisco.’

Rhomberg looked at Jauma reproachfully, but Jauma’s eyes were on the passing countryside, as if he was reading the text of his speech off it.

‘I find it very relaxing to take a pleasure trip in the company of a socialistically-inclined senior executive and an intelligent fellow countryman. Did you know that Spaniards make the best foremen in the world? Would you agree that this is to be our role in the brave new world?’

‘When I was younger I used to think that Spaniards were cut out to be only executioners or their victims. I wasn’t aware of our role as foremen.’

‘Oh there’s no doubt of it. The history of Spain’s economic and political emigration is full of foremen. From the nineteenth century onwards Europe and America were supplied with excellent foremen in the shape of Spanish political and economic émigrés. My father went into exile in 1939, and he was a forestry overseer in the south of France, until he had to run from the Germans, from Dieter and his pals.’

Rhomberg’s grunt indicated the routine disapproval of a person reacting to an overworked joke.

‘That’s interesting—my father went into exile in ‘39 too, and he also ended up as a foreman. In a quarry near Aix-en-Provence.’

‘You see? And I’ve got the explanation. In part it relates to your theory about Spaniards being either executioners or victims. The victim ones are particularly suited to being foremen in foreign countries. They’ve got the fears of a born loser, the determination of a survivor, and the hardness of a person who knows he can’t turn back. I’m the same. I’m a foreman. And Dieter is an inspector of foremen.’

‘Are you a loser, a survivor, a man who can’t turn back?’

‘I would say so, yes. Almost all the students in my year at the Law Faculty have ended up either as labour lawyers of such standing as to merit a ten-line entry in the
Encyclopaedia Sovietica
, or as affluent business lawyers. I was a wanderer, who dedicated himself neither to “defending the working class” nor to making a brilliant social career. I’ve got a survivor’s instinct, and I’ve got myself a foreman’s position in the most powerful multinational in the world. I can’t go back. It would mean going back to square one: taking the children out of a nice school with trees round it where they learn French up to the age of ten and English from eleven onwards, not to mention having to give up my chalet, my fifteen-metre yacht, and membership of my golf club. What would Reclus and Quimet do without me?’

‘Who?’

‘Reclus and Quimet. They’re the two sailors that I’ve hired for my yacht. I keep the boat in the marina at L’Estartit, and I use it once in a while to go for a quick trip to the Medas islands—which, by the way, you can reach just as easily by rowing, or even swimming.’

Spring was multiplying the flowers on the low fences surrounding the wooden houses that were built in the so-called Californian style. Houses of dark, seasoned timber, each with a seal of individuality, in contrast with the mile after mile of prefabricated chalets that they had left behind on entering Carmel. The eucalyptus, orange and lemon trees would have given the place an almost Mediterranean air were it not for the more northerly light, which gave things a sharper edge. As far as Carvalho was concerned, the way this landscape ran down to great long beaches and white sand was as mock as Californian or New York State champagne—a sea and beach that seemed to go on forever, in a bright, unbroken stretch of blue, with rhythmic rolling waves which the arrival of spring would convert into mobile tracks for surfboarders. The beauty of the scenery was also an obstacle to an imaginative transfer to the Mediterranean. Beautiful sands, with not a scrap of litter in sight; beautiful gardens, watered daily; beautiful Anglo-Saxons, white as the sand on the seashore, and always casually dressed, as if life for them was always casual.

The outcome of the phone call to San Francisco was that Carvalho opened the fridge in his office and downed a glass of chilled
orujo
.

‘Rhomberg doesn’t live here any more.’

‘Since last night?’

‘Not for several months.’

‘I rang last night and someone told me that he’d gone out, but that he’d be back to sleep.’

‘Error. He left for an unknown destination.’

‘Are we talking about the same person? Dieter Rhomberg. He works for Petnay as an inspector.’


Used
to work. He stopped working for Petnay as of two months ago and left for an unknown destination.’

‘Didn’t he leave a forwarding address?’

‘No.’

‘Who are you? Who am I talking with?’

‘That is none of your business, sir.’

And she hung up on him. The woman’s voice was different to the one that had spoken to him the night before. Dieter Rhomberg had disappeared in the space of twenty-four hours, which had now turned into two months. Another glass of
orujo
made it clear that he should not venture a third. Concha Hijar was quite surprised to hear of Dieter Rhomberg’s sudden disappearance.

‘The two months business is impossible. He rang from San Francisco, not even two weeks ago, inquiring after me and the children.’

Jauma’s widow sounded genuinely surprised.

‘Do you have an address for him in Germany?’

‘When he’s not been on his round-the-world inspection trips he’s lived in San Francisco. Especially since his wife died. When she was alive, they used to have an apartment in Bonn. I don’t know for sure whether he kept it on, but I believe he did. He had a son who went to live with his sister, and he would go to visit them every once in a while. The sister lives in Berlin.’

One hour later Carvalho knew that Rhomberg’s Bonn apartment had been empty for several weeks and that, according to his sister, he had left on a drying-out trip. Dieter had left his job profoundly depressed with his work, and had sent his sister a postcard saying that he was off on a trip round Africa ‘in search of the source, not of the Nile, but more of myself’. At the risk of appearing like a TV detective, Carvalho asked Rhomberg’s sister if she was sure that the card was from Dieter. The card had been typed, but the style and the signature were Dieter’s, she said. At this rate the facts were mounting up, but with no obvious trail in sight. The first phone call had said that he’d popped out and would be back shortly. The second call had said that the German had been touring the world for the past two months. And according to his own sister, the Petnay inspector had sent her a card two or three weeks ago.

‘When was that, exactly?’

‘I don’t have it with me. I gave it to the boy. He keeps all the cards his father sends. I can’t ask him for it at the moment, because he’s at school.’

It made little difference whether it was two weeks or three. Either the second San Francisco voice was lying, or the whole scenario had a logic which just didn’t fit. A senior Petnay executive seems to quit two months previously, remains undecided for a month and a half, writes to his sister, and only finally decides to leave—abruptly—the day after Carvalho’s phone call. Carvalho was suspicious as much by nature as by his profession. Rhomberg was obviously very worried about something, he thought, as the morning clouds lifted from his stomach and made way for a sizable hunger. He couldn’t decide whether to ask Biscuter to improvise a meal, or whether to walk up the Ramblas in search of a suitable restaurant. A sudden telephonic idleness prevented him from ringing Charo to invite her out, whereupon a restless nervous energy took him to the Ramblas and a thoughtful deliberation regarding a possible choice of restaurant. He had a beer on Plaza Real, and pined after the long-lost tapas that used to be the speciality of the most crowded bar in the neighbourhood—squid in a spicy black pepper and nutmeg sauce. Instead he had to make do with squid floating in a brown, watery liquid, which was all that was on offer under the new management. The problem with cultures of the transient is precisely that they are transient. This restaurant had once witnessed a genius in the art of cooking squid, a man who had created the illusion of a taste that would last forever—but then he had gone, leaving a void. There was no one left who could match his genius. Once lost, a good barman is gone forever—especially these days, when all you need to be a waiter is to wear a white jacket that is dirtier than yesterday’s but not as dirty as tomorrow’s. As he tormented his brain in mourning for the squid of yesteryear, Carvalho decided to eat at the Agut d’Avignon, a restaurant which he appreciated for the quality of its cooking, but which disappointed by the paucity of its helpings. When Gracian wrote that ‘a good experience is doubly enjoyable when it’s short-lived’, he can’t have been thinking of food. Or, if he was, then he must have been one of those intellectuals who are happy living on alphabet soup and eggs that are as hard and egg-like as their own dull heads. More than one musty philosopher has declared that ‘man should eat to live, not live to eat’, a sentiment nowadays taken up by dieticians, whose principal endeavour seems to consist in the oppression of fat people.

‘A soft garlic tortilla to start with, followed by a plate of pork belly, and then codfish
a
la llauna
, and a portion of raspberries on their own.’

‘On their own?’

‘On their own…’

He enjoyed the clitoral look of raspberries, and their fleshy texture and acidity, which was less gritty on the teeth than the mulberry, and with more of a physical consistency than the strawberry. The owner of the Agut d’Avignon had the air of a 1920s dandy who had ruined himself with one mad night of gambling at baccarat and had only been saved by this restaurant, which he seemed to cherish as if it were his wife or a good fountain pen. Carvalho had a vague memory of him wandering about the university campus during the years of the Terror, with his guitar slung across his back and his moustache an irresistible attraction for girls who were wild about music. One night he must have gone into this restaurant with a gang of fellow-students, and, in between one stupid song and another, he must suddenly have realized that a restaurant is the best home that a man can have, and he must have decided to stay forever. Carvalho often saw him in the Boqueria market, casting an expert’s eye over the produce, always dressed as if he were about to pose for a postcard in which a young English lord has his arm round the waist of a fresh-faced girl in some Sussex meadow, and over their heads an angel carries a scroll saying: ‘I love you, milady.’ The owner of the Agut d’Avignon chose the same produce that Carvalho would have chosen, with an aloof self-assurance that was probably explained by the fact that he never said anything, but just pointed at what he wanted to buy. One gesture from this dandy was sufficient for fishmongers and butchers to save the required items for him, and it meant that Carvalho could now eat the best that the market had to offer, complemented by a variety of interesting contributions from the owner’s market gardens, which he cultivated with a sense of professional dignity worthy of the best of French restaurants. The quality of the food and the manner in which it was served excused the smallness of the helpings, which Carvalho attributed not so much to the owner’s meanness as to a desire that all his clients should be as slim as himself. Even though the total failure of this crusade was evident for all to see, the clientele emerged from his restaurant satisfied, because he had given them the opportunity of respecting the principle of leaving some space for their supper. A philosophy of life that Carvalho found abhorrent.

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