Read The Angst-Ridden Executive Online

Authors: Manuel Vazquez Montalban

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

The Angst-Ridden Executive (9 page)

BOOK: The Angst-Ridden Executive
12.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

‘Still the same old knife-in-the-ribs Carvalho. But what have you been doing with yourself all this time? The last I heard was that when you came out of prison you went off traveling. They told me you were a private detective. Bogart-style, like in the films.’

‘Nothing so glamorous. Runaway adolescents. Jealous husbands wanting their wives trailed.’

‘Sounds a pretty reactionary job to me.’

‘No more reactionary than gathering economic statistics for the financial oligarchy.’

‘No need to get personal! Don’t forget I’m gathering statistics for you too. Here, I’ve prepared you a rundown on Petnay’s activities in Spain and its immediate ramifications. For example, part of their Latin American activities is controlled from Spain. Another part is controlled from San Francisco, and now they’re setting up a third head office, in Chile, in Santiago. As regards their key personnel, I would make a distinction between the managers and the politicians. Sometimes the two coincide, but not always. Unlike other companies, Petnay almost never conducts its negotiations via state apparatuses through diplomacy, for example. They have their own network, and only turn to the State Department in the last resort.’

‘Who’s in charge of things in Spain now?’

‘Antonio Jauma. He represents management’s public face. But somewhere close to him there must be the politico—the one who goes to talk to ministers, pulls strings and so on.’

‘Well, just for a start, Antonio Jauma has been murdered, so someone else must be running the show now.’

‘Our records aren’t entirely up to date.’

‘Carry on, then. Who’s the politico?’

‘Nobody knows. Or at least very few people know.’

‘Who’s going to be taking over from Jauma?’

‘How long ago did he die?’

‘A month and a half. No—a bit more. . .’

‘It’s probably a temporary stand-in. Companies like Petnay don’t make this kind of decision overnight. I’ll go and phone someone to find out.’

‘Hang on. The porter in reception. . . Do you only hire porters with degrees in literature? He was reading
Reality and Desire
.’

‘What’s that? You know I’m just a humble economist.’

‘The collected poems of Cernuda.’

‘Oh, right. He’s a poet. A porter poet. He’s had a few books published, in fact.’

While he waited for Parra to return, Carvalho found himself thinking of other poets with unusual jobs. Emilio Prados, in exile, working as a playground supervisor for children in a secondary school in Mexico. Or the poet who ended up teaching infants in a school in Tijuana. Carvalho had met him in a bar at the border, as he was drinking tequila solos, with salt, interspersed with a sip of water and bicarbonate.

‘I’m not coming back,’ he had said, ‘until Franco’s dead. It’s a question of dignity. Maybe I am nothing here—but at least I have my pride. You’ll find me in a few pre-War anthologies. The name’s Justo Elorza—have you ever heard of me? No? I’ve only just had the chance to start being published again. I went from the Argeles to Bordeaux. Then I got on a boat, to Mexico. I ended up in Tijuana. A temporary teaching job in a school. Temporary! Thirty years, my friend, thirty years! Every time I heard a rumour that Franco was ill, or that he was about to be toppled. I gave up shaving. I packed my bags, and I stopped changing the sheets, so that I had even more reason to leave. Several months ago I just gave up. I’ve got twenty books of unpublished poems. I went to Mexico to talk with the Era publishing house. Renau, the mural painter, is a good friend of mine. He’s in East Germany now. Anyway, the woman at Era is the sister of Renau’s brother-in-law. They’ve suggested I do an anthology. Imagine it—an anthology of poems that have never been published!’

A growth of white stubble round his chin, the looks of the poet Machado but with a stomach peppered with ulcers, one lens of his glasses more or less covered with sticking plaster so as to concentrate his vision in his one good eye, a stained shirt that had once been white but was now yellow , a rim of dirt round a frayed collar and the pervasive smell of old man’s sweat, a pervasive smell of an animal which is soon to die.

‘There’s a standing committee of three or four Petnay inspectors who will advise the company on Jauma’s successor. They’ll stay here for another couple of weeks, and then they’ll leave Martin Gausachs in charge. He was Jauma’s second in command.’

‘Do you know the man?’

‘A meteoric career. He was four years behind me at university, studying law. Won all sorts of prizes as a student. Then he went to MIT and returned as a professor of business administration. A true technocrat.’

‘Is he Opus Dei?’

‘He probably flirted with the Opus when he was chasing promotion, but judging from the way he lives his life I’d say he’s never taken vows of poverty or obedience. Or chastity either. . .’

‘Screws like a dog, does he?’

‘He’s an unusual sort, Pepe. You might think he’s effeminate, because he has the mannerisms of an English butler. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without a jacket, even in the middle of August. When he became aware that people were saying he was queer, he began hanging out with women. Dozens of them. A different one every night, and some of them pretty classy. And he keeps a couple of regulars in tow for when he needs a change.’

‘Family money?’

‘Not at all. He’s the third son of the fifth son of the brother of the heirs to the Gausachs dynasty. Cotton manufacturers. They used to hobnob with the Guells, the Bertrans and the Valls y Taberner until the cotton crisis hit. They’re only now beginning to pick up again. But Martin Gausachs has no real connection with them. His father was a lawyer who didn’t have two cents to rub together. A solicitor, in fact, dealing with separations and neighbourhood quarrels.’

‘Do you have all this information on your files here?’

‘No. I know about the Gausachs family from when we were doing a study of Catalonia’s economy. The name carne up, and since it turns out that one of the Gausachs is tied up with the far Left I was curious to find out about the rest of the family. They’ve got all sorts. A Maoist, and another one who’s more or less a Maoist. Then there’s Martin, the perfect executive. Another brother supports the nationalists. He’s got a daughter who’s in the Communist Party, and two young boys still at college—one studying with the Opus, and the other with the Jesuits.’

‘A family that’s determined to survive, come what may.’

‘Correct. An inexorable law of nature. Every ruling class tends to perpetuate its power by reproducing other ruling classes, either through the mechanism of economic inheritance, or via political adaptability or cultural power.’

Not a hint of irony in all this. Parra spoke a language that was just as much jargon as Bromide’s or Golden Hammer’s.

‘I’m leaving this bank with an impression of having got something for nothing.’

‘Send a cheque to Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, or to Trias Fargas. They’re both on our board of directors.’

‘How much?’

‘I reckon an hour of my time is worth four hundred and sixty-six pesetas. I spent two hours on all this, so that makes nine hundred and thirty-two. I’ll give you a discount—let’s say eight hundred in total, or if you’re feeling generous you can send my boss a cheque for a thousand.’

‘Florentino—this friend of mine used to be a poet too.’

The porter looked up and stared at them to see if they were making fun of him.

‘A progressive poet—one of your lot.’

‘Poetry isn’t progressive. Or raspberry-coloured. Or anything at all. It’s just poetry, or it’s nothing,’ the poet said, without anger, but with all the dignity of a Flemish burgher.

Nuñez arrived on time, complete with his faithful sweater and the tips of his shirt collar floating above the crew neck like the shoots of some strange, hidden vegetable. He wore a fixed smile and a laid-back expression that was pure Actors’ Studio.

‘The only people who are punctual in this country are those who were active in the underground.’

Nuñez returned the menu to the patron.

‘An
hors d’oeuvre
to start with, followed by a
confit d’oie
.’

Carvalho followed him in ordering the
confit d’oie
, but he decided on snails ala Bourgogne as a starter. He picked a Saint Emilion from the limited wine list, and now he and Nuñez had no further excuse for putting off their discussion. Nuñez’s embarrassment formed part of his way of relating to people. Carvalho’s, on the other hand, was a lingering echo of his residual respect for the man—the same respect he felt towards his old teachers, or to other people that he had admired. With a sigh, Nuñez took a photograph out of a shabby wallet in which Carvalho could see a solitary five-hundred-peseta note.

‘Here, take this. It’s like a family memento.’

An amateur snapshot, with a scalloped edge and worn by the passage of time. Four young men standing at the back, and two squatting in front. The year must have been about 1950, and they were all aged between eighteen and twenty, but now they seemed from some undefinable, far distant era. They were all wearing suits and ties, except for Marcos Nuñez who was wearing a suit jacket and a roll-neck sweater. Jauma was presumably the one standing on the left. A thick head of hair, his Sephardic features accentuated by his thinness.

‘Who are the others?’

‘The cast, in order of appearance. Next to Jauma, Miguelito Fontanillas, a lawyer, like the rest of us, but doing very nicely thank you. In other words, he’s the company lawyer for God knows how many firms, and has three houses and four swimming pools.’

Unkempt-looking, with a bit of a squint, and wearing a suit, in the photograph he looked like a young wide-boy from the barrio in his Sunday best.

‘Tomas Biedma. Labour lawyer. The tall one, there. The one who looks a picture of seriousness and good sense. He’s the biggest red of us all. Certainly more left-wing than me. He leads a small ultra-leftist group.’

There was something of the young Bourbon prince in those features, a sensuality contained by youth.

‘He looks like the mayor of a big city.’

‘He’ll never get to be mayor of anywhere unless he manages to storm the Winter Palace first. I told you, he’s on the far Left. He sees me as a revisionist and a cynic. Now, there are a lot of people who see me as a cynic, but for different reasons to Biedma. He says that I’m a cynic because I know enough not to be a revisionist, but that I’m still a revisionist for all that. The other one standing there is the novelist Dorronsoro.’

‘Which one?’

‘The elder of the two. Juan. The one that’s just published
Weariness and the Night
. I’m one of the characters in it. Don’t let that put you off, though. I come out just the way you see me now.

‘How do you know how I see you?’

‘That’s one of my favourite occupations. Working out how other people see me. Sometimes I help them build the picture. And sometimes I try to throw them off the scent. Not for long, though, because I get bored very quickly. Bored with everything except getting bored. Anyway, if I concentrate on one thing for too long it prevents me from being aware of what’s going on round me. You’ll have noticed already that I don’t like over-exerting myself.’

‘Who’s this one here?’

Squatting next to Nuñez was a lad who looked the picture of happiness. A thick crop of hair sitting like a beret on his head, glasses with bifocal lenses, features that were small and hard but were softened in the photograph by a broad smile, and the whole weight of his body seemingly behind the clenched-fist salute that he was giving to the photographer.

‘Who took the photo?’

‘That’s a source of some contention. Señora Biedma claims that she took it, but there’s another friend, who’s not in the photo, who claims he took it. The probability’s on his side, since he is, or rather would like to be, a film director. Jacinto Vilaseca by name. He’s not had a lot of luck in films. As you know, it’s not an easy world to break into, and Vilaseca’s not much of a stayer, really. What’s more, he’s on the far Left. He used to run a small political group—not the same one as Biedma, though.’

‘What a bunch! Out of seven friends we’ve got two extreme left organizations, one executive, one society lawyer, a novelist, yourself, and what about this one, the one with the glasses? You still haven’t told me his name.’

‘Argemi. In those days he was well set to become the next great exponent of the grand old tradition of Catalan poetry. These days, though, he’s a leading yoghurt manufacturer. He’s the one I see least of, because he spends his time either abroad or at his mansion in Ampurdan—a huge seventeenth-century farm that he’s converted into a hi-tech palace.’

‘What are my chances of getting hold of their addresses?’

Nuñez reached into the top of his sweater, and extracted a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket.

‘Here. I thought you might be wanting them.’

‘What sort of relationship did they have with Jauma?’

‘Very good. But only on a one-to-one basis. . . Or two at the most. We’ve only ever all met together on two occasions. Once at a party that they gave for me when I returned from exile, and another time, about a year ago, when we were all invited by Jauma. He’d suddenly become incredibly paranoid for some reason and wanted us all to meet up. It was a disaster! On a one-to-one basis, we generally manage to find a common language and a common history. But when we were all together, all trying to sort out who remembered what about whom, we just all ended up in a mess, with everyone trying to justify what they had become. I could see from the way they looked at me that they’d expected better of me, and I suggested that perhaps I would have expected better of them. Then they started to get ratty.’

‘All of them?’

‘No. Not Dorronsoro. He wasn’t saying a lot. I think he was sizing us up as characters for his next novel. Since he only writes ten lines a day, with us he should have enough material for a lifetime.’

‘Was Jauma especially close to any of them?’

‘He’d given Fontanillas a few bits of work connected with his company. He’d also used Biedma on a number of occasions, because he valued his “rationality”. And he occasionally went on trips with Argemi.’

BOOK: The Angst-Ridden Executive
12.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Dead Silence by Brenda Novak
The Delicate Prey by Paul Bowles
Alien Games by Claudia Rose
Not the Same Sky by Evelyn Conlon
MotherShip by Tony Chandler
Rude Awakening by Susan Rogers Cooper