Carcinus' Malediction Read online

  Carcinus’ Malediction

  Pablo Poveda

  Copyright © 2020 by Pablo Poveda

  Translation: Mauro Rivera

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 9798566906713

  Imprint: Independently published

  Pablo Poveda Books

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Carcinus' Malediction

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

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  About the author

  The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today.

  — Seneca the Younger

  1

  The sunshine beams struck the oak bedside table next to the headboard. I took the glass of wine and had a sip from it; it was not that strong, yet it made me wrinkle the nose. I looked to my left; an angelical dark-golden blonde slept on her side under a white sheet. Her name was Valentina. Oh, Valentina, we had such a great time the night before. I got up — making sure I would not spoil her appointment with Morpheus — grabbed my underpants, and nimbly jumped out of bed.

  She opened her eyes, and I looked out the window. The day was stupendous.

  “Where are you going, Gabriel?” she said drowsily.

  “To fetch us some breakfast,” I said, “Is there anything open around here?”

  From the window of that fourth floor, I admired a cove bathed by the crystal-clear sea, almost deserted because of the early hour in the morning. Palma was a city of nooks, adventures, and hidden secrets. We were one of those secrets. The beautiful Valentina was barely on the verge of turning twenty-five. We met by chance, one of those far-fetched coincidences that start at bar counters, among cocktail glasses and leather-seated stools. That is how we met — on the perfectly ordinary night of one of the first days of my well-deserved vacation. I admit that I got carried away, but it was so good that I wanted to repeat it. I was staying at a coastal hotel with bay windows, and Valentina was the love cue in search of its blackball among the many bronzed tourists, nervous about getting their hands in the dresses of the local girls. I approached her with a glass of gin on the terrace of a nightclub boat, and hours later, we were boarding a taxi that drove us to the other end of the roadway, far from the windmills, the apartment blocks, and the night frenzy of the island.

  It was the third day that I had woken up between her velvet-soft legs and the unique breeze of the cliff before us. It did not take me long to realize that that apartment was not hers, nor her parents’, much less a distant relative’s, and her leasing it was out of the question. The apartment — a charming loft with marble floors, a small balcony, and sea view — was her lover’s. She did not mention it, and I decided not to ask, but there was the possibility that the latter appeared sooner or later with a grim face.

  “Come back to bed,” she ordered me. “It is still early.”

  I had a bad feeling. Something did not make sense.

  “I’ll go for a walk,” I replied. “Coffee and croissant?”

  Valentina turned around when a horn blared from the outside. She raised her head and looked at me.

  I put on my trousers, buttoned my shirt, and picked up my belongings. How did he do it? I still wonder.

  When the door opened, a man — hair slicked back with brilliantine, a yellow polo with a raised collar, khaki capris, and old-fashioned Ray-bans — appeared. It was a man with a grimace of disenchantment, chest pain, and a broken heart. The artery in his neck bulged and reddened.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he said as he put the keys to the apartment back in his pocket. He was not wrong. “Valentina?”

  She covered herself with the sheet.

  “Rodrigo!” she replied. “I can explain.”

  I knew the story already, I knew how it would end, and after all, I was on vacation.

  “You whore!” he yelled. I tried to sneak out alla Française, but he stepped in my way. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  And he pulled a knife out of his pocket.

  “Calm down, Rodrigo,” Valentina begged him, but he would not listen.

  “You!” he yelled at me again. “I don’t know who you are, but I am going to cut your balls off.”

  Sometimes dialogue is overrated. They say that violence is the last resource; that everything can be sorted out with words and reasoning. But Rodrigo did not strike me as one of those people who like to sit amicably at the table and talk over the reason for my sleeping with his girlfriend. Rodrigo wore as much brilliantine in his hair as he had hatred within, and he was not going to hesitate to cut off my testicles with his jackknife.

  I grabbed the glass of wine, which was still on the bedside table, and I threw it in his face. He howled. Once again, luck was on my side. The cuckold could not dodge it and got all of its content right in the eye. I had already given him enough reason to slice whatever he wanted off of me.

  I did not linger to tell Valentina goodbye and ran out of there and down the stairs like there is no tomorrow — because sometimes there is not, and that is how it is. Running and running until death part us from life because yet another bastard runs after us.

  In the distance, I heard a blow, desperate yelling, and Valentina unsuccessfully trying to obstruct the escape of her hookup.

  I got to the street and saw a poorly parked black BMW Z3 convertible. It was that asshole’s car. I kept running and spotted a taxi driver leaning against the door of his vehicle, dangling a cigarette with the corner of his mouth, and wearing a hat advertising orange juice.

  “To the docks!” I yelled at him, still several meters away.

  We got into an old Ford Sierra that smelled antique. The driver — who seemed eager to retire soon — threw the cigarette butt out the window and pulled off.

  “Are you in a rush?” he asked and laughed.

  “Step on the gas,” I replied, “or I’ll miss the ferry.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said and accelerated.

  My heart pounded while I held my fist on my belly, and butterflies fluttered in my stomach deep inside.

  “Gosh! Valentina was going to pay for her fling with me and all her bedmates before me. Poor girl, I thought. She did not play it well, although maybe she did, and it was evidently not the first time. Maybe that cuck would forgive her because it is a well-known fact that the best solace for a broken heart is a good pair of legs — and Valentina had a very nice pair. If people knew about the stories behind apartment doors, they would get shocked. In fact, they would get shocked if they saw themselves in the mirror twice. That magical touch of madness that inhabits every corner, every second of our lives that dishevels, messes, and seasons them up — just the right amount — so that in the end, we have something to talk and think about. If we were all good and life was not so expensive, living would be like fishing, where all you have to do is wait and for the most part, it is a matter of faith. Valentina was a lost fairy godmother, playing with the confusion of her own flower, the forbidden, taking away from others what did not belong to them either. And so, life passed.

  In the background, on the radio, the announcer spoke in a Balearic accent more similar to Catalan than that of my own region.
Paco de Lucía played the guitar, and I smelled the aroma of churros and the restaurants on the beach.

  “Look at him, can you believe it?” said the cab driver at the time he looked in the rearview mirror. “That bloke is out of his mind.”

  I noticed him scared, looking up to the mirror, I turned around to see the hood of the Z3 getting closer and closer and Rodrigo — his hair unmoved by the wind because of the brilliantine — red like a watermelon about to crash into us.

  “Slam on the gas,” I ordered the driver at the time I stuck out my head. “Lose him in a corner. He’s after us.”

  The old man shrugged.

  “What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into, young lad?”

  “I got into someone’s pants,” I answered. “Some very loose pants.”

  “Oh, mother of God,” he murmured. “I should have stayed with the German.”

  The old Ford Sierra took off from the ground; I pressed my bottom against the seat. The driver — whose countenance resembled constipation and being on the verge of a cardiac arrest at the same time — drove through alleyways and old women pushing shopping carts that appeared among the cars. My hand squeezed the passenger’s headrest, the flamenco guitar from some gypsy song played on the background, and I prayed to all the faded images of virgins and crucifixes that decorated the dashboard of that man’s taxi.

  With my eyes squinted, I turned back and saw nothing.

  A bell rang from the church tower.

  “Well, well, well” — the cab driver interjected and began to laugh aloud, right there, in the parked car — ”you don’t mind if I smoke one, do you? My wife won’t let me, you know.”

  I looked around without paying much attention to what he was saying.

  “At this point, we are like comrades, young lad. I am fine with it, as you can see.”

  I saw him again, driving faster, glaring because of the infernal fire ablaze inside his head.

  “Pull off!”

  The tires burned and screeched. I saw a boy eating ice cream next to his mother when my driver splashed them in the face when he drove over a puddle. We reached 130 kilometers per hour in the middle of downtown, at the time we activated a choir of sirens coming from several patrol cars on duty around the area. With my bowels scrambled and about to ink like a squid, I found myself wishing that Ford Sierra were a DeLorean capable of taking us to another era like in that famous movie. I wished the boulevard did not take us to the beach but to another timeline that led us to 2015 or any other year, but far from getting caught. Nevertheless, as the song goes, dreams are dreams, and that was a lawful chase for sleeping in a bed where I should not have. My jaw dropped in bewilderment when I saw my driver grinning, having the time of his life.

  He turned up the radio and clapped.

  “Olé, olé,” he uttered. “You know, I used to be a racing driver when I was young.”

  That was just what I needed to hear.

  Behind us, two local police cars, the BMW Z3 convertible, and a swarm of motorized hipsters riding Vespa Primaveras, making way like flies, with the arrival of the patrols.

  Again, luck scored another point on my favor when a double-decker bus, infested with shirtless tourists, came out from one of the adjacent streets and onto the boulevard.

  The driver stepped on the accelerator, dodged the wheeled elephant’s trunk with a turn, and lost the cavalcade of chasers behind us. Seconds later, an impact resonated in our ears, several vehicles crashing into each other, horns, more crashes, broken sirens and windows, and ambulances.

  As we drove away through the alleys of a neighborhood of dirty streets and spray-scribbled façades, the fuss stayed behind, and the announcer on the radio presented us with that one love-night that Triana sang about.

  We traveled quietly for the rest of the journey. I saw the boats, the cruise ship laden with Nordics eager to give in to spree that night while others boarded, carrying a little more than drunkenness. The smell of tar and oil woke me up. The ocean reminded me of home and being next to it helped me keep my feet grounded. Coast people need to be near the sea if they do not want to die depressed in a chalet on the mountain. Those are not my words, I read them on a Sunday newspaper magazine.

  We parked in a double row next to a dumpster. I pulled out my wallet and gave the driver almost all the cash I had on me.

  “C’mon, keep it,” he told me with an honest smile from ear to ear behind his white beard. “Mother of God, I haven’t had such a good time in a while.”

  “It is for the expenses... you will need it,” I insisted.

  “Not at all!” he said. “They’ll blame it on the bloke with the pretty car. That’s why he has it and pays for it.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he replied, “but I’ll tell you one thing. You might not be so lucky next time. Don’t you think that all taxi drivers are racers like me.”

  “Yes, I know” — he had started to ramble. I heard the noise of horns — “I have to go.”

  “Did I tell you that I was a racing pilot when I was young?”

  We got out of the Ford Sierra and I hopped to the ticket booth. I looked at the car one last time. A cigarette held on its own on that man’s lower lip, who greeted me with his hand like the father who says goodbye to his son before taking the bus that will drive him to summer camp.

  Once on the boat, I went to the stern where the bar and the terrace were located. The sun shone, reflecting in the sea; couples hugged by the railing, re-enacting a scene from a movie poster; seagulls overflew the surrounding, children threw breadcrumbs at them; sun-tanned and dehydrated tourists hid under sunshades and straw hats. I was surrounded by peace and glory. I rejoiced in what happened, imaginarily patting myself in the back, thanking God for the good fortune of running into that kind taxi driver.

  I had another sip of beer. It was as cold as the character of Blanca Desastres. Yes, the one and only. I thought of her wherever, and with whomever she was. This one is for you, Blanca, I said and toasted to myself.

  Then I heard a howl, a disturbing vibe in the air, the cry of an enraged gorilla.

  “Son of a bitch!” — the words resonated in the air — I am going to kill you!” You son of a whore!”

  I recognized that voice. It was him. I do not know how, but he had boarded the ship. My luck had only lasted so long.

  I sensed the sepulchral silence of the people stepping out of his way. As I turned around, I saw Rodrigo in an unbuttoned shirt, a gold chain around his neck, and his hair full of brilliantine. He was red, and his face portrayed several fresh cuts. His sleeves were rolled up, showing a golden watch. He proceeded to grab a table and hurl it at me like a brute.

  “I am going to kill you!” he shouted with his jaw dislodged from his face. “Come here. Do you still think you are so brave?” I am going to kill you!”

  After the table, he threw a chair and also a beach lounger at me. A bottle, a glass and a vase, and even a fork, came next.

  Much like my bravery, I ran along the deck, but he kept getting on my way, throwing at me whatever object he could find as I moved.

  “Now what, uh?” he said, still several meters away when he pulled out his knife anew. “Come here if you think you are so brave!”

  “We can talk it over, Rodrigo,” I said while I shooed him away, moving my arms. “There is a solution to everything.”

  “Don’t you dare say my name,” he replied furiously. I am going to kill you!”

  Rodrigo rammed his greasy head, full of hair product, against my body. Boldly and gracefully, I dodged his attack like a good matador. People around chanted “olé,” and I puckered mockingly. Being faster than him, I found myself at his back and did not hesitate to knock him down and was able to make him drop the weapon several meters away. Rodrigo turned around and connected a boxing hook, and then another, and another until I fell to the floor. The audience witnessed the spectacle disheartened. I could hear disappointed “aw’s,” and some child sa
ying, “he is going to kill him, dad.” On the floor, next to the railing, at the tip of the stern, I saw Rodrigo pick up his knife from the deck, I saw his brown khaki capris, his perfect hair, I saw Valentina, and the taxi driver saying “olé, olé.” I left my mind blank. Rodrigo approached me, his shirt ajar showing a stitch, the screeching of his jaw after several lines of cocaine, knife in hand seeking revenge.

  “What now? Do you still think you are so brave?” he yelled. “What now?”

  From my position on the floor, I sighted his ankle and kicked it so hard that I caused him to fall and break his lip. Badly hurt, I got up, grabbed him by the lapels of the shirt, and pulled him over the railing.

  “No! Don’t!” he yelled. “Don’t throw me into the water!”

  Awaiting a possible ovation from my audience, I threw him into the sea from the deck, like an aspirin into a glass of water. I contemplated Rodrigo splashing in the water, asking for help, and the crew of other boats disapproving of my exaggerated reaction.

  Unfortunately, as I turned around, my disappointed audience pointed their fingers at me before the glance of several men clad in green who would proceed to detain me in brief. I saw Valentina on the background; I smiled at her, but she did not seem proud of my audacity.

  The sun still shone in the sea, but there were no more couples re-enacting Titanic, nor children feeding fish.

  Two civil guards approached me. I noticed shame in their faces, disapproving of my lack of maturity.

  Then I knew that my vacation was over.

  2

  The coast guards pulled Rodrigo out of the water stunned and soaked by the diving lesson received. The civil guards calmly detained me and asked me to accompany them to the boat’s dungeon to take my statement.

  Half an hour later, one of the cops scribbled something in a notebook with a hint of disbelief in his face.

  Of course, I had to omit some parts of the story.

  “Ask anyone,” I explained. “He was going to stab me with his knife.”

  “And you claim this was because of a woman,” said the one who stood by the door. “Right?”