Carcinus' Malediction Page 2

  “I didn’t say that,” I insisted. “Valentina, her name is Valentina. She was on the boat too.”

  “Finding Valentina on the boat,” mumbled the one jotting down, “is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “Valentina,” said the one at the door. “A little too late, isn’t it, Valentina?”

  It must have been some secret code that I did not understand. I did not mind it much, for I rather keep going on with my statement, hoping that getting out of there would not cost me an arm and a leg.

  “You have committed a very serious act of misconduct,” said the interrogator. “You have no idea what you could have caused, Mr. Caballero.”

  His partner chuckled — ”What do you do for a living?”

  “I am a journalist,” I answered.

  “I see,” he said impassively.

  “You may have heard of me” — I hesitated — “the story about the girl in the cult — ”

  “No, it doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Journalist,” the other repeated with a hint of disdain.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “I see,” said the one taking notes.

  The men left me in the storage room that functioned as a makeshift dungeon and returned two hours later. I had time to think about myself and about what was to come next. The truth is that I did not know the consequences of pushing someone overboard. Who could possibly know about these things? The guards came back. I heard the latch unlock. They brought news. The man who had been taking notes seemed agitated.

  “The moment we set foot in Dénia,” he mentioned, “you can file a complaint... if so, you desire.”

  “Yes,” the other repeated, “if you desire.”

  Again, they spoke in a cryptical fashion that I could not decipher.

  “Mr. Gracián,” the scripter added, “will not file any complaints against you.”

  The news dropped my jaw in disbelief.

  “Indeed,” confirmed his companion. “There won’t be a complaint whatsoever. And you, Mr. Caballero?”

  The scripter mocked me. There was something to my last name that they found amusing. It was too good to be truth, and I simply asked them again.

  “So, you’ll let me go, just like that,” I ventured. “Just like that.”

  “Yes. Just like that.”

  It did not seem odd that Rodrigo Gracián would rather not get himself in trouble. I assumed that, in such a case, someone would have to explain how Rodrigo had made it there unscathed, and his sports car unscratched after the damage caused to the public road. I did not have an answer to such a question myself.

  I did not know who Rodrigo Gracián was, but my journalist instinct told me that he was no saint. It was evident that someone had to pay for all of that without getting dirty, and I do not only mean the accidents, but the car, the loft, the pretty girl, and the tons of brilliantine.

  We arrived at the port, and I was waiting for them to take me out of my prison when I crossed glances with my antagonist. Tense, wet, and pale as a squid, he walked in silence.

  A patrol of the National Guard waited for me in the port of Dénia, a bay forgotten by fishermen and seagulls after remains of fish.

  The civil guards took us to a stone bench next to the dock where the ship anchored, and the guests fixed their gazes on us like zoo animals.

  “You’ll regret this!” Rodrigo rebuked them. “Rodrigo Gracián. Remember this name.”

  “Go threaten someone who cares,” said one guard.

  “You are coming with us,” the note taker told Rodrigo. “You still have many things to clear out.”

  “As for you,” one of the guards addressed me, “your people will take care of you here.”

  “It is a matter of jurisdictions,” said the note taker.

  “I’ve told you already,” Rodrigo intervened from the bench, “I want my lawyer. What the fuck are you doing? What are you doing?”

  “Calm down. Don’t you think you have made enough of a fool of yourself?” the officer told him.

  That angry but powerless man fixed his eyes on me, begging for mercy and my silence, letting me know with a look that if I opened my mouth, he would slit my throat sooner or later — actually sooner than later. Poor man, I thought. They were giving him the scare of his life.

  The officer said something on his walkie-talkie — that I could not hear — and put it back on his belt.

  I heard footsteps approaching. Rubber sole on pavement. Tactical boots. The footsteps came closer. I could not turn to see him because of the sun in the eyes.

  “Good morning, officers,” said a deep voice hard to forget. It never occurred to me that I would hear it again so soon. “We’ll take it from here.”

  “Just that one,” said the guard who had taken my statement. “We’ll take care of the other one.”

  The voice took human shape, a shade covered the sunlight that prevented me from seeing, and that’s when I saw him — standing in front of me.

  “Well, well...” he said. He did not sound too happy to see me. “Mr. Caballero.”

  It was Rojo, officer Rojo. We had not seen each other since that ordeal. Since the farewell. What was he doing there? Dénia was not his jurisdiction, and I doubted he had come just to pick me up.

  Next to him, appeared a second officer whose gullible face, inexperience, and enthusiasm sufficed to show that he was not in charge.

  “Do you know him?” he asked him. He was skinny, blond, and too trendy to be a policeman, and I mean excessively because his body did not stand out for being like that of a rough biker’s working for the law. That youngster did not look tough, but underneath his gaze, one could infer something dark. Pain, discipline, or perhaps a terrible past.

  “I do,” said Rojo. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Well, if everything is in order,” said the guard, “we had better get out of here, or we won’t catch the boat.”

  I chuckled at that man’s joke.

  “Indeed,” said the other one. “We’ll have to catch the boat, and later we’ll have to catch the in-laws, you know.”

  “Whose in-laws?” intervened the note-taker.

  “Yours,” replied his companion jokingly, “cause I have none.”

  There was some laughter in unison that I also joined, trying to show camaraderie and see if I was lucky enough to get the handcuffs off of me, but it did not work. The collective laugh faded like the end of those pop records, where the songs only end in an infinite softening of the music. There was a clap that meant to conclude the friendly gathering, and the tallest of the guards grabbed Rodrigo from one arm and lifted him. The gaze of that daddy’s boy met mine again. His eyes said that he would kill me, or so I understood. I looked down like dogs do when their master wields a rolled newspaper.

  The Civil Guard boarded the ship with the guest while a multitude of passengers, desperate to cross the Mediterranean, observed from the railing on the deck, musing about the origin of that mysterious man.

  “Well, you can uncuff me now,” I muttered. “Will you?”

  Rojo looked me in the eye from above, hiding the sun behind his head.

  “It seems our paths are coming together again,” he answered. He scratched his cheek. “I sure hope you have an explanation.”

  “I was on vacation,” I replied.

  “You think you are so smart, don’t you?” the other officer interjected with his arms akimbo.

  “Did you miss me, Rojo?” I replied, ignoring him. “And you’ve got yourself a sidekick!”

  “Watch your mouth,” Rojo replied and grabbed me by the arm. We walked to a Citroën parked on the street. “I was counting on your being so far, far away that I would never have to see you again.”

  “Well, here I am,” I responded. “What are you doing here?”

  “That is confidential,” said the policeman who accompanied him.

  I looked at him with disgust.

  “Are you still in the press?” Rojo asked.


  “I guess so,” I said.

  I may have guessed right or wrong, but I did not know any better. How long had it been? One summer? Locked in the back of that car that smelled of lemon and vanilla — instead of the traditional vice and nicotine — I realized there was some writing to do about that morning.

  Rojo’s partner turned on the radio that crackled.

  “Thirteen - Twenty. Do you copy?”

  “What’s the matter?

  “Another knife assault. Phoenix Street.”

  “How many?”

  “Two victims, both seriously injured. I am notifying the ambulance.”

  “Roger.”

  “Hurry. They are violent and have lost a lot of blood. They have gotten something in them. I don’t understand how they are still standing.”

  “Well, you know.”

  “Youth.”

  “On our way.”

  “Hurry.”

  “Yes, damn it. We are close.”

  The messages kept repeating. Similar situations happened in other parts of the city.

  “Thirteen - twenty, where the fuck are you?”

  “I had to stop for gasoline, I am on — ”

  “Don’t fuck with me!”

  “What’s the matter?

  “One of them has disappeared.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Notify the corps. Fuck, on my birthday, what could top this?”

  “What do you mean he escaped? Are you new?”

  “He jumped in the ocean, just like that. Fucking junkie! Notify the corps, he mustn’t be very far. Blue shirt stained with blood. He had been stabbed five times in the back — ”

  Rojo turned off the radio and turned his head on the driver’s seat.

  * * *

  It has been eleven months, with their respective days and nights, sobbing on the cobbled stones. Eleven months without hearing from Rojo. He had asked me to help him with an investigation, to which I answered no — I needed a break — that was not for me.

  We did not talk about it again, and I returned to the newspaper as assistant director by request of Armando Fuego’s after the loss of that human asparagus who used to be in charge. A renovated staff, two new interns — who were green as lettuces — and a girl who could not handle the file fast enough.

  I did not last there very long either.

  The pressure from the board of shareholders — due to low profitability — began to take its toll on me as the manager of that crew of callow journalist wannabes. Who was I to lead anyone if I was unable to take the reins of my own life? Gullibly thinking that I outsmarted all of them, two months after my raise, I asked Fuego for an appointment. Two hours later, I had been dismissed. Why? I had better not know. I took an envelope with cash because that was one of the points on the agenda, and I was not an advocate of law and order either. That may have been the very same reason I stopped meeting with Rojo, despite longing for his company.

  Christmas passed, and my current life only resonated with the previous one. My life used to be filled with glamour and fame. Several national and international publications took interest in my story and me as a public figure. I was getting paid loads for writing editorial articles in which I talked about myself, others, and the unique Mediterranean lifestyle. With my earnings during the first months, I was able to afford a small minimalist apartment with better views than the previous one. I did not need much, nor did I like the idea of accumulating unnecessary furniture that took up space either. Space was a vital necessity that had always haunted me. I could not understand those obsessive couples who crammed Ikea’s latest catalog into ninety square meters. It is an atrocity like cutting down a forest to make room for a garden. Space is like air and oxygen for life — an anti-materialistic equation capable of breaking my relationships with the opposite sex.

  Calm and intimate quietness helped me enjoy the city from my terrace — the turntable playing on the background — while I saw the sunset, sipping from a bottle of cold beer. I also traded the old Seat Ibiza for a second-hand red Porsche Boxster. I was the fucking king of the city.

  However, fame soon vanished, and the quality of my writing suffered because of the daily hangovers that my body underwent. I could not control the situation and lived mostly at night. Women, excess, and the shadowy casino in the port of the city, where — with one Martini in hand — I thought of myself as the James Bond of the bay.

  When I ran out of money, I began having severe self-worth problems again. The world revolved around one word — that back then seemed no more than a fad: viral. My story had gone viral, like a YouTube video, or a summer song. Viral. Everyone was talking about it and I could not understand what the story was about. The internet and the viral. If I was viral, then what was the internet? And the others? What made something viral? The audience or the reporter? The news in itself? And if viral was synonymous with money, was it possible to create the viral? Were there people making viral news? I was confused. After the fog, I realized that I had only been the witness of a macabre plot worthy of a cheap novel, a student drama essay. A story with several gunshots and an injured girl. A story with an expiration date, that robbed me of my self-worth, throwing me away into a hole with all the other penniless writers. Heroes who were anonymous at their own home. There was no way around it. That was it, and yet I insisted, lost, wandering the streets of Alicante, among lazy tourists who were reluctant to leave to their home countries. Ice cream parlors closed and left their tables outside. October returned, and so did tartan jackets. The humidity of the beach turned into cold. The kebab in the corner lowered the price of their drinks. There were no bars I could go to where I would not feel like a stranger.

  The world had forgotten me.

  But it was not all drama and sobs. Losing my job was actually a good thing. I really think so.

  The future of the regional government looked ominous. Politics in the country was about to explode. Bipartisanship, transition, and all those issues that I was not interested in because they were not related to jazz, women, or bars, were going to change years later.

  Things seemed to be going well on the surface. Only on the surface. No one would get away. Whistleblowers related to footballers and some members of the city hall started to come out. Electoral campaigns started receiving dubious funds in briefcases and envelopes. Men in suits and brilliantine were taken to prison. First Castellón, then Valencia. Formula One. Envelopes and more envelopes. Leaked text messages. Crisis in the very core of the political parties. Shit floated everywhere and all around us. It threatened to smear us all, including me.

  I assumed the newspaper would suffer collateral damage from the distortion of information once everything was out. The little credibility it had left would go down the drain. I understood it would bring me down and returned the envelope that I had been given despite it contained enough money to start over again, recoup my lifestyle, and go back to writing.

  But writing a novel could bring me back.

  Another fruitless plan that stayed in a mere idea, when on a November afternoon, the sun set through my window, the radio played a Japanese quartet covering Miles Davis on Radio 3, and the doorbell of my house rang for the first time in a long time.

  From the kitchen, I ignored the bell and kept on slicing potatoes for an omelette that I was going to prepare.

  It rang again.

  I took the knife, leaving the raw potato on the countertop. I got to the door. The window was open, and the breeze from the street made the curtains in the hall flutter gently.

  I peeked through the door viewer and opened.

  It was Blanca.

  Blanca Desastres.

  The girl of bad awakenings, the citrusy humor, and the gaze of mystery.

  “Hi,” she greeted me and looked at the knife I held in my right hand. “Were you expecting someone?”

  “Uh...” I muttered. “No. Blanca. What are you doing here?”

  At her feet was a small wheeled suitcase.
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  She was wearing a black blouse, a green jacket, and a pair of torn, tight jeans. Her hair was jet black and tied; her gaze was dark like charcoal.

  Blanca stepped forward, grabbed me by the back of the head, and kissed me. Her lips joined mine on the landing while the elevator came and went, and an aroma of roasted peppers rose through the stairwell.

  We melted in an everlasting moment, forgoing the world around us, forgetting everything: her, me, her presence, our surroundings.

  Blanca stepped back, passing her tongue over my lower lip, touching my two-day beard, and looked me in the eye.

  I was dumbfounded

  “Can I come in?”

  * * *

  It was an idyllic winter romance. None of us knew how it started, nor how it came to an end.

  The day Blanca showed up at my door, I knew why she had come.

  It had been several months since we said goodbye at the train station, waving at each other, resisting the urge to light up the fuse of the pyrotechnic box that our emotions were, and that abandonment would eventually consume. Cowardice got the best of us. I regret letting her go, but I did so because I had reaped too much from her.

  She seemed not to think the same as I did.

  The day Blanca showed up at my door, I invited her in.

  I asked her to make herself at home, and she complimented me on some of the changes I had done in the apartment. We took a beer out of the fridge and drank it while I finished cooking.

  Blanca had tried her luck in Madrid. The capital city embraced her, but she was not after embraces. She told me that plight we had gone through had marked her for life. She felt that an unbreakable bond had been created in her heart: a bond between the two of us.

  We went to the living room.

  I engulfed the dinner before her eyes in complete bewilderment. Sitting in the sofa, she held a can of Heineken in her hand.

  She kept talking about herself, her life in Madrid, a boy who used to take her out. She told me that Malasaña was no longer the same, that working as a freelancer was exhausting, and that the boy who used to take her out stopped seeing her when she would not sleep with him. And so was life, her life, so different to mine, and yet equally oblique, redundant, and empty.