Читать книгу The Blind Man of Seville - Robert Thomas Wilson, Robert Wilson - Страница 12

Thursday, 12th April 2001, Javier Falcón’s house, Calle Bailén, Seville

Javier Falcón sat in the study of the large eighteenth-century house that had belonged to his father. The room was on the ground floor and looked out through an arched colonnade on to a central patio, in the middle of which was a fountain of a bronze boy up on one toe with one leg trailing and an urn over his shoulder. When the fountain spouted, water came out of the urn. Falcón only ran it in summer when the trickle of water could delude him into thinking he was cool.

He was alone in the house. The housekeeper, Encarnación, who had been his father’s housekeeper, left at 7 p.m. which meant that he never saw her. The only evidence of her presence was the occasional note and her habit, annoying to him, of moving things around. The plant pots on the patio would suddenly be arranged in a different corner, small pieces of furniture would be removed to reappear in different rooms, effigies of the Virgen del Rocío would occupy previously vacant niches. His wife, his ex-wife, had been a great promoter of change, too.

‘We could make this room your snooker room,’ she’d said. ‘We could put a humidor there for your cigars.’

‘But I don’t smoke.’

‘I think it would be nice.’

‘And I don’t play snooker.’

‘You should try.’

These stupid conversations drifted back to him as he sat at his desk with his magnifying glass. Not the ridiculous antique Sherlock Holmes affair his wife had bought him for a birthday, which was too absurd for the Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios. This was a magnifying glass mounted on a perspex box that also shed light on to whatever he was observing.

He was going through the photographs he’d taken from Raúl Jiménez’s desk. In front of him, leaning against a framed photograph of his mother holding him as a baby, flanked by his then seven-year-old brother Paco and five-year-old sister Manuela, were two other photographs side by side. The first was another shot of his mother, who was sitting on the beach with the wind in her hair, wearing a swimsuit and holding a bathing cap covered with rubber white-petalled flowers. It was her favourite informal photograph. On the back was written Tangier, June 1952. She had been twenty-five years old and it was impossible to believe, looking at her there, full of vitality, that she only had nine more years to live.

The second photograph was of his father — black hair swept back, a small pencil moustache, his nose too big for his young face, the mouth of a sensualist and the eyes. Even in black and white, the eyes were extraordinary. They looked as if they were used to seeing clearly over great distances and any received light would glow in the irises, which were green but turned to amber close to the pupil. In his eighties, after the first heart attack had weakened him, those green eyes still managed to hold the light in them. They were the eyes you’d expect an artist of his stature to have — observant, piercing and numinous. In the shot his father was wearing a white dinner jacket and a black bow tie. On the back was written New Year’s Eve, Tangier, 1953.

Falcón worked his way through the Jiménez photographs, furious at the poor quality of the prints. He wondered why the hell he was doing this. He had a habit of working tangentially, but this was absurd. There was no connection to the case. What difference would it make if he did see either of his parents in these photographs? What if they were in Tangier at the same time as Raúl and Gumersinda Jiménez? So were 40,000 other Spaniards. As he built the argument against his illogical muddling so his fascination grew and it occurred to him briefly that he might just be getting old.

The yacht photographs, which were just shots of Raúl Jiménez’s new toy, didn’t interest him until he came to one of the harbour full of boats and people partying on the decks. Jiménez and his wife and children were in the foreground. They looked happy. His wife was waving with the two kids over her knees giggling. Falcón shifted the magnifying glass up and along through the other boats lined up behind Jiménez’s. He stopped, slid back to a couple on the deck and dismissed the likeness. He carried on and then returned to the couple and realized why he’d dismissed them. It was his father and he was leaning on the ship’s rail of a yacht, much larger than Raúl’s. He was with a woman whose face he could not see properly but who had blonde hair. They were kissing. It was a quick, private moment that the Jiménez photographer had inadvertently caught. He checked the back. Tangier, August 1958. Pilar, his mother, would still have been alive. He looked at the blonde woman more closely and was stunned to find that it was Mercedes, his father’s second wife. He felt nauseous and pushed the magnifying glass away. He pressed his palms into his eyes. That’s what happened when you went off on a tangent … you came across unexpected truths. It was the whole reason he did it.

The phone rang — his sister on a mobile in a packed bar.

‘I knew I’d find you at home if you weren’t at work,’ said Manuela. ‘What are you doing, little brother?’

‘I’m looking through some old photographs.’

‘Hey! Come on, grandpa, you’ve got to learn to live a little. We’re here in La Tienda for the next half-hour, come and have a cervecita with us. Then we’re going to dinner at El Cairo. You can come there too, if you bring your walking stick.’

‘I’ll join you for the cervecita.’

‘You do that, little brother. And one thing. One very important condition … ‘

‘Yes, Manuela?’

‘You’re not allowed to say the word “Inés”. OK?’

She hung up. He shook his head at the dead phone. Manuela’s bad psychology. He put on his jacket, straightened his tie, checked his pockets and found Raúl Jiménez’s son’s address and telephone number. It was Viernes Santo tomorrow. The holiday. He tried the number just on the off chance. José Manuel Jiménez picked up the phone. Falcón introduced himself and offered his condolences.

‘I’ve already been informed,’ he said, about to put down the phone.

‘I just wanted to talk to you about —’

‘I can’t speak to you now.’

‘Perhaps we could meet tomorrow … for a short talk. It would be important for background detail.’

‘I really don’t see …’

‘I would come to Madrid, of course.’

‘There’s nothing to be said. I haven’t seen my father in years.’

That’s the point. I’m not interested in now.’

There’s really nothing.’

Think about it overnight. I’ll call again in the morning. It won’t take long and it would be a great help.’

Jiménez stammered and hung up. Falcón knew the man was a lawyer but he hadn’t come across as one; too uncertain and unconfident. He turned off the lamp and went out on to the patio. He breathed in the cool night air and the near silence, as the workings of the city arrived at a faint roar in this dark and hollow centre of the house. He stretched, opened his chest and arms, and saw among the arches of the gallery above the patio what Eloisa Gómez would have called, ‘the shadows move’. He sprinted up the stairs, digging in his pocket for the key to open the wrought-iron barred door at the top. He strode the length of the gallery to the next wrought-iron door, which led to another stretch of arches outside his father’s old studio. It was empty. He moved back to the arch where he thought he’d seen the movement and looked down into the patio. The water in the fountain, flat and black as a pupil, stared up to the sky. Just tired, he thought, and squeezed his eyes shut.

He left the house, stepped out through a small door cut into the massive wooden-and-brass riveted gates, which were the entrance to his oversized home on Calle Bailén. Too big for him, he knew it, and too grand for his position, but each time he thought of selling it he quickly foundered on what it would entail. First of all, he would have to do what he should have done as instructed by his father’s will — clear out the studio and incinerate everything. Burn the lot, right down to the last rough sketch. He couldn’t do it. He hadn’t done it. He hadn’t even been back into the studio since his father died nearly two years ago. He hadn’t even unlocked that last wrought-iron door in the gallery.

His father’s lawyer had died three months after the reading of the will, and Paco and Manuela didn’t give a damn. They were too engrossed in their own inheritance — Paco’s bull-breeding finca at Las Cortecillas on the way up to the Sierra de Aracena and Manuela’s holiday villa in El Puerto de Santa María. They hadn’t had the same relationship with their father that he’d had. He’d spoken to him almost every day since the first heart attack and, once he’d started working in Seville, if they didn’t go out for lunch on Sunday they would at least meet for a fino just to get him out of the house. They’d nearly recaptured that same level of intimacy as when he’d been a boy in the early 1970s. He was the only child left after Manuela had decamped to Madrid to study veterinary science and Paco was installing himself on the farm after his recovery from a severe goring in the leg which he’d suffered as a novillero in La Maestranza bullring in Seville. The injury had ended any hope of a career as a torero.

Falcón headed down the narrow, cobbled street canyons to the bar on Calle Gravina. It was a converted mercería, still with the old scales on the counter. People were spilling out on to the street with their beers. Manuela was with her boyfriend deep in the crowd. Falcón squeezed through. Men he barely knew gave him un abrazo as he went past, strange women kissed him — Manuela’s friends. His sister kissed him and hugged him to her gym-worked body. Alejandro, her boyfriend, whom she’d met on the rowing machines at the club, handed Javier a beer.

‘My little brother,’ she said, as she’d always said since they were small, ‘you look tired. More dead bodies?’

‘Only one.’

‘Not another gruesome drug slaying?’ she said, lighting one of her foul menthol cigarettes, which she thought were better for her.

‘Gruesome, yes, but not drugs this time. More complicated.’

‘I don’t know how you do it.’

‘There can’t be many of your friends who could imagine that someone as beautiful and sophisticated as Manuela Falcón could have been up to her shoulder dragging out stillborn calves.’

‘Oh, I don’t do that any more.’

‘I can’t see you cutting poodles’ toenails.’

‘You must talk to Paco,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘He’s very stressed, you know.’

‘The Feria’s his busiest time of year.’

‘No, no, not that,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the vacas locas. He’s worried his herd has been infected with BSE. I’m testing the whole lot for him, off the record.’

Falcón sipped his beer, ate a slice of sweet and melting jamón ibérico de bellota.

‘If they bring in official testing,’ she continued, ‘and they find one animal with the disease, he has to slaughter the whole herd, even the ones with 120-year-old bloodlines.’

‘That’s stressful.’

‘His leg’s bad. It always is when he’s stressed. He can hardly walk some days.’

Alejandro put a plate of cheese in front of them and Javier instinctively turned his face away.

‘He doesn’t like cheese,’ explained Manuela, and the plate was removed.

‘Your name came up today at work,’ said Falcón.

‘That can’t be good.’

‘You vaccinated a dog for someone. It was a bill.’

‘Whose dog?’

‘I hope he paid you.’

‘You wouldn’t have found a signed receipt if he hadn’t.’

‘Raúl Jiménez.’

‘Yes, a very nice Weimeraner. It was a present for his kids … they’re moving to a new house. He was due to collect today.’

Falcón stared at her. Manuela blinked at her beer, put it down. This happened rarely, that real murder slipped into a social situation. Normally he would entertain, if asked, with tales of detection, his idiosyncratic approach, his attention to detail. He never told how it really was — always laborious, at times very tedious and interspersed with moments of horror.

‘I worry about you, little brother,’ she said.

‘I’m in no danger.’

‘I mean … this work. It does things to you.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know, I suppose you have to be callous to survive.’

‘Callous?’ he said. ‘Me? I investigate murder. I investigate the reasons why these moments of aberration occur. Why, in the heart of such reasonable times, such heights of civilization, we can still break down and fail as human beings. It’s not like I’m putting down pets or slaughtering whole herds of cattle.’

‘I didn’t know you were so sensitive about it.’

They were so close he could smell the menthol from the cigarettes on her breath, even over the sweat and perfume in the bar. This was how it was with Manuela. She was provocative and it was why her boyfriends, selected for looks and wallet, never lasted. She couldn’t keep up the fluttering femininity.

‘Hija,’ he said, not wanting this, ‘I’ve had a long day.’

‘Wasn’t that what you said was one of Inés’s accusations?’

‘You said the forbidden word, not me.’

Manuela looked up, smiled, shrugged.

‘You hoped I’d been paid for vaccinating that poor man’s dog. It struck me as hard-hearted, that’s all. But perhaps you were just being … phlegmatic.’

‘It was a small joke in bad taste,’ he said, and then surprised himself by lying. ‘I didn’t know the dog was a present for the kids.’

Alejandro stuck his magnificent jaw line in between them. Manuela laughed for no reason at all, other than it was early days and she was still keen to make her man feel good about himself.

They talked about los toros, the only topic they had in common. Manuela enthused over her favourite torero, José Tomás, who was, unusually for her, not one of the great beauties of the plaza but a man she admired for always being able to bring some tranquillity to the faena. He never rushed, he never shuffled his feet, he would always bring the bull on with the face of the muleta, never the corner, so the bull would always pass as dangerously close to him as possible. Inevitably he would be hit and when this happened he always picked himself up and walked slowly back to the bull.

‘I saw him on television in Mexico once. He was hit by the bull and it tore his trouser leg open. The blood was running down his calf. He looked pale and sick, but he stood up, got his balance, waved his men away and went back to the bull. And, the camera showed it, there was so much blood running down his leg that it was filling his shoe and squirting out with every step. He lined the bull up and put the sword in to the hilt. They carried him straight out to the infirmary. ¡Que torero!’

‘Your cousin, Pepe,’ said Alejandro, who’d heard that story too many times, ‘Pepe Leal. Will he get a chance in the Feria?’

‘He’s not our cousin,’ said Manuela, forgetting her role for a moment. ‘He’s the son of our sister-in-law’s brother.’

Alejandro shrugged. He was ingratiating himself with Javier. He knew that Javier was Pepe’s confidant and that, when work permitted, he would go to the plaza on the morning of the corrida to make the bull selection for the young torero.

‘Not this year,’ said Javier. ‘He did very well up in Olivenza in March. They gave him an ear from each of his bulls and they’ll invite him back for the Feria de San Juan in Badajoz, but they still don’t think he’s big enough for the Feria de Abril. He can only sit around and hope for someone to drop out.’

He felt sorry for the boy, Pepe, just nineteen years old, a great talent, whose manager could never quite get him into the first category plazas. It was nothing to do with ability, only style.

‘Fashion will change,’ said Manuela, who knew that Javier felt responsible for the boy.

‘He’s convinced he’s too old to get anywhere now,’ said Javier. ‘He looks at El Juli, who seems to have been with us for decades and who’s only a couple of years older than him and he loses heart.’

Alejandro ordered three more beers from the barman. Manuela was giving Javier her raised eyebrow.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘You,’ she said. ‘You and Pepe.’

‘Forget it.’

‘Remember what the guy wrote in 6 Toros last year.’

‘He was an idiot.’

‘You’re closer to Pepe than his own father. All that business he does in South America and he won’t even go and see his son when he’s performing in Mexico.’

‘You’re being sentimental, like that journalist was,’ said Javier. ‘I only ever help Pepe with his bulls.’

‘You’re proud of him in a way that his father isn’t.’

‘You’re not being fair,’ he said, and then to change the subject: ‘I came across a photograph of Papá today … ‘

‘You need to find yourself a woman, Javier,’ she said. ‘It won’t do, you going through all the old albums.’

‘This was a shot I found in Raúl Jiménez’s study. He was in Tangier around the same time. Papá didn’t know he was being photographed.’

‘Was he doing something unforgivable?’

‘It was dated August 1958 and he was kissing a woman …’

‘Don’t tell me … she wasn’t Mamá?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you were shocked?’

‘Yes, I was,’ he said. ‘It was Mercedes.’

‘Papá was no angel, Javier.’

‘Wasn’t Mercedes still married then?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Manuela, waving it all away with her cigarette. ‘That was Tangier in those days. Everybody was as high as a kite and fucking everybody else.’

‘Can you try and remember? You were older. I wasn’t even four years old.’

‘What does it matter?’

‘I just think it might help.’

‘With Raúl Jiménez’s murder?’

‘No, no, I don’t think so. It’s personal. I just want to sort it out, that’s all.’

‘You know, Javier,’ she said, ‘maybe you shouldn’t be living in that big house all on your own.’

‘I did try to live there with somebody else, who we can’t mention.’

‘That’s the point. Old houses are crowded and women don’t like sharing their living space unless they choose to.’

‘I like it there. I feel in the centre of things.’

‘You don’t go out into “the centre of things” though, do you? You don’t know anywhere that isn’t between Calle Bailén and the Jefatura. And the house is far too big for you.’

‘As it was for Papá?’

‘You should get yourself an apartment like mine … with air conditioning.’

‘Air conditioning?’ said Javier. ‘Yes, maybe that would help. Clear the air. Don’t the latest models have a button on the side that says “past reconditioned”?’

‘You always were a strange little boy,’ she said. ‘Maybe Papá should have let you become an artist.’

‘That would have solved everything, because I’d have been so broke I’d have had to sell the place as soon as he died.’

The rest of Manuela and Alejandro’s friends arrived and Javier drained his beer. He excused himself from dinner through a barrage of fake protest. Work, he said, over and over again, which few of them understood as they were well cushioned from the hard edges of daily toil.

At home he ate some mussels in tomato sauce, cold. Something left for him by Encarnación, who knew that he couldn’t be eating properly without a woman in the house. He drank a glass of cheap white wine and mopped the sauce up with some hard white bread. He wasn’t thinking and yet his head seemed to be full of a sense of rushing. He thought it was his mind unwinding after the day, until he realized it was more of a rewind, like a tape, a fast rewind. Inés. Divorce. Separation. ‘You have no heart.’ Moving to this house. His father dying …

He stopped it. There was an audible thump in his head. He went to bed with too much happening in his body. He slammed into a wall of sleep and had his first dream, that he could remember, for some considerable time. It was simple. He was a fish. He thought he was a big fish, but he could not see himself. He was fish; aware only of the water rushing past him and a scintilla in his eye, which he closed on, which instinct told him he should close on. He was fast. So fast that he never saw what he instinctively pursued. He just took it in and moved on. Only … after a moment he felt a tug, felt the first rip of his insides, and he burst to the surface.

Awake, he looked around himself, astonished to find that he was in bed. He pressed his abdomen. Those mussels, had they been all right?