The Angst-Ridden Executive (22 page)

Right up to his death, Evaristo Carvalho had a feeling of remorse every time he saw his son, and he tried everything possible to purge the boy’s brain of any instinct towards paternity. From his habitual vantage-point on the balcony he would watch as the cars and the generations passed. Cars were the symbol of human madness—a machine designed to speed up mankind’s absurd progress from birth to death. And for him the kids that emerged from the bellies of the girls in the
barrio
were victims—losers of everything and winners of practically nothing.

‘I ask you! The woman in number seven’s had another kid, for God’s sake! Needs her head examining, bringing more victims into this world. . .’

Carvalho had always meant to ask his father if he’d have thought the same way if he hadn’t lost the Civil War.

He’d Invited Pedro Parra up for a meal at Vallvidrera. He managed to find time to go to the Boqueria to buy the essentials for a spare but wholesome menu designed to replenish the energies of a colonel who had still not abandoned his dream of storming the Winter Palace. A leek soup and a freshly-caught steamed turbot. Parra was pleased to find a meal that was not going to jeopardize his life’s struggle against cholesterol and uric acid.

‘So this is how you live! A proper little hideaway!’

‘North, South, East or West, my home is wherever happen to be at the time. . .’

‘You bachelors can always afford to leave the cage door open.’

Parra ate sparingly, drank just one glass of chilled Perelada, and was enchanted by the dessert of yoghurt, orange juice and grated orange peel. He was rather put out when he discovered that it also contained Cointreau and a triple sec, but was placated when Carvalho assured him that the quantities involved were minute. He declined the offer of a coffee and took a small packet from his pocket.

‘I’m sorry to be a bit of a bore, but I’d be grateful if you could do me an infusion with these leaves. If you’d rather, I could do it myself.’

‘What is it?’

‘A mixture of what Catalonians call
puniol y boldo
. Excellent for the digestion. And for the liver.’

From the same pocket he produced a small dispenser which disgorged two small saccharine tablets which he placed within reach for when the infusion was ready. Carvalho poured himself a coffee, and two glasses of
orujo
, and prepared to counter Parra’s ironical comeback.

‘To think that I was counting on you for the revolution! You’ll be too unfit when the time comes.’

‘You still on about the revolution?’

‘My old plan still holds. I’ve just adapted it to changing circumstances.’

Twenty years earlier Parra had calculated how many activists would be needed to occupy the nerve centres of the country’s four or five principal cities.

‘All we need do is wait for the cracks to start appearing in the state apparatus. Then we move in and seize the time.’

Parra was appalled by the Left’s growing willingness to negotiate electoral alliances, and had been obliged to postpone his plan of action to some future date when the vanguard elements of the working class would hopefully have regained their historical lucidity and thrown off that sense of self-pity that led them to want to be accepted by the bourgeoisie.

‘Here’s your flow-chart. If you ask me, this kind of thing’s more for visual effect than for serious study: they’re more graphic art than economics, really.’

‘In this case I’m more interested in the graphic art than the economics.’

‘The picture is fairly complete. It shows the relationship between Petnay and its various associated companies, at several levels: (1) companies that are directly linked because Petnay owns shares in them; (2) companies that are indirectly linked because people from the boards of directors of directly linked firms are also on the boards of firms that are indirectly linked; (3) companies that are indirectly linked via family connections—parents, children, marriages, that sort of thing—the list isn’t completely up to date because our research department can’t afford to spend all its time reading the gossip columns; and (4) companies that are indirectly linked because their survival depends on selling to Petnay itself or to one of its subsidiaries.’

‘It looks more like a swamp than a flow chart!’

‘Don’t start complaining—we did it for you in record time. And don’t forget, you owe the lads five thousand pesetas for doing all the fancy work with the coloured pens. Now, how about telling me what this is all about? Would I be right in thinking it’s to do with the stories in the papers, about Antonio Jauma and Dieter Rhomberg?’

‘Could be.’

Carvalho’s eyes flicked from name to name, and from time to time he recognized names that he’d seen in the papers. Present-day members of the government; yacht owners who tended to come fourth or fifth in international races; noted socialites from Fuengirola, Torremolinos, Puerto Banus and S’Agaro; and sundry notables from the national Chamber of Commerce.

‘I’ll take a closer look at this later.’

‘If you’ll excuse me being nosey, I’d say you’re dealing with some pretty big fish here. Jauma was by no means a nobody. I’ve copied you an article from
Time
magazine, to give you an idea. It gives a list of the leading political and financial figures in Spain at the time it was written, together with their future prospects. Jauma’s right in there. They describe him as having strong prospects at the international level.’

‘They’re a bit wide of the mark with the politicians, though.’

‘The article’s from the Franco period, and they underestimate the staying power of some of the old guard. But if you take a close look you’ll see that the financial list isn’t so wide of the mark. Maybe you don’t follow these things, but today you’ll find all these characters holding key positions. There’s been a change of faces among the politicians, but in the world of industry and commerce everything’s stayed just as it always was—in fact the Young Turks of the economic sector are increasingly tending to take on political power. It’s a phenomenon typical of periods of crisis. Big capital feels confident for as long as it has the back-up of the repressive power of the fascist state. As soon as that state starts losing its grip, big capital goes through a phase of dissociating itself from the political forces that might previously have represented its interests, and in part takes on that role itself. This also happens in countries with a formal tradition of democracy. Look at Italy. The Agnellis never took on a directly political role for as long as the Christian Democrats were strong enough to do their dirty work for them. But as soon as the political forces representing their interests began to disintegrate, the Agnellis started getting involved in politics themselves. The elder one dabbled in conspiracies, and the younger one stood as a member of parliament and tried to advance his interests inside the Christian Democracy.’

‘So what’s big capital’s game in Spain right now?’

‘They’re moving on several fronts at once. I don’t believe that Spanish capital is divided into one bloc that’s nostalgic for Francoism—the so-called economic “bunker” —and another bloc that favours change as long as it can control it. I think they’re all banking on a controlled changeover, but at the same time they’re keeping one hand on their guns. In other words, they hand out a hundred pesetas to the neo-Francoites, a hundred to the Centre Right, and another hundred to the far Right and the secret police.’

‘A hundred pesetas! We’re talking about five million, rising to two hundred million . . .’

Some impulse prompted him to get up and begin pacing round the room like the proverbial caged animal, or, in Carvalho’s case, like an ex-prisoner pacing round his cell in voyages through a geography of the imagination.

‘Now, they’re not that generous just for the hell of it. In order to have coughed up two hundred million, either they must be very strong undertakings or they must have a very strong hand to play.’

‘Two hundred million, in 1976 to be precise.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You could do a lot with money like that. Finance a sympathetic political party; hire a bunch of armed mercenaries; or even buy top-level government decisions.’

‘Yes, two hundred million’s not bad. But that would have to be just for starters.’

At four in the morning Carvalho finally fell asleep. The sheets that the ‘colonel’ had given him fell to the floor like a gentle flight of clumsy, ingenuous animals. He dreamt of having a strange erotic relationship with Fuensanta, which began with a plate of sausage and beans served at the counter of a bar which was too flashy to be La Chunga.

‘Are they real?’ Carvalho asked, pointing to her breasts.

‘Touch them.’

He did. They were big, soft, and hot.

‘If my son comes back, we’re done for.’

They found a hiding place among some plastic drainpipes in the moonlight, but the woman still wasn’t satisfied.

‘They can see us from the house.’

‘Which house?’

In the background you could see the outlines of a terrace roof, and the shadow of a guard with a rifle slung across his shoulder.

‘It’s my son. Can’t you see him?’

‘I thought you had a daughter.’

‘No, no, a son.’

Carvalho seemed to have no strength left to finish pulling her skirt off, even though he could already see in the moonlight the promise of a white arse with its soft cleavage appearing between two cool, spherical globes of flesh.

He suddenly found himself awake, with his cock at half mast and a sex urge somewhere in his nether regions. He made his way to the toilet, unsure whether to piss or masturbate. As he pissed it relieved the pressure on his sex organs, but not on his imagination, which was still a jumble of carnal images of Fuensanta and her daughter.

He cleared the dirty dinner plates off the table so as to make room for the carefully detailed sheets of paper that Parra had given him. The name Gausachs cropped up five times in firms that had links with Petnay. The lawyer Fontanillas was on the board of directors of two companies with rather remote connections, and Aracata Milk Products Ltd turned up in the list of firms supplying raw materials.

‘Boss—señora Jauma has been chasing you for two days now. She wants you to get in touch with her, urgently. Should I give her your Vallvidrera number?’

‘Certainly not. If she calls again, tell her I’m out of the country.’

‘As it happens, I already have.’

The seven minutes that it took him to get from Vallvidrera into the centre of town seemed longer than usual. He decided against waiting for the slow, asthmatic and over-ornate lift, and walked up the worn pink marble steps that led to the flat of Alemany the accountant. He was met by a tearful señora Alemany, and all she could say was:

‘He’s dying. He’s dying.’

It did indeed seem that Alemany had decided to die. He lay there with his yellow blotchy face more or less sunk into the pillow. He tilted his head slightly at the sound of his wife’s voice, and his eyes still had the fierce look of the badly wounded eagle that senses the mystery of its own death approaching.

‘Alemany—I wanted to ask you something else about señor Jauma.’

‘The father?’

‘No, the son.’

‘Ah, the son.’

His eyes returned to the ceiling as if he was Washing his hands of the business, but the way he tilted his head slightly in Carvalho’s direction indicated that he was all ears.

‘About the money that was missing from the Petnay accounts.’

‘I will only discuss that with señor Jauma.’

‘He’s dead, Alemany. Remember? He was killed because of something to do with those accounts.’

‘So many people dying, so many. . . !’

‘Alemany, how was that money channeled out of Petnay? What company did it go through?’

‘They’ve taken all of them. My collection. My books.’

‘He’s dying, he’s dying!’

‘What are you talking about? Who’s taken them?’

‘He’s getting confused. Señora Jauma rang me yesterday, and she had a very good offer to make me. A friend of hers was interested in buying my husband’s accounting books. You see, he used to keep copies of all the most important accounts for his archive, and this gentleman told me he wanted to buy them all for the library of some business college he’s involved with.’

‘You sold them?’

‘Yes. Yesterday. Two gentlemen came to look at them, and they said they definitely wanted them. I asked my husband what he thought. They made us a very good offer, and they told me that if I sold the accounting books they would also make me an offer for our collection of posters of the Generalitat, and for my husband’s correspondence with Macia, Companys, and Pi i Sunyer.’

‘Who made this offer?’

‘One of them was called Raspall, and I don’t remember the other.’

‘Did they pay you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much?’

‘A decent figure. It pained me to sell them, but what would I have done with them otherwise? All I have is this flat, a pitiful pension, and a few shares that are worth nothing. They wouldn’t have been any use to the children either.’

‘Who signed the cheque?’

‘Mr. Raspall. My eldest son paid the money in this morning.’

‘Does Alemany know that you’ve actually sold them?’

‘I told him. At first he said no; then he agreed. At the moment he’s grumbling and shouting at me every now and then, but then he says it was a good idea because that way I end up with a bit of money.’

Alemany was sleeping, or pretending to sleep. Carvalho raised his voice, to wake him.

‘Alemany, you’ve got to tell me —who was responsible for siphoning off that Petnay money?’

The old man was like a block of marble—either deaf or fast asleep. He didn’t respond to Carvalho’s shouted questions, and the noise brought his children running. Politely, at first, and then with growing anger, they asked Carvalho to leave so that the old man could die in peace.

‘So many people have died—so many. . .’ the old accountant murmured, evidently aware that he was about to become the next in a string of dead acquaintances, and that nothing and nobody was any longer worth opening his eyes for. The approaching footsteps of the Alemany children more or less drove Carvalho out, and when he found himself alone on the landing he had the sensation of other steps sounding behind him too—the same footsteps that were dogging his trail and always seemed to get there before him. First there was the buying of the bar, and now buying up Alemany’s papers. Maybe Concha Hijar, unbeknownst to herself, had done a deal with her husband’s murderer. There would be no point in confronting her and demanding to know the name when he only had a hunch to go on. Tense with fear and anger he arrived at the Petnay offices. Gausachs’s secretary stepped out of the way just in time to avoid being pushed and Gausachs himself spluttered a protest and made as if to get up, but then sank back into his chair under the pressure of the inevitable. The inevitable, in this instance, was Carvalho, standing in the middle of the office, with the secretary at his side spluttering accusations at him and apologies to Gausachs.