The Faint-hearted Bolshevik (6 page)

When I still enjoyed the idea of seeing the world, I took advantage of a summer holiday to go to Paris. There is a cemetery there called Père Lachaise, and that is where Oscar Wilde is buried. His tomb is an unbearably tacky affair funded by an admirer, but behind it there’s a shelf loaded with curious objects. They are mementoes left by visitors: stones, dried flowers, metro tickets, locks of hair, letters. Among the latter I discovered one which began: “Dear Oscar, Since you left us, things in England haven’t changed much … ” This was followed by the moving confession of the spiritual torments of a closet gay, an impressive filigree of exquisite feelings. After reading it I had a curious thought: Would anyone be the slightest bit moved by a letter left by a straight guy on the tomb of, for argument’s sake, one of the honourable members of the jury that condemned Oscar?

That day, and I didn’t realize until the end of the afternoon, when I went to Rosana’s school and nobody came out, was a Friday. In June, public schools don’t have classes in the afternoon, but in those where the wealthy pay fees (where they stow away their offspring for safe keeping far from their servants’ vulgar influence, while they go about their important business) Fridays are the only half day in the whole academic year. It must be because it’s increasingly common for the urban warrior to begin his weekend rest period on Friday afternoon.

Fridays always throw me off center. Sometimes I end up going to one of those bars where you find affection-starved divorcés and divorcées. The kind of place where women give you their phone number the moment they tell you their name and always carry condoms in their handbags. For the most part it’s boring, but from time to time I’ve met some very sensitive people who simply feel lost in the midst of a mess that caught them off guard. Society has no pity for those who break down and fall through its cracks. Besides which, they’re forty years old and the men realize that their eyes aren’t crinkling the way Robert Mitchum’s do and the women that their butts aren’t quite as tight as Jane Fonda’s.

Other times I feel less philosophical and head to one of those temples that resound with the rubbish that acts as a tom-tom for the spoiled brats who stuff themselves with pills then go out and kill themselves on the motorway crashing into some innocent father on his way home from the night shift. Once there I normally get drunk as quickly as possible while I pass the time watching spoiled little girls dancing, since there’s a well-known law of physics that determines that the density of their gray matter is inversely proportional to the length of their legs and the firmness of their tits.

The number of long legged people around these days is incredible, in a country known for its short legged population. The number of blondes and Business Administration graduates is also amazing. They must have put something in the food that’s caused a spate of genetic mutations, because we were never like that before. One of my family heirlooms is a picture of a handful of soldiers and NCOs posing with four mules during the Africa campaign taken around 1924. One of them is my grandfather, who had to do his military service there, or rather, to fight in the war, which was what men were forced to do at the time, although nobody claimed to be a conscientious objector (a conscience isn’t a basic commodity, just a whim of people with full stomachs). If those dark skinned men in rags could see their great-grandchildren dancing acid under blaring laser lights they’d think they were witnessing the end of the world. And vice versa: on more than one occasion a gum-chewer passing through my apartment to do the only thing you can do with gum-chewers has stopped in front of the photo and asked me why I had all those horrible Turks up on my wall.

But I was in the middle of that Friday afternoon after I had made contact with Rosana and, in front of the gates of her deserted school, I was weighing the pros and cons of a series of unenticing alternatives for filling the rest of the day. Since it was still a few hours until nightfall, I decided to head over to the López-Díaz apartment and sit outside for a couple of hours in the car, waiting for something to happen. Perhaps Rosana might come out. Or Sonsoles would, and catch me exhausted from the long wait.

I’d say I spent almost two and a half hours there, posted opposite the entrance. When the door opened and Rosana came out, the light was starting to fade and I was beginning to doze off. She’d replaced her school uniform with a pair of jeans that showed off all her curves and a vest top that didn’t quite cover her midriff. As she’d done in the morning, she walked unhurriedly up the street that led from her building to the Retiro park. Even when she’d disappeared from view I still couldn’t decide whether or not it was a good idea to follow her. Perhaps it was enough to leave things as they were for the day. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to spy on her. If I’d been given the chance, I would have sold my soul for a good picture of her naked shoulders.

Rosana walked up as far as the pond. She wandered amongst the musicians, puppeteers, fortune tellers and trinket sellers. Then she spent ten minutes leaning on the railing, watching the boats. A kid of about her age tried to strike up a conversation and she listened to him silently until he gave up and went away. Then she moved away from the railing and walked down the path that leads to the small square with the statue of the Fallen Angel, which she ignored. She was heading for the rose garden, where she found a seat and made herself comfortable to watch the sunset.

Two powerful sensations grew within me as I watched her. The first one was a most unhealthy envy towards that blessed creature who could devote herself to watching sunsets and didn’t have to waste her time for a fistful of filthy money. I remembered that scamp Joseph de Maistre, and how right he was was when he declared that only those with private incomes who find themselves exempt from the squalor of a regular job have time to cultivate the spirit and are therefore able to consider the problems of the Republic with equanimity. The rest of us are resentful sods who can, in the best case scenario, become dangerous criminals (examples of humble men who unfairly attained power: Napoleon, Durruti, Himmler).

The second sensation concerns something I owe, paradoxically, to Dostoevsky. I am one of the few men alive who can say they’ve read
The Brothers Karamazov
from cover to cover; I undertook such an enormous sacrifice with the sole aim of being able to say from first hand knowledge that old Fyodor Mikhailovich was real hard going. But Dostoevsky is also the author of a short story entitled “White Nights”, which I not only liked, but which had a lasting influence on me. It is the story of a woman who goes for solitary walks and in just a few nights the main character falls madly in love with her. Ever since I read it—I reckon I was very impressionable at the time—women who walk alone have inevitably stolen my heart. Sitting there, watching the sunset at the end of the afternoon, Rosana awoke that irrational fascination in me. If I were a general or a minister, the enemy could drag every last state secret I possessed out of me just by sending a spy who could sit still on a park bench meditating. She wouldn’t even have to be beautiful, just as long as she didn’t have any visible deformities. Whenever I’ve told anyone this, they’ve immediately assumed that I fall in love all the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nowadays it’s extraordinarily difficult to find women (or men) who meditate. Especially not on a park bench, even if someone were holding a gun to their heads.

Rosana wasn’t in any rush. She remained at her post until the sky turned a shade of violet and I started to wonder how her family let her run the risk of being in the Retiro park as night began to fall. It’s true that there were still quite a few people around, but the rose garden was starting to empty. When she finally got up and started on her way, I took a moment to do a quick calculation. Before she left the rose garden I ran to a path that she would be forced to take if she headed home. I chose a bench and sat down.

I saw her coming, lost in thought, taking her time. I was hoping that she would spot me, but she walked right past me and I had to attract her attention.

“Rosana.”

She stopped walking and turned towards me. It took her a second to recognize me.

“What are you doing here?”

“I come here for a walk every evening,” I replied. “What about you?”

“Nothing.”

“Why don’t you take a seat?” I invited her, bluntly. “It’s nice here.”

“My mother says I shouldn’t talk to strangers. I think that’s equally true of the unemployed guys who sell packs of kleenex at traffic lights and policemen who wear fancy ties.”

“Do you always do what your mother says?”

Rosana came a couple of steps closer, close enough for me to be filled with an unbearable desire to jump on her and bite her shoulders. As if this wasn’t enough to turn me into a drooling beast—and it was—I realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. She had a pair of perfect little things, light as birds.

“No,” she said.

“Well then.”

Rosana looked away.

“Is Javier your real name?”

“Yes.”

“I like that name. Are you a real policeman?”

“Yes to that too.”

The girl looked at me again. Her pupils were shining.

“Have you arrested Borja yet?” she asked.

“No, not yet. We need to check a few more things.”

“I thought you might lie to me. Borja rang me this afternoon. He was sitting at home, calm as could be.”

“You’re a very smart kid. But if you carry on standing there you’ll grow and you won’t be a girl anymore. You might even stop being so bright.”

She took a step back. The sky was already dark.

“It’s very late. I can’t stay.”

“Lucía already has supper ready,” I guessed.

“You’re good with names.”

“It’s how I earn a living.”

“Lucía had the afternoon off. It’s my mother’s turn to cook.”

I leant back and tried to resist her spell. It was better not to start anything I wasn’t in a position to finish.

“Then you ought to go. I wouldn’t want your mother to be angry with you on my account.”

“You’ll think I’m trying to get away from you,” she whined and I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or speaking seriously.

“No. I’m going to do something. Tomorrow at eleven I’ll come and sit on this bench. If you’re here by eleven fifteen we’ll talk without you having to run off anywhere. If you’re not, I’ll get the message and leave and we will never speak to each other again. What do you say?”

Rosana laughed.

“I’m not promising anything. I get up late on Saturdays. If you were still here at noon, I might be here, but I still couldn’t promise.”

“Eleven fifteen, not a minute later. If you’re not here at eleven fifteen then I’ll know you don’t care. Sweet dreams, sleep tight.”

“I’m too old for sweet dreams. I had my first period three years ago.”

“ Wow.”

“And I know what you’re after, in case you think I haven’t noticed,” she announced proudly.

“I don’t think you really know. And if you get here after eleven fifteen tomorrow you’ll never find out.”

“Of course I will. When one of these days you go back to catch a glimpse of the girls’ panties when they skip rope at the playground. Then don’t pretend you’re a policeman.”

“I didn’t make it up. But you can think whatever you like, Rosana. You’re too pretty to have regrets.”

“Goodbye.”

“See you tomorrow.”

She left and when night fell over the park completely I was still sitting on the bench, lost in memories of her shoulders and conjuring unmentionable dreams.

That Friday night I skipped my usual pastimes and stayed home, drowning my sorrows in a bottle of Black Bush I’d bought in some airport somewhere. My body managed to absorb about half of it: I poured the rest ceremoniously down the toilet. My CD player was on at full blast in the background, the final nail in the coffin of any civilized relationship with my neighbors, playing the low notes of that sumptuous melody the world owes to Alison Moyet with the most perfect title anyone has ever come up with: “Winter Kills”.

In this day and age, overwhelmed by the media, that either drone on about how we should go and see a film about that pretentious cornball Beethoven, or instead beatify some English-speaking lout who died of an overdose despite the fact that he didn’t even know how to hold a guitar properly, people don’t dare say what they really think about music. It’s tough to admit that what Mahler did and what Mick Jagger does are the same thing, but you realize that you can’t say anything against either of them, so most people come to believe they don’t have any taste and they’d better keep quiet or repeat whatever the TV or the press tells them.

I am aware that like everyone else I’ve been gagged in this way, and the few times I’ve tried to rise up against it, the person I was talking to hurled such a ton of official crap that I was almost left without any arguments. I say almost because I always had at least one, which I used to keep to myself, but I don’t mind sharing now: the only worthwhile music is music that moves me, and the kind of music that moves me is the music that I fucking want to be moved by.

During my lost years, many different types of music moved me, partly because I didn’t correctly identify what music was and partly because I didn’t correctly identify what it meant to be moved. I even thought myself moved by Haydn, which is clearly a slip-up. Having reflected on the matter, I now understand that a man needs to travel light, so I’ve stuck with the essentials. I’ve reduced the entirety of musical history to the following list, which is more than enough for my needs:
Upstairs at Eric’s
by Yazoo,
The Number of the Beast
by Iron Maiden, and Schubert.

The fact that the list is so short doesn’t mean I don’t listen to other types of music. As you will remember, this whole ill-fated story began with a smash caused by Judas Priest. What it means is that, except for the music I’ve just listed, I refrain from
listening
.

I’ll start with Schubert. How is it possible that nothing he composed is unnecessary? Perhaps the trick is to barely eke out a living, to be as lonely as a dog and to die at thirty. To give a contrasting example, Bach lived to a ripe old age, had a bunch of kids and stuffed his face (you only need to look at his double chin to see that). With regard to the merits of his music—I’m talking about Schubert here—I’ll leave it to other people to sum up the universally accepted reasons you have to reel off in polite society to prevent a shitty know-it-all shutting your mouth for you. That’s not what interests me here. I’ve rescued Schubert and placed him above all others because the first and only time I believed I had fallen in love in a respectable manner, his Trio Op. 100 was playing in the background. It’s also because the first time I was more or less serious about throwing myself off the viaduct (this is harking back to when I was an idiot and didn’t shit in my pants at the thought of death like I do now), I took a Walkman with
Winterreise
on it (as well as an idiot, I was a sensationalist) and listened to it all the way through to the end (by which point I’d forgotten I’d gone there to commit suicide). But perhaps more than anything else I love Schubert because even today, when the first movement of his Fifth Symphony starts, I am assailed by the astonishing conviction of having been truly happy at some point in my life.

The reasons that come to mind for choosing
The Number of the Beast
are less nostalgic. Although I limited myself to this particular album, I do admit that there’s enough on their first two albums (
Iron Maiden
and
Killers
) for them to claim they’d peaked at that early stage. For me, they could have saved themselves the trouble when it comes to all the music that came after that (I do understand though that they had families to feed). It was already a kind of premonition that the final track on the album,
Hallowed Be Thy Name
, was the lament of a death row inmate. There’s no denying that none of the other tracks equals the perfection of this last one, those fleeting minutes when heavy metal reaches an absolute mastery of the highest mysteries it has never been able to repeat. Personally, though, I’ve always had a soft spot for
22 Acacia Avenue (The continuing story of Charlotte the Harlot)
, the best romantic tale ever told to a background of drums and staccato guitar riffs. I’ve spent more than one afternoon walking down the Paseo de Acacias in Madrid, thinking of Charlotte who, according to Iron Maiden, you can go and visit whenever you feel down and lonely, which is the most frequent and least unstable state of modern man.

Finally, there’s Yazoo. As far as I know, in the short time they put up with one another, Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet gave birth to two LPs under this name. The second LP is a final agony just meant to make money and shouldn’t concern anybody. The first,
Upstairs at Eric’s
, is simply spectacular. For years I listened to it every day, until a small but significant piece of my soul was locked away in each of those tracks.

The soul is the sum of all the things a person experiences before they become a sceptical bastard. “Don’t Go”, the first song, contains the euphoria of my naïve youthful drinking bashes, when I always felt strong and optimistic; “Too Pieces”, the spring nights I used to spend watching the clouds lit up by the moon (one night I saw someone up there, I swear, although, either through lack of chance or patience, it never happened again). “Bad Connection” represents the hardship of all my inevitable separations. Woven into the burnt-velvet strains of Alison’s voice, “Midnight” encloses the voluptuous serenity of summer nights, when summer nights existed and when they were voluptuous. For me, “In My Room” evokes the long hours spent alone in my bedroom, where I learnt almost everything I know about my fellow human beings. “Only You” encompasses the end of what had begun with Schubert’s Piano Trio. And it was with “Tuesday” that I had the first premonition of how one fails at life in general. But I wasn’t afraid, because “Winter Kills” made me take a liking to the somber tranquillity of defeat.

Clarke’s lyrics are fairly incoherent and Moyet’s are sometimes inscrutable. But in this case I think they serve to explain why that night, that same Friday night when I first exchanged words with Rosana, it was “Winter Kills” I chose to listen to:

You grew sunblind

You thought me unkind

To remind you how winter kills

The first time I listened to those words I was fifteen, like Rosana. Back then the parks and the slow hours of the sunset used to belong to me, too. I’m not looking for someone to absolve me, but I hope that someone can understand that I let myself grow sunblind, forgetting that winter would kill everything I cared about. If you think about it, it’s not that bad when something a person has yearned for disappears. There was once a very talented homosexual in Lisbon who played at changing his name and he wrote it both quickly and definitively, perhaps on the back of a bill of exchange: you only have what you have already lost.