Wonderful World: читать книгу онлайн полностью и бесплатно

“But big victories require sacrifices,” says Fonseca with his brow slightly furrowed. The effort of gauging his words makes the network of veins on his temples reconfigure themselves intricately, generating several localized swelling points. “Not necessarily big sacrifices. Sometimes small sacrifices are enough. Small details that can produce spectacular benefits. If we want to be first in the area of contracts, we have to divert capital. Maybe eliminate a department.” He shakes his glass again, provoking a tinkling of ice cubes. “We need to get behind Chicote. Show him that, from here, we've got his back covered. Set up larger offices in Mainz and put in one of those fish tanks that take up a whole wall in his office. Germans like to see stuff like that.”

“We are working closely with Chicote.” Estefanía Giraut lifts her eyebrows to the middle of her horribly taut forehead in a self-indulgent gesture that is one of the most fearsome in her range of facial quasi-expressions. “We've frozen his salary indefinitely. We've leaked the rumor that we are very unhappy with his performance. We've given out shares in luxury yachts to all the top executives in the company except him. We've spread the rumor that we don't think he's having dinner as much as he could be having dinner. That's my way of reaching out to him.” The way she takes a sip of her Finlandia with ice in no way resembles a human taking a sip. Introducing her bruised lips on the edge of the glass and carrying out some sort of rapacious suction with her appallingly taut cheeks. Just like some forest mammals suck out nests of ants. “I call it negative motivation. Much better than positive motivation, in my opinion. It's never failed me yet.”

Lucas Giraut gives no sign of taking part in the conversation. The Fishing Trophy Room of the house in the Ampurdan was the place Lucas Giraut, as a child, most hated and feared in the entire world. With its six-and-a-half-foot-long sea monsters on the walls. With its sinister photographs of people holding up sea creatures. With its barely noticeable smell of unwashed tackle boxes and something else that Lucas could never quite put his finger on. Something vaguely chemical that could only be smelled in that room. In the beginning, the Fishing Trophy Room's primary function seemed to be to foster the public derision of Lorenzo Giraut. It was there that Fanny Giraut held all her cocktail parties and social events for the Ampurdan circuit. Spreading her guests out over the various leather couches and providing the evening's entertainment with anecdotes of her husband's clumsiness in the art of fishing and the ridiculous situations said clumsiness placed him in. Lorenzo Giraut always attended these social events, and would remain standing by the large window with his glass of Macallan and his cigarette, and drink in silence. While his son spied on him from his window in the North Wing. While the guests laughed behind him. From his window's parapet, Lucas could see his father's figure standing there, showing no sign of taking part in the conversation. He was never sure if his father knew that he was spying on him.

“The International Division is our future,” says Fonseca. “In terms of competitiveness. And the Speyer Cathedral is our flagship. Once we have the contract, dozens more will follow. Within a year, our profits will have multiplied thirty times over. Of course, we need your signature for the restructuring.” A new reconfiguration and anxious swelling of the network of veins on his temples is produced. Creating some sort of bulging membranes that beat briefly on both sides of his forehead. “Given that technically you are still the principal shareholder and president of the company. And technically you are above us. Of course, we would continue to rely on you. With conditions that will be very advantageous to you. You'd only have to go to a few meetings a year. We trust that you'll sign those papers, son.”

“Of course he'll sign.” Fanny Giraut smiles. The silicone and the tautness of her surgically smoothed skin make Fanny Giraut's smiles more like a retraction of the lips, revealing her deathly pale gums. She stares at Fonseca. “The Speyer Cathedral is ours. It's always been ours. See to it that everyone talks about it all the time. Invent meetings. Threaten people. Pay off some German journalists. Punish everyone that isn't talking about it. See to it that people talk about the cathedral as our flagship. Make sure that they use that exact phrasing. Threaten to fire Chicote tomorrow if he doesn't have dinner more. We want him to have dinner more. Until he's had dinner with so many Germans that he has nightmares of beer and sausages and sauerkraut.”

“Your birthday cake is ready,” says Lucas Giraut to his mother suddenly. Without turning around. Without taking his eyes off the breakwater on the other side of the large window. “With all the ingredients you asked for. Six stories high. With the message you asked for. With no mention of your age, of course. The baker assured me that it's the largest cake he's ever made. I had him put it in writing, just as you asked.”

“I should have hired a professional.” Fanny Giraut's surgically taut cheeks withdraw to each side. Her white gums have a texture inexplicably similar to enamel. Her bruised lips plunge into the glass once again, and emerge a moment later. “I've never seen you do anything well. And I doubt you're going to change now.”

“The audiovisual material for the party is ready,” continues Lucas. “The old videotapes have been transferred to digital. The photographs have been adapted for digital projection.”

The most important fishing trophies in the Fishing Trophy Room, those Trophies That Justify a Fishing Life, are on the mantelpiece. Among them is a blowfish stuffed in attack mode. Attacking an invisible enemy with its spines. There is a red tuna six feet and nine inches long. The largest ever fished out of the Mediterranean. There are various gold and silver trophies. Many of them have figures of fishermen or figures of fish and other objects related to the world of fishing.

“My son never learned to fish.” Fanny Giraut makes a vague gesture with her hand around the Fishing Trophy Room. “He's even clumsier than his father, and his father was the worst fisherman I've ever seen with a pole in his hands. Remember when we went out in the boat to fish tuna? Those were the few times that idiot Lorenzo ever made me laugh. The poor bastard was so scared that when they were tying up the chair's belts his face looked like he was being strapped into an electric chair. My husband was gutless.” She pauses and her features come as close as they can to an evocative expression. “Not even jail gave him the guts he never had. In fact, he came out even more ridiculous and gutless. A ridiculous old man clinging to his stupid store and his ridiculous old friends. It would have been fitting if he'd dropped dead in that horrible place, amid all that junk and spiderwebs.” The three-story building and its attached warehouse in uptown Barcelona that houses the commercial activities of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., is simply known in the Giraut family as The Store. “Getting rid of him was the best thing I ever did in my life. But it seems getting rid of a son isn't so easy.”

The main discovery that Lucas Giraut made as a child while spying on his father from his window in the North Wing had to do with his father's facial expression. Which was, in essence, an expression of terror. Pure terror. And somehow that terror seemed to be connected to the fact that he was standing in front of the large window. Somehow the terror seemed to derive from the large window itself. Standing in front of the large window with his glass of Macallan in one hand and his cigarette in the other, Lorenzo Giraut's face was a grimace of intense, painful terror. The discovery was described in detail in Lucas's childhood notebooks.

“The band has already been hired,” says Lucas Giraut. “For your birthday party.”

And he arches his eyebrows as if what he has just said gives him some sort of secret gratification.

CHAPTER 4. The Beginning, Strictly Speaking, of the Story

Lucas Giraut rests his chin on the intertwined fingers of his hands and examines, his eyes slightly squinted, the image of Mr. Bocanegra, Show Business Impresario, in the monochrome monitor connected to the surveillance camera in the lobby of the building that houses LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD. Searching for familiar elements in his appearance. Elements that could awaken some childhood memory. Perhaps the coat. Over his shoulders Mr. Bocanegra is wearing a fox, or sable, or perhaps Chinese otter coat, whose cut and overall appearance is strikingly feminine. The image of a man with a strikingly feminine coat definitely seems to awaken some type of memory in the nooks and crannies of Lucas's childhood mind. The images on the monochrome monitor that watches over the lobby are a color halfway between electric blue and the gray scale. Lucas Giraut realizes that Mr. Bocanegra has looked up and is now staring into the lobby camera with an impatient look on his wide, mustachioed face.

“Send him up,” Lucas says to the intern who occupies the lowest rung of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD.'s hierarchical pyramid.

The intern goes down the stairs that lead from Lucas Giraut's office on the mezzanine to the antique store itself. Giraut looks at the monitor again, sprawled out in his office chair in that rigid way of his. The office that Lucas Giraut now occupies, and which used to be his father's, has one side that overlooks the public sales and showroom. The only furnishing element that has arrived since Lorenzo Giraut's death is the Italian Louis XV — style cartonnier that Lucas uses as his desk. A cream-colored cartonnier with ebony accents and four leather drawers above the writing surface separated by a decorative alcove, the type with compartments that can only be opened by triggering secret inner mechanisms that is technically known in the antiques world as a magic desk. According to most professional opinions, Giraut is the most important collector of magic desks in the country.

Bocanegra's arrival is announced by the thundering sound of his steps on the wooden stairs and a slight trembling of the floor. A moment later, he reaches the top of the stairs, wrenching an anguished creak from the floorboards. The Show Business Impresario and Reputed Best Friend of the late Lorenzo Giraut shows his teeth in a ferocious grin. Over six feet of flabby flesh with an impossibly shiny bald head crowning his wide, mustachioed face. Giraut looks Bocanegra up and down and carries out a quick suitological analysis of his beige Prada suit, with the following results: indifference; sumptuousness that becomes disdainful without ever being classy; contained violence and respectability strictly based on negative personality elements.

Bocanegra energetically extends his flaccid hand to his host. The smile on his wide, mustachioed face is cruel for some reason that's hard to discern. There's something intrinsically cruel in Bocanegra's features. Something that doesn't seem to depend on the specific configuration of said features at any given moment.

“I can't explain how much this means to me.” Mr. Bocanegra raises a hand to his chest and wrinkles his large soft face into an expression of emotional pain. Then he makes a gesture with his large hairy mitts that includes the entire office. “Being here. That you called me. I don't need to say that your father was more than a brother to me. Fuck, I'd fit most of my real brothers with cement shoes and dump them in the sea. But that's another story.” He frowns. “Your father was the most significant person in my life. I know it's strange for me to say that when most likely you don't even remember me. How old were you the last time I saw you? Four? Five? But what can you do.” He gives a resigned shrug. “Your mother never liked me. Let's just say that she never wanted me to set foot in her house. Which is why you've never seen me, and why your father never told you about me. Fuck, I don't even want to think about what would have happened if she'd suspected that I worked so closely with your father.”

Lucas makes a sign for his guest to sit down in the armchair on the other side of the Louis XV cartonnier. Mr. Bocanegra drops himself heavily into the armchair and leans back against the wide back with his arms extended. There is certainly something familiar about him. It's not his wide, mustachioed and slightly sweaty face, or the way he talks. It's more the way his features adjust to his different emotional states without losing a constant trace of underlying cruelty. Some sort of background trace. A trace that evokes large predators in ecosystems not dominated by human beings.

“My mother is a difficult woman.” Giraut takes out his silver cigarette case embossed with the initials that he shares with his late father and offers his visitor a cigarette. There is a moment of silence as Bocanegra lights his cigarette with the lighter that Giraut extends to its tip before continuing. “Things tend to get complicated when she's involved.”

“God bless your mother.” Bocanegra takes a drag on his cigarette. His feminine coat, made of sable or Chinese otter or maybe astrakhan lamb, somehow manages to make his figure more threatening. Like some sort of cosmic provocation directed at no one in particular. “The truth is that I don't blame her for hating me. After all, your mother hates the entire human race. You should have seen the face I made when your father told me he was going to marry her. Why don't you just marry an electric eel, I told him.”

Lucas Giraut nods.

“Mr. Bocanegra.” He places both hands, palms open, on the surface of the cartonnier. “As you are well aware, I didn't get to know my father very well. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I get the impression that my father never made any effort to help me get to know him. Or, of course, to get to know me.” He shrugs his shoulders. “The circumstances of his life and his death are a mystery to me. And my mother has made sure that it remains that way. And nevertheless, I am pretty well versed in the professional aspects of his life. Some of his international dealings are still legendary in the antique business.” He gestures toward a pile of professional magazines on top of the cartonnier. “And of course, since when he died he left me at the helm of his corporation, I now have access to all company documents and records. Including those documents and records which, due to their nature, have never been examined by anyone outside of my father's intimate circle. And here is where you come in.”

Mr. Bocanegra seems to sprawl out even further in his chair. The way he superimposes his new position onto the original one is analogous to taking out a second mortgage on top of the one you already have. His new lounging position seems to suggest abundance in every sense of the word and a laxness bordering on defiance.

Lucas Giraut takes a file out of a drawer. He places it on the cartonnier's writing surface and opens it up to the first page.

“To give just one example.” Giraut examines the file's first page. Bocanegra's evident lack of any curiosity toward the file seems designed to cover up a certain degree of interest and curiosity. “Have you ever heard of the Isle of Guernsey? I confess that when I first came across that name I was a bit confused.” He turns a page of the file. “Well, it turns out that the Isle of Guernsey is a British protectorate located in the English Channel. Its total surface is thirty square miles, with a population of sixty thousand people. Typical animals are the donkey and a local type of cows. Its national color is green.”

Something has changed in Mr. Bocanegra's facial expression. The element of cruelty that lies beneath his features seems to have come to the surface without causing any tangible change in his facial expression. Except perhaps for a quasi-feline element of alertness. His enormous body now seems to withdraw into an alert, quasi-feline crouch.

“I'm sure you would agree,” continues Giraut, “that it doesn't seem like a place where my father would go to conduct business. And, yet, the Isle of Guernsey is the headquarters of Arnold Layne Experts. A company I haven't bothered to investigate for the simple fact that it's none of my business what the people of Guernsey do. And the name isn't the only curious thing about this company. For example.” He continues reading from the file he has open on the table. “The last names of the three principal shareholders are Wright, Waters and Mason. Now if one were to type those three last names into any Internet search engine, he would discover that they are the last names of the three founding members of the British rock band Pink Floyd. While 'Arnold Layne' is the title of the band's first single. Defined in musical encyclopedias as,” he reads, “'An optimistic and seminally psychedelic song about a cross-dresser that ends up in jail.' Okay”—he looks up and observes Bocanegra's facial expression—“I'm not a big fan of rock music. Although, as you already know, my father was. And, yet, the name Pink Floyd brings to my mind a series of memories. You can already imagine what kind of memories. That was the first detail that made me think. And then, of course, there's the date that Arnold Layne Experts was incorporated. The summer of 1978. Of course, it took me a little while to recall why that date was so familiar to me. I was only five years old. So”—he closes the file—“does any of this ring a bell with you?” Giraut raises his thin, pale brows over his namby-pamby eyes. “Are you, perhaps, a Pink Floyd fan?”