The Calligraphy of Dreams

9. THE ARSEHOLE OF THE WORLD IN 1945

“And the Roxy cinema too?”

“Yes, the Roxy, of course,” his father replies.

“And the Bosque?”

“The Bosque as well.”

“And Proyecciones, and the Mundial.”

“Proyecciones no, the Mundial, yes.”

“And father, what about the Capitol and the Metropol?”

“Neither of them.”

“What about the Kursaal? And the Fantasio?”

“Not them either, comrade. Nor the Windsor or the Monte Carlo or the Coliseum. No first run cinema, got it?”

“What about the Maryland?”

“The Maryland, of course. But it’s a bit far. The Delicias, the Rovira, the Iberia and the Moderno. The ushers are all friends of mine. We’ll go and see them so they can get to know you too, then they’ll let you in for free whenever you like.”

“Really? When can we go?”

“In a few days.”

“When do you get back from Canfranc?”

“I’ve never been to Canfranc.

I’ve never lost anything in Canfranc. There’s no such place as Canfranc, got it?”

What a fib, he thinks. Ringo knows his father goes regularly to Canfranc because that’s where, according to his mother, he can get reliable, cheap rat poison for the brigade. But for some mysterious reason he prefers to deny those trips, to deny that Canfranc even exists, and what takes him there. The thing is, there are always lies, distortions and contradictions lurking behind whatever the Rat-catcher says. And also, in the midst of all this bluster and pretence, there is often a stupendous nugget of truth, for example this incredible list of cinemas his father’s brigade has disinfected where friendly ushers are willing to let him in for nothing.

This is a real, unexpected present he is given on an extremely cold day at the start of December, a month after he has turned thirteen and is about to leave school to start working in Señor Munté’s workshop. From early on this boring Sunday afternoon he has been in two minds whether to ask his mother for money for the cinema, because he senses there’s not a peseta in the house. His father has sent him to the bedroom to get a packet of Chesterfields he left in his jacket hanging in the wardrobe, and he has searched in all the pockets, sniffing expectantly at them (he loves the smell of Virginia tobacco impregnated in the linings) but all he has found are a few coins. He has kept them, and now is unsure if it is because his mother saw him committing this small theft, or for some other reason, that she is so silent and depressed as she irons shirts on the dining-room table. His mother’s gloomy spells are so well known to him that he can predict them: the thin film of fear on her hard-working, bony hands as she sews buttons, folds shirts and handkerchiefs, jabs oranges or quickly does up her white housecoat, the fear she has of being left without work because she is not a qualified nurse, fear that the stove might go out or she could lose the ration card, or that there’ll be a knock at the door in the middle of the night, fear that the priest-baiter could be taken away to a police station, and that the boy could end up in an orphanage if she’s not there one day. The red-fringed lamp casts its light on the wallpapered walls, and the shadow of the fringe falls on the far side of the table onto his father’s lizard-skinned hands, folded lifeless one on top of the other, and the dim light glows on the wine bottle and glass, on the bronze ashtray with the two golden spikes, and on the smoke rising from the not fully extinguished cigarette butt, before gradually dissipating in the surrounding gloom. A subtle net of domestic repercussions, of mutually agreed and accepted habits, hangs over his father and mother, suggesting conflicts postponed yet again, a possibly violent argument that for a long time now they have kept in check, one that will never burst into the open with him present.

He has been told not to snoop around at home, to go out to play. He could go up to Las Ánimas to see the latest production by the theatre group, or play Ping-Pong with El Quique or the Cazorla brothers, but he prefers to stay at home with Jim Hawkins and poor Ben Gunn, who dreams of eating cheese. He really likes that episode, he finds it very funny. Then, sitting at the table with the heating dish next to the window, he looks at the illustrations in “The Flight of Prince Hassin” and “The Defeat of James Brooke”, the last two chapters in Salgari’s The Pirates of Malaysia.

“We’re the arsehole of the world, Alberta light of my life,” his father groans, his voice deliberately sorrowful. “You can see that clearly from La Carroña. And even more so from Canfranc … well, it looks as if we’d better go out, nano.” Winking at him to win his support, he gets up from the table with a sudden burst of energy. “Let’s go out into the street for some fresh air before your mother decides to hit me over the head with the iron.”

“Wear your scarf, Son,” she says, still ironing, without even looking up at either of them. “And tell that good-for-nothing father of yours to take an umbrella. It’s going to rain.”

*

This is why from that day on, walking through Gràcia to fill a gloomy Sunday afternoon threatening rain, the doors to some of the local cinemas are thrown open for him without his having to pay. His father stops to greet doormen and ushers, and the boy is formally presented. First they show up at the Roxy in Plaza Lesseps. They’re showing a silly Spanish film and “Buffalo Bill”, with Gary Cooper, but he’s already seen it at another cinema.

“See how big this place is. Take a good look,” says his father, dropping his heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder while he stares at the façade. “It took us more than a week to clean it, but there wasn’t a flea or bug left alive. And thanks to who, eh?”

“The light brigade of rat-catchers.”

“That’s right. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the doorman, he’s a good friend.”

In every cinema, without going beyond the entrance curtain, the same confident request: Do me a favour, if my boy here comes, let him in. He loves films, he’d spend his life watching them if he could. Come whenever you like, lad, they all say. On the screen of the Roxy, at the far end of the immense auditorium, there’s the sound of shooting. A magic blink of his eyes, and he can see once again how Wild Bill Hickok is shot in the back, and the last kiss his girl gives him on the lips, only this time Bill Hickok cannot wipe it away with the back of his hand, because he’s already dead on the ground.

Later on they go by the Selecto, and his father remembers that until a short time earlier it was a pigsty.

“You could pick up lice and scabies and I don’t know what else in the artistes’ dressing rooms. But by the time we left, you could eat your dinner off any seat.”

“You did a good job, Father.”

“But this one is no good. It’s not for minors.”

“I know.”

“On we go then.”

He’s stopped to look at the case of photos. “The Four Feathers”. He likes June Duprez a lot. On the board announcing the variety shows, Chen-Li Puss in Boots has vanished, and now another pair of glittering legs and another name is engraved on his mind: the Supervedette Lina Lamarr, a comic dancer.

“Do you think there are any blue rats left in there, Father?”

“Who knows? Keep going.”

“With all the blue rats that are around, I’ve still not seen even one.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Do you think that before your brigade finishes them all off I’ll be able to see some?”

“You’ve come across them lots of times.”

“No I haven’t, I haven’t seen a single one …”

“What are you standing there for? Come on, let’s go.” He examines his fingernails, rubs them on his lapel. “If they gave you five pesetas for every one you’ve seen, you’d be a millionaire.”

“But I haven’t, Father.”

“And I say you have.” Avoiding the boy’s inquisitive gaze, he feels with his hand for his shoulder once more. “The thing is, sometimes those rats lose their colour in the rain. It’s normal, if you think about it. Brown rats though, who have a very soft skin …”

“Hey, you’re making fun of me!”

“Don’t stop, keep going.”

He’ll have to show me a blue rat, he thinks, or I’ll never believe him.

“Didn’t you hear me? Keep walking,” his father insists. “And don’t imagine that it’s only rats that can infect you. Not long ago in some cinemas if you took a piss in the toilets you could catch the clap.” He points to an ancient-looking balcony on the far side of the street, next to Fontana metro station. “Look — when you were five we used to live behind that balcony, on the first floor. Your mother’s younger brother Francisco died there. He was only seventeen. He was called up at sixteen. He was brought back from the Battle of the Ebro with typhus, covered in lice. He hadn’t fired a shot. You won’t remember, you were too young, but from that balcony one January day seven years ago now, you and I watched the Nationalist troops march into Barcelona … Well, anyway, as I was saying. Do you know what gonorrhea is, Son? Or the clap?”

“It’s a venerable disease.”

“Venereal.”

“That’s it.”

“But do you know how you catch it?” They cross the road opposite Cuesta’s jewellery shop and walk on down the left-hand pavement. “Or syphilis? You’re growing up, and it’s time you knew these things, isn’t it?”

“But I already know all that, Father.”

“I bet you do! Look, this is the Smart cinema.”

“It’s not called the Smart anymore, it’s the Proyecciones now.”

“It’s an infectious disease of the cock that you get if you go whoring in the Barrio Chino.” They have halted in front of the cinema, and the boy is staring at the posters. “Whores. Do you know what they are? Of course there are whores everywhere, not just in the Chino … Besides,” he says, a melancholy note in his voice, “today that district isn’t what it used to be, or anything like it. You should have seen it fifteen years ago, when we used to go to La Criolla on Calle Cid … Well, I only went once. Dreadful little alleyways lined with bars and prostitutes and queers and the worst sort kind of pimp you can imagine … But anyway, there’s nowhere like it to go whoring. But it’s not to be recommended, do you hear me? And it’s as well you know that. I suppose it hasn’t yet crossed your mind to go down there for a look with your little friends on a Saturday night, has it?”

“Not me.”

“Do you know what whoring means, Son?”

“Of course.”

“It’s the kind of thing you should know by now. Wrap up well in your scarf. Your mother wants you and me to talk about it, so we have to.”

“Alright.”

“There’s no choice. You need to know certain things.”

“Uhuh.”

“Better today than tomorrow, your mother says. And she may be right. What do you think?”

“Well, I’m not sure …”

He remembers seeing his father standing on the rusty balcony they have now left behind. He can see him there in a thick overcoat with the collar up, weeping silently, an unlit cigar between his lips, as he watches the soldiers marching down from Plaza Lesseps, exhausted under their heavy capes and rolled-up blankets, rifles slung over their shoulders, boots resounding on the cobblestones. Ringo is crouching between two pots of geraniums, his face thrust between the bars of the balcony. Recalling that day, his father always said that the boy, seeing him crying and chewing the cigar, suddenly burst into tears himself. Not because he felt impotent and furious at seeing the Nationalists march past, obviously not, he was too small to understand that a war and untold hopes had been lost, but possibly because he empathetically felt the same sorrow, because this was the first time he had ever seen his father cry. But what he remembers most are the troops marching down the street: that strange, wriggling caterpillar of backs bristling with rifle bayonets, equipment belts and canteens, and above all in the last rank, three dead little birds swinging from a wire stuck in a backpack.

“Let’s go on,” his father says, nudging him with his elbow. “We’ve never worked in this cinema, so they don’t know me.… Careful, here comes a vulture in a cassock.” A young, alert-looking priest was coming up the same pavement, the skirts of his cassock billowing out as he strode along carrying a bulging briefcase. After he had passed by them, the Rat-catcher turns to look at him. “He’s a poof! You only need look at the way he walks.”

“Ha,” Ringo agrees, lowering his head.

At that moment he would give anything to be with his friends back in the village in the country, swimming in a green pond among the leaping frogs. He tries to summon up this image at times like these, because this is what he most loves to do, apart from reading books or musical scores: to swim, dive, fill his ears with water and music and nothing else.

“So, tell me something,” insists the Rat-catcher. “What’s the first thing you look at when you see a girl?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

Err … I dunno. The eyes.”

“The eyes. Very thoughtful of you.” He pauses for a few seconds, then adds: “The eyes. That’s a very clever answer. Now tell me: what’s the first thing you look at when you see a girl?”

“What …?”

“I mean one of those beauties, a stunner as they call them these days. I know it’s a silly question. But you must notice what it is you like, I don’t know, the arse for example … there’s nothing bad about that, it’s normal. Yes, don’t look at me like that, everybody thinks it’s normal.”

“Yes, but the fact is …”

“Girls’ arses, dammit! Do you like girls or not? I don’t know why you think it’s so odd! It’s a simple enough question!”

It takes him an age to reply, and when he does so he hides his mouth, nose, and almost his eyes, in the top of his scarf.

“The thing is, I don’t really look.”

“Come off it! How can you not, a normal boy like you! Remember, it’s your mother who’s insisting we have this little talk. I reckon it’s something we ought to do when you’re fifteen or sixteen, but your mother’s been going on and on about it … Look, here on the right is the Mundial cinema. Let’s go in and say hello to Señora Anita in the box office. She’s a good woman. She’ll let you in for free, and you can bring a friend as well, if you like. Or if you want to bring a girlfriend, eh?” He laughs and slaps him so hard on the back he almost doubles up. “Great, isn’t it?”

“Yes, great, just great.”

“Well, that’s that,” his father concludes, lowering his voice. “So now we’ve had our little talk.”

Shortly afterwards he comes to a halt on the pavement, caught up all of a sudden in concerns of his own. Staring down at the glistening road surface, he unhurriedly raises a bent cigarette to his lips and lights it with a flickering, badly aimed match.

It’s cold, and it is as if the street prolongs the sadness and smell of the metro corridors. Heavy raincoats and autumnal overcoats that seem to be parading along suspended from their hangers, old women wearing black mantillas, children in mourning with wide-open, inquisitive eyes, chilled pedestrians hurrying by, couples in their Sunday best coming and going from the Monumental bar, all pass them and fade into the greyest hour. His father stands there, the weight of sorrow and regret making him stoop as he watches night fall on the wet cobbles. They’re moving like clockwork toys, aren’t they, Ringo hears him mutter. He knows these mood swings well: just as when least expected he can play the fool, so equally unexpectedly the wastrel, the merry priest-baiter, the charlatan as his mother calls him, suddenly disappears and in his place remains this embittered and anti-social grouch, this rough, insensitive fellow. At that moment everything connected to him, the surprise absences, the case with poison in it, his colleagues in the pest control brigade, his work tools, all turn into something clandestine, vaguely dangerous. Even now, as he stands on the edge of the pavement engrossed in thoughts of his own, his back turned to the people going up and down the street, his thickset body in the raincoat with raised collar, he creates an atmosphere of secrecy, as does his voice, thickened by cigarette smoke and his own hoarseness, like a belch that turns into a private prayer: We’re in the arsehole of the world, son, we are the arsehole of the world.

His mood lightens half an hour later when he says exactly the same thing at the Maryland cinema in Plaza Urquinaona, the one furthest from their house. He explains that its English-sounding name has been changed to the Plaza, since officially these days they are Germanophile, but that he still calls it the Maryland. This week they are showing “Blood, Sweat, and Tears” and — as at the Roxy — “Buffalo Bill”. In the foyer, after he has been presented to Señor Batallé, the doorman and usher, Ringo pokes his head through the curtains into the stalls, and sees that Wild Bill Hickok has not been shot yet. His father’s voice grows gruffer as he chokes back his anger and says: “Who cares what happens here in Spain, Batallé? Do you still think that the solution to all our problems will come from abroad? To which Señor Batallé responds in a cautious whisper: Where else from, Pep? You can start looking for another job, because in case you haven’t heard, the war with the Boches is over, and soon Canfranc won’t be Europe’s rich storeroom any more. They’ve closed the border and blocked the tunnel, there are at least ten thousand soldiers in the area and they’re building bunkers all along the Pyrenees, but it’s not like it used to be, when the Gestapo guarded the frontier on the other side, and the Falange on this. Why do you keep going to the British consulate near here when they no longer need to communicate with the border? Nowadays I go by Pont de Rei and sleep in Vilella, his father says. Marcelino sends you greetings. And whatever you might say, there’s still a lot to be done … I agree, but it’s not the same, now we have to wait for things to improve, the doorman insists: Didn’t you know that the United Nations has just condemned the regime? So what? Do you think that means they’re going to come? How naïve can you get? his father grumbles. Of course they will. And they’ll toss the bastard Generalissimo in the same sewer where they pitched the Nazis. And we’ll live to see that day, Pep! You think so? You really think we’re that important to those gentlemen of the United Nations? You really have become gullible, haven’t you, damn and blast it! Have you forgotten that only two years ago we had four thousand men in the Valle de Arán just waiting for those sons of bitches, who never arrived? We’re living a lie dammit, so don’t pin your hopes on it!

By now both of them are on their high horse. They think they are debating the currents of the great waves of recent history; in fact they are yet again doing nothing more than revealing their deep-seated melancholy, their intimate defeats. It is from repeated conversations and arguments of this kind that the boy becomes accustomed to living in an atmosphere heavy with daily doses of bitterness and a sadness that he sees as a curse. He wants nothing to do with history, he feels no need to settle scores with any of that, and so he prefers to slip into the stalls once more and recover Bill Hickok’s black Stetson and silver revolver after he has been treacherously shot in the back, while he hears the Rat-catcher’s plaintive voice whispering to his friend Batallé: They’ll never come, dammit! Can’t you see we don’t count, can’t you see we’re the arsehole of the world?

In his father’s mouth, this arsehole of the world always expresses the same sense of loss and lack of self-esteem, however ludicrously and sarcastically he puts it, whatever the different variations he uses: we’re the greatest shit that history has ever produced; we’re the sewer of the West; we’re the greatest scum that ever has been or ever will be on the face of this earth; we’re less than nothing of the most absolute nothing there is. Whatever the reasoning behind this well-worn catchphrase, Ringo does not think that this self-incriminating we are includes him and his mother, but is more directed at the group of his father’s semi-clandestine friends, his colleagues in the pest control brigade, the filthy, stinking holes where they sometimes have to work during his forced, lengthy absences, whether the commissions he received for his trips to Canfranc — and did this mysterious Canfranc really exist? — or the farmhouse at La Carroña were legal or not. Ringo thought about the poverty and hardships he must have shared with his Alberta light of my life for so many years, the family’s past and present misfortunes … No, he would never have compared his Alberta light of my life to the arsehole of the world, always supposing the world did have an arsehole. Not directly, at least, because in spite of frequently behaving like a wastrel and scatterbrain, he never avoided what he saw as his main responsibility as father and husband: to bring money home whenever he could, a little or a lot, however he could and whatever the cost.

The arsehole of the world. For a long time the boy took those words as a simple respite, a bar-room quip that had become a habit, the snort of a man sick and tired of his own jokes, blaspheming and lies, but eventually he understood that this so-often mentioned arse is nothing other than the country he lives in, and that the relation spoken about in such derogatory terms between country and arse reflects a general feeling of exclusion, self-loathing and defeat, a lack of esteem they all recognise and accept, the sad conclusion that we count for nothing in the world. So we are the greatest shit, and even worse than that, as his father says, and so do Señor Sucre and Capitán Blay, who are always ranting as they sit on a bench on Plaza Rovira or at the bar counter. In this grey city, with its penitence and ashes, where nothing interests the rest of the world, when, as he heard Señor Sucre comment, even foreign ambassadors are sent packing, and we are suffering unprecedented international isolation, why on earth should we be listened to anywhere, with that sewer rat we have in the Pardo taking himself for the Moorish guard and the sentinel of the Occident — Señor Sucre is well read, and people listen to him when he speaks — always surrounded by those yokes and arrows like black spiders, those blue prayers and anthems. We are nothing, my boy, even our football team can only play Portugal, we’ve ended up so badly that the rest of the world doesn’t even know we exist, we are their laughing stock, nano.

*

The following Sunday he is sitting in the front row at the Delicias cinema, together with El Quique and El Chato. All he had to tell the doorman was I’m Pep the Rat-catcher’s son and all three of them got in for free. He’s known El Quique by his nickname Pegamil for some time now, and lately all he talks about are girls he is sure would let you grope them if we took them up on Montaña Pelada, and how much Victoria Mir looks like María Montez when she’s in a swimsuit with her towel wrapped round her head like a turban, although you won’t have noticed, he tells Ringo, because when you watch a film you look for other things, but they really do resemble one another.

“That’s because of their arses!” shouts Chato.

El Quique claims to have been the first to think of her when the gang was having a collective wank in the ruins of Can Xirot. They were all doing it imagining María Montez, but he started thinking of Violeta and came almost at once. He said it was like feeling a gentle electric shock go through him. Ringo considers El Quique as his best friend, although he couldn’t really say why, and often invites him to the cinema. To keep him quiet during the film, he always promises to make up a tale where Violeta is abducted and is about to be tortured by the dacoits or the Sioux, with El Quique as her only hope. This deference has its origin in one of his first fantasies, which has El Quique as protagonist, which he later turned into a recurring dream: Violeta Mir is living in the jungle in a semi-wild state, threatened by a thousand dangers — she is chased by a panther that pounces on her, tears her clothes, and is on the verge of devouring her. El Quique arrives with his bow, and kills the panther just in the nick of time with an arrow between the eyes. Then he picks Violeta up in his arms, soothes her scratches, and takes her to swim in the lake with Tarzan and Jane. For a long while this was El Pegamil’s favourite tall tale, which he often asked for. Then one day the narrator added a variant: El Quique misses with his first arrow, and the panther eats one of Violeta’s legs. A second, well-aimed arrow kills the beast, and El Quique manages to save the girl, whom we soon see not only swimming in the lake but beating Jane in a race.

“Alright, but later on they meet the wizard Merlin, who restores her leg,” Ringo added when he noticed how crestfallen his friend was as he refused to accept the change and demanded he hit the target with his first arrow. Ringo insisted, and so the two friends fell out. Ringo’s uneasy conscience advised him to bring back Violeta’s thigh and to make his peace with El Quique, but for some time his pride would not let him do so. By the time he finally relented and went back to the first version of the story, this devoured thigh had become an obsession with El Quique: in his own tales, which were always breathless and thrown together any old how, a panther would suddenly appear at the most unlikely moment, about to take a bite out of Violeta’s dark thigh; she would scream for help, and he would appear with his bow and arrows …

Now, lounging in the stalls in the Delicias, he is silent until midway through the film, but then can contain himself no longer, and whispers in Ringo’s ear:

“Don’t make it the dacoits, Ringo. This time she is abducted by Yellow Hand and his Cheyenne.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m an explorer in the jungle, and my name is Alan Baxter. And I save her just as she’s about to drown in the lake.”

“Alright.”

“And she’s dressed like María Montez in ‘The Thousand and One Nights’, with a turban on her head …”

“Fine, whatever you like, but now we’re watching the film, so be quiet.”

Basil Rathbone stabs an orange with his knife, and Tyrone Power watches with an ironic smile as they dine in the house of the crooked mayor of Los Angeles, a flabby, cowardly marionette manipulated by his ambitious captain of the guard. Among the other guests are the stunningly beautiful Linda Darnell, but for the moment the boys only have eyes for Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone. The latter does not yet realise that his guest Diego Vega is Zorro himself, the masked avenger. The boys know Basil Rathbone very well, they have seen him play the villain in “Captain Blood”, in “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “The Adventures of Marco Polo”, and even in “David Copperfield”, where he portrayed the evil Mister Murstone, always looking like some sinister bird of prey with that hooked nose of his. His sadistic smile broadens as he tortures the orange with his knife and stares disdainfully at Tyrone Power who, masterfully accentuating the mask of a foppish dandy so that nobody will suspect he is Zorro, says to him:

“I see you treat that fruit like an enemy.”

“Or a rival,” replies the captain, and then the plump, obsequious mayor comes out with the incredible line:

“My great Esteban here misses no opportunity to cross swords with someone. Not for nothing was he a fencing master in Barcelona!”

Stupefied, Ringo springs upright in his seat in the Delicias and, still bemused, digs his friend in the ribs.

“Quique! Did you hear that? Did you hear what he said?”

“I think so.”

“He said: in Barcelona! That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right,” confirms El Chato to his left. “I swear I heard it! He said in Barcelona.”

Unbelievable, it’s unbelievably incredible. What a surprise, boys. How wonderful, how strange to hear the name of their city spoken by famous Hollywood actors, so far away from them, from this parochial, irredeemable Sunday afternoon gloom. Ringo intends to tell all the rest of the gang who haven’t seen the film yet, and his mother the moment he gets home, but above all his father, when he returns from Canfranc. They know we exist, we’re not so insignificant, Father, they haven’t forgotten us! In Hollywood they know our city exists! Basil Rathbone was a fencing master in Barcelona!

His astonishment and joy are not shared in the least by his father, who is amused and surprised at his euphoria, and confesses he has no idea who Basil Rathbone is, and nor has he seen the film. Although Ringo is disappointed his father doesn’t remember how often he has complained bitterly for precisely this reason, for being or being in the arsehole of the world, he himself, all of us, our city, and the whole of Spain including its football team, which is also the arsehole of the world because nowadays only Portugal will play them, he forgives him because he knows he has never been the slightest bit interested in the cinema, not even as a pastime; he is so unimpressed it takes a great effort for him to stay awake to the end of a film.

His mother, on the other hand, smiles when she hears him tell the story, turning her face away from him. But he notices her slight nod of pleasure, as if she could hear a distant, pleasing music.