Winter Journey

Finis Coronat Opus

orresco referens, said Saint John before the Seventh Seal, and 1 say the same, friends, now that, after a period of intense training, I am at home in the Truth, the Here and Now, the best site, the right place at the right time, surrounded by bird shit and stink, which the Lord has provided expressly for me, the Returnee. The Lord has given me shelter and put me right up front, with a generous no-man's-land and lots of noisy traffic between me and them. And a nice breeze to make up for how sticky and hot it's been.

I'm going to go back, friends, only a few weeks. The whole thing started when Miqui told me it was a piece of cake. That's what he told me: a piece of cake, Quiquin. If 1'd known then how 1 was going to suffer, 1 would've gone looking for Miqui at his Israeli beach house in Salou and hauled him by the balls into the Here and Now, so he could see what I'm going through. He'd shit in his pants because he's a person who's scared to death of death. So the whole thing began when 1 spent an entire afternoon and evening building myself up, as patiently as that masochist Job. And pumping yourself up is a bad idea. A hell of a bad idea. Inside you're reciting the prayer that says, I'll show you guys how to make plans, you assholes. But the damage is done. And it's so bad you have no other choice.

it's easy to pick up girls, that jerk Miqui told me. So 1 thought, okay, and 1 went into the Cafe de la Mirada looking around, ready to party, 1 mean with good intentions, to get some, you know. The first one 1 saw was pudgy, with a very short skirt, and she really knew how to handle that tray full of stuff, and amazingly she knew how to keep from tripping on the steps, because the place is all up and down.

I sniff Crimson, Lord, and that's the greatest pleasure that Life in the Here and Now can bring. 1 sniff Crimson through my blessed Hearing and everybody, thanks to the Walkman, is absent lovers and everybody is Kerouac and Cassidy driving around in Paris. Life is beautiful and so I want to tip my hat to Fate: the girl is right for me. Come on, Quiqu1n, don't screw up, get off to a good start; keep your hand steady; perfect, she's mine, she's mine. Bingo. BINGO, Quiquin. She's perfect. I'm in the right place. Miqui, Mom, if you could only see me.

1 did trip, on the first stair, because there's no light in the place, which 1 think they do to save money. She walked past me saying to herself, three Cokes, a SevenUp, two drafts, as if it were a litany, three stuffed olives, ora pro nobis, an order of anchovies, ora pro nobis, turris eburnea, four beers. She didn't even look at me. 1 didn't like that. That pushes my buttons, but 1 was being patient, see. 1 didn't even do anything, l just damned Miqui to hell. That's all 1 did then. But it really gets to me when they act like I'm not even there.

1 sat down at the first empty table I saw and I was already pissed off because the illegal immigrant in charge of ambience had put on shitty Heroin like this was the Factory and those assholes were inviting everybody to Direct Intravenous Perdition. Hearing Velvet makes me want to throw up. It was a bad beginning, friends, way too seventies. It was time to get out of there. But I stayed. That's why the whole thing started, because 1 stayed. With Velvet boring into my ears. Why the hell did 1 have to go through all that if all 1 wanted was to pick up a girl? And on top of everything else, the socalled music was too loud. 1 hate it loud because then you have to pay attention to the music and you can't get into the pickup thing. If it were up to me, 1'd burn down all the discos with the Communists, teenagers, street people, disc jockeys and Bosnians inside. All of them. If 1 have to spend so many hours there, they should turn down the volume, right? Or turn it off, for God's sake, before 1 lose it because 1 have sensitive ears and all those decibels just drill their way into my brain as if 1'd spent the whole day on a cell phone. That's why I'm so sensitive to background music and 1 turn right around and get off the elevator if it's playing Mozart and 1 refuse to get on planes. Well, I've only been on a plane in the Return to the Promised Land episode. And when they'd had enough of the Velvet Underground, because it was going on and on, he goes for contrast and puts on Finlandia by Sibelius, which is even more retro. Like we were in the metro, and this was the perfect time and place to listen to that drivel. I felt like killing the person in charge of ambience, of choosing the music, right there. If there is somebody responsible, because sometimes things just happen, for no reason, just because. Thinking about that just wears me out. It irritates me, it wounds my sensibility that they don't know that what gives a place style, especially if it's new, like the Cafe de la Mirada, is something like King Crimson. And people weren't even paying attention, as if they couldn't even hear the music. People are really something, you play the soundtrack of their lives and nothing, they don't give a shit. For a minute 1 felt like killing all of them. But then 1 got myself under control. 1'd only been in the place for four minutes and thirteen seconds and things were going downhill fast. It was very hard to control myself because the place was full of old people, Bosnians, hippies, Norwegians and homeless, nobody normal like me. That's when she appeared. Slender, wearing just enough eye makeupyou have to describe everything-blondish, with a smile on her lips and gum between her teeth lighting up her mouth, which I would have planted a kiss on then and there, but 1 just held on, like Saint George before the Dragon of Temptation… because when I'm good I'm very, very good. She still didn't know that I was beginning to pump myself up. The girl, with a tray in one hand and a cloth in the other, goes and leans over and lets me see her promising cleavage, and then 1 thought, Hey, Miqui, you're right, it is fucking easy, and 1 picked up on her smile and said, What's up, and she winked at me and said, What'll you have, sir?

Listen, in a place like this, with waitresses who're, you know, friendly, it's insulting when they call you Sir. That girl was saying You're thirty-seven, you idiot, don't you even notice you're going bald, you fool, you've broken up with three different women and everybody knows about it, you haven't even been able to finish a lousy university degree, what are you doing here? You think you're Tarzan? But 1 controlled myself, pumping myself up even more, and I said, Don't call me Sir, sweetie, like that, politely. And then they go and put on Child in Time, a mess with no sense of rhythm and stupid crappy lyrics, and 1 was starting to get pissed off, pumping myself up, with Gillan's high little neuter voice, he's worse than Farinelli. 1'd take all the queers and all the Bosnians and 1'd boil them in a pressure cooker. Quousque tandem abutere, Deep Purple, patientia nostra? says Saint Matthew 13:22, which 1 repeat and make mine. 1 mean, l don't think you always have to score the first time…

If I weren't sniffing Crimson and traveling with Neal and Jack through the streets of Paris, 1 wouldn't be able to take any more, it seems like even from the Here and Now 1'd be able to hear how this guy gives orders. I think she's looked in the direction of Here and Now and I can't have that because I'm God, 1 kill when 1 want and I don't have to explain anything to anybody. Besides, from this distance the guy looks like Pepus. I'd like to get a look at his neck, but it's as short as the sleeves on a vest. Just a minute, Pepus, the guitars have gone back to that impossible rhythm, oh, oh, hearing the Truth in the Truth. Saint Robert Fripp, ora pro nobis… Where were we? Pepus. That fucking son of a bitch Pepus. It's your turn, man. Can you imagine being Pepus? There. Calm down Let's see… Bingo. Right in his nonexistent neck. You're something else, QuiquIn.

…but if a girl turns up her nose 1 tell her, No problem, I've got a full schedule and I wouldn't have had five minutes for you anyway. And that's when they soften up and when you say, Now get screwed and I'm gonna find somebody else. And she just keeps looking at me, moving her gum around with a shit-eating grin, and she comes back with, What'll you have, sir, as if 1 hadn't said, Don't call me Sir, honey. 1 decided to be nice and pump myself up even more, if that were virtually possible.

"A nice cold Estrella and the time you get off work, Jane," 1 said with a smile.

That's what I'm like: if somebody wants a fight, l bow down and bend like bamboo because, you ignoramuses, it takes two to fight, as Lao Tse teaches. And 1 looked back at her with the same shiteating grin.

Now it looks like they're starting to realize that something's going on. People are really slow. It's like they walk around without looking at one another, ignoring one another as He has ignored everybody.

At that moment Our Father Time had had enough of Gillan's yelps and we were supposed to listen to Barber's Adagio for Strings, the most saccharine thing ever to emerge from the human mind, and 1 kept on holding back and grinning shittily like the waitress. 1 was starting to notice how hot it was that time of year, which was made worse by the vulgarity of the DJ, the hired gun of the Bad Taste Mafia.

"We don't have Estrella. It'll have to be Voll Damm."

"What the hell do you mean you don't have Estrella?" It just came out; 1 know 1 shouldn't have said it, but what's done is done. And Samuel Barber kept on greasing up the walls and nobody even noticed. Maybe that's the worst thing: that people don't notice whether it's Lou Reed or a fucking Bosnian tone poem, for God's sake.

"1 mean we're out. So it's Voll Damm or come back tomorrow,

So she was still calling me Sir and she was inviting me to get lost. And chewing gum the whole time. So instead of blowing up I thought of Luke 2:27 where he says, be more whorish than the Guineans and more clever than the foxes, and I didn't react. I said Fine, honey, a Voll Damm. And when do you get off?

"Go to hell."

See, friends? She stopped calling me Sir. She didn't give me time to say, And what time is Go to Hell, exactly? Ten? Eleven? Eleven twenty-three? Huh? She'd walked away, nose in the air, to get the beer, and I'm thinking so hard that, if it weren't for the saccharine Barber, you could probably hear my brain whirring from outside my cranium. Three columns away, 1 saw the fatty laughing like crazy by a table where two boys were being very nice to her. The little pig probably wanted to make it with both of them and I jotted this down in my memory book. The Barber wasn't over yet and all of a sudden Jane was right there. She banged the bottle and the mug down on the table.

"Four euros."

She tossed the tab as if it were confetti, and it fell into the puddle made by the sweating bottle. Four euros for a beer, hell, even if it's a fashionable bar, come on, even if it did just open, four euros for a beer isn't right. 1 felt like 1 could hear the gum rubbing against Jane's very white teeth.

"Do I have to pay now?"

1 said that because 1'd just realized that 1 didn't have enough fuel in my coin purse. And what did she do? She didn't say yes or no. She just stood there waiting. Then 1 noticed her breasts. Amazing, 1 admit. 1 closed my wallet and said, How much did you say it was, love?

Jane snorted, looked around as if she were searching for a friendlier client to do business with, and stared impatiently at me. Her voice was shaking with an anger 1 didn't deserve.

"Four thirty-five," the little whore said, smiling like a bishop's secretary.

"You told me four euros!" 1 yelled, shocked.

"So why did you ask me?"

A logical woman. 1 took a gulp of Voll Damm to try and repair my ego, which was a little damaged. Then 1 saw the damp tab and you know what it said, friends? Two eighty-five. Two euros and eighty-five cents, it said. It's infuriating, so infuriating that I can't think about it because it makes my heart pound.

"Here it says two eighty-five!" 1 said this objectively, sure that 1 was on the side of the angels. And so, buttressed by my strict sense of justice as a son of Hammurabi and Charles Lynch, 1 opened my wallet again, reached inside and left two puny euros on the table, to get back at her.

"Go fuck yourself," 1 said just as, finally, Barber was becoming history and some ancient nonexpert was trying to refresh our neurons with Jethro Tull. Jane-not because of Tull, because she was part of the immense majority who live without listening-froze her tongue, her lips, her teeth and her gum. After a few seconds she blew a pretty little dry bubble and popped it.

"Do you want me to call Pepus?"

I've never known anybody named Pepus. Well, now I do. But before meeting Jane, I didn't know anybody named Pepus. But it didn't seem right that she would say, Do you want me to call Pepus, as if everybody on earth knew who Pepus was. Back when I was in college, the way things worked was that if a woman who just popped her gum asked, Do you want me to call Pepus, you knew Pepus was a refrigerator with fists like hammers and a very short neck, fuse and hair. So, 1 decided to retreat, but 1 immediately wrote down the incident in my memory book and thought about the first letter to the Corinthians 5:2, when the Apostle to the Gentiles says that the Bosnians should be delivered to Satan for the perdition of their flesh. 1 took my wallet out of my pocket and left the biggest bill 1 had on the wettest part of the table.

"For your services," 1 blessed her.

Jane took the bill and disappeared without responding to my provocation, which shows that she really was as slutty as they come.

Let's see, let's see, the guy with the white hair who looks all worried and wants to run everything… Don't mess with me, because I… Oh… for the fourth and last time the guitars according to Saint Fripp, the most godly crim of all, the eternal crim, the essence, the DNA of Crimson, I said not to look over here. I don't know why they don't realize they're all in danger. My God, when people can't comprehend the movement of God they become animals in God's eyes, they're like beetles, or ants, poor things. Take a deep breath. Goodbye, man with white hair. And that's three, Quiquin. Now it looks like everybody's getting really nervous. It took them long enough.

Jethro Tull. Okay. You can smell the mothballs, but okay. The people at the next table, you could put on ballads and they'd keep right on talking without trashing the place. You can't believe how out of it people are. They spend the whole day talking so they won't have to think and then at the end of the day they're exhausted, a little pill just in case, and that way they don't have to open their memory books and worry about indigestion.

Jane brought my change very correctly, on a little plate. She set it so carefully on the table that 1, drinking beer and helping Jethro redeem humanity, raised my eyes, totally surprised.

"Five minutes after eleven," she said.

"Excuse me?" 1'd moved on to a different war.

"1 get off at five after eleven." She pointed, 1 suppose in the direction of the kitchen. "At the door that opens onto the street out back, okay?"

Friends, 1 was amazed. So that tight-ass stuff was an act: she seemed like she was all uninterested in front of everybody else and what she really wanted was to get into a relationship that involved an exchange of bodily fluids. 1 remember thinking, Miqui, you're a great guy. 1 looked at my watch: 1 only had half an hour to wait until five after eleven.

"I'll be there, Jane," 1 said gallantly. For a minute, only a minute, 1 drifted away, and when 1 came back they were playing, believe it or not, the Pixies. As if the no-taste idiot in charge of the music wanted to share my happiness. If man is five and the Devil is six, God is seven, repeated the Pixies. Where's my wallet, to put away the change. The Pixies, Barber, the Underground, Sibelius, Jethro Tull… If that's musical taste, may God come down and damn the person in charge.

The street out back wasn't a street but a dirty, narrow alley. It was well lighted, though. 1 tried every door 1 went past to see if it was open, because I didn't have the faintest idea which one belonged to the place. Finally 1 recognized the logo of the Cafe de la Mirada on a door painted green. That was it. I leaned against the wall, satisfied, thinking about Jane's gum, which was the first thing 1'd ask for. 1 looked up, towards the stars, towards some friendly constellation. But the streetlight above me was blocking my imagination. Then 1 heard the whistle.

No, not true. I didn't hear the whistle then. She was one of those pigs who make people wait. Eleven. 1'd gotten there at a quarter to, of course, but eleven came and five after and then seven after and she didn't show up. And when the bells rang for eight minutes after, still nothing. Then 1 got pissed off; I've explained that I'm a guy with a full schedule and 1 won't be kept waiting. At a quarter after-a quarter after! — 1 heard a kind of whistle, as if somebody were calling me.

Now they're figuring out what's going on. You just have to make up your mind calmly. Take this, old lady. And you, for being Bosnian. And you, for being a Communist. No, don't go there. Quiquin, don't get overwhelmed. Come on, man!… Communists have always been the hardest nuts to crack, said Saint Paul in his second to Timothy 3:12. Because Crimson was on for the fourth time in a row and 1, friends, didn't want to go crazy obsessive about music that would make holes in my memory and keep me from thinking about others, 1 put the FRSo down on the floor very carefully, took out the Apostle Fripp tape, kissed it and threw it into the void, immolated for the good of Humanity. 1 wished that Crimson would make its way into the head of a cop and be recorded in his repressive brain. Now, friends, I put the Holy Tape into the machine, the Musical Discovery of the Century, the Second Part of The Last Recital of Pere Bros, the Find from the little store on the Osterhausgate, the unknown, lawful, real, stimulating, imaginative, living, supermodern, ultraclassic Contrapunctum of Fischer, a musical story for minds that are lucid, awake and imaginative like mine. And, when I heard the opening theme, the tears in my eyes almost, almost made me stop wanting to do justice. That son of a bitch Pere Bros could really play. He was so good that 1, Quiquin of Barcelona, understood and accepted the degree of desperation that drove him to commit suicide after having helped to create such beauty.

1 thought there was only one way in but apparently not, because 1 saw the front of a 4x4 coming around the corner and stopping in front of me. Motorized Jane. And she called me from inside the car. 1 was under the streetlight, where she could see me perfectly, and 1 tapped three or four times on my watch, offended, or maybe five or six, or seven or eight or nine times. And only then, when 1'd defended my honor, did 1 get in the 4x4 thinking about the gum, thinking that 1 felt like chewing that gum and then… But 1 didn't have a chance to say what 1 hadn't even finished thinking 1'd do with Jane after asking for her gum, because she interrupted me.

"Come on, get in," she said. And, like in a miracle, just from hearing her voice 1 saw her breasts and 1 thought that life was good. 1 hadn't thought that for twelve years. Twelve years and five months. Maybe because 1 was thinking that it had been one hundred fiftynine months since 1'd broken up with Lidia, eighty-six since I'd broken it off with that whore Mercedes, and eight hundred twentytwo days since I ran away from Sonia and the world opened before me up north, like in a movie, 1 didn't notice that in the 4x4 there was no gum and no Jane, but rather a refrigerator with short hair, no neck and, if 1 had to judge from the way he was drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel, very little patience. Ars longa, vita brevis, said Saint James in his epistle. And 1 really was about to have a short life, because Pepus grabbed me by the shirt and banged me up against the rough wall of the alley, all without getting out of the car. So imagine, friends, what was going to happen when he got out of the 4x4: he picked me up off the ground by the hair and held me up to his stinking breath. He worked things out with his fists; he broke three of my teeth, bruised my spleen and cracked three ribs. 1 was interested in turning that monologue into a dialogue more productive for both participants, but I have to confess that 1 was unable to respond properly because I was thinking about my long, fruitful and surprising life, especially after leaving the seminary to the great delight of my mother and, I suppose, my father and starting to handle women with kid gloves for fear of getting burned and having decided that the words of the apostle Robert Fripp, nosce to impsum, would have to be the guiding light of my life from then on, After beating on me for a long time the maniac must have been worn out because he ended it with one last roundhouse punch. 1 saw that nice light show and the world inside me disappeared.

From what I've deduced after a week of convalescence, Pepus put me in the 4x4 and took me out of the car some distance from the Cafe. 1 don't know how, but 1 don't think he was too gentle because my clothes were all covered with mud and weeds. And so 1 woke up in the morning on the Vallvidrera highway with a terrible headache, with pain when 1 breathed, blood in my mouth, my teeth altered for the worse and, in general, an impressive resemblance to Saint Lazarus. 1 felt like job and I didn't like the role, so 1 decided to go back home. It took me three hours to get there, an enriching Crossing of the Desert, an illuminating Road to Damascus, a fruitful Mystic Revelation. Animam pro anima, oculum prooculo, dentem pro dente, says Our Lord Jesus Christ, and I made this evangelical maxim mine and when my soul and my body were restored, I went to steal the boar rifle that Papa had hung on the wall in Cerdanya, in an area where no one has ever seen a boar unless it's braised with scallions or stewed with chocolate. 1 say steal because once 1 was there 1 remembered that Papa had sold the house six or seven years ago. Regrets aside, 1 decided that 1 couldn't let the trip go to waste and also, the guy hadn't changed the lock on the door and, on top of that, his rifle, a real Swedish FR50, had a telescopic sight, so if anybody was to blame, it would be his grievous negligence. And the new owner was hiding the box of ammunition in the same place where Papa had hidden it. So l loaded the rifle with his bullets and myself with patience, searching, searching without haste, thinking God will provide, thinking that in the Gospel according to Fripp the Lord says, Do you not see the birds, how they fly and fornicate untroubled, dammit? In this way God protects and watches over all his creatures; how, then, can you think he will not protect you, Quiquin of Barcelona, you who are his favorite? Inflamed by this faith, I searched, inquired, and finally found the perfect site, the right place to do what 1 had to do, between the top floor and the roof of the ideal building, in the stratum called No Man's Land. Wow, the third or fourth variation, an imitatio in four voices, what a wealth of ideas. Why was Fischer unknown until now, God? Why did the Holy Fisherman hide from us the essence of his art?

A whole day inside this dovecote full of bird shit and dead pigeons and a filthy, absurd stink, with an additional problem, which is that 1 have to bend over all the time and sometimes 1 stand up without thinking and smack myself on the back of the head, which 1 think is bleeding. But the thing is that the magical and camouflaged opening to the Holy Dovecote is directly across from my target. It's the Lord's will and for that reason I've baptized this Sacred Dovecote with the name of Truth, though some call it Here and Now. Another defect of the Sacred Dovecote is that it's fucking hot inside. But if to find this perfect hiding place it was Lord's Will that first I had to neutralize the doorman of the building, who rudely and insultingly insisted on knowing where 1 was going with that shotgun, the fact that the find has had to overcome these obstacles makes it even more valuable in the eyes of God, in the eyes of Humanity, in the eyes of History. 1 can hardly move and every once in a while my legs cramp, but 1 praise the Lord for showing me the Site and for being able to ignore the inconvenience first with absent lovers, absent lovers, absent lovers, a cassette tape with nothing on it but Neal, Jack, Me, and now the seventh and last variation of Fischer the Saint, which will be with me until God says Enough… Hey, look, finally, shit! 1 chose right! God finally said Enough; what I've been waiting for for eighteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds: after so much trouble, finally, nosy Jane has stuck her head out, all jittery. She just couldn't wait. I'm not going to give her a second chance. Okay, be still, honey. Done. 1 just hung a well-deserved red medal over her heart. I hope her gum won't end up in the wrong place, poor thing. Honesta mors turpi vita potior. Amen.

I'm going to try and include everybody in the cast, oh Barcelona friends, especially Bosnians, the homeless, Norwegians, old people and Communists. I'll be here as long as 1 can stand it and the sweat doesn't make me close my eyes. And I'll set aside the last bullet, to erase my memory book Here and Now. 1 already said it a minute ago when 1 began this Second Epistle: horresco referens.