Robert Wilson - The Blind Man of Seville

The phone rang — his sister on a mobile in a packed bar.

‘I knew I’d find you at home if you weren’t at work,’ said Manuela. ‘What are you doing, little brother?’

‘I’m looking through some old photographs.’

‘Hey! Come on, grandpa, you’ve got to learn to live a little. We’re here in La Tienda for the next half-hour, come and have a cervecita with us. Then we’re going to dinner at El Cairo. You can come there too, if you bring your walking stick.’

‘I’ll join you for the cervecita.’

‘You do that, little brother. And one thing. One very important condition … ‘

‘Yes, Manuela?’

‘You’re not allowed to say the word “Inés”. OK?’

She hung up. He shook his head at the dead phone. Manuela’s bad psychology. He put on his jacket, straightened his tie, checked his pockets and found Raúl Jiménez’s son’s address and telephone number. It was Viernes Santo tomorrow. The holiday. He tried the number just on the off chance. José Manuel Jiménez picked up the phone. Falcón introduced himself and offered his condolences.

‘I’ve already been informed,’ he said, about to put down the phone.

‘I just wanted to talk to you about —’

‘I can’t speak to you now.’

‘Perhaps we could meet tomorrow … for a short talk. It would be important for background detail.’

‘I really don’t see …’

‘I would come to Madrid, of course.’

‘There’s nothing to be said. I haven’t seen my father in years.’

That’s the point. I’m not interested in now.’

There’s really nothing.’

Think about it overnight. I’ll call again in the morning. It won’t take long and it would be a great help.’

Jiménez stammered and hung up. Falcón knew the man was a lawyer but he hadn’t come across as one; too uncertain and unconfident. He turned off the lamp and went out on to the patio. He breathed in the cool night air and the near silence, as the workings of the city arrived at a faint roar in this dark and hollow centre of the house. He stretched, opened his chest and arms, and saw among the arches of the gallery above the patio what Eloisa Gómez would have called, ‘the shadows move’. He sprinted up the stairs, digging in his pocket for the key to open the wrought-iron barred door at the top. He strode the length of the gallery to the next wrought-iron door, which led to another stretch of arches outside his father’s old studio. It was empty. He moved back to the arch where he thought he’d seen the movement and looked down into the patio. The water in the fountain, flat and black as a pupil, stared up to the sky. Just tired, he thought, and squeezed his eyes shut.

He left the house, stepped out through a small door cut into the massive wooden-and-brass riveted gates, which were the entrance to his oversized home on Calle Bailén. Too big for him, he knew it, and too grand for his position, but each time he thought of selling it he quickly foundered on what it would entail. First of all, he would have to do what he should have done as instructed by his father’s will — clear out the studio and incinerate everything. Burn the lot, right down to the last rough sketch. He couldn’t do it. He hadn’t done it. He hadn’t even been back into the studio since his father died nearly two years ago. He hadn’t even unlocked that last wrought-iron door in the gallery.

His father’s lawyer had died three months after the reading of the will, and Paco and Manuela didn’t give a damn. They were too engrossed in their own inheritance — Paco’s bull-breeding finca at Las Cortecillas on the way up to the Sierra de Aracena and Manuela’s holiday villa in El Puerto de Santa María. They hadn’t had the same relationship with their father that he’d had. He’d spoken to him almost every day since the first heart attack and, once he’d started working in Seville, if they didn’t go out for lunch on Sunday they would at least meet for a fino just to get him out of the house. They’d nearly recaptured that same level of intimacy as when he’d been a boy in the early 1970s. He was the only child left after Manuela had decamped to Madrid to study veterinary science and Paco was installing himself on the farm after his recovery from a severe goring in the leg which he’d suffered as a novillero in La Maestranza bullring in Seville. The injury had ended any hope of a career as a torero.

Falcón headed down the narrow, cobbled street canyons to the bar on Calle Gravina. It was a converted mercería, still with the old scales on the counter. People were spilling out on to the street with their beers. Manuela was with her boyfriend deep in the crowd. Falcón squeezed through. Men he barely knew gave him un abrazo as he went past, strange women kissed him — Manuela’s friends. His sister kissed him and hugged him to her gym-worked body. Alejandro, her boyfriend, whom she’d met on the rowing machines at the club, handed Javier a beer.

‘My little brother,’ she said, as she’d always said since they were small, ‘you look tired. More dead bodies?’

‘Only one.’

‘Not another gruesome drug slaying?’ she said, lighting one of her foul menthol cigarettes, which she thought were better for her.

‘Gruesome, yes, but not drugs this time. More complicated.’

‘I don’t know how you do it.’

‘There can’t be many of your friends who could imagine that someone as beautiful and sophisticated as Manuela Falcón could have been up to her shoulder dragging out stillborn calves.’

‘Oh, I don’t do that any more.’

‘I can’t see you cutting poodles’ toenails.’

‘You must talk to Paco,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘He’s very stressed, you know.’

‘The Feria’s his busiest time of year.’

‘No, no, not that,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the vacas locas. He’s worried his herd has been infected with BSE. I’m testing the whole lot for him, off the record.’

Falcón sipped his beer, ate a slice of sweet and melting jamón ibérico de bellota.

‘If they bring in official testing,’ she continued, ‘and they find one animal with the disease, he has to slaughter the whole herd, even the ones with 120-year-old bloodlines.’

‘That’s stressful.’

‘His leg’s bad. It always is when he’s stressed. He can hardly walk some days.’

Alejandro put a plate of cheese in front of them and Javier instinctively turned his face away.

‘He doesn’t like cheese,’ explained Manuela, and the plate was removed.

‘Your name came up today at work,’ said Falcón.

‘That can’t be good.’

‘You vaccinated a dog for someone. It was a bill.’

‘Whose dog?’

‘I hope he paid you.’

‘You wouldn’t have found a signed receipt if he hadn’t.’

‘Raúl Jiménez.’

‘Yes, a very nice Weimeraner. It was a present for his kids … they’re moving to a new house. He was due to collect today.’

Falcón stared at her. Manuela blinked at her beer, put it down. This happened rarely, that real murder slipped into a social situation. Normally he would entertain, if asked, with tales of detection, his idiosyncratic approach, his attention to detail. He never told how it really was — always laborious, at times very tedious and interspersed with moments of horror.

‘I worry about you, little brother,’ she said.

‘I’m in no danger.’

‘I mean … this work. It does things to you.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know, I suppose you have to be callous to survive.’

‘Callous?’ he said. ‘Me? I investigate murder. I investigate the reasons why these moments of aberration occur. Why, in the heart of such reasonable times, such heights of civilization, we can still break down and fail as human beings. It’s not like I’m putting down pets or slaughtering whole herds of cattle.’