José Manuel Prieto - Rex

Which would all be received with understanding because of the total madness of the Russian people. The TV program I watched one night, my mouth gaping, not believing what my eyes were seeing: an imbecile, an idiot, an impossible man, who was passing himself off as the grandson of the last Romanov! And all Russia was supposed to believe this on the basis of a single test, a laughable demonstration in a TV studio. Do you know what such and such a word means in Greek? Such and such a word in German? Oh! Excellent! And I have written here (the host consulting his notes) that you know … how to tune a piano! Perfectly! Am I right or have my assistants misinformed me? Yes? … Excellent! A piano! To the studio! Though without your tools … It’s a long process … Some other time. Better yet, why don’t you say something to us? Something in Slavonic, old or ecclesiastical Russian.

The fact that the person who claimed to be a Romanov spoke many languages fluently had seemed to his children, crowded together at his feet like the children of a miller (in the Writer), to be the final and convincing proof that their father was the son of the last emperor, miraculously saved. Who had survived and triumphed over his hemophilia and the terrible eyes of Yurovksi, the gaze of deepest hatred cast on him in that cellar, where he knew enough to lie still, Alexei, while he saw the bullets that were nearing him turned away by the force of the years that remained to him to live. His sisters no, Anastasia even less so, and not his parents, Nicholas and Alexandra, either. The bullets that flew past him and buried themselves in the sodden wallpaper at his back like the rays of a distant star which, through the effect of the gravitational lens, Petya, bypass the sun and end up shooting into your eyes, the day of an eclipse, in 1919. The same year when Alexei recovered consciousness in the middle of a forest, got up, walked, asked for help at a peasant isba, the memory of his former life as heir to the throne flowering colorfully in his mind, placing itself between his eyes and the sole of a shoe that had to be nailed down (such was his adopted father’s profession).

Wasn’t it enough to make you die laughing? A madness like the one Larissa had laughed and jeered at, and rightly so? We had to elude, to leap over it: not a restoration or an inauguration. Neither would I tell them that the invitation was from the czar and czarina of Russia (too much, no?). Better to say a party thrown by some nouveaux riches … How rich? “Very rich, believe me, I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.” Looking them straight in the eye: “Very rich, you know?”

8

“Kirpich?” Of course not. Why would it be Kirpich? Just some Russian or another, an old pal (said with irony).

The sinister man I had to pass on my way into the elevator and whom I forgot instantly, intent on seeking out my guests across the hotel, the Russians who in all certainty were now populating it, after having discovered this one example who was, in any case, impossible to invite to the party. At least not dressed like that, in the blazer with the gilded buttons. Without having resolved what I would do, almost happy about the failure of my trip to Madrid, the impossibility of the party, free now of the obligation to sell the stones in order to come up with money for musicians, flowers, and caviar.

Without any result whatsoever, not one tourist in the hallways, not on nine and not on twelve, upon quick inspection (holding open the elevator doors), traveling back down. But when I’d returned to the lobby and the elevator doors opened again, without yet having taken my hands from the nickel-plated rail or made a clear sign of intent to get out, I saw a radiant face come in, a face that filled up the space in front of me. A woman with red hair and Asiatic cheekbones, the transparent skin of her throat. Filling the space of the elevator from wall to wall. I blinked and weighed more for a second or two, felt that I was sinking because the elevator was rising. The new passenger took a step toward the glass, seemed to go into ecstasy at the sight of the glass wall, growing as well, her torso and her legs, more visible and coming into focus. The freckles on her face, the incredible mauve of her eyes glowing more intensely.

“My God,” I couldn’t restrain myself and exclaimed in all sincerity, wanting to warn her, “you can’t go out in the sun with that skin.” And, eyes squinting, I pointed it out to her, the sun, round and flaming on the other side of the tinted glass.

This woman, the tourist, dressed with impeccable taste: the blue silk blouse forcibly containing her breasts, the string of chalcedony across the fresh skin of the clavicle, the same red color illuminating her shoes, with absolute (Western) elegance. So much so that I pointed once more to the sun and to the freckles on her face because for a moment I thought that dressed like that, with such good taste: not a Russian. Perhaps only from the north, from a place without summers, going south every year to toast in the sun.

“Well,” she answered, “in just the same way, in a hotel near here, a nice, friendly young man like you, decently dressed …”

(I was a bit more than decently dressed, I wanted to tell her, the laughter dancing in my eyes until I heard her: the horrible confusion.)

“They talked, agreed to see each other and … just like that! He had stolen her purse.”

Such a bad beginning, Petya! Me as a hotel elevator thief. I’m almost ready to let her go, I let her go, so disconcerted was I: the doors of the elevator opened and her face and legs, her tattooed ankle, disappeared. Impossible to overcome such ill will, so much suspicion. Having descended to the lowest point of my mission, at zero. On such a bad footing. A Lancôme consultation! My ridiculous Lancôme consultation!

The breath of perfume she left behind: violets. The sun warming my arms, my feet slightly sinking into the carpet, a horrible hotel carpet.

But something curious here, some kind of fate: I’d forgotten to press the button, and no one had summoned the elevator from the lower floors (there’s no elevator man in hotels nowadays: you do it yourself). The elevator cabin stopped there, the air-conditioning blowing on my neck. The elevator bell rang, I heard it ring from a place as far away as the sun and felt the doors slide open at my back. The distant hum of the cocktail hour reached me once more, snatches of music, the bartender’s unbearable banter, some vulgarity in reference to the unknown lady, the Russian: “Did you get a load of that chick?” Or “Pretty hot, isn’t she?” something like that. Not that vulgar myself, Petya, I would never have said or shouted that as the man carrying a tray through the lounge chairs did.

Very impressive she must be indeed, I said to myself then (I knew that, I’d noticed it immediately), for this waiter with so many women, so many Swedish girls (though, why Swedish? Not particularly pretty), so many Italians … And I felt a slight, oh so light, almost imperceptible oscillation or feeling that the floor was giving way and the red of her feet, the kid glove, the tattooed ankle entered my field of vision once more. She put her hand on my back and gave me a friendly pat: “Don’t be upset,” she said. “Not every girl is as smart as I am. You’ll be able to fleece some of them. Anyway, I like your shirt. Do all the swindlers in Marbella dress as well as you do?”

9

(Everything that is written has an author, and every author, an intention.)

I didn’t turn around right away, Petya. I don’t like being treated like that. I do like being treated like that. Certain women: the lapis lazuli trinket on her wrist. What to say to her? I have seen it — you know? — your plastic purse, made of that hard transparent vinyl with a flowery print: do you think I imagine money in there? Do you think I don’t know there’s only sunblock, face powder, lipstick? And anyway, how much money, ever, in the purse of a Russian woman? I didn’t say that but thought it, and then I had to say to myself: look how she’s dressed, stupid! More money on that woman, more money has passed through her fingers than you’ve seen in your life (well, there were the stones, that’s true, the diamonds in my pocket — but they were fakes!). I studied her mauve eyes once more. Security, confidence, confidence in having seen me from behind: an inoffensive lad, crestfallen, there in the elevator.