Jaume Cabré - Winter Journey

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?