Enric Rosquelles:
How do you think I felt when I found out
How do you think I felt when I found out that there was something more than friendship between Nuria and Remo Morán? Terrible, I felt terrible. My world was falling apart and my spirit revolted against such a cruel injustice. I should say: the repetition of such an injustice, because some years before, in similar circumstances, I had seen Lola, my best social worker, an extremely efficient girl, enviably balanced and positive too, fall into the clutches of that South American dealer, who soon destroyed her life. Morán degraded, despoiled and defiled everything he touched. Lola is divorced now, and seems to be leading a normal life, but I know she’s hurting inside, and maybe it will take her years to recover the glow of freshness and joy she had before that unfortunate encounter. No, I never liked Morán; I could never stomach him, as they say. I have a natural talent for judging people and right from the start I knew he was a fraud, a charlatan. Some have said I hated him because he was an artist. A con artist more like it! I adore art! Why would I have risked my position and my future to build the skating rink if I didn’t? It was simply that he didn’t fool me with that world-weary, seen-it-all manner of his. So he’d been through a war. So he’d been on TV a couple times. So his dick was a foot long. God almighty! I’m surrounded by a pack of rabid dogs! My former subordinates, despicable busybodies from Fairs and Festivals, Child Welfare, the volunteers from Civil Defense, all the people affected by my budget cutbacks, who were shifted to smaller offices, or simply sacked because I didn’t want dead wood in my departments, now they’re trying to get their own back by making up stories, casting the Latino as the hero and me as the villain. Morán’s a clown, he’s never been near a war; he might have been on television, on some local show, but who hasn’t these days; and let me tell you a secret I discovered a long time ago: size is not everything. What women really want from a man is affection and tenderness. Unless you think you need a foot-long tool to reach the clitoris? Or stimulate the G-spot? When I think of Lola walking along the beach, hand in hand with her little boy, to whom they gave some unfortunate Indian name I can never remember, I feel I have every reason to hate Morán. Yes, I tried to get rid of him, but always within the strict bounds of the law. I had seen him only three times in my life before the regrettable incidents at the Palacio Benvingut, and each time, if I’m not mistaken, he boasted about flouting the current regulations forbidding the employment of foreigners without work permits. As far as I know, Morán and the small-time farmers around Z were the only ones consciously breaking the law. With the market gardeners, or some of them at least, it was understandable if not excusable; the lettuces, for example, had to be harvested, and the pool of laborers available was basically made up of Africans, most of whom didn’t have their papers in order. I don’t like Africans. Especially if they’re Muslims. Once, in passing, I suggested to my team in Social Services that we could gather up all the street kids in Z and give them jobs on the farms: sowing, harvesting, driving tractors, even working on the market stalls each morning. It would have been marvelous to see that generation of future delinquents and junkies working the land. Of course the idea was rejected, almost as if it had been a joke. I wasn’t entirely convinced myself. A bit too much like slave labor, they said, bad for our image. We’ll never know now. As I was saying, the farmers had their reasons. But Morán used to employ foreigners just to bug us! I once mentioned this in passing to Lola, when she was still his wife, and I still remember what she said. According to Lola, Morán used to hire old friends, friends he had made when he was eighteen, a bunch of poets who had eventually washed up in the Mother Country one way or another. He found them, or came across them, through a combination of luck and concern; he gave them work, helped (or forced) them to save, and at the end of the season they invariably went back to their respective places of origin in Latin America. Or that’s what Morán told Lola, at least. She never made friends with any of them, although she judged them all to be worthy of her professional attention. Scruffy, damaged individuals; resentful, taciturn, sickly misfits, the sort you’d rather not encounter on a deserted street. I should say that in spite of the gulf between me and her husband, my professional relationship with Lola was, and I trust still is, founded on a sense of friendship and team spirit — after the mayor, she was my closest collaborator — and there was no reason to doubt what she confided in me. The aforesaid poets, completely unknown in Spain as indeed in Latin America, were never very numerous, and must have blended in with the rest of the motley staff, which comprised a range of characters to satisfy all tastes. I never saw any of them, and I only remember the story now because of the aftereffect it had on me, like a horror film. Anyway, as I put it to Lola, was he helping out his old friends and colleagues, or just trying to get rid of them? Lola pointed out that they might not all have gone back to Latin America, maybe they just didn’t come back to Z, but the way their departures coincided with the end of the season struck me as too neat. Which raises another question: did they go back empty-handed, apart from the few pesetas they would have been able to save, or was the trip a way of continuing to work for Morán as couriers or messengers? It’s well known that the drug trade is comfortably established in Z, and more than once I heard it said that Morán was involved, although to be honest I should add that the claims were unconfirmed. Of course I never mentioned any of this to Lola, out of respect more than anything; after all, Morán was the father of her child. Twice I called some acquaintances in Gerona to see if they had anything on him. But I drew a blank. People drop off the twig when they’re ripe. Needless to say, the labor inspectors never got anywhere when they went to visit. I didn’t have any illusions about that. I know exactly how those bureaucrats operate; they wouldn’t have tried to take him by surprise by calling at an unexpected time, questioning all the staff, checking with the neighbors and so on. As long as they kept using their traditional methods, Morán was always going to slip through the net, without even a token fine. Another solution would have been to report him to the Trade Union Councils, but I don’t have very good relations with the union officials in Z. Only once in my life have I been in a fight, about five or six years ago, when I encountered a group of maniacs at the entrance to the UGT headquarters. It was me and a municipal policeman, who has since retired, against eight or nine heavies from the strike committee. To be honest, there were so many of them I don’t remember the exact number. Luckily the fight was brief, and there were more slaps and pushes than punches. All the same I came away with a bleeding nose and an eyebrow gashed open, and Pilar dropped whatever urgent task she was engaged in to come and see me straight away. It’s strange: as a child, I never bullied anyone and no one bullied me; I had to come to Z and work like a slave and fall in love to get beaten up. I want to make it clear that I said nothing to Nuria; not a word of reproach or anything that could be taken as such. I stifled my rage and (why not admit it?) my jealousy and the utter shock of it all. Her body language and the way she brought up the subject made it clear to me that Nuria herself didn’t entirely understand what was happening with Morán, and that my interference could only make things worse. The pain I felt did not reduce the intensity of my love, but transformed it continually, producing new mental pleasures. And I had plenty to keep me busy; my antagonism toward Remo Morán has never, thank God, represented more than three per cent of my emotional investment. Around that time I dreamed of the ice rink again. It was like the extension of an earlier dream: outside, the world was subjected to a temperature of 105 degrees in the shade, while inside the Palacio Benvingut, the glacial chill of the air was cracking the old mirrors. The dream began precisely when I put on the skates and went gliding, without the slightest effort, over the smooth white surface, whose purity, it seemed to me, was peerless. A deep and final silence enveloped everything. Suddenly, impelled by the force of my own skating, I left the rink, or what I thought was the rink, and began to skate through the corridors and rooms of the Palacio Benvingut. The machinery must have gone crazy, I thought, and coated the whole house in ice. Flying along at a dizzying speed, I reached the rooftop terrace, from which I could see a corner of the town and the electric pylons. They seemed to be overcharged, about to explode or stride away toward the coves. Further away I could see a small, almost black pine wood on a slope, and above it some red clouds like slightly open duck bills. Duck bills with shark’s teeth! Nuria’s bike appeared, moving very slowly along the dirt road, just as huge flames erupted from Z. The glow lasted only a few seconds, then the whole horizon was plunged in darkness. I’m done for, I thought, it’s a blackout. I woke as the ice beneath my feet was beginning to melt at an alarming rate. This dream reminded me of a book I had read as a teenager. The author of the book (whose name I have forgotten) claims to be recounting some kind of legend about the struggle between good and evil. Evil and its agents establish the empire of fire on earth. They spread, make war and are invincible. In the final, crucial battle, good unleashes ice upon the armies of evil and brings them to a halt. Gradually the fire is extinguished and vanishes from the face of the earth. It ceases to be a danger. The agents of good are victorious at last. Nevertheless, the legend warns that the struggle will soon begin again since hell is inexhaustible. When the ice began to melt, that was exactly the feeling I had: along with the Palacio Benvingut, I was plummeting into hell. .
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