Fernando Royuela - A Bad End

Ordinary people’s hands aren’t usually stained with blood. Ordinary people don’t realize they are playing bit parts in the tragicomic farce of existence. Poets often gloss the paradoxes of human drama in graphic fashion, by simply letting the ink flow freely, without subterfuges or palliatives. When ordinary people stain their hands with blood, they never think that the act they’ve committed hasn’t depended strictly on the exercise of their own individual will and that it might, on the contrary, be a decision taken by an unknowable supreme entity; they assume their guilt and at most purge it. Taking little Margarita’s life wasn’t in my hands. Nor do I think it was in yours to come here and entertain yourself with my vicissitudes. Just like me, you are part of destiny’s cunning game, and we’re both made to believe we are in control of our own decisions, when we are only bit parts in a pre-orchestrated show; some are dancers, others, actors, and most, acrobats, or the distinguished public that at best is stunningly grateful for the truce brought by the interval as they gradually realize everything is empty, hollow, and made of cardboard.

Thrust lock, stock, and barrel into that farce I’m recounting, I began increasingly to wonder how I could take life away from little Margarita. A mere thought became an obsession, a wish, a necessity, as if by committing such an act, I could put aside the bloody chalice of my past for once and for all. I only imposed a single condition to purge my consciousness completely: she should be fully aware I was the one sending her the ultimate gift of death.

Even if every inch of my behavior was investigated, it could never be said that I’m a criminal, or, conversely, that I display the usual conventional prejudices against crime. Men’s painful acts are predetermined, that’s why they commit them. Likewise their playful forays. Destiny is a book beset by meaningless replies. I hardly had to rack my brains to concoct the means; Providence deemed fit to mete out its sarcastic punishment by having it come to me while I was having a pee in my office toilet. I could have paid the rate and hired a local thug to get rid of her, but it was out of my hands. I could have ordered my chauffeur to knock her over any Saturday I wished as she left her bingo hall, and, for the right price, he’d have obeyed my orders and not argued, but I didn’t do that, either.

Events developed apace a few days after that trip to Ciudad Real, and everything happened within the bounds of my own office. Because of my blight, I have to perch on the pan when peeing, just like a female, though in reverse, with my torso always facing the wall. How he tricked the security systems controlling access to the building and managed to overcome the restricted entry to my floor is something I’m in no position to explain. One enjoys a beautiful view of Madrid from high up in my bathroom. The tops of the highest buildings are within my purview, sometimes hidden in smoky mists of cloud, and nothing vitally important seems to happen in the labyrinth of streets, the same streets where I tanned the leather of my youthful hide in a life of petty crime. Right opposite, in the distance, one can see the top of the aerial of the Telefónica building on the Gran Vía and, slightly to the right, the flat roofs of the westward-facing Edificio España. The city is unreal from so high up; there should be a ban on constructing into the heavens.

Perhaps he gained entry by swinging off one of those platforms used for cleaning skyscraper windows out in the elements, but I didn’t ask. While I was peeing, and recreating in my mind’s eye the voluminous spectacle of little Margarita, a brutal shove suddenly bashed my face against the lavatory cistern. My lower lip split as it hit the lid, and a streak of ruby-red blood stained the icy-white porcelain. Still not grasping what was happening, I felt a nasty kick in the ribs that really hurt my insides. I remembered Blond Juana and the time I accosted her in the lavatory in the party locale, but these blows were more accurate and more vicious. I looked up, and the first thing I saw was the slanting scar starting on the right cheek that split his face in two. “You must have stolen one hell of a lot, dwarfy, to get so high, and you didn’t remember your friends one little bit, did you?” Years of suffering had slimmed him down, with the help of a rapacious infirmity; he was half bald, missing teeth, and, above all, was no longer handsome. “Hey, Handsome, don’t trample on me, take your foot off, I can’t breathe.” Handsome Bustamante laughed over me, the holey sole of his trainer pressing down on my chest, on the point of bursting my lungs. “Well, well, Goyo, you’re not the clown you were, you don’t laugh at your friends’ little pranks no more, the good life means you’re not as humble as you used to be. Pity your luck’s run out.” Bustamante thrust his right knee into my stomach and ran the edge of his knife along my lower jaw. “I’ve been after you for years,” he said, splattering me with gobs of saliva. “Prison is a good place to work out revenge, there’s a lot of time in the pipeline and not much to do. When the lights went down, the sound of your disgusting squealing echoed round my head night after night, and my blood would start to boil; only a hit of horse could dull my desire to kill you, but to get those I had to sell my ass to the dealers. Look what’s left. I’m no good even for buggery anymore, and now you’re going to pay for all the damage.”

The merciless, heartless, impious prison air had implanted its shadows over handsome Bustamante’s body. From prison to prison, from cell to cell, like a pilgrim of the holy bars, Handsome had learnt to put up with life with a mixture of resignation and scorn, seasoned with the oil of revenge. After the great amnesty release, he’d pursued me for weeks, then tired of enquiring on street corners and opted to inject china white into his veins, beating people up, stealing, living poorly off whores — the kind that bring neither profit nor pleasure, who’ll suck you off with a mouth full of chewing gum — working the streets to the limits of what’s healthy, till he fell in with two other guys and snuffed out a queer jeweler who traded in bits and pieces, little knickknacks. Beatings, sexual favors, and the meanest squealing, such exemplary behavior thus earning him over the years the third degree treatment, and the big scar that sailed across his face bore witness to his private little hell. Infectious gawkiness had replaced the agile, angelic movements that once made him so admired on the high wire. He was like a mortally wounded animal that might still have clung to a lingering beauty, an animal caught in a rusty trap that destiny had laid with its eyes shut. Time hadn’t showed him one iota of pity, and his lordly, youthful arrogance had shrunk to a frightful bellow, and the last straw, his stinking breath spread manure over every word he uttered. “Have the guts to not kill me and get the most out of me, Handsome,” I said with no conviction. Right then nobody would have bet a counterfeit coin on my life, and yet Handsome, perhaps out of nostalgia for the past, stood and looked at me thoughtfully while the point of his knife gently stroked the wall of my jugular. “What do you mean ‘get the most out of you’?” he asked, intrigued. “The most I’d like from you is to see you dead.” I implored him to go easy with the pressure of his knee on my chest. I knew that if I could offer him a credible way out of these desperate acts, I might be able to save my skin, at least for a day. I sweet-talked him all I could and calmly went about persuading him. “There’s nothing we can do to change the past, Handsome,” I drawled, “forget it and try to enjoy what you can get out of life, for as long as you can, if you use your wits. Let me give you the means. Look at me, don’t you see how I live in a land of milk and honey. I’m no use to you dead; alive you can have my money.” Handsome Bustamante’s eyelids drooped, he removed his knife, and, with obvious reluctance, listened to the offer I made, which he accepted, without a qualm. A pity. It cost him his life.