Carlos Gamerro - The Islands

Then everything happened very fast. The reflection of the ones in front seemed to shudder slightly, then the glass cracked into a spider-web and big chunks began to fall towards the street, taking the images of the new converts with them. Someone shouted ‘Look, the murderer!’ and a corpulent back sheathed in a grey coat loomed into view between the lens and what must have appeared behind the shattered glass of the opposite tower. The camera reeled and dived, and the screen was flooded with crackling snow.

‘That’s as far as it goes,’ announced the fat man, hitting pause.

‘What happened?’

‘In the scrum to see someone inadvertently hit our video-man and he dropped the camera.’

‘So the murder wasn’t recorded.’

‘The accident,’ he corrected me. ‘No.’

‘How very convenient. And you didn’t see anything?’

He was sweating again, and again his tubby fingers started fidgeting, Hardy-like, with the tip of his tie.

‘So you did recognise Sr Tamerlán’s son.’

He pulled himself together faster than I’d expected.

‘You can be quite certain, my dear sir,’ he said to me, pronouncing the words with self-assured gravitas, ‘that if you put him in a line-up with a circus dwarf, two blacks, a transvestite and a one-eyed hunchback, I wouldn’t recognise him, even if you made me stare at him for a week. Pass that on to your employer.’

He’d started to get up to remove the cassette, but I stopped him in his tracks.

‘I want to watch it again. The last bit. Rewind please.’

He rewound. The camera returned to the grey overcoat, which moved out of the way, the heads bobbed frantically like dice in a shaker and the shards of glass flew upwards to fuse into the window and its still intact promise of riches and success.

‘There,’ I said to him. ‘Now slow forward.’

Once again, the increasingly absurd scene played itself out before my eyes in klunks, like the second hand of a watch: the heads now waved slowly, with all the time in the world, like seaweed in the tide; the spectators contemplated a reflection that had taken on an air of eternity; but that wasn’t what had caught my interest: almost imperceptible the first time, the man in the overcoat could now be seen clearly, although he deliberately kept his face averted from the camera, advancing from left to right across the screen, jostling and barging through the crowd which, spellbound, barely noticed him and protested lazily and with infinite slowness. And it was only then, after he began his advance through the viscous submarine medium of slow-mo, that the first crack appeared in the window and began to spread tentatively, as if drawn with a nib and Indian ink, and the first piece of glass opened like a door and, before the grey-clad shoulder covered them, gave a dark glimpse of the blurred shapes flapping behind it.

‘Spotted anything of interest?’ the fat man asked when we finished.

‘Nothing,’ I answered, keeping my inferences to myself just in case. ‘So. Down to business. I want a list with the details of everyone present that day.’

‘We didn’t get round to taking the guests’ details. We usually do it at the end of the meeting.’

‘All right then. A list of all the Surprise members in the room.’

‘That’s confidential information.’

‘How much?’ I sighed.

‘A thousand dollars, and in return you’ll receive your first batch of Christopher products, and this badge showing you’re a retail partner,’ he said, pinning a little metal badge in the shape of a rabbit onto my lapel. I looked at his. He had a similar badge of an Æsop fox in a hat. I signed the cheque and tossed it across the desk.

I asked where the bathroom was. When I got back, I found Fatty raptly piecing together a giant pyramid of Christopher products on his desk. He was taking boxes from the base and trying to stack them on the summit without the whole structure collapsing. I wondered how to break it to him.

‘It won’t work,’ I told him. ‘It’s a mathematical inevitability.’

‘You’re mistaking mathematics for morality. I’m not interested in the viability of the system, but my chances of saving my bacon. There are your boxes by the door. One of them contains the list you asked me for. Good luck with your sales.

‘Why don’t you get out before things get any worse?’

This time he looked me in the eye. I wish he hadn’t. The holes of his pupils were two small to let out all the pain his colossal body had managed to store up.

‘I’ve lost too much. I can’t go back.’

‘You’ve invested a lot in this?’

‘All my friends. I’ve next to none left now. I was always one for few friends. Few friends, but good ones, as they say. Should have listened to my wife. In cases like this it isn’t the quality of your friends that matters, only the quantity. One friend’s as good as another if they’re willing to take part in Surprise. The few good friends I had I lost in this business, and now I haven’t even got bad friends to invest in it. It’s times like this when you learn the true value of friendship. If I pull out now, I’ll have lost my friends in vain. It’s worth risking a few more to justify the loss of the others. There are childhood friends I still haven’t tracked down. Alfredo, for example, who used to tease me when we played football. I kicked his leather casey under a car once, and it burst like a toad. Fucking lard-arse he called me. Do you think he’ll hold it against me after all this time?’

‘I don’t know, Fa …’

‘Hernán’s my name. Hernán Stoffa. Stuffer Stoffa the lads used to call me. It wasn’t that long ago we used to get together on Sundays for the match and go for a pizza at Las Cuartetas afterwards. Now I spend my weekends trying to sell Christopher products door to door; and even if I did have any free time, I’d have to go to the match on my own because they haven’t done as well out of it as I have. But you know how it is: no sooner do you get your head above water than they want to cut it off; when you start to get ahead, there are people who try to drag you down instead of being happy for you. Is it my fault I stopped being that idealistic, good-natured local lad? It was the same when I stopped being a Lefty. This country doesn’t forgive people that change. Serves me right for being so bloody generous, mind. That’s what you get for doing business with your friends.’

‘I thought that was precisely what Surprise was all about.’

‘A word of advice: only deal with acquaintances; they’re more malleable. Only use your friends as a last resort, at the eleventh hour, when you can’t scrape any more from the bottom of the barrel. There’s always the car mechanic, the butcher, your kids’ kindergarten teacher, your old man’s friends at the nursing home … Yes, indeed, stick to acquaintances; don’t repeat my mistakes. Oh, and another thing,’ he shouted as I was getting ready to leave, a huge box of Christopher products under each arm, ‘don’t forget, fifteen per cent of your sales are mine.’

* * *

Skirting the dock, staggering under the weight of the boxes, I stumbled across the unearthly bulk of Columbus’s caravel. They’d made quite a bit of progress over the last few days, having completed the hull, deck and masts; with the furled sails lying on one side, it would be finished. From high up in the tower it had looked sturdy enough: capable, if not of sailing to new worlds, then at least of floating about in the docks like a rubber duck; but on closer scrutiny it was quite obvious that it stood less chance than one of those nutshell caravels we sailed on plasticine seas as schoolboys. They’d stained the cheap wood dark brown to make it look sturdier, rigged it with raffia thread, and the aftercastle looked like a shack in the act of being tipped overboard. But the worst thing was the hull: they’d covered the great whale ribs with unseasoned 0.5-mm pine cladding and, with the damp of the first two nights, all the planks had warped in the terrible agony of wrenching themselves free of the screws that held them in place. Screws, on the Santa María ! Next thing you knew they’d be using them to screw Christ to the cross. I stuck my whole hand into one of the countless gaps between the planks: the ship they were building looked better suited to straining the seas than plying them — a kind of Columbus’s egg in reverse. Straining against the four ends of the main and mizzen masts like Tupac Amaru drawn by horses, a banner caught the wind: a swelling sail striving in vain to drive the beached ship forward. Along the length of the torn and frayed nylon banner read the legend: ‘The construction of the Santa María is sponsored by Spanish Surprise, an independent sales company. Madrid-Caracas-Mexico-Buenos Aires. Set sail for the First World hand-in-hand with the Motherland.’