Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“We have to get there,” he says. “You see that light?”

Lucas squints. At the other side of the room there is a window and at the other side of the window a light blinks on and off. Like those lights in spy movies that blink out Morse code. Giraut doesn't understand Morse code. Suddenly a deep, booming sound makes the walls and floor tremble. Several trophies fall inside their display cases and some of the framed photographs crash onto the floor. The sound continues. Becoming clearer and clearer. With the cadence of footsteps. Giant footsteps coming closer. Lucas looks at his father with a worried face.

“Don't blame me,” says Lorenzo Giraut. In a mocking tone. “No one would have wanted to spend much time at home. With your mother.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Blame that trip we made to London together. Before you were born. If we hadn't gone, later things wouldn't have gone so wrong. But none of that matters now. In fact, none of it ever mattered to me. You go on alone,” he says. He gestures toward the window where the Morse lights blink. “Before she gets here.”

Lucas Giraut starts to walk hurriedly along the trembling floor. Around him the trophy display cases are collapsing. Cracks appear on the walls. Rubble falls from the ceiling. Forcing Lucas to walk staying glued to the walls. Covering his head with his hands. Many of the framed photographs still on the walls are familiar to Lucas. They all seem to show the same person. Dressed in a yellow slicker. But in the photographs the person's face is always covered by a black square. On the black square it says “CENSORED BY THE DREAM AUTHORITY®.” Lucas stumbles into the middle of the room, where there is a framed image larger than all the others. The frame is antique and gold and seems like it should frame a painting, not a fishing award. The black square, however, covers the entire image. Leaving a simple black square with a gold antique frame. “HIDE US FROM THE FACE OF HE WHO SITS ON THE THRONE,” reads the label.

Lucas runs away from the censored picture across the last stretch of the room and arrives at the window, from which he can see the light. Whatever it is that is approaching with giant steps must already be upon them, because the thundering of footsteps is everywhere and several panes of glass are starting to shatter. Lucas looks back. His father is naked and old in a bed. Sweating. Waving good-bye. Then he opens the window and looks out at the place the lights are coming from.

It is an old store in an old building. The sign on the store says: “YE OLDE MAPPE SHOPPE.” From the window of the Map Store, Valentina Parini is signaling to him with a flashlight. A patch covers one of the lenses of her small eyeglasses. When she sees that he is watching, Valentina starts to signal to him with her hand. She turns and points her flashlight at an X written in ballpoint on the back of her neck. The Protective Sign. The Fishing Trophy Room seems to be sinking around Lucas. Plaster dust rains down on his hair. The wall is crumbling. The sound of footsteps abruptly stops. Everything stops shaking.

The unexpected silence makes Lucas's ears ring. Suddenly, someone taps him on the shoulder.

The events that take place in The Dark Side of the Moon at this point in this story unfold just like the images on the surface of a mirror ball. With the same flashing combination of simultaneity and succession. Warped into a mosaic of distorted fragments that appear and disappear with a blink and reappear every time the ball completes one of its rotations. Without any one of the images taking center stage for more than the infinitesimal instant it takes for it to be absorbed in your consciousness.

Mr. Bocanegra, Showbiz Impresario, is sitting on a bar stool in the Eclipse Room, flanked by two dancers dressed in G-strings and high heels. Holding a cocktail with a tiny umbrella in his right hand and a lit cigar in his left. Smiling broadly beneath his impeccably trimmed mustache.

Mr. Bocanegra is a bar, just as he often likes to say. Not exactly a catalyst or the glue that binds other elements together, like those people that everyone seems to know and around whom most of the leisure activities of a given city revolve. Not exactly like those people who always seem to be at the center of everything and whose function in life seems to be putting people who would otherwise act independently in touch with each other. Achieving groups that are more than the sum of their parts. Mr. Bocanegra is all that, but also something more. Something perhaps similar to what a bar is literally. Like a place. Like a comfy place where people can sit down and gather and talk and relax and order their favorite drink. Like a place designed for the enjoyment of life. Or at least that's how Mr. Bocanegra sees himself.

At the other side of the bar in the Eclipse Room, half a dozen waitresses under twenty years old and dressed in the official uniform of G-strings and stiletto heels serve drinks to groups of men in suits who unabashedly flirt with them and make the joke of trying to stick bills under the elastic strap of their G-strings. The joke is always the same. Night after night. The same boozed-up smile and the same arm reaching out over the bar trying to stick a folded fifty-euro bill under a G-string strap. The girls laugh at the joke and serve their drinks with professionally seductive smiles.

The Dark Side of the Moon's admission policy hasn't changed a bit in the last twenty-five years. Formal attire is still considered a requirement. Suits make Mr. Bocanegra feel good and comfortable and willing to show his Good Side. Suits are like the carpeted floor and the velvet sofas and the mirror balls and the quality wood paneling. They are like the thighs of The Dark Side of the Moon's girls when they brush against the velvet sofas. They are one of those things in life that make you feel good. They are, without a doubt, like statues. And there is nothing that makes Bocanegra feel as good as statues do.

On the stage of the Eclipse Room there are several dancers having sex with each other. On one of the tables closest to the stage, a member of the city government has gotten up on the table and is doing a supposedly erotic dance that consists mainly of rhythmic hip motions. With one of the table napkins tied around his head. A dozen of his sycophantic underlings laugh a little too hard at his attempts to be funny and clap to the beat of his pelvic movements.

Mr. Bocanegra has never been against the right kind of fun. In fact, he considers himself a mastermind of the right kind of fun.

Several customers at the tables closest to the door of the Eclipse Room have stopped paying attention to what's happening onstage and are now turned, with various degrees of concern on their faces, toward the door. Whatever's going on near the door, it still hasn't attracted the attention of the customers close to where Bocanegra is sitting. It still isn't visible to the waitresses serving drinks or to the drunken customers trying to stick wrinkled fifty-euro notes into their G-strings.

At the exact center of the room a gigantic mirror ball turns. Over the tables. The dancers having sex onstage and the clients reaching their arms over the bar and the statues are reflected in each one of its facets, as is the city government official dancing on the table. Whatever it is that's going on near the exit door is reflected there, too. And whatever it is, it is attracting more and more attention at more and more tables and some people are even standing up with alarmed faces. But for someone sitting near the bar to see what's going on at the door, the mirror ball would still have to make another full turn on its axis. The gigantic mirror ball that turns in the middle of the room turns slowly, and its rotations project hundreds and hundreds of brightly colored shapes onto the walls and the statues and the faces of the people. A statue near the bathrooms' entrance, representing the god Pan chasing a nymph, is dyed completely red, and then gold, and finally an amalgam of every color.