Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

He goes up the unvarnished wood staircase with the bottle of Finlandia in one hand and the remote in the other. He stops for a moment to look at the wall of the landing with his flashlight's beam. It would be a really nice place if someone with half a brain had decorated it. Who's the asshole who decided to leave the bricks showing along the whole staircase? He shrugs and tosses the remote into the landing's ornamental fish tank. On the upper floor he amuses himself for a few minutes tipping over bookshelves and emptying out the contents of closets onto the floor and attacking the paintings with the foot of a steel lamp. He lights a bedspread on fire with his lighter and after a minute changes his mind and takes the smoking, balled-up bedspread off the bed and puts it under the faucets of the bathtub. Somehow all that destruction makes him feel good, but at the same time makes him feel intensely bad. His small individual acts of vandalism against Giraut's furnishings give him overwhelmingly ephemeral doses of satisfaction, followed by waves of despondency. Nothing seems to give him the well-being he needs. He pisses on the pillows and manages to rip the sink out of the wall. In a closet on the stairway he finds a toolbox. He starts a general remodeling of the apartment with a mallet and five minutes later he's crying inconsolably on the sofa, covering his face with his forearm.

What's the point of so much effort? What's the point of living in a world that doesn't reward work and personal merit? Like take this asshole Giraut, thinks Saudade as he vomits on Giraut's sofa. What the hell did he do to have this apartment and that collection of fancy suits upstairs and a bathroom so lovely it makes you want to move in there? And what's the point of destroying it all? As much as he destroys the apartment now, even if he destroyed it ten times over, Mr. Filthy Rich Shit for Brains can just come in with his credit cards and his bank accounts and put it back the way it was. The truth is, he now thinks, dropping from the sofa to the rug and crawling toward the cocktail cabinet, is that he'd give anything never to have met that dickwad Giraut. Maybe Giraut hadn't caused all of his current problems, but there was no doubt that he symbolized them. A hair-salon-going, fancy-suit-wearing, odiously unflappable symbol. With that stupid chubby-cheeked poker face. As if the world wasn't worth stopping to think about. Saudade twists on the rug. With his teeth gnashing. He stretches out an arm, as if with his last dying breath, toward the cocktail cabinet. He manages to open its door. He grabs a second bottle of Finlandia and takes the top off with his teeth. If only he had never laid eyes on that fucking filthy rich moron's stupid face. In Saudade's opinion, the class war is something that mostly takes place between the individual class made up of Juan de la Cruz Saudade and the class made up of all the fucking filthy rich morons in the world. The modus operandi of said war, in general terms, is analogous to the way someone parts a crowd, moving through it with an ax. It's not about any intentional self-centeredness in Saudade's general attitude toward life. It's not about any basic aggressiveness either. His attitude is closer to the way certain animals eat very quickly and keep glancing suspiciously over their shoulders.

When he wakes up in his tightie whities inside the bathtub, peacefully hugging an empty bottle of Finlandia, he doesn't have the slightest idea how long he's been there. The inside of his head seems to have turned into a handful of swollen nerves that someone is rhythmically beating on with a guitar. He throws up on himself twice before managing to stand up in the bathtub and he takes a freezing cold shower, watching the remains of vomit swirl around the drain clockwise. He looks at himself, for the first time in several weeks, in the mirror over where the sink used to be and discovers he has a cut through his eyebrow and a series of strange liver spots under his eyes. Then he goes to Giraut's walk-in closet and chooses a charcoal gray suit. From his collection of the latest season of Lino Rossi suits. In the office next to the bedroom he finds a new checkbook in Giraut's name and half a dozen Cartier, Rolex and TAG Heuer watches in a drawer. For a moment he contemplates the Louis XV cartonnier that dominates the room. He uses the mallet to make several holes in the polychrome rosewood and finally, somewhat satisfied, throws the hammer into the fish tank on the landing and goes down the stairs whistling, his haul distributed between the pocket of the suit jacket and his two wrists.

Judging by the growling in his stomach, it must be past lunchtime. Saudade is thinking about checks that can buy hot meals in expensive restaurants as he goes out onto the street and someone brusquely pulls him by the arm and pushes him into a car. It all happens very quickly and through the opaque, sticky screen of his headache. The inside of the car he's just been pushed into seems to spin on various axes at the same time. Finally he manages to look up and he sees that he's lying on his side in the backseat. Next to him, a guy with a repugnant smile is pointing a gun at his face. For a moment he considers the advantages of telling him that he has three luxury watches on each wrist.

“Delighted to meet you, Mr. Giraut,” says Leon, pointing the gun. With a Russian accent that, given the circumstances, makes all of Saudade's body hair stand on end. With an absurdly high-pitched voice, considering his giant shoulders and his enormous bullet-shaped head. Still smiling, Leon indicates that he should sit in the middle of the backseat. Between the guy with the gun and the other enormous guy, who also looks Russian, that pushed him into the car. Saudade obeys. “I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Giraut. An important guy, huh? Lately it seems everyone wants to be your friend, huh?” Leon says, and pauses as if what he just said was a joke and he was leaving time for people to laugh. One of the main reasons why Leon is repugnant is the contrast between his enormous hairy body and his absurdly high-pitched voice. Another reason is the smell of industrial grease that seems to emanate from his body. And which none of the people in the car, except for Saudade, seems to notice. “I personally know someone who wants to meet you, too. To really get to know you. Because he's convinced you'll understand each other perfectly. And I agree, of course. This person's name probably won't be familiar to you.” He arches his eyebrows in a vaguely afflicted gesture. “But you can call him Donald Duck. That's what we all call him around here.”

Saudade follows Leon's gaze to a tiny little man sitting in the passenger seat. The little man turns and says something that does sound quite a bit like something Donald Duck would say. His voice comes out of one of those surgical collars people who've had their vocal cords operated on wear. With a transistor in the front. Saudade looks up and considers the barrel of the gun that is pointed at his face. The car is turning onto one of Vía Laietana's packed lanes. Something tells him he'd better think fast. Find a way out of the predicament he's gotten himself into. That they got him into. It's obvious that that asshole Bob Marley sold Giraut out to the Russians. But it's also clear that trying to convince these Russian assholes that he isn't Giraut is gonna sound like the typical thing Giraut would say to save his ass if he were the one sitting in that car. In Saudade's aching mind the dilemma starts to look grimly like a vicious circle.

“Listen,” says Saudade, in that overly obsequious tone you use when you want to be extremely careful not to piss off the person you're talking to. “I know this is the typical thing I would say if I really was Giraut and wanted to convince you that I'm not,” he starts to say, with a nervous smile. Wiping the sweat from his temples. And he stops. Staring at Leon's bullet-shaped face, which is staring at him while aiming at his face.