Javier Calvo: Wonderful World

“Blah, blah, blah,” Valentina keeps saying. Faking her own death in slow motion. To one side of the group of Slavic men led by Koldo Cruz and Leon that are aiming at the group composed of Bocanegra, Lucas and Iris.

This is what you can see if you look closely at Valentina Parini, with her shirt over her head and her no-longer-childish belly covered with mystical drawings: the beginning of an absence. The shadow of an absence. Something still too subtle to define itself but which clearly indicates the beginning of a process. The first sign that Valentina is already starting to pass to the other side of the story.

Bocanegra approaches Koldo Cruz. With his eyes still glued to him. In his face rage and cruelty are combined with a new element: some sort of fundamental ambiguity. His face is still trembling. The wrinkles on his forehead continue to redefine and reorganize themselves in a way that some could only define as tectonic. Tracing intricate fractal designs made of folded flesh. His mouth is still a horrible grimace. His hand lifts, trembling, to signal to Cruz. One of the Slavic thugs kneels to pick up the gun he has dropped.

“Very well,” he says. “Lovely. A triumphant entrance. With your little Russian friends and everything.” He makes a disgusted face. “With your impeccable suit and your eye patch and all the rest.” He grabs the bottom of his absurdly feminine fur coat and takes a couple of stiff, ridiculous little steps. Moving his butt a lot. Like an exaggerated parody of someone strutting with stiff, ridiculous little steps. Then he stops. He looks at Cruz, his eyes swollen with rage. “And I guess I'm supposed to get down on my knees and ask for forgiveness for all these years. And tremble, and beg you not to kill me. And I guess everyone else”—and he makes a wide gesture with his arm—“thinks it's all very well and fitting. Well I.” He beats his chest with one hand. Releasing a cascade of little drops of saliva whose trajectory is discernible depending on your relative position to the setting sun. “I'm pleased as punch. And why should I repent and beg if I'm happy and pleased.”

No one says anything. The Slavic thugs of a size clearly larger than average just look forward in a way that doesn't allow you to see if they've understood Bocanegra's words or not. Valentina rolls her eyes and grabs her throat, a few feet to one side. Lucas Giraut and Iris Gonzalvo still have their arms in the air but they've dropped a bit, like people who've had their arms up but then realized no one was really paying attention to them. In a certain way, everything seems to be in place. The elements of the scene have reconfigured in such a way that you could practically say that they are now the essential elements to satisfactorily conclude the story. There are only a few details missing. Minor details. Those minor details that set apart a perfectly realized conclusion.

Koldo Cruz sticks his hands in the pockets of the pants of his suitologically impeccable pinstripe suit. Now that Lucas has him there in front of him, he notices that Cruz has an indefinable gleam to him. It doesn't just have to do with his impeccable suit, nor with his certain strange, mutilated beauty, nor with the majestic aura he definitely projects. It's a gleam similar to the flash Giraut caught sight of in the courtroom during his hearing: something that makes you turn your head and stare in his direction. Some sort of powerful flash that comes off the plate on his head. Like the beam from a lighthouse.

“You're Giraut's son.” Koldo Cruz looks at Lucas Giraut out of the corner of his only eye. As he walks among his Slavic thugs of above-average size. With his hands comfortably in his pockets. His tone isn't questioning. Nor is it exactly curious. His words are slow, and seem measured. “I understand why you're here. I understand why you kept the money and ran. Although you got the wrong person.” He shrugs his shoulders. “He wasn't the one who did it. He didn't sell out your father. Bocanegra wanted to keep your father. All to himself. That's why he put a bomb in my house.” He pauses. “It was her, of course. In case you're interested. It was your mother. Your mother and the lawyer.”

According to one of those ancient oral legends, childless men have no reflection in the mirror. The legend says that it's because they've already started to disappear, or because in a certain sense they're already dead. Like those people that in a certain sense have already started to disappear from a story. In a similar but inverse way, people who have no father and no mother observe the world as if they were on the other side of a mirror that no one is in front of. People without a father and without a mother, as the most basic logic dictates, are the exact opposite of childless men.

“We'd been expecting something like that from her for a while before it happened.” The part of Koldo Cruz's face that isn't covered by the patch or the metal plate adopts a pensive expression. “She had started to do strange things. Change her face and things like that.” He shrugs. His aura seems to flicker the way beautiful things or things once lost and now found flicker. “She was the one who organized the ambush and called the police. She was the one who pretended to be the buyer and sent your father to that fleabag hotel in Camber Sands. After paying off the lawyer, of course.” He brings a fist to his mouth and clears his throat. “I suppose she offered him part of the business once your father was in jail.”

Cruz stops pacing through the Slavic thugs with their weapons at the ready. He stops. With his hands in his pockets. He looks at Lucas Giraut.

“I guess this is sad news,” he says. “Since she's your mother and all.” He points with his partly metallic head at the bottle green Puma sports bag that Giraut is still holding up in his flagging raised hand. “As far as I'm concerned you can keep the money. The way I see it, that money belongs to your father. It's the money he would have gotten that night in Camber Sands.”

Giraut looks at Iris. Iris looks at Giraut. They both look toward where Valentina was a moment before. The sun has already set on the horizon of rocky hills and Valentina Parini is now only a blurry silhouette in the distance. Scampering toward the hills. A bit like an evil niece. With her shirt over her head and lifting her knees high and leaping cheerfully in what looks like an evil parody of a happy child's leaps.

Bocanegra stares at her for a moment before she disappears on the horizon. Then he wipes his brow with a meticulously folded handkerchief and points with the trembling handkerchief at the thugs that are aiming their guns at him. With a defiant expression.

“I'm extremely proud of everything I've done,” he says to them. Showing his big white teeth. In a final cruel grimace. “That's the key to my success in this world.”

No one does or says anything that could be interpreted as an immediate response to Bocanegra's words. From where he is, on the edge of the group of people in the parking lot, Lucas Giraut has the impression that Iris is rolling her eyes or even muttering some malicious comment under her breath.

A long time ago, a young man closed all the curtains in his room for the first time. He closed all the shutters and enjoyed the peace he got from the lack of natural light. A long time ago, a woman took the bandages off of her face for the first time and discovered that her rage lines had disappeared.

Giraut and Iris are heading away from the service area's parking lot. Without looking back. Not walking particularly quickly or particularly slowly. The sky is no longer red. The sky has grown dark and night is falling fast around the service area. Like someone were turning off the lights on a stage. A dramatically conclusive fade to black, if you will. Giraut and Iris walk hand in hand toward the lights of the highway.