Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“Put down the pistol,” says a voice in Spanish from behind Pavel's back. A masculine and imperious voice. A voice that feels completely at ease ordering people around. “And you can start explaining what's going on here. Because I don't have any desire to learn Russian. For example, you could start explaining why you don't have any panties on.”

Pavel turns slowly and takes a look at the person who has just spoken. At first he doesn't even manage to comprehend what it is that he's looking at. And not exactly because of poor lighting. He's forced to look again. And what he sees does indeed seem to be a man. Although at first glance that's not entirely clear. Pavel squints to see better in the orangish half-light. The man has a very large head and a mat of white curly hair and a patch that covers one eye. And something that looks like a sheet of metal where his right temple once was. A substantial part of the right side of his face no longer seems to be where it once was. The man, by the way, is aiming a double-barrel shotgun at Pavel. Pavel throws his pistol to the floor. Now it seems an absurd, laughable and not very masculine object compared to the man's double-barrel shotgun.

“I'm a light sleeper,” says the man. In a perfectly calm tone. “Unfortunately for you. And luckily for me. That's to be expected after a bomb explodes in your house while you're sleeping.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Doesn't matter that it was thirty years ago.”

The painfully attractive young woman dressed only in a T-shirt advertising the Biosphere Park theme park stands between the two barrels of the shotgun and Pavel's exaggeratedly tall and gawky figure.

“Don't kill him,” she says in Spanish to the man that seems to be missing a substantial part of the right side of his face.

The man stares at her with a weary face.

“And would you mind telling me why I shouldn't kill him?” he says.

There is a moment of silence. Finally the young woman sighs. With a put-out expression.

“Because he's my brother,” she says.

Now the man stares at Pavel curiously.

“Your brother?” he says. “I didn't know you had a brother.”

Pavel's face now reflects infinite despondency and infinite contempt for the world he was born into and the role he was given to play in that world. From the front of his T-shirt, Bob Marley raises his eyes up to heaven in a look of musical ecstasy.

Standing in front of the large window of the Upper Level of The Dark Side of the Moon, Mr. Bocanegra contemplates the hordes of shoppers that cross Diagonal Avenue with their bags from the big department stores. There is something vaguely regal, or perhaps even Shakespearean, in the act of smoking a cigar pensively in front of a large window located several stories above a commercial avenue filled with people. Or at least that's Bocanegra's impression. The self-confessed fan of his nieces and nephews and of seventies-era British rock takes a meditative pull on his cigar and observes the unmarked car parked across the street. Inside which Commissioner Farina's two lackeys are watching, as usual, with their state-of-the-art photographic equipment.

“We're in the business of fantasy,” he says. And shakes his cigar absentmindedly in the direction of the police car. “It doesn't matter that they say we're criminals. We're just not like other people. We have fantasies. We have dreams. We haven't given up that part of our lives. That's why we steal. And once in a while we bust up a face or we shoot someone in the kneecap. There're always kneecaps that are screaming out, begging for us to shoot them, of course. Because we're people with positive energy. Ambition. That thing that gets lost when you work in an office and turn into a drab, colorless kind of guy.” He looks, with something bordering on commiseration, at the hordes of people crossing Diagonal at intervals set by the municipal streetlight system. “Which is why I'm glad that we're getting back into action. These have been a few very lovely months of rest and all that. Some of you have had fun and others have used the time to get into trouble. Which is fine.” He sighs and gazes into the large window at the indistinct reflection of the four men seated behind him. His audience for the night. The Repositories of his Wisdom. The panes of the glazed Upper Level of The Dark Side of the Moon are reflective on the outside and semi-reflective on the inside. So that someone situated where Bocanegra is now can't be seen from the outside but can see both what's going on outside and the reflection of what's going on behind his back. “Now it's back to work. The fun is over. Mr. Giraut will give you the basic details of our job. He even brought a slide projector. Mr. Giraut, by the way, is my new partner. In other words, your new boss.”

Mr. Bocanegra turns around and looks at the four other inhabitants of the room. With the regal calm of someone who knows that the members of his audience have no other choice but to remain obediently seated and wait until he decides to continue speaking. The three men seated at the long table filled with small bottles of mineral water in the meeting room of the Upper Level of The Dark Side of the Moon look at him with blank faces. Aníbal Manta is seated with his giant arms crossed over his hot air balloon of a belly. With his crew cut and his incongruent hoop earring. Due to the size of his belly, his crossed arms almost touch his chin. Saudade is seated a bit farther on, apparently concentrating on getting something out from between his teeth with a finger bent into a hook. At the end of the table, Eric Yanel smokes with a desperate expression next to an ashtray brimming with cigarette butts.

Mr. Bocanegra gives Lucas Giraut a sign to turn on his slide projector. Giraut pushes a button on some sort of little switch he has in his hand, which is connected to the slide projector. The machine makes a click similar to the sound of someone cocking a pistol and the three seated men look up, startled.

On one of the white walls the image of a business property appears.

“This is Hannah Linus's gallery,” says Giraut. “The most important gallerist in the country for Renaissance and Baroque art. I myself have lost some important clients to her.” He presses the little switch in his hand again, causing the same vaguely ballistic sound, and on the wall the image of a young blond woman walking down a street with a cell phone at her ear appears. “Miss Linus is a woman with an impressive career. She worked at Sotheby's until some people got upset by how quickly she was getting promoted and then she left to set up her own business. Taking with her one of the world's most important group of collectors.”

The three men seated at the table look at the image of the woman with feigned disinterest. Although it is hard to tell because of the cloud of cigarette smoke that surrounds his head, it seems that Eric Yanel could have a long dark bruise on one side of his face. Right below the idiosyncratically French wave of his blond hair. Standing in front of the large window in a somewhat Shakespearean stance, Bocanegra observes how one of the windows of the unmarked police car lowers and a hand throws a cigarette butt onto the sidewalk.

“In two weeks,” continues Giraut, “Miss Linus will display in her Barcelona gallery a batch of objects that come from Celtic monasteries in Ireland. Nothing of great value, except for four paintings on wood from St. Kieran's church in County Limerick. Experts call them the St. Kieran Panels, and their value stems from their history and their rare subject matter. They are depictions of the Black Sun. A subject associated with the book of the Apocalypse. They are usually attributed to Brother Samhael Finnegan, nicknamed the Crazy Monk of Limerick.”