Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“Do you know the joke about the black kid who says, 'Mommy, I'm white'?” Leon stamps out his cigarette with his shoe and goes back to fixing his greasy hair with the fingers on one hand. “It's too much. The black kid goes to the kitchen, where his mother is making dinner, and puts his hands in the flour. Then he rubs his hands on his face and says, 'Look, Mom, I'm white.' And his mother up and slaps him. Then the boy goes into the living room and says to his father, 'Look, Dad, I'm white.' The father punches him. And the kid says, 'I haven't even been white for five minutes and I already can't stand these damn niggers!'” He lets out a laugh. “It's too much.”

The unknown man with the Really Expensive shoes and pants clears his throat to draw attention to the fact that Donald Duck has just appeared on the scene. He's just come in and now seems to be looking for an outlet along the walls near the door. In one hand he carries an extension cord and in the other a drill. Donald Duck's famous drill. His overall appearance, with a sweater full of holes and a filthy Barcelona Football Club cap, seems to indicate he got trapped in an office building as it was being demolished and was forced to survive for days on end among the ruins without changing his clothes. He also seems to be strangely small. Not small like a child, but small like a large child. Around his neck he wears some sort of metallic surgical collar with a battery-operated voice synthesizer, like the type that people who have had an operation on their vocal cords wear.

“Is this for real?” says Pavel.

Donald Duck starts talking with his voice synthesizer, the basically unintelligible buzzing tone of which does indeed sound like Donald Duck's voice. He kneels next to the wall outlet and starts to extend the extension cord until he reaches the place where Pavel is sitting. Finally he connects the drill, tests it and lets out a synthesized sentence whose modulation could very well suggest an angry inflection.

“What the fuck is he saying?” says Pavel.

“He says,” explains Leon, “that he's had a shitty day. One of those shitty days that make you want to drill into things that move and gush blood.”

Donald Duck chatters on with his voice synthesizer.

“He says that drilling works like a painkiller,” translates Leon. “Better than a painkiller.”

Donald Duck chatters on with his voice synthesizer and puts both hands in front of his belly in a broad gesture that suggests that he is holding a very large ball against his belly.

“He says,” translates Leon, “that his wife doesn't wanna fuck. It's one of those superstitions Russian women have when they're knocked up. Something to do with the fact that if you let your husband fuck you while you're knocked up the kid will grow little horns or something. And it's been a couple of months already. Russian women are usually superstitious,” he adds in a wise tone. “That's one of the disadvantages of Russian women. Who for the most part have a lot of advantages. Obviously.”

The imminence of the interrogation with torture doesn't manage to dispel Pavel's sensation of decidedly un-Rastafarian weariness. In some part of his mind circulate images of secluded beaches and jungle settings. Images of him floating faceup on crystal-clear waters under a sky much bigger than any sky he's ever been under before. Letting the late-afternoon tropical sun warm him. Letting the pleasant feeling of warmth and humidity bathe his skin. Soaking his clothes and filtering through his pants. Someone clears their throat. Pavel opens his eyes and blows to get the dreadlocks out of his face.

“I never thought you'd be one of the ones that piss themselves, Pavel.” Leon gestures with his head toward the wet spot that is beginning to spread from Pavel's fly down his right pant leg.

Donald Duck chatters on with his voice synthesizer and places a small drill bit onto his electric drill.

“Donald Duck says he never imagined you'd be a pisser,” translates Leon. “That you're the last person in the world he thought he'd see piss himself.”

Donald Duck chatters on with his voice synthesizer for people who have had their vocal cords operated on and opens up his box of drill bits organized by size on the floor, in front of Pavel's tied-up feet.

“He says he doesn't have to tell you that the pissers are the scum of the earth,” translates Leon. “That even little kids know that.”

Pavel wrinkles his face into a disgusted expression as Donald Duck finishes fitting the bit into Donald Duck's Electric Drill, kneels in front of his crotch and turns it on. In the back of Pavel's mind an idea begins to emerge, an idea that isn't in the least reassuring. The electrical sound comes closer and closer to his soaked right leg. Until the tip of the drill makes the fabric of his pant leg tremble.

“Wait a minute,” he says, speaking up over the whir. He can feel Donald Duck's breath on his damp crotch. “Tell this moron to stop that thing.”

The sound of the drill stops. Pavel can feel the bill of Donald Duck's hat touching just below his belt buckle.

The guy that's too far from the light to be visible clears his throat again and takes a step forward. His torso and face materialize above his Really Expensive pants and shoes. Pavel looks at him with his eyes squinted. Beneath a mop of white hair the vaguely reflective surface of a metal plate appears, where the right part of the guy's forehead should be, and beneath that a black fabric patch covering his right eye. Pavel frowns. It's the same guy. The one from the house. The one that's screwing his sister. Pavel feels a new wave of weariness and negative feelings toward the world in general. Whatever mess Bocanegra has gotten him mixed up in this time, it doesn't exactly look like he's going to be able to get out of it with every part of his body intact.

“I love that you're asking me to wait a minute.” Leon lights another cigarette with a match and shakes the match out with more force than necessary. The size of his arms seems to indicate a muscular strength that is potentially dangerous in most everyday situations. “Because I'm dying to hear what you have to tell me. Now in my life I've seen people up to their necks in shit, but you take fucking first prize. First of all, I find out you broke into a house. And not just any house. My boss's house. Second, you let yourself get caught by the cops. And third, I find out that you are having a coffee with the cops and they slap you on the back and let you go free.” He exhales a new mouthful of Russian black tobacco toward Pavel's bruised face. “So I have three good reasons to leave you here with Donald Duck and come back tomorrow to scrape up what's left of you.”

Pavel realizes that while he was paying attention to Leon's words, a rat has started chewing on the tip of his shoe. Other rats observe from a prudential distance.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” says Pavel, shaking his shoe. “I swear I won't try to escape.”

Donald Duck is adjusting the bit on Donald Duck's Drill as he chatters on with his voice synthesizer that brings to mind cartoon characters. The guy with the metal plate in his forehead and the patch on his eye remains just outside the reach of the lightbulb's light, in such a way that his head goes in and out of the darkness creating a vaguely flickering effect. Leon holds his cigarette between his index finger and his thumb and blows the smoke out with his eyes half closed.

“And yet,” he says with a pensive face, “my boss tells me it's not a good idea to leave you here with Donald Duck and come back tomorrow to scrape up what's left of you. In fact, he tells me that it makes no sense to interrogate you or let Donald Duck get any information out of you because in fact we already know who the idiot is that paid you to break into his house. In fact, and he's got a point, we don't have anything to ask you. What he tells me is that we should untie you and let you go, but that we shouldn't let you get too far. Like when you go fishing. Like when you're fishing and you let out the line, but not too much.”