Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“On one hand you've got Gilmour.” Mr. Bocanegra takes a drag on his enormous cigar and looks through the windshield of his two-seater convertible Jaguar, stopping at the stoplight on the corner of Pelayo and Ramblas. “Gilmour is, basically, a numbskull. And on the other hand there's Waters. The guy who wrote Dark Side of the Moon. The Wall. Wish You Were Here. I mean, he's a genius. With one of those strange minds. His music is strange, I won't deny that. Waters is the guy that Gilmour kicked out of the group.”

This afternoon it is not Mr. Bocanegra at the wheel of his brand-new convertible Jaguar, which now turns the corner of Pelayo and Ramblas and heads down the Ramblas. It is Aníbal Manta that's driving. With his wrist resting on the open window and his enormous hand hanging outside the vehicle. And with two pieces of cotton stuffed into the nostrils of his nose, which was broken last night by Mr. Bocanegra. After he confirmed that Raymond Panakian had escaped the headquarters of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD. A nose that in its present state no longer looks like a nose. It isn't very clear what exactly it looks like now, but it definitely bears some resemblance to a swollen, irregular meteorite that crossed the stratosphere and crashed violently into the middle of Aníbal Manta's face.

“It's as if Watson fired Sherlock Holmes,” continues Bocanegra. Drumming with his fingers on the glove compartment to the beat of the Pink Floyd compact disc that's playing on the Jaguar's compact disc player. “As if that Indian that went around with the Lone Ranger one day just up and handed the Lone Ranger a pink slip and started trying to do everything the Lone Ranger did. Which would be absurd.” He shows his teeth in a cruel smile. “Because the Lone Ranger can only do what he does because he is the Lone Ranger.”

The Ramblas are as congested as they are every evening. The center walkway is mostly filled with groups of British citizens singing and drinking beer from enormous plastic cups that they then throw at each other or simply let drop to the ground between heaves. The image makes one think of hordes of native British Islanders before the arrival of the Romans. There are also groups of drunk girls that stagger up the main lane of the Ramblas and seem to be celebrating something undefined. Hugging each other. Raising swaying arms to halt taxis and struggling to remain vertical.

“It's as if one day you show up at my office and you kick me out of my own business,” says Bocanegra with a frown. He can't imagine what so many drunk girls could be celebrating. Except perhaps International Drunk Girl Day. He shrugs his shoulders. “It's as if you come to my business and throw me out and from that moment on you sit at my desk and you smoke my cigars and you decide that you are going to run my business. Not caring that I invented my business. Or that I am the best at what I do, or that in the end it's the only thing I'm good at. Because you are a numbskull and a loser and I am the guy that invented what I do. Well, that's what happened in Pink Floyd. When Gilmour the numbskull kicked out Waters the genius.” Bocanegra leans forward to turn up the volume on the compact disc player. The CD that's on is A Momentary Lapse of Reason by Pink Floyd. The song that's playing is “Learning to Fly.”

The British people that fill the main walkway of the Ramblas have very short hair and sportswear and carry lit cigarettes and very large plastic cups filled with beer. Their necks are that intense red color that rural Americans' necks supposedly are. The main brands of their sportswear are Burberry and Nike. Many of them wear soccer jerseys of British teams. Some of them are naked from the waist up, in spite of the fact that the giant thermometer at Puerta del Ángel has dipped below the area where there are numbers to represent the temperature. A couple of them are wearing full-body rabbit costumes of the kind that seem to have become popular that winter in Barcelona. Costumes sold in souvenir stores for tourists, filling the streets with giant rabbits.

“The history of Pink Floyd is like life.” Bocanegra takes a pensive drag on his cigar. “Or perhaps one should say that life is like the history of Pink Floyd. First there was Barrett. The origin of it all. The original genius, if you will. But nobody remembers. How the hell could they remember? The only people who saw Barrett perform with Pink Floyd were a few Englishmen so stoned they can't remember what they saw. That was in the sixties, of course. Then came Waters. And that was the worst of all. Because it turns out that there are people who remember Waters. We remember him. And now we have to bear the fact of remembering Waters and remembering his genius and his music. And all we have is that memory of better times. And Gilmour the numbskull. Playing songs that don't belong to him and ruining everything with his lack of genius. You understand?” As the Jaguar gets to the end of the Ramblas, the landscape changes. The tiny street entrances on either side are filled with shady-looking people. With that stereotypical gesturing that people use when carrying out illegal transactions. Looking around furtively. Making transactions below waist level and looking over their shoulders with serious expressions. There are also guys vomiting with the palms of their hands resting on the façades of buildings and their heads hanging between their arms.

“It's a symbolic thing. It's like the ages of man or something like that. Barrett and then Waters and then Gilmour. It's like life. It's like remembering old friends that aren't around and not being able to do anything to make them come back. Maybe you'll understand when you get to be my age.”

The Jaguar gets to the end of the Ramblas and turns onto the circle with the monument to Christopher Columbus in the middle, and takes the coastal road that's moderately filled with traffic at this hour of the early evening. The thrashing that Mr. Bocanegra gave Aníbal Manta last night wasn't limited to breaking his nose with a head butt. When Manta fell to his knees, Bocanegra grabbed the baseball bat held out by a terrified Saudade and beat him on the chest, back, and arms with it. While Saudade and Eric Yanel and Lucas Giraut watched in terror. Bocanegra found it particularly pleasurable to beat up Aníbal Manta in front of Lucas Giraut. Due to the warmly paternal feelings he has toward his old friend's young son. A clearly paternal pride came over him as he heard Manta's ribs crack under the bat. Something similar to that warm feeling you get showing your son how to bait a hook or cast a line over the waves. While Aníbal Manta trembled on the ground, shrunk into a fetal position and protecting his head with his hands, Mr. Bocanegra looked at Giraut with a warm smile. Bocanegra had to repress an ineffable desire to give him the bloodstained bat, tousle his hair affectionately and encourage him to finish the job.

The coastal road becomes more and more empty as they leave behind the city and the airport. Soon the highway begins to flow placidly through an astonishingly uniform landscape of coastal housing developments and roadside bars. With withered palm trees flanking the road. Many of the roadside bars have multicolored blinking neon signs whose bulbs form exuberant female outlines.

Bocanegra takes out his portable organizer equipped with a satellite global positioning device and introduces the exact location of the roadside bar where his contact has indicated he can find Raymond Panakian. That's one of the big advantages of being Mr. Bocanegra: the fact that no one can hide from him. Thanks to his ubiquitous and always alert network of contacts, spread out everywhere. Or at least within the area of influence of his empire of cocktail bars, nightclubs, discothèques and restaurants. That empire with The Dark Side of the Moon at its center, which is like a living creature lying in wait for its prey. Always awake. Always sniffing around in search of those things that Mr. Bocanegra wants to find. And always willing to make a little call to Mr. Bocanegra's cell phone to let him know, merely as a little insignificant favor, where a certain individual, of certain renown in the underworld, that Bocanegra has lost just a few hours earlier, can be found. Something that is always appreciated. And something that Aníbal Manta in particular should appreciate. Because, after all, said phone call has just saved his skin.