Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“When is Mom getting out of jail?” asks the boy.

Saudade rubs his temples with his index finger and thumb.

“Mom is not in jail,” he says. “How many times do I have to tell you? She's at her mother's house. Do you understand? Fuck.”

“Dad,” says the boy in an impatient tone. “Mom called the other day and said she was in jail.”

Saudade sighs. He opens up the drawer on his bedside table and begins to search through the papers inside. After a moment he pulls out a wrinkled piece of paper and smooths it with his hand.

“Here.” He gives the paper to his son with a hostile expression. “Your mother's coming back on Tuesday. Are you happy? Eat what's left in the fridge and when it's gone, call your aunt and tell her you have to spend a couple of days with her 'cause we're having some work done on the house. You understand?”

Cristian Saudade, eight years old, goes off down the hall dragging his feet. Saudade bolts the door. Then he closes the window and puts a movie with big asses into the DVD player. Then he lies down on the bed and uses the remote to skip the transitional scenes that precede the first anal sex scenes. Anal sex scenes are, in Saudade's opinion, the main element of a good porn film. Oral sex scenes are also very important because they show an actress's technique. But there's no denying that the anal sex scenes are what give pornography true meaning. He usually fast-forwards the vaginal sex scenes with the remote or just skips them with the Skip Chapter function on his DVD player. Once he's found the most adequate scene, he lights his joint with a lighter advertising his favorite soccer club and takes a couple of hits before putting it back in the ashtray. Then he sticks his hand into his briefs and proceeds to carry out the controlled stroking that makes up the main phase of the mental-physiological operation he's nicknamed “recharging the batteries.”

* * *

Stretched out on the sofa in her living room with the DVD player's remote in her hand, Iris Gonzalvo alternately pushes the PLAY and FAST FORWARD buttons to select those fragments of her favorite show that release emotional responses of identification, desire and repulsion in her. It's possible that the sun has already come up. It's hard to tell because she closed the blinds hours ago so she could concentrate on what was happening on the TV. She isn't hungry or sleepy but that doesn't mean anything when you take into account that by now she's finished off the reserves of cocaine she had in the kitchen. She moves the sofa cushions to make herself more comfortable, closes her eyes, and imagines how things will be when she achieves Fame and Success in Life. She imagines the magazine interviews and the photo sessions and the dates with famous men in restaurants. The kinds of things, she thinks, that make life worth living.

* * *

Marcia Parini is crying beside the bed at the prestigious psychiatric center for children where her daughter Valentina is sleeping with white plastic straps around her wrists and ankles and a drip delivering sedatives into a vein of her arm. She cries and dries her tears with a wrinkled handkerchief and once in a while holds her daughter's inert hand. A nurse with a bruise on her face and her arm in a sling comes in to check the reading on the ECG machine. Marcia looks up at the nurse with a troubled face.

“Oh, for God's sake,” says Marcia to the bruised nurse. “You have to give me your medical bill.” She shakes her head sadly. “I never imagined the poor little thing was so strong.”

The nurse smiles weakly.

“We're insured against patient attacks,” she says. “It's one of the downsides of the job.” She pauses and looks at Valentina with her eyes gathered together. “Does her father know she's here?”

Marcia dries her tears with her wrinkled handkerchief.

“Her father's in Uruguay,” she says. “Anyway, Tina doesn't get along with him.”

The nurse nods. There is a moment of silence punctuated by the barely audible beep of the ECG machine.

“We have a coffee machine on this floor,” says the nurse kindly. “If you want we can go have some breakfast together. After all, it is Christmas, isn't it?”

Marcia Parini smiles and nods as she blows her nose into her wrinkled handkerchief. Marcia and the nurse leave the room.

In her bed in the children's hospital, surrounded by machines and white furnishings, Valentina Parini opens her eyes suddenly. Her pupils dilate and begin the trembling, rough dance of sleep's rapid eye movement phase.

Lucas Giraut lifts his head, trying to get his bearings on the deserted, wind-swept avenue that Tottenham Court Road seems to have become. Not a neon sign as far as the eye can see. No rivers of shoppers with their plastic bags from department stores and no giant West End theater marquees. Lucas Giraut takes refuge in a doorway and lifts an arm to protect his face from the gale winds. There may be someone nailed to the Astoria's door. Lucas doesn't want to get closer to check. The wind drags dried leaves and tattered newspapers. Lucas catches one in flight. He reads the date: August 7, 1972. He starts to count on his fingers. With a frown. It's really amazing how many pieces of newspaper are flying along Tottenham Court Road.

Three blocks farther up, he arrives at the pub he has to go to following the internal logic of the Filial Down With The Sun Dream. It isn't hard to find: above the pub, tied to the roof of the building and floating in the night sky, is an immense hot air balloon in the shape of a pig. With pig ears and a pig tail. And with an inscription on the side in those cloudlike letters that were popular in the early seventies. It reads: “WELCOME TO THE DOWN WITH THE SUN DREAM.” Giraut shakes off the pieces of newspaper stuck to his back and shoulders and pushes the pub door open.

Inside the pub it's warm and full of people, and yet no one is speaking. Everyone is silent. The faces that stare at Lucas Giraut when he enters are terrified faces.

“In the back room, darling,” says a blonde on the other side of the bar who looks terrified and wears a T-shirt advertising the Filial Down With The Sun Dream.

Lucas Giraut thanks her for the information with a half smile and continues walking among the crowd of fearful faces.

“In the back room, buddy,” says a guy smoking a pipe.

Lucas Giraut enters the back room and looks at the three official members of the Down With The Sun Society. They're cheerfully occupying a round table filled with empty pint glasses, on which a shockingly young and not yet bald Bocanegra has just put down four full pints of beer. Lucas looks at Bocanegra. Then he looks at Koldo Cruz. Then he looks at his father. Finally he looks at the fourth figure seated at the table. The fourth figure has no face. His entire body is wrapped in bandages like those Egyptian mummies in old horror movies that come back to life. The bandages are stained with blood in various spots. On the wrists and the ribs and the forehead. Neither its height nor the configuration of its limbs is particularly human. There are two yellow lights where there should be eyes, which can be faintly seen through the bandages.

“David Gilmour's over the hill,” Bocanegra is saying as he puts the beers on the table and sits between Cruz and Lucas's father. “I don't think the band will last another year. I mean, let's be serious. Roger Waters is Pink Floyd. They're synonymous.” He pauses. He looks in the direction that his fellow members of the Down With The Sun Society are looking and notices Lucas, standing in front of the table. “Ah, Lucas! You're late. We should have toasted to our invisible house twenty minutes ago.”

Lucas Giraut sits on the paisley sofa where the club members are seated and takes the pint of beer that someone offers him. The five figures around the table bring their pints together and all take swigs before putting them back down on the table's wooden surface. Lucas looks around him. The three members of the Down With The Sun Society have long, tangled hair and denim jackets over paisley shirts. There are eight necklaces among the three of them. Seated beside him on the paisley sofa, Koldo Cruz holds a joint between his index finger and thumb and is looking at it with a lethargic smile. Without a metal plate on his right temple. Without a patch covering his right eye. With glitter sprinkled over his face. None of the three members of the club seem older than twenty-five.