Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

The black woman and her black companion have chosen a song on the jukebox and are now dancing in front of it. The scene causes Pavel a slight stab of emotional pain. Black people have a special attitude and a credibility and an authenticity just because they're black. It's unfair. Not to mention the subject of the black man's supposed sexual vitality and genital size. Pavel doesn't so much want to be black as he wants to find a way to develop that same credibility. To be accepted in a way that would make him feel like real Rastafaris must feel, for example. Instead, Pavel is excessively tall and very blond and gangly and, even though he's twenty-nine years old, still can't get rid of the pimples on his cheeks and the area of his neck where he shaves. When he lives in Jamaica, he's already decided, he is going to devote himself to the music business. He'll set up his own discothèque and he'll wear really long dreads and he'll throw parties on the beach that will give him the credibility he needs.

The first thing Pavel notices is the smell. Even before he realizes that the black faces around him are looking suspiciously at something located right behind him. Before he feels the big hairy hand land on his shoulder like a big hairy bird of bad omen. The smell of industrial grease and an abandoned garage where all that's left is the smell of grease. Leon's unmistakable smell of grease.

“Nice tie,” says Leon's high-pitched voice in Russian. Pavel turns to find his compatriot's big, shiny head that's morphologically similar to a bullet. Leon points with his head at the local soccer club tie sticking out of Pavel's pocket. “Can't say it goes very well with the rest of your outfit. But what the hell….” He shrugs his shoulders. “It's a start, I guess.”

Pavel finishes his glass of whiskey with ice in one slug. He puts the empty glass back on the bar beside the pornographic novel and the Christmas wrapping. He makes a sign to the black waiter and points to the empty glass with his finger. Which in international sign language indicates a refill. Some of the black people seem to now be looking out of the corner of their eyes at the two white men at the bar. Pavel decides that the best way to tackle the problem of the bullet head who just appeared by his side is to pretend, as much as he can, that the problem doesn't exist. The black woman with the ample ass is dancing in that way a lot of black people dance: subtly swaying her pelvis and neck while talking to her male companion and introducing coins into the slot of the jukebox. A way of dancing that's not really dancing. Which more just seems to form part of her general disposition.

“Sometimes I think you think I'm a boring guy.” Leon is also looking at the ample ass of the black woman, but with a different expression. With the same expression a passenger sitting in an airport looks at the poster he has had in front of him for two hours as a result of a two-hour delay. “Maybe because I have a family and my own business and we always see each other for work-related stuff. It's an understandable prejudice, I guess. But mistaken.” Leon shows a large set of teeth, in a shade ranging from white to grayish. “The truth is I really like music and dancing and all that stuff. I used to be a pretty good dancer when I was young. In Russia. In my day, there were good jazz and rock and roll bands. With really good Russian musicians. I like movies, too. Especially the Alien series. You know the Alien movies? I guess everyone does. The ones with that dyke and the creature that crawls out of people's bellies. Which brings me to the question of why I came here to talk to you. In case you were thinking that I was just passing by here and we met up by chance. The truth is that this isn't my kind of atmosphere.” He looks around him with that expression that makes you think of air travelers during an excessive flight delay. “And I came here to make it clear to you that I'm an outgoing kind of guy. A good friend. More than that. A person perfectly willing to make friends with people who aren't his friends yet. Or who aren't his friends anymore.”

Pavel picks up his second glass of whiskey on the rocks from the bar and shakes it in a vaguely unconscious way. Making the ice tinkle against the glass. The black woman with the ample ass has taken a seat. Expanding the ampleness of her ass. Expanding her ass in a movement similar to an overflowing that threatens to make her tight red pants burst.

“Tell me what you want to know.” Pavel gets up from his bar stool with a weary gesture. The deep red and blue tie hangs from his pocket in a way that doesn't quite suggest a tail. “And I'll tell you if I can tell it to you.”

“They've talked to me about this new guy.” Leon lifts his eyebrows. “Some kind of antiques dealer. Seems he's the son of someone who was important here many years ago. And they told me about those stupid little paintings that are worth so much money to some people. And I have some idea where they might be. And I also think that all this has something to do with the fact that you broke into my friend's house. So what I want to know is: everything. Where those little paintings are going and when. So I can be waiting there. With Donald Duck and the rest of the boys.”

“I've only seen the antiques dealer a couple of times.” Pavel walks up to the dirty glass screen of the jukebox and starts pushing buttons on the panel. “At Bocanegra's club. And I don't know anything about the paintings.”

Leon plants an enormous hairy finger on the jukebox's dirty screen. The finger is pointing to the face of a black guy with his mouth open very wide in some sort of chemically induced expression of enthusiasm. With his eyes open unrealistically wide. With an overall expression of chemically induced enthusiasm whose effect is vaguely terrifying. An enthusiasm that surpasses all known limits of the healthy and normal.

“Louis Armstrong.” Leon taps on the glass screen with his fingertip a few times. “A genius of modern music. It can take a little while to get used to his voice. It's not like Russian voices. Russian voices are strong. Masculine and all that,” he says in his high-pitched voice. “You know what I'm talking about. But, hey, Armstrong came to Russia. As an American cultural ambassador. And he made a lot of people happy.” He nods with a satisfied expression on his bullet-shaped head.

He puts a coin in the machine and punches a numerical code into the panel. A slight buzzing is heard, similar to a bicycle chain. The buzzing every jukebox in the world makes when changing from one song to another. Pavel keeps making the ice in his glass tinkle languidly. After a moment the opening bars of a Louis Armstrong song are heard.

“Of course, what people say Louis Armstrong's music means is stupid,” says Leon. While he moves his head to the rhythm of the song. The rocking of his head and hand is that stereotypical rocking that people associate with classical music lovers listening to chamber music in the smoking salons of their homes. “All that crap about the joy of being alive and waking up to see a new day. Bullshit. It's not about birdies in the sky and the joy of living. You just have to go out on the street. I don't see much blue skies or birdies singing or happy people frolicking. The truth is the weather sucks and the birdies are dead. No, sweetheart. What Louis Armstrong is saying, like the genius he is”—he makes a pause obviously designed to create a certain sense of mystery or paradox about to be revealed—“is that the world is wonderful because the world is horrible. And therein lies his great wisdom. The crazies who get on a bus with a bomb and kill all the passengers. Or that gigantic wave that was on every TV news show. Those are the things that make the world wonderful.” He nods and begins tracing arabesques of cutaneous grease with the tip of his hairy and vaguely phallic index finger on the dirty glass screen of the jukebox. “A world like us. For us.” He looks at Pavel's face. “Isn't it wonderful?”