Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

There is a moment of silence. Marcia Parini is turning the pages of the photo album she has in her hands with a pensive face and once in a while looks up furtively at the guy walking around the living room with an unlit cigarette in his hand, blowing out invisible puffs of smoke. The way people look furtively when they feel they're in a situation they shouldn't be in and seeing things that are none of their business. Lucas Giraut remains seated in his armchair. In that posture of his, with his back very rigid and his arms horizontally rigid on the arms of the chair. Like some kind of replica of those pharaonic images sculpted in stone. Without looking at Yanel. Looking at a point that apparently doesn't correspond with the location of any of the people in the room.

“He doesn't even have nice armpits,” says Iris Gonzalvo. Shrugging her shoulders. With an expression that says she's just stating a fact, not making any sort of judgment. “They let him be in the deodorant commercial because he gave the director a bag of coke this big.” She makes a gesture with her hands to represent the size of the bag in question. “Which, by the way, he never paid for. The coke. And you aren't smoking a cigarette,” she adds, now addressing Yanel and pointing to his unlit cigarette. “What the hell do you think you're smoking?”

Eric Yanel stares at Iris for a long moment. As if he wanted to make an angry comeback but he still hadn't thought up what to say exactly. With his mouth half open. As if he were about to reply. Then he looks down. He stares at the cigarette in his hand. His expression isn't exactly one of surprise. The moment is embarrassing. The only sound in the room is the sound of Marcia slowly turning the plastic-covered pages of her photo album. Finally Yanel sits down on the floor. On the rug. He sits on the rug and he hugs his knees and he buries his face between his knees and breaks out in tears. His sobs are too high-pitched and not very masculine.

“Typical,” says Iris Gonzalvo. “I swear I was expecting this.”

From the sofa comes the dull, somewhat leaden sound of Marcia Parini snapping the photo album shut. Iris and Giraut turn their respective heads to look. Marcia sighs. She gives the closed album to Iris, gets up from the sofa and goes over to where Yanel is sitting and crying noisily. She kneels down next to him and runs a hand over his shoulders.

“We all feel like that once in a while,” she says. “Feeling alone is just that. A feeling. That's why you feel bad. I understand you. Look at me.” Her tone of voice is not maternal. It lacks those soft, enveloping features that maternal voices have when comforting someone. “I'm thirty-four years old. My husband left me. My daughter is in a mental hospital and she hates me. And I can't find a husband. No matter how hard I try. And I really am trying. That might be the problem in and of itself.”

Yanel stops sobbing for a moment, but doesn't lift his head up from between his knees. The only part of his head that is visible to the other people in the room is the back. Where the messy matted hair that looks like dusty, dirty doll hair is sticking up, like he hadn't washed it after sleeping on it.

“He can't stay here,” says Iris Gonzalvo. “No one can invite him to spend the night.”

Lucas Giraut passes a tissue to Marcia Parini. She tries to put it into Eric Yanel's hand.

“If anyone invites him to spend the night here I'm taking my things and leaving,” says Iris Gonzalvo.

Out of the corner of his eye, still seated very rigidly on the sofa in a posture few would hesitate in calling pharaonic, Lucas Giraut can see that Marcia Parini is stroking Eric Yanel's dirty, messy hair.

“That's my boy.” Commissioner Farina jumps to his feet in the stands of the amateur racetrack. He pats Pavel on the shoulder and points to the amateur car of reduced dimensions that now makes its way along the start of the track piloted by Commissioner Farina's son. Pavel remains seated beside him with his handcuffed hands covered by a jacket. The car piloted by Commissioner Farina's son is now in second place and has the number two painted on the front. Farina applauds and puts the index and middle fingers of both hands into his mouth and lets out a long, powerful whistle. Then he sits back down in the stands to Pavel's right. “Do you want to know what I said to my boy when he got up this morning and we all had breakfast together at home? It's very important for us to have breakfast together. All at the same table. Even though my kids have to get up earlier than the rest of the kids in their class. We're one of those families, you know? What's the point of having kids if you can't show them the things that will guide them through life? And I'm very good at that. Because I'm a man with experience.” He nods with satisfaction. “Nobody knows the things I've seen. Did I ever tell you my father was a policeman, too?”

Pavel moves his handcuffed hands forward and down, carefully so that the handcuffs don't show beneath his jacket, and picks up the cup of soda with a straw that he has in front of his feet. He brings the straw up to his mouth and takes a sip of soda. The cars in the race this morning are not professional ones, and were probably designed for children. They are not only reduced in size but they also don't seem to have any kind of bodywork beside the panel with the number painted on it. They look like unfinished prototypes, or chassis on wheels. Miniature car skeletons. Pavel is struck by the strange feeling that the machines are still growing and that in a few years they'll become normal race cars.

“I'm not saying that I want to do with my son exactly what my father did with me.” Commissioner Farina applauds and whistles as the cars take the curve and make their way across the straight stretch on the other side of the circuit. The amateur circuit has an oval or elliptical shape, or actually more like if someone took a circumference and stretched its two diametrically opposed points. There are a lot of tires piled up around the track and in the island in the middle. Pavel isn't sure why there are so many tires everywhere. “I know times have changed and all that. What I told my son this morning while we were having breakfast is this. Son, I said. Sometimes I call him son and sometimes I call him David. David is his name. Son, this morning you are gonna make the whole family proud. You're gonna drive as if your father was chasing you with his standard-issue gun and you're going to beat all those other kids. But above all, most importantly, you can't come in second. Son, I told him, your father knows about life because it's his lot to see the things no one sees. Things that aren't pretty. And what I learned is this: in life only the people who win first place count. There's no prize for second place. You're the winner or you're the loser. That's what I told him. And he knows what he has to do if he doesn't want to spend the summer working in my father-in-law's garage.”

Pavel puts the foam cup with a straw down on the ground in front of his feet and picks up the bag of salted peanuts next to it. He opens it with his teeth and spits out a piece of plastic. At the end of the first lap, Commissioner Farina's son's car, with the number two painted in white on green, is in fourth place. The car in the lead, very far ahead of the others, is the one with the number six. The number six is painted in red on white. You can't see any part of the kids piloting the cars except for their helmets and the gloves that grab the steering wheel. The gloves and helmets make their hands and heads look disproportionately large.

The official explanation for why Pavel finds himself this morning at an amateur racetrack instead of in a police custody cell is that Commissioner Farina didn't want to miss his son's first serious competition. Pavel looks around him. The stands are filled with adults and kids eating sandwiches that mostly come from the sausage stand at the entrance. Most of the adults seem to be fathers of drivers competing in the race. There are some mothers, too. They all shout and clap and whistle every time the cars pass. In a way that also seems like some sort of competition. A whistling and clapping competition. The various family groups look at each other suspiciously out of the corners of their eyes and seem susceptible to succumbing, at any moment, to an eruption of competitive tension.