Rafael Chirbes - On the Edge

Francisco leaps on this statement like a Bengal tiger:

“Don’t I know it. He loves showing off to me: Olivier Leflaive’s Corton-Charlemagne with the amuse-gueules ; a Chateau Cos d’Estournel with the plat de résistance; and a Coutet Sauternes with the dessert or the foie gras: mere nouveau-riche posturing.”

Justino interrupts:

“Don’t forget the cognacs: Martell, Delamain, Camus, because his other vice — apart from prostitutes — is cigars and cognac, even more so than wines. He loves sitting around after a meal, one hand on his belly, his legs stretched out under the table and his lips pursed, blowing out a great cloud of cigar smoke. He uses wine to give him a veneer of class, but cognacs are his true love. I would say that he’s spoiled Amparo rotten because it suited him to. Husbands who cheat always take great care to make sure their wife lacks for nothing. If you do get caught out at some point, you can always save yourself by saying: but I’m crazy about you, don’t be silly. Don’t I bow to your every whim and treat you like a queen? Besides, anyone can make a mistake.”

Francisco can resist no longer. Falling into the trap of discussing what wines and cognacs Pedrós drinks has hit him where it hurts — in his wine expert’s liver. He can detect direct competition; all that talk about Corton-Charlemagne and Delamain; and hearing someone say that Pedrós knows more about wine than he does is tantamount to challenging the emperor for his crown. And so he adds:

“It’s one thing to say Amparo is still gorgeous, even at her age, and that she’s intelligent and has good taste, but basically he, well, he’s just a fucking plumber. He may have fitted the bathrooms of his Russian clients with gold taps, but he’s still a plumber. That’s how he started out. He knows nothing about cognac or wine. He knows names and labels, but that’s a very different matter. He’s quick on the uptake and notices what the genuinely rich people he mixes with are drinking. He’s the sort who keeps a little notebook and goes into the restaurant toilet to note down the labels of the wines being served with the meal, or which were the most expensive ones on the menu, along with the brand names of the clothes and shoes his fellow diners are wearing, he even notes down words he doesn’t know, but which he notices are considered to be chic. He was on at me for months to teach him about denominaciones , wine merchants, good years and bad years. He bled me dry, like a vampire. Not that I’m criticizing him, mind. At least he did his homework. He’s a conscientious fellow. Hard study can turn even an ignoramus into a sage,” Francisco declares, closing his speech with an unexpected defense of the plumber Pedrós. Like Christ with Lazarus. The Lord taketh away and the Lord giveth back. The Lord is God-like in his generosity.”

Justino yawns and stretches voluptuously, undulating his body like an odalisque in a harem, then he scratches his crotch and sighs:

“It’s such a good feeling when you do rein yourself in and stay faithful to your wife. I’m faithful most of the time, and only occasionally do I allow myself to succumb to temptation, but how delicious those occasions are, no?”

Bernal continues:

“They’re each as bad as the other, it’s been pretty much tit for tat between Tomás and Amparo. She’s done her fair share of over-spending too and hasn’t gone without certain other things either: trips abroad, shopping sprees, days spent who knows where (best not ask); solo visits to Paris, exhibitions, although, having said that, their marriage does seem pretty indestructible. Or it has been as long as the money kept flowing in. We’ll see what happens now. But I think that, at least for the moment, their bond will remain strong as long as they still share financial responsibility. What really binds a couple together are the business deals they have in common or the loans taken out in joint names and that have to be repaid. If you sign up for a twenty-year mortgage, you’re pretty much guaranteeing your marriage for the same period of time. That’s true love. Not mere words that the wind can carry away. The banks don’t keep words in their safes; you can’t buy anything with words or use them as a guarantee.”

Justino:

“When things go wrong, that’s that. Like they say, when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out the window. Unpaid bills put paid to love. The water of debt shortcircuits the electrics of passion. Wow, that sounds like something straight out of an old-fashioned novel or some high-falutin’ essay! You’re the writer, Francisco, take note. Who knows what goes on between husband and wife, it’s forbidden territory, not even a lover has access to the secrets of the marital bedroom, the bedside table with the family photos, the alarm clock, the little boxes with earplugs in them, tampons, KY jelly, it’s years of accumulated habits and obsessions, you get their different versions of events, but you don’t know what really matters, what they owe each other, what money they have, where they keep the safe and who has the keys; that’s what you can’t know, what’s in her name or her father’s name or the name of some spinster aunt above suspicion, they won’t tell you that even if they fight like cat and dog, I know, or I think I know, that they’ve agreed on separation of property. And this bankruptcy could well just be a cover.” He speaks as what some people say he is, one of Amparo’s spurned lovers.

Francisco:

“It’s obvious that the only happy marriages are marriages of convenience, which work like well-oiled machines, with no friction, each partner aware that their aspirations are progressing well thanks entirely to that alliance. It’s really good to see such couples working as a team, having grasped the idea that matrimony is tantamount to being a publicly traded company. They do well in the world, providing each other with total support, each one specializing in a different activity so as to get maximum return on their investment, because they know that whatever one of them gains will benefit them both. Public arguments, disagreements, announcements of a separation make the price of shares on the social stock exchange plummet, damaging the domestic economy, so forget all the garbage that young people and other imbeciles proclaim to the winds, not realizing that they’re devaluing what they have. They believe in being in love and falling out of love, in betrayal and jealousy, unaware that, as soon as what novels and romantic magazines insist on calling ‘love’ gets in the way, you’re fucked. Screwed. An end to all peace of mind. When someone says ‘I’ll love you for ever,’ the affair has already begun to take in water. A mountaineer can’t stay on the peak he’s just conquered, because he’s already reached the highest point. What next? You know that now you have to climb down again and find another K 8000 mountain to climb. Your newly-married neighbor, the office colleague you’d never even noticed before, become new targets. It’s the same with everything. The flames melt it. It’s what happened to the Twin Towers. They melted. At boiling point, the stock in the pan soon evaporates and the stew you were so lovingly preparing burns dry. Ardor only serves to scorch things. The lovers themselves, if they’re truly in love, are in a hurry to end that torment and do all they can to free themselves from it. They force matters. If a marriage is to last, you must never swear eternal love. Rather than a rolling amorous boil, you need a steady selfish simmer on a medium flame.”

Francisco — quite unintentionally — is telling me about his marriage to Leonor, but Justino, despite his radical distrust of all things human and, indeed, of the whole of divine creation — he’s the sort who hears a goldfinch singing at the window and rushes to close it because he thinks it’s the screech of a rat in heat — gathers his strength, sensing that now is the moment to begin to make light of the charges against the accused: you never know who you might be talking to; he’s probably noticed that I’ve only opened my mouth to defend Pedrós and this makes him uneasy. He must know that I’m a partner in Pedrós’s business. And naturally he knows about all the work I’ve done on his properties. As for my bankruptcy, he must be more than aware of that, how could he not know what everyone else knows? Besides, he has direct access to the intimate details of the Pedrós household, not through Tomás, but through her, through Amparo, who he criticizes — his usual strategy — simply in order to conceal their likely relationship; and, quite probably, because he’s a tad jealous, given that Amparo has vanished along with her husband and hasn’t stayed behind, waiting for him, despite the rumored separation of property. People have always said that there is or was something between them, and that some of her disappearances coincided with his business trips. At this point, the conversation — doubtless purely as a precaution — changes in tone. Justino says: