Rafael Chirbes - On the Edge

“I know Tomás well. He’s spent money because he had the money to spend, but above all because it suited him to do so. For every euro he’s squandered, he’s earned a hundred. He’s used it, let’s say, for PR purposes; that’s how he’s always earned his money, by sticking his nose into other people’s businesses and involving millionaires in his various projects. Why else would he invite a whole legion of old crocks onto his yacht? To get money out of them. Retirees who have chosen to end their days by the sea — Germans, French (the English out here don’t have yachts, they’re too low-class), and who everyone else ignores. They’re bored stiff here and feel sad because, in old age, they have finally come to the realization that money doesn’t bring happiness (as if old age were not a stupid addendum to life proper). He takes them out for a sail, provides them with a hammock on deck, serves them a plate of salted tuna when they’re on the high seas, a few toasted almonds for their very white false teeth to bite into, a little glass of wine (well, a little glass of wine never hurt anyone, it’s recommended by cardiologists, rheumatologists and endocrinologists), tries to make them feel comfortable, cared for, listens with interest to the problems they have with their children, grandchildren and daughters-in-law, and simply by listening he becomes the ideal son, grandson and son-in-law, they adopt him as the son they would like to have had (what son would ever treat them so well?), they spoil him as they wish their grandson would allow them to spoil him, they love him just as they would love a daughter-in-law if she was all she should be, the kind to prompt a few erotic dreams. He offers them the understanding and complicity they wish they received from their wives. The trouble is that now with the crisis, Pedrós’s yacht barely leaves its moorings because gas is so expensive. The banks aren’t giving out any more loans (now, they’re in the business of getting loans from the government) and going for a weekend sail beneath the blue Mediterranean sky costs a fortune what with the soaring price of gas, and so, he wasn’t even able to try to save himself by casting his net in the fishing ground of the elderly, though they wouldn’t have rescued him anyway, because it’s one thing to wheedle the occasional tip out of them or to ask for a helping hand when necessary, but quite another to stand before one of them and say, point-blank: Herr Müller, I need eight hundred and fifty thousand euros. What’s giving a bit of small change to their boy entertainer (a letter of reference for some new project, a “loan” of eight or ten thousand euros, a box of Moselle wine, even a Patek Philippe watch as a birthday gift)? That’s quite different from actually getting out your wallet and handing over a large wad of money. That’s a serious matter — requiring careful consideration, evaluation and expert advice. They may be capricious and old, but they’re not stupid — they’ll pay for a toy, but at a toy price. They’d been prepared to keep shelling out just enough to make sure the fun would continue, but not a euro more; they’ve made their investment (as people usually do), thinking of the profit they might make (opening doors locally). We’ve known for centuries that there is no such thing as a generous rich man, generous people tend to run aground in the stages preceding wealth, when, for a while, they point wildly back at the coast, but then they drown. Their corpses disappear forever, buried in the sea of the economy or the sea of life, which comes to the same thing. They die in poverty.”

Francisco:

“A few days before he disappeared, Pedrós came to see me in tears. It’s not the over-spending, he said, as I know people are saying, but the lack of income that’s done me in. I swear to you on my daughter’s life, and she’s the person I love most in the world. I haven’t gone out on the town or been to a brothel or with anyone else in months. I swear. I spent money while I had it, when I could afford to spend. But now it’s all gone. Paying for materials, paying wages, paying for publicity, of course, but with no money coming in. You pay, but no one pays you, that’s the problem. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. I’m not the only one who’s been caught. Do you know how many local businesses have disappeared? Not closed, but simply vanished, gone: you go to the office to get your money, and the office isn’t there, I don’t just mean that the doors are closed, but you look through the window into an empty room, with papers and boxes strewn all over the floor, and when you try to find out who is (or was) the owner, no one knows. And the guy you dealt with, the one who signed the receipt, had no right to sign it, he wasn’t even an employee. That’s the worst thing. It’s as if you’ve been working with ghosts, phantoms from the other side. I’m not the only one bankrupt either, Tomás told me in tears. Fajardo’s, the building suppliers in Misent, has closed, and Magraner’s has fired half its staff and is about to close. I know this for a fact. And Sanchis, the furniture supplier and Vidal who used to sell blinds. And Ribes. And Pastor now does his own bricklaying when anyone asks, because he’s laid off all his men, more than fifty of them. And Fajardo’s has auctioned off all their material, for which they got a pittance (I mean, who’s going to want to buy building materials, machinery, a backhoe or a crane nowadays?), and they’ve paid what creditors they could and shut down. And Rodenas has gone back to Jaén or Ciudad Real to pick olives alongside Moroccans and Romanians and Poles, can you imagine, a developer working with immigrants, with scum, his poor chilblained fingers frozen on those icy Andalusian mornings.”

While Francisco is talking, all the while carefully avoiding my eyes — which means that, during that conversation, Pedrós must have mentioned me among the victims of this chain of disasters — I can’t help thinking that, if this were the jungle, we would be watching the lianas beginning to twine their way around the window frames of the closed shops, to climb the walls of abandoned apartment blocks, smothering the empty penthouse suites with their foliage and thick woody stems. A lost city, like in the adventure movies we enjoyed when we were kids. For days and days you hack your way through the jungle, then, suddenly, you stumble upon a vast city, all overgrown with leaves and scrub and full of temples, statues, buried treasure. The fantasies of Jules Verne and Salgari.

My friend concludes his speech:

“I don’t know how this is all going to end, Pedrós said, whether the country will emerge from the crisis or not, but what does it matter to you and me, Francisco? There’s no way out of our crisis, we know that. It’s like Carlos Gardel says in the song: Downhill all the way. He was feeling terribly low. I felt really sorry for him.”

Bernal:

“What did he mean ‘ our crisis’? Is that what he said? Is he seventy years old, like you? He’s only about forty-four or forty-five. God, he’s a sly one. He really has a way with people, trying to draw them in. You and him, two retirees contemplating their final days together. As if he wasn’t already plotting some new deal. I bet he is. This bankruptcy business is probably just some new strategy or other and it’ll turn out that all they’ve impounded is pennies, because anything valuable is in Amparo’s name.”

Yep, everyone here is still talking about Pedrós, even though, as far as I know, they’re not among his creditors — although I’m not sure where he stands with Justino — and the suppliers he hasn’t paid will be talking about him for months, and so will the people who hated him and are pleased to see him go under, and the employees he fired and their poor families; and by the ones who’d have given anything to be invited to go for a sail on his yacht. That’s his lasting bit of fame. Better than nothing, I suppose. I may be doing my best not to mention him, but I think about him all the time. I may not be making any contribution to his long-term fame, but I do keep his memory alive. The people who talk are the ones who would’ve gladly paid a fortune to watch him go under, as well as those of us who did pay a fortune for him to watch us go under with him. I take my last sip of beer, listening to them discuss Tomás’ fall from grace, and think that I should be able to get at least a couple of hours’ sleep tonight. The alcohol’s doing me good. I glance at my watch, and Justino notices. He says: It’s after eight o’clock, Esteban, time for your Colombian girl’s shift to end. During the game, I drank a black coffee with a dash of brandy and two glasses of punch. Then, when we left the card table, and continued chatting at the bar, I’d had three glasses of beer, or was it four? More or less what I usually drink in the evening. I don’t know if that comfortable feeling that wraps itself around you when you leave the bar is thanks to the card games or the alcohol, but you leave the bar as if borne along, floating on a cotton-wool cloud. I consider suggesting to Francisco that we have a gin and tonic together, from one of those bottles of Bombay Sapphire or Citadelle that the bartender keeps especially for him.