Thrust lock, stock, and barrel into that farce I’m recounting, I began increasingly to wonder how I could take life away from little Margarita. A mere thought became an obsession, a wish, a necessity, as if by committing such an act, I could put aside the bloody chalice of my past for once and for all. I only imposed a single condition to purge my consciousness completely: she should be fully aware I was the one sending her the ultimate gift of death.
Even if every inch of my behavior was investigated, it could never be said that I’m a criminal, or, conversely, that I display the usual conventional prejudices against crime. Men’s painful acts are predetermined, that’s why they commit them. Likewise their playful forays. Destiny is a book beset by meaningless replies. I hardly had to rack my brains to concoct the means; Providence deemed fit to mete out its sarcastic punishment by having it come to me while I was having a pee in my office toilet. I could have paid the rate and hired a local thug to get rid of her, but it was out of my hands. I could have ordered my chauffeur to knock her over any Saturday I wished as she left her bingo hall, and, for the right price, he’d have obeyed my orders and not argued, but I didn’t do that, either.
Events developed apace a few days after that trip to Ciudad Real, and everything happened within the bounds of my own office. Because of my blight, I have to perch on the pan when peeing, just like a female, though in reverse, with my torso always facing the wall. How he tricked the security systems controlling access to the building and managed to overcome the restricted entry to my floor is something I’m in no position to explain. One enjoys a beautiful view of Madrid from high up in my bathroom. The tops of the highest buildings are within my purview, sometimes hidden in smoky mists of cloud, and nothing vitally important seems to happen in the labyrinth of streets, the same streets where I tanned the leather of my youthful hide in a life of petty crime. Right opposite, in the distance, one can see the top of the aerial of the Telefónica building on the Gran Vía and, slightly to the right, the flat roofs of the westward-facing Edificio España. The city is unreal from so high up; there should be a ban on constructing into the heavens.
Perhaps he gained entry by swinging off one of those platforms used for cleaning skyscraper windows out in the elements, but I didn’t ask. While I was peeing, and recreating in my mind’s eye the voluminous spectacle of little Margarita, a brutal shove suddenly bashed my face against the lavatory cistern. My lower lip split as it hit the lid, and a streak of ruby-red blood stained the icy-white porcelain. Still not grasping what was happening, I felt a nasty kick in the ribs that really hurt my insides. I remembered Blond Juana and the time I accosted her in the lavatory in the party locale, but these blows were more accurate and more vicious. I looked up, and the first thing I saw was the slanting scar starting on the right cheek that split his face in two. “You must have stolen one hell of a lot, dwarfy, to get so high, and you didn’t remember your friends one little bit, did you?” Years of suffering had slimmed him down, with the help of a rapacious infirmity; he was half bald, missing teeth, and, above all, was no longer handsome. “Hey, Handsome, don’t trample on me, take your foot off, I can’t breathe.” Handsome Bustamante laughed over me, the holey sole of his trainer pressing down on my chest, on the point of bursting my lungs. “Well, well, Goyo, you’re not the clown you were, you don’t laugh at your friends’ little pranks no more, the good life means you’re not as humble as you used to be. Pity your luck’s run out.” Bustamante thrust his right knee into my stomach and ran the edge of his knife along my lower jaw. “I’ve been after you for years,” he said, splattering me with gobs of saliva. “Prison is a good place to work out revenge, there’s a lot of time in the pipeline and not much to do. When the lights went down, the sound of your disgusting squealing echoed round my head night after night, and my blood would start to boil; only a hit of horse could dull my desire to kill you, but to get those I had to sell my ass to the dealers. Look what’s left. I’m no good even for buggery anymore, and now you’re going to pay for all the damage.”
The merciless, heartless, impious prison air had implanted its shadows over handsome Bustamante’s body. From prison to prison, from cell to cell, like a pilgrim of the holy bars, Handsome had learnt to put up with life with a mixture of resignation and scorn, seasoned with the oil of revenge. After the great amnesty release, he’d pursued me for weeks, then tired of enquiring on street corners and opted to inject china white into his veins, beating people up, stealing, living poorly off whores — the kind that bring neither profit nor pleasure, who’ll suck you off with a mouth full of chewing gum — working the streets to the limits of what’s healthy, till he fell in with two other guys and snuffed out a queer jeweler who traded in bits and pieces, little knickknacks. Beatings, sexual favors, and the meanest squealing, such exemplary behavior thus earning him over the years the third degree treatment, and the big scar that sailed across his face bore witness to his private little hell. Infectious gawkiness had replaced the agile, angelic movements that once made him so admired on the high wire. He was like a mortally wounded animal that might still have clung to a lingering beauty, an animal caught in a rusty trap that destiny had laid with its eyes shut. Time hadn’t showed him one iota of pity, and his lordly, youthful arrogance had shrunk to a frightful bellow, and the last straw, his stinking breath spread manure over every word he uttered. “Have the guts to not kill me and get the most out of me, Handsome,” I said with no conviction. Right then nobody would have bet a counterfeit coin on my life, and yet Handsome, perhaps out of nostalgia for the past, stood and looked at me thoughtfully while the point of his knife gently stroked the wall of my jugular. “What do you mean ‘get the most out of you’?” he asked, intrigued. “The most I’d like from you is to see you dead.” I implored him to go easy with the pressure of his knee on my chest. I knew that if I could offer him a credible way out of these desperate acts, I might be able to save my skin, at least for a day. I sweet-talked him all I could and calmly went about persuading him. “There’s nothing we can do to change the past, Handsome,” I drawled, “forget it and try to enjoy what you can get out of life, for as long as you can, if you use your wits. Let me give you the means. Look at me, don’t you see how I live in a land of milk and honey. I’m no use to you dead; alive you can have my money.” Handsome Bustamante’s eyelids drooped, he removed his knife, and, with obvious reluctance, listened to the offer I made, which he accepted, without a qualm. A pity. It cost him his life.
What won’t a man do for money — swindle the innocent, defecate in public, renege on his religious convictions? Money is the measure of all things in this world, those that are what they are, and those that aren’t what they aren’t. Money relaxes the sphincters and relieves stress; whoever’s got some knows so, whoever handles the stuff guesses it’s so. What wouldn’t you do for money — bear false witness, eat worms straight from a corpse, murder whoever you were told to? I was telling handsome Bustamante about my plan to end little Margarita’s life, and he thought it a wonderful idea, provided the reward was substantial. “You name the price you want. Half now, the rest when you’ve done.” Handsome Bustamante accepted the deal; one death in exchange for another wasn’t a bad fix if rich pickings were on offer — for the two more days of life the syndrome would have granted him, that is. I insisted on only one thing: that before ending little Margarita’s life, he should recite to her on my behalf a few lines from Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, so she could be under no doubt that however much we struggle on, the past always comes back to defeat us. I wrote them on a piece of paper while we waited for a small suitcase to arrive with half of the amount in cash Handsome had agreed to as his price. “Is everything all right, Don Gregorio?” asked the security guard who’d been told to bring the money when he saw that hoodlum by my side. “Yes, Jimmy, everything’s fine, leave us alone, please.” (Security men are yet another symbol of the uncertain times we live in — if you can pay for them, that is, if not, you’ll simply be on the receiving end.) When Handsome finally left my office, he looked and stared at me as if something strange were troubling him inside. “What did I ever do to hurt you, Goyo?” he asked. “Nothing you’d ever accept as an explanation.” “Why did you pin the death on me, you bastard?” he asked again nervously. Nobody had insulted me like that in a long time, and coming from Handsome on this occasion, it inevitably reminded me of the night when Frank Culá died for love. “I don’t remember, Handsome,” I lied, “time erases everything. The only thing I can say in my defense is that it wasn’t me, it was the justice system that clapped a life sentence on you. What’s more, you already had problems with the law. Blame Lady Justice and not me, take it out on her apparatus if you’re still so angry, and if you do, remove the blindfold over her eyes for me, will you, and stuff it up her cunt, like a sanitary towel, so when it blows up it doesn’t spatter the world. I’ve just bought you oblivion. Now, in exchange, try doing what I’ve paid you to do. When you’re done, we’ll be quits. Nothing else matters, Handsome; can’t you see nothing else matters anymore?”