‘What I mean,’ continued the journalist, ‘is that you got to where you are through your own efforts.’
‘Sensu stricto, miss.’
‘Lucía. Lucía Santiso.’
Good, Lucía, good. He felt at ease. He puffed out his chest and came out with one of his favourite quotations: ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’
‘Do you also speak English?’
‘I speak lots of languages. I’m a troglodyte.’
He let out a guffaw. He had no problem laughing at himself. ‘The sea brings everything. Languages float as well. You just have to have a good ear. What do you think of John Wayne?’
The girl smiled. She’d end up being the one interviewed.
‘He’s from another time. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I liked him in that.’
‘A man is a man,’ replied Mariscal transcendentally. ‘That doesn’t belong to another time, miss. That is intemporal. Cinema began with Westerns. And will go to hell, is already going to hell, when there are no more Westerns. It’s the decline of the classic genres. Write that down.’
‘I will do,’ she said agreeably. ‘We were saying you were a self-made man.’
‘Let’s just say I learned how to ride out the storm in my own dinghy. Without fear, but with common sense. You have to pray, yes, but never let go of the helm. What was it that sank the Titanic? A blasted lump of ice? No, it was the pace of greed, a loss of perspective. Man yearns to be God, but he’s just… a worm. That’s right, a drunken worm who thinks he’s in control of the hook.’
‘Mr Mariscal, people say…’
Mariscal pointed with his cigar at the journalist’s notebook. ‘Did you write down that bit about God and the worm?’
Lucía Santiso nodded uneasily. She knew the interview had been agreed between the editor-in-chief of the Gazeta and the lawyer Mendoza. There were a few ground rules. But Mariscal was growing far too much, his head, eyes, arms, everything, while she felt diminished.
‘Mr Mariscal, your name is often bandied about as that of future mayor and possibly even senator.’
Mariscal joked, making out he was on stage: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, before I speak, I would like to say a few words…’ He didn’t carry on until the journalist had let out a convincing laugh.
‘Listen, Lucía… Can I call you that? Yes, good. I’m a dried fig by now, I’m not a danger to women,’ and as he said this, he winked at her. ‘Though dangerous women still get me going. Once a gallant, always a gallant. Don’t write that down.’
Lucía lifted her biro off the paper. She was beginning to have fun and to calm down in time to the boss’s baton.
‘Listen, Lucía, I’m not going to lie to you. Politicians eat shit. Did you write that down? Yes? Then don’t. That’s right, I am apolitical. Absolutely apolitical. Ab-so-lu-te-ly! But put this as well. I, Mariscal, am prepared to sacrifice myself for Noitía.’
He waited for his words to have an effect, but the journalist continued writing in her notebook.
‘To sacrifice myself and to fight for freedom!’
Mariscal accompanied this strong statement by banging his fist on the table.
This time Lucía Santiso did look up, forced to do so by the power of his rhetoric. She found herself face to face with a Mariscal transfigured. Looking serious, with flashing eyes.
‘Freedom! You may think I don’t go in for such a word…’
‘Why would I think that?’
‘Well, I do. I love freedom! Much more than those leeches who are always sucking on it. Freedom, yes, to create wealth. Freedom to earn a living with our own two hands. As we have always done!’
The cigar was forming low clouds, and for the first time Lucía Santiso decided to break a taboo. She looked down at Mariscal’s hands.
He understood. He never spoke about this matter, but thought he would make an exception for this girl who listened and wrote with such intelligent meekness.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why I wear gloves.’
The editor-in-chief had already briefed her on this and had been strangely emphatic. ‘He always wears white gloves. Don’t even think about asking him about the gloves. It would seem he burned his hands while trying to rescue some money from the engine of a tanker. The tanker caught fire. He was taking emigrants to France. It was a miracle they got out.’
Lucía lifted her biro in a gesture of confidence. ‘There’s a journalist at the Gazeta who’s allergic to touching door handles, phone receivers… And typewriter keys.’
‘That’s the one who’ll be in charge!’ said Mariscal, finally getting the journalist from the Gazeta de Noitía to laugh out loud.
‘Don’t worry. I won’t mention your clothing. Just say you dress like a gentleman.’
‘Then you’ll be telling the truth. But I want you to ask about the gloves. There are all sorts of rumours, idiotic comments. All of it nonsense.’
‘Why then? Why do you wear them?’
‘I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve never told anyone before. Because I swore to my dying mother I would never again touch a glass of alcohol. That’s a real scoop now, isn’t it?’
Lucía thought this might be a good moment to ask about something that interested her both professionally and personally.
‘How did you make your fortune, Mr Mariscal?’
‘With culture, basically.’
‘With culture?’
‘Yes, with culture! The cinema, the dance hall… I brought the classics. Juanito Valderrama, for example, singing “El emigrante”! Everybody cried. Now that’s how you show you’re a classic. Of course nobody remembers that any more. My motto was always the same as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s: Ars gratia artis. We even set the benchmark for hamburgers, way before McDonald’s. Ours were better, of course. Nobody gave me anything, miss. But I’m going to let you in on a secret. I have always, always believed in Noitía. Noitía is an endless work in progress. It’s fashionable nowadays to preserve the environment. Yes, that’s fine. But what do we eat? The environment?… Did you include that bit about eating the environment?’
‘It’s a good metaphor.’
‘It’s not a metaphor!’ exclaimed Mariscal, trying to stifle his cough. ‘I already said I was apolitical. There are two kinds of politicians. Those who are off their heads. And those who walk about in water, asking for water. I’m not here to sing carols.’
The journalist decided to broach a sensitive subject in the gentlest tone possible.
‘Which party will you stand for, Mr Mariscal?’
‘I’ll tell you. The one that’s going to win!’
She understood his jokes. Mariscal accompanied the journalist’s smile with a pleasurable exhalation of smoke. He felt jolly.
‘Listen, the only party I’ll stand for is Noitía. I like our way of life. Our religion, family, constant partying… If that bothers somebody, well, that’s their problem.’
‘But in Noitía strange things are happening. Do you approve of smuggling, Mr Mariscal? They say drug trafficking is spreading its nets here.’