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:
“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.”