The Professor was in full flow, heaping elaborate insults on some of his Barcelona colleagues (some of whom he had once favoured, but now regretted doing so), when Vidal came over to us, friendly and smiling and slightly teasing, as was his way, at least with me. He was about seven years older than me (so he would have been about thirty at the time) and bore a remarkable resemblance to Paul McCartney: his nose, cheeks, even his eyes were rather like the ex-Beatle’s, except that his skin was a little lined or pockmarked. His Republican family had always been good friends with mine, especially with my aunt and uncle, and he and I had known each other since we were children or, rather, since I was a child and he was an adolescent. The difference in age meant that, while we had never considered ourselves to be friends exactly, that same age difference allowed him to treat me in a fraternal fashion, taking on the role of older brother. He was like one of those people you’ve known all your life and with whom you tend not to make any special arrangements to meet up, but with whom there’s always an immediate sense of deep trust and familiarity whenever you do run into them. His grandfather, an ophthalmologist and lawyer (the first career, oddly enough, didn’t earn him enough to live on in the 1920s and 30s), had ended up in prison at the end of the Civil War, and on his release, he was further punished by being banned from exercising either of his two professions, and so in order to survive, he had to set up one of those agencies that helps people deal with labyrinthine Spanish bureaucracy. His grandmother, for her part, had had all her hair shaved off before being sent to clean the Falangists’ latrines. As for their son, Vidal Secanell’s father, he had been charged with sedition because, as a very young man, he had fought for the Republican side; luckily for him, though, the case against him was dismissed. Then, in the 1950s and 60s, he had set up a branch in Mexico of the record company Hispavox and made a fortune, which meant that he could send Vidal to a good school and to study medicine in Houston, which served him very well when it came to working towards his specialism, cardiology. Despite his family antecedents, Vidal had got on well and met with no difficulties, thanks to hard work, efficiency and a certain astuteness, that is, an ability to dissemble when necessary and not to antagonize those people he despised for professional or political reasons. Unlike Rico, who gloried in proud insolence or frank impertinence or gleeful arrogance, Vidal was one of those people who could put any antipathies, not to mention moral judgements, on ice. Such people reserve such judgements for when they’re needed and bring them out at the propitious moment. And I clearly constituted a propitious moment, even if only because of our long fraternal acquaintance.
‘Well, I’m very glad to see you in better company than of late. I was beginning to get worried,’ he said almost as soon as he saw me. And holding out his hand to the Professor, who often appeared in the newspapers and even occasionally on the television, he added warmly: ‘An honour to meet you, Professor Rico, author of Small Man’s World.’ Vidal was well read, or at least attentive and with a retentive mind.
Rico held out one languid hand (he had a cigarette in the other) without bothering to get up, and could not resist correcting Vidaclass="underline"
‘You mean Man’s Small World. Why on earth would I write about a small man? I leave that to the author of Tom Thumb or The Hobbit, assuming you know what that is.’ He was already being rude, or heading in that direction. The Hobbit was not particularly well known in Spain at the time. ‘And you, sir, are?’
I made the necessary introductions. Vidal sat down with us, abandoning the two men and two women, possibly colleagues, whom he had been with at the bar. He waved his almost empty glass at a passing waiter, indicating that he should bring another beer to our table, where he was clearly intending to stay for a while.
‘What do you mean “in better company”?’ I asked anxiously, the usual response to a brotherly reproach. ‘We haven’t seen each other lately, in fact, not for ages.’
‘You may not have seen me, but I’ve seen you, two or three times. And the reason I didn’t come over or make myself visible was precisely because I wanted to avoid the utter bastard you were with. What are you doing going around with a man like that? It’s one thing me having dealings with the man, because we worked at the same clinic and he was a colleague, but you don’t even have that excuse.’
Then the penny dropped. Vidal must have seen me with Van Vechten on café terraces, in discos or bars. As I mentioned earlier, in 1980, the whole of Madrid went out at night, regardless of age, respectability or profession.
I was slightly put out, but only slightly, after all, my mission, now cancelled, had been to ascertain more or less whether the Doctor was what Vidal had just said he was, or had been in the remote past. I was about to bombard him with questions and listen to his answers, but Rico, for whom the penny had not yet dropped, got in before me, filled with a doubtless prurient curiosity:
‘So who is this utter bastard young De Vere has been fraternizing with? This is news to me. Come on, out with it, Dr Vidal, I love hearing about dirty deeds, even contemporary ones. They pale into insignificance beside the classics, of course, but it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, so chocks away and let the dog see the rabbit.’ He had a penchant for idioms, sayings, proverbs and the like; some of which he invented or used in a way that was incomprehensible to me, I couldn’t understand what those chocks, dogs and rabbits were doing there. He topped off his request with one of his indecipherable onomatopoeia: ‘Fúrfaro.’
‘Why is he an utter bastard?’ I finally managed to ask. ‘As a doctor? That’s not what people usually say about him. He’s an expert in his field. And everyone says how well he behaved in the 1940s and 50s. I’m sure you’ve heard that too. It’s true, isn’t it, Professor? Isn’t it true that Dr Van Vechten helped people who suffered reprisals after the War? Like your own family, José Manuel, you must know that. There are loads of testimonies to that effect.’
Vidal drew his chair closer to the table and lowered his voice a little, mainly, I assumed, given what he told us — although I assumed this only once I’d heard what he had to say — because we were in the Salamanca district, which, even now, is heaving with Nationalists nostalgic for the late dictator, even more at that time, when he’d only been dead for five years, which, to nearly all of us, felt more like twenty — so quickly, impatiently and eagerly had he been dispatched and forgotten.
‘Yes, I know the story. That’s the official version, the favourable version, the legend that has lingered on and which has suited him perfectly because it’s meant he could be accepted everywhere. He’s always played both sides off against each other, with no preference for either. He’s clever, I can’t deny that.’
‘Come on, Dr Vidal, spill the beans. I’m all ears,’ said Rico contentedly and as if the story were intended for him. He didn’t seem to care two hoots or give a fig about his excellent relations with Van Vechten (those absurd idioms are as infectious as swear words, once they come into your mind).