He plunges into the water again. Being underwater fills him with a quite peculiar feeling of power. The power of powerful creatures that live under the sea. He decides that he's a shark. Gluing his hands to his sides and moving the way he imagines a shark would. It's definitely the most fun thing he's done in a long time.
“I'm a shark,” he tries to say underwater.
But the only thing you can hear is an unintelligible gurgle.
CHAPTER 65. Fire Ball (2)
In the opinion of Mr. Bocanegra, Barcelonian Showbiz Impresario and the Main Non-Paternal Figure in this story, the Universe is an abandoned service station by the side of the highway. One of those run-down service stations at the mercy of the elements. Abandoned by the highway administration and the chains of roadside franchises. With broken windows and cracked walls covered with water damage. With those faded signs that are missing letters, the kind photographers usually take pictures of to represent the relentless advance of time. Of course, none of these ideas as such has ever passed through Mr. Bocanegra's head. It's not that Bocanegra has ever consciously made those associations and decided that he could establish a satisfactory analogy between the Universe and a service station. It's that for him, deep down in his brain, the Universe is a service station.
The dramatic sunset reflects on the surrounding hills and the buildings in the service station just like certain Caribbean skies reflect on the crystalline waters of paradisiacal beaches. Strictly speaking, this isn't a moment in the story. The characters in the final scene are stock-still, the way characters in some action movies freeze in sculptural groups in the middle of an action scene. With the camera spinning dizzily around them along an impossible axis. Valentina Parini is paralyzed in the air, in the middle of an ecstatic leap. With her arms and legs splayed out.
And the universe is an abandoned hotel. A haunted house. One of those enormous buildings with the windows broken and boarded up. With the inside filled with garbage and rats and wild animals. With long halls filled with strange sounds with tattered curtains at the end, swaying to a ghostly gust of wind.
And Mr. Bocanegra, Showbiz Impresario, owner of the recently shutdown nightclub The Dark Side of the Moon, is in the middle of the group of people standing in the parking lot of the abandoned service station. With his arms still held high. With his mouth and eyes open very wide and the palms of his hands facing the general direction of a group of Slavic men that have just gotten out of the recently arrived cars.
“A week ago we put one of those things on your car.” Koldo Cruz shrugs his shoulders and looks around. “Every time you get in your car to go buy a quart of milk, there's a satellite telling us where stupid Bocanegra is buying a quart of fucking milk.”
In Bocanegra's opinion, evil nieces and nephews are unquestionably the main population of the Universe. Scampering through dark, dilapidated hallways the way evil kids scamper in movies. Lifting their knees high. Softly singing lullabies to themselves in evil tones. With short pants and lace dresses and other stereotypically childish clothes. With evil smiles and bloodstained chins. With messy hair and open mortal wounds in their skulls. But there's something more. Something that you can't see at first glance. Something that was once there, smiling in a much less evil way when the universe wasn't yet a haunted house. In the happy days when the cafeteria at the service station was filled with that thick cafeteria light, and between its walls the sound of programmed radio music was heard, and there were people lining up with trays filled with food in front of the cash registers. Something soft and warm and almost forgotten.
Valentina Parini brings both hands to her chest and makes a sound like “ughhh” and sticks out her tongue the way kids do when they are pretending they've been shot in the chest or are having a heart attack. The newcomers look curiously at the small, alarmingly skinny figure that seems to be looking at them with her T-shirt over her face and her torso covered with ballpoint pen drawings. Several feet from where the scene is taking place. Valentina tosses her head way back and extends her arms in a gesture of slow agony. And she falls onto her bare knees on the concrete ground and continues acting out her death in slow motion, with her tongue out and her eyes rolled back in her head.
What could have been forgotten between the cracked walls of the abandoned hotel? Like those things that are inexplicably forgotten in dreams: homework to do or tests to take or babies wrapped in baby blankets. Mr. Bocanegra's life isn't flashing before his eyes in a simultaneous confluence of temporal events. Somehow, what's going through his head at that moment is the simultaneous confluence of spatial coordinates. The universe reduced to a place. Life reduced to a stage. And without his being conscious of any of this as such, nor as a mental image he can recognize, Mr. Bocanegra is in that place. In that haunted house. Which in turn is inside his mind. And magically transported to the foot of a concrete staircase covered with the crumbling remains of a carpet, Bocanegra touches the termite-eaten railing with his brow furrowed and looks at the fingertips of one hand. With an uncertain look of recognition. And he goes up the stairs covered in the remains of carpet and walks through a dark hallway, dodging the evil nieces and nephews that scamper by and finally arrives at a full-length standing mirror covered by a sheet that is in the place where the window with tattered curtains should be. And he moves the sheet aside.
“Blah, blah, blah,” says Valentina, in some part of the hallway. With her face covered by her shirt. Bringing her fingertips together rhythmically the way kids do when they want to show that someone is talking a lot. “Blah, blah, blah, blah.”
And in some part of the house all those lost things should be found. The era of the lines with trays in the cafeteria and the cheap souvenir shops. The story of the three friends and the woman with the furious face and the promises made in crowded pubs on Tottenham Court Road. And all the rest too, of course. The fake business fronts and the meetings on board ships. The meetings on ship deck, with both parties dressed in wool coats and hats. The call from a British police station after Lorenzo Giraut was arrested in Camber Sands. The money accruing in Swiss bank accounts and the active capital of companies located on fiscally convenient archipelagos. And the hasty calls and the secret meetings. And the explosion in Koldo Cruz's house. The first house called Ummagumma. And “The Fletcher Memorial Home.” The song that plays in the abandoned house is “The Fletcher Memorial Home” by Pink Floyd. With the flaming pieces of Koldo Cruz's house raining over the streets of Pedralbes. And everything deteriorating a bit more with each passing year. Everything cracking and sinking and getting covered with water stains. As the Swiss bank accounts were filling up with money.
“Blah, blah, blah,” Valentina keeps saying. Faking her own death in slow motion. To one side of the group of Slavic men led by Koldo Cruz and Leon that are aiming at the group composed of Bocanegra, Lucas and Iris.
This is what you can see if you look closely at Valentina Parini, with her shirt over her head and her no-longer-childish belly covered with mystical drawings: the beginning of an absence. The shadow of an absence. Something still too subtle to define itself but which clearly indicates the beginning of a process. The first sign that Valentina is already starting to pass to the other side of the story.
Bocanegra approaches Koldo Cruz. With his eyes still glued to him. In his face rage and cruelty are combined with a new element: some sort of fundamental ambiguity. His face is still trembling. The wrinkles on his forehead continue to redefine and reorganize themselves in a way that some could only define as tectonic. Tracing intricate fractal designs made of folded flesh. His mouth is still a horrible grimace. His hand lifts, trembling, to signal to Cruz. One of the Slavic thugs kneels to pick up the gun he has dropped.