“Congratulations, Bob Marley,” he says to Pavel. “Your cop boyfriend's here to see you.” He swings the bunch of keys he has in his hand with a distracted expression. “It's amazing how cops love you.”
“I don't think he's that handsome.” The other guard looks at Pavel with a calculating expression. “I don't know why the police love him so much.”
On hearing this, the Ecuadorians' body language transforms into gestures of penitentiary contempt. One of the Ecuadorians spits on the floor of the cell. Pavel lets himself be handcuffed, goes out into the corridor escorted by the guards and takes a last look at his bunk with an almost nostalgic expression.
“Don't come back,” says the guy from Minsk as he takes his Russian pornographic novel back out from under the mattress. “Please.”
The group composed of Pavel and the two guards travels through a muddled succession of hallways, stairways and rooms. Pavel can't make out any trace of cruelty or sadistic pleasure in the guards' faces, or any other traditionally penitentiary or police attitude that he's familiar with. In the visiting room, Commissioner Farina is at a table on which sit a thermos of coffee, a pile of plastic cups one inside the other, half a dozen croissants and various paper napkins. Beside the napkins are a group of the kind of folders that are used to transport police files. Commissioner Farina is flipping through a magazine about cars as Pavel sits at the other side of the table and waits for a guard to take off his handcuffs.
Pavel glances around. Several inmates at the other tables of the visitors' room look at him with expressions of penitentiary contempt. Pavel sighs. Commissioner Farina looks up from his automotive magazine as if he had just realized Pavel was in front of him and nods with admiration.
“Those hair things of yours have grown a lot,” he says, closing the magazine and leaving it on the table. Commissioner Farina has one of those chubby-cheeked faces and that very dense, black hair that are common in male adults from Barcelona. “The last time I saw you they were so short you looked like one of those puppets on TV.” He furrows his brow and turns to the lackey standing behind his chair. “What do they call those puppets?”
“Puppets?” The lackey frowns. “I think I know the ones you mean.”
“Doesn't matter.” The commissioner rolls up the magazine and starts hitting the edge of the table rhythmically with the rolled-up magazine, as if he were playing a simplified version of a drum kit. “The important thing here is that we're very happy to see you. We haven't seen you in months. Come by the station once in a while. You're neglecting us.” He makes some sort of sad face. “We're so happy to see you that we wanted to bring you a present. Some Bob Marley CDs or something like that.” He turns toward the police lackey again, still playing his simplified drum kit. “Did we bring him his Bob Marley CDs?”
The lackey seems to be staring at the legs of the wife of one of the prison inmates that are looking at Pavel with contempt.
“CDs?” says the lackey without taking his eyes off the woman. “I think we forgot them.”
“We forgot them.” Commissioner Farina shakes his head the way people shake their head when they want to emphasize that something's a real shame but, in the end, that's how life is. “But let's see. We must have something to give you. What do we have around here that we could give you?”
He kneels down and gets something from under the table. He places it on top of the table. It is a plastic tray with Pavel's street clothes, along with his watch, his wallet, his keys and his pack of cigarettes.
There is a moment of silence. Commissioner Farina and his lackey smugly contemplate Pavel's terrified expression.
“No,” says Pavel finally. After looking at the plastic tray with his belongings for a long moment. His terror seems almost moral in nature. As if in the tray there were a check for a million dollars in exchange for his letting Farina fuck his sister.
“No what?” asks Commissioner Farina. Leaning a bit over the table as if he was having trouble hearing what Pavel was saying.
“No,” repeats Pavel. “No way. I don't want to leave.”
“You don't want to leave?” Commissioner Farina points with his head around the visitors' room. “This is jail, son. Everyone wants to leave.”
Pavel finds Commissioner Farina a perfect example of the kind of humankind that makes the vast majority of his universal Rastafarian concepts fall apart. A perfect example of the things that he doesn't like about the so-called civilized Western world. When he sees signs of Western decadence of Farina's stature, Pavel starts to feel tired and depressed and in a bad mood that seems to screw him into the chair he's sitting in, there in the middle of the visitors' room. That seems to multiply the force of gravity.
“We want you to leave.” Commissioner Farina opens the thermos and fills a couple of little plastic cups with steaming coffee. “You're going to waste here. I've always thought that you had a lot of potential.” The commissioner waits for his lackey to respond with a sycophantic little laugh. “A kid like you. So elegant. So tall.”
Commissioner Farina takes half a dozen little plastic cups from the pile and spreads them out on one side of the table. Then he takes the croissants and spreads them out on the other side. He takes the thermos and places it at a point equidistant from the group of little cups and the group of croissants.
“Imagine that all these things on the table are your friends.” He points to the group of little plastic cups. “Those are Leon's gang. Russians like you. Lifelong friends. And you've got that little one that's had an operation on his vocal cords. What's his name?”
“Something Duck,” the lackey prompts.
“These ones over here are Bocanegra's gang.” Commissioner Farina now points to the group of croissants. “More recent friends, but good friends just the same. You've got your old friends and your new friends, too. That's life. And what else do we have?” He points to the thermos. “Turns out you also have a sister. A dancer, says the file. I see there's an artistic streak in the family.”
“One day I went to the bar where she works,” says the lackey. Looking out of the corner of his eye at the legs of the woman who is now standing as she ends her visit. “I like those Russian babes.”
Commissioner Farina shakes his head.
“He's kidding,” he says. “We wouldn't do something as disgusting as lay your sister. But let's just say your sister has paid your bail. Your sister hasn't actually paid your bail. I doubt the poor girl knows how to pay someone's bail. That is, if she had the money. And if she even remembered you exist. But just between us.” He leans over the table to say something in a confidential tone. “We forgive you. Arrivederci.” He makes a gesture with his hand as if he were waving good-bye. “And don't you forget to visit us every once in a while.” He smiles with his chubby-cheeked face. “And don't change your cell phone number.”
In Pavel's opinion, the civilized Western world is a giant ocean of shit where everyone ends up drowning, sooner or later. Pavel doesn't really know if the rest of the world is an enormous ocean of shit or not. The only thing he's sure of right now, at that table filled with croissants and little coffee cups, is the basically shitty composition of the civilized Western world in which he currently finds himself. With no little islands in view to grab on to. He also has no doubt that right now he seems to find himself in the middle of the largest concentration of shit he has ever seen in his life.