The question of Lucas Giraut's childhood birthdays takes up dozens of pages in the secret childhood notebooks that constitute his subjective chronicle of those years. Year after year, Lorenzo Giraut systematically forgot his son's birthday, in spite of the many, not very subtle hints in the form of anonymous notes and red circles in engagement books that Lucas left during the days leading up to his birthday. Often Lucas Giraut wondered if there could have been something true in those systematic and perfectly predictable oversights. In his father's slightly amused expression and in the cheerful melodies he whistled when he got up on the mornings of his childhood birthdays. As he stared at him from the other side of the breakfast table.
“I need to know what happened the night they arrested my father.” Giraut concentrates his gaze on the next blank page of his block of notes with a look of concentration. “I mean the night at Camber Sands. In the summer of 1978. I need to know the details. Someone held the cargo in the port that my father was going to sell and someone called the police. I've been reviewing my father's accounting ledgers and his desk diaries, as well. That night there should have been someone else in the hotel room. Some sort of business partner. Someone who didn't show up. And who called the police.” He starts to trace the contours of a new drawing. With a frown. With the tip of his tongue sticking out artistically from between his lips. Finally he lifts his gaze for an instant in Fonseca's direction. “I need to know if my father was betrayed. And if so, I need to know who it was.”
“Son.” Fonseca looks at him with theatrical fatigue. “Your father was a strange man. Who did strange things, like turn off all the lights and cover the windows with newspaper pages. Or like leaving you the majority of the company stock in his will. Which could only be a joke. A strange joke. Which is why I'm here today. To tell you that your mother is willing to forget everything. To forgive things other people wouldn't forgive, and perhaps to give you a job more suited to your talents. Perhaps in some other part of the world. Let's be honest: you were never exactly the son your parents expected. I think that in many senses the word disappointment could be used.” He pauses. Giraut doesn't, not even for a second, see Fonseca make any sign of being uncomfortable in his hard, rigid chair. “And as far as what happened to your father”—he shrugs his shoulders—“who could know about that at this late date? Your father was a disturbed man. Who associated with undesirables. And it doesn't seem prison helped him at all. When he got out, I don't think it could be said that he was himself.”
According to the hypotheses laid out in Lucas Giraut's childhood notebooks, Lorenzo Giraut's systematic and inexplicable forgetting of his only son's birthday was somehow related to other inexplicable elements of his paternal behavior. Like the fact that he never directly answered his son's questions. Like the fact that he invented strange explanations for everything. Like the fact that he lived and died without letting his son know basically anything about who his father was.
“I know about the Down With The Sun Society,” says Lucas Giraut. He now seems to be prolifically drawing a group of three figures with their arms around each other's shoulders in a gesture of male camaraderie. All three have long hair. “I've been investigating. I know there were three of them. I know they were friends. And I know that they were together in what they were doing.” He pauses and wipes a lock of straight blond hair off his forehead to admire his drawing. One of the three long-haired guys in the drawing wears a coat whose shape seems to suggest that it is a woman's coat. “I need to know their names. Who they were and what they were doing. That's the price.”
Fonseca leans back and the network of shadows on his face darkens until they fuse almost completely with the darkness.
“There's a reason why no one ever spoke to you about those people,” he says. His distance from the light making him inscrutable. “Why your mother kept you far from certain things. Your father had gotten involved with dangerous people.”
“What did the Down With The Sun Society do?” Lucas Giraut puts the finishing touches on the long, slightly tangled hairdos of the figures in his drawing. “How was it involved in what happened in Camber Sands? Were they the ones who betrayed my father? Is that what happened?”
Fonseca looks fixedly at Lucas, for a long moment, his facial cavities and treelike elements beating in the darkness. Then he sighs. He leans slightly forward to pick up his briefcase from some area in the dark at the foot of his chair and opens it on his lap. He takes out a bulky file and puts it on the table. Then he takes his own fountain pen out of his suit pocket and leaves it on top of the file. He taps the paper a few times with the tip of his finger. The scene seems to be frozen in that moment. The two men stare at each other across the table. The treelike beating of veins in Fonseca's temples can only be intuited. Lucas Giraut's hands have stopped drawing and seem to be resting in an alert state on the cartonnier's surface. It is difficult not to think of duelists watching each other with their pistols held high at each end of a frozen field. It's difficult not to think of opponents in an action film in one of those scenes where the action freezes and the camera turns dizzyingly around the two men. It is difficult not to think about inexpressive chess players from the Eastern bloc. Finally Lucas Giraut lifts his eyebrows. He lifts his chin.
To his surprise, Fonseca lowers his gaze.
“They are named Koldo Cruz and Bocanegra,” he says. And he uncaps his fountain pen. “Lorenzo's childhood friends. They were two-bit thieves. Your father was the brain of the operation. Until they got tired of splitting the money with him.” He opens the file to the first page. “Sign on every page. Here on the bottom. On the dotted line.”
Lucas Giraut's hand opens one of the drawers of his cartonnier and puts away his notepad and then the fountain pen he was drawing with. Then he pushes a button on the intercom on his desk and waits to hear his secretary's voice.
“We're finished,” says Lucas Giraut to the secretary. Without taking his eyes off of Fonseca. “Please escort Mr. Fonseca out.”
The silence is only interrupted by the barely audible click of the intercom button on Lucas Giraut's desk when he removes his finger. The darkness that surrounds the two men in the office is like a feeling of uneasiness on the edge of your visual field. Sort of like a headache. Fonseca's face starts to transform. The branches of arteries on his temples change color and texture and swell up noticeably. The swelling extends rapidly through the rest of the blood vessels on his face. Like the expansive wave of an explosion. Like a porcelain funereal mask that has remained intact for millennia at the bottom of a tomb but splits with cracks when it comes into contact with the outside air.
CHAPTER 18. Donald Duck
Tied to a chair in a greasy-smelling corner of the warehouse commonly known as LEON'S GARAGE, THE GREASY GARAGE or MR. LEON'S EMPIRE OF GREASE, Pavel confirms that the last vestiges of his Rastafarian desire to come together with all his fellow human beings in universal love are vanishing. He is tied to the chair in the classic posture of prisoners about to be subjected to an interrogation with torture. With his arms immobilized behind his back and his ankles tied together.
Immediately in front of Pavel is Leon. The owner of LEON'S GARAGE. Sitting backward on a chair. With his forearms resting on the back of the chair and his legs extended on both sides. Which is to say in the classic position of someone about to use torture as an interrogation technique. Leon runs a gigantic hand through his greasy hair and exhales a mouthful of Russian black tobacco smoke toward Pavel's bruised face.