A minute later he leaves the Caipirinha café-bar and crosses the street. He passes in front of the newspaper stand, where a woman with many dogs on leashes is chatting with the bored-looking guy who runs the stand. He walks up to the house with the electrified perimeter at the end of the street and stops in front of the wrought-iron gate. The scrupulously polished gold plaque on the gate reads “UMMAGUMMA 2.” A bit farther up he can see the remains of a security camera that someone seems to have beaten with a blunt object. Giraut lifts up the top of Koldo Cruz's personal mailbox and sticks the envelope inside. Without noticing the black Volvo parked on the same block where someone is watching his movements with binoculars. Within Koldo Cruz's electrically delineated yard there are half a dozen workers installing bars on the windows of the first floor. Giraut looks through the bars of the door and sees a very pale young woman with dark glasses who seems to be supervising their work. Then he readjusts his cap on his head and heads off down the street. Once again passing the black Volvo, which has a slight rhythmic vibration coming from inside it, like the vibrations you feel near the dance floor in a disco.
Inside the black Volvo, moving his head rhythmically to the beat of the strictly percussive dance music that comes out of his compact disc player, Juan de la Cruz Saudade watches Giraut with a satisfied expression. With one of those smiles that you only see on the faces of people who think they were born under a lucky star. With the neck of a bottle of Finlandia sticking out of the glove compartment. Saudade folds the fingers of one hand and points it at Giraut's increasingly faraway back, imitating the barrel and hammer of a pistol.
“Bang,” he says. And he moves his hand brusquely to indicate firing his finger pistol.
CHAPTER 40. Wonderful World
Strictly speaking, Barcelona is nothing like the idea that Pavel had of Barcelona before getting onto the airplane that took him there. In general, he finds it gray and filled with cars and ugly people. Not to mention those fat little ladies with their short hair dyed ridiculous colors that go around staring at everyone with hateful expressions. He's not crazy about the Paseo de Gracia either. The brochure in Russian he brought with him in his suitcase said that the Paseo de Gracia is “an art nouveau architectural gem.” Pavel spent a morning sitting on a strange-looking bench on the Paseo de Gracia looking at people and buildings. The most interesting thing he saw were the butts of the female tourists that passed by, their necks twisted upward to admire the building façades. And whose idea was it to paint the taxis yellow and black? A very overrated city, is what Pavel would say if anyone ever asked him. Which hasn't happened yet.
Pavel leaves the Russian book he's reading on the bar of his favorite spot on the Rambla del Raval and looks out of the corner of his eye at the butt of a black woman who is standing beside him. A big soft butt. Ample in every direction. The type of urban landscape that Pavel likes is the kind you see in the postcards of Jamaica he has tacked up near his bed. Short, brightly painted wooden houses with people sitting in some kind of garden chairs in front of the open doors. Colors that make you think of parrots or other tropical bird species. Black women in minishorts strutting among the men with a certain high and mighty attitude. The fact that the Jamaican men in the postcards pay no special attention to the women that parade around in minishorts arouses the suspicion in Pavel's mind that black women in minishorts are a species sufficiently plentiful in Jamaica so as not to be a highly prized asset. So that it doesn't seem preposterous to imagine nocturnal scenes starring Pavel and a black woman with an abundant ass touching each other in front of a fireplace. That is, if there are fireplaces in Jamaica. Pavel's not sure. There's no indication in the postcards. He raises a hand to his increasingly satisfactory dreadlocks in a flirty gesture. He is sure about the palm trees. There are palm trees in practically every postcard of Jamaica that he has in his room. Palm trees are one of the main reasons that Pavel likes to come to the Rambla del Raval and the seaside at dusk. The palm trees and the black women. Another image of Jamaica that often comes into his head is one of him beneath a waterfall in a jungle setting. He's not sure exactly why. One of those small waterfalls that often appear in television ads for soap. In the image, he is beneath the cascading crystal-clear water with his eyes closed, drinking water from a vaguely spiral mollusk shell. It is impossible to know where the image comes from.
The black woman with the ample ass walks to the jukebox with the black man that accompanies her and they both start to flip through the record selection system. A large part of the clientele of the bar is black people. Pavel picks up the package, which is shaped like a box that holds a tie, from the bar and starts to unwrap the Christmas gift wrap. The same gift wrap that his sister's Christmas gifts come in every year. It doesn't seem his sister is very good at wrapping gifts. The paper is always wrinkled and dented and the pieces of Scotch tape are irregular and in the wrong places. The book that Pavel is reading is one of those Russian pornographic novels they sell in the neighborhood Russian bookstore. In paperback editions with unpleasant stains on the part of the pages that you turn. It's unclear how his sister manages to have the same gift wrap every year. With snowmen and candy canes and some sort of little Christmas goblins printed on it. This year's tie is deep red and blue and has some sort of heraldic crest on it. It takes Pavel a minute to realize that it's a tie with one of the local soccer teams' colors. The kind designed to show one's allegiance to said team. He sighs and sticks the tie in the pocket of his combat pants.
The black woman and her black companion have chosen a song on the jukebox and are now dancing in front of it. The scene causes Pavel a slight stab of emotional pain. Black people have a special attitude and a credibility and an authenticity just because they're black. It's unfair. Not to mention the subject of the black man's supposed sexual vitality and genital size. Pavel doesn't so much want to be black as he wants to find a way to develop that same credibility. To be accepted in a way that would make him feel like real Rastafaris must feel, for example. Instead, Pavel is excessively tall and very blond and gangly and, even though he's twenty-nine years old, still can't get rid of the pimples on his cheeks and the area of his neck where he shaves. When he lives in Jamaica, he's already decided, he is going to devote himself to the music business. He'll set up his own discothèque and he'll wear really long dreads and he'll throw parties on the beach that will give him the credibility he needs.
The first thing Pavel notices is the smell. Even before he realizes that the black faces around him are looking suspiciously at something located right behind him. Before he feels the big hairy hand land on his shoulder like a big hairy bird of bad omen. The smell of industrial grease and an abandoned garage where all that's left is the smell of grease. Leon's unmistakable smell of grease.
“Nice tie,” says Leon's high-pitched voice in Russian. Pavel turns to find his compatriot's big, shiny head that's morphologically similar to a bullet. Leon points with his head at the local soccer club tie sticking out of Pavel's pocket. “Can't say it goes very well with the rest of your outfit. But what the hell….” He shrugs his shoulders. “It's a start, I guess.”