El poder no corrompe

Llevaba palestina de marca y medía sus tierras en desiatinas. Parecía entender los textos y te llamaba camarada, pero bajo la superficie no llevaba más que desierto. Bucear en su falta de personalidad era ahogarse al vacío. El coste que suponía hacerle lucir pobre era suficiente como para alimentar a quienes despreciaba por dentro. Era de esos que decían: "si yo hubiera vivido en tiempos del caudillo, habría sido un espía en la sombra; un rojo que a la luz del blanco y negro parece gris", pero referirse al cabrón del Generalito llamándole "caudillo" en lugar de cacique le delataba. En su juventud se había tatuado dos frases de La Internacional en francés donde sólo dejaba que le iluminasen bombillas. Tenía sentido, pues tener más interés en las apariencias que en saber idiomas no le permitía entender el texto, que tranquilamente podía haber sido escrito en cantonés. Era ateo pero se persignaba antes de arrojar los dados. Era demasiado tonto para hacerse el listo y demasiado listo para hacerse el tonto, así que, creyéndose rojo maquillado de gris y siendo más cercano a lo contrario, se volvía transparente tras unos minutos de conversación. Por eso le gustaban las prostitutas, porque no querían explorar más allá de su corteza. No buscaban desgajar ni mondarle el alma, sino pelársela. Era la única transacción honesta de la que había sido partícipe en su vida. Tampoco se hacía ilusiones al respecto, pero sí disfrutaba de la brevedad que caracteriza a los perfiles virtuales. Se decía que su "yo" de la red era el verdadero. Un "yo" decorado, de tramoya. Tan falso como sus historias y sus colores y su ropa y sus textos.

La conoció a través de una equivocación fingida en las redes sociales. Ella se interesó por su máscara y él se dejó enamorar por su piel. Por una vez en su vida pensó en otro ser humano como tal, aunque en sus fantasías previas al primer encuentro se le escapó referirse a ella como "puta" un par de veces. Se dijo que ella podría ser quien cambiase esta costumbre y así fue, por un tiempo. Había encontrado a su alma gemela en tantos aspectos que poco tardó en aflorar lo que ambos llevaban dentro. ¡Hurra! Podían ser ellos mismos. Y lo fueron sobre una alfombra kilométrica de sueños ajenos. "El poder corrompe" se dijeron, pero no era cierto. El poder destapa.

25 Pesetas

Esto es un ensayo que escribí para la clase de inglés que estoy haciendo ahora. El asunto era escribir algo autobiográfico -sin preocuparse por la puntuación, de ahí que las comas y demás se ajusten a mis lenguas nativas.

25 Pesetas coins have a hole in the middle. Most Spaniards my age have worn them around their neck at some point, tied to a string. 

Play.

«É que vos non vedes que todo isto facémolo por vos»[1] he said. He was talking about taking legal action against the town council. Pepe was a proper officer. He was more than that: he was a copper and a hardcore unionist. Our work as “community support” made his police work a lot easier –we directed traffic during the busy summer months-, but it represented the town’s aim to keep paying him a ridiculous salary whilst avoiding to hire new police officers. I see it now. Our needs conflicted with those of the population. We bet on “then and there” and we bet against ourselves. I see it late, and now I’m living in a different country. I see it on the news. I see it now.

            Any given day I could have been waving my hands at passing cars whose drivers actively tried to make derisive eye contact with the kid wearing a blue “police’s bitch” polo shirt. But we were on our own that day. He hated me and we were sitting together, separated by a gear stick and a dark cloud. I reached out to him, curious, and I got a several hour long lecture about the king, republics, Das Kapital, Francisco Franco and workers’ rights. These are now subjects that interest me, that have become a priority in my day to day life. Not then. Not until the property bubble burst. A storm was abrew and I didn’t even know how to open an umbrella. Now all of us Spaniards are soaking wet, and Pepe –copper, unionist, Nostradamus- will probably retire saying «xa volo dixera eu[2]». And that he did, he told us so.

            We were talking, which is more than my old “community support” brothers could ever say. Pepe had found a listener. Class was in session. The dark cloud was starting to dissipate. Then someone yelled out his name. They might as well have been saying mine.

            I could see the owner of the old haberdashery running towards the car. He didn’t look well. His frown wasn’t angry, but near tears of incomprehension. His eyebrows and lower lip seemed to attract each other like magnets. A thread of voice made its way out of the shuddering old man’s throat: «Morreu a do seghundo.»[3]

            «Got it» I thought. «Some lady who lived on the second floor is now dead. What’s that? Pepe is looking, don’t look bothered. Am I even bothered? Not really. I’m a modern guy. I live in a world where dead, alien things look like “those dead, alien things from that movie” or videogame. Mimesis? What is mimesis? Life imitates Art and I have seen Art, therefore I have seen the real thing.»

            We parked the car and got out. The old man kept talking about something he hadn’t actually seen and at one point he looked straight at me. I remember it well because I sensed malice in his words. Somehow, during that moment of confused, mixed feelings, he had found the time to hate me and my polo shirt. «A Garda Civil está no piso, pero só son rapaces». That meant the Spanish gendarmerie was already in the woman’s flat, but they were “only kids.” I understood his concern, not his look of disapproval. I never will.

            As we approached the building, “oglers” gathered around us. “Morta[4]” this, “morta” that. Tourists spoke “death” in several languages. Muerte, mort, morte. I even saw some smiles that screamed “happy coincidence”. Nothing surprising. I was ready. The edifice was old and didn’t have an elevator, so we walked upstairs and met a 19 year old wearing a green uniform. We exchanged solemn looks. «Suicidio[5]» he said, welcoming blue uniforms into someone else’s flat.

            The smell. I think about it now and I cannot get it out of my nostrils. I thought I should breathe in through my mouth, out through my nose. That way the smell wouldn’t rot my insides. I wouldn’t catch “the death”. I looked around the room. An empty bottle that had contained her weapon of choice lay on the floor. She was on the bed, but nobody would have thought her to be asleep.

I remembered the movie Se7en. «Gluttony», I thought. She looked heavy. She had short hair. Her exposed shoulders looked like cracked alabaster. I couldn’t see much. Yet.

            We talked to “the greens” in the kitchen. The 19 year old we had met at the door was pale and decided someone should wait near the front door. Pepe asked me several times if I was feeling OK and I said “yes.” After an uncomfortable wait, the forensics scientist arrived and we all walked back into the smell. She looked around the room and took some photos, bagging evidence methodically. Her examination didn’t take too long. She took a step back and gave Pepe a “go ahead”. He said loudly: «Démoslle-la volta[6]», and we proceded to flip the body. The young green excused himself.

            The whole scene had looked clean enough thus far, but the forensics scientist said the corpse was in “livor mortis” stage, which means blood had already started to settle in the lower portion of her body –now exposed. At this point the heart no longer agitates the blood and gravity does what gravity does.

The only living woman in the room took out a tape recorder and began to pronounce a speech containing the words “brain”, “leak”, “ears” and “pillow”. The scientific jargon puzzle was as simple to put together as it was disturbing. I held myself together. Then, I saw it.

            Her purplish hand was clutching a picture. The part of the photo her thumb didn’t cover showed a much younger –and very much alive-, happy woman hugging a smiling child right in front of London’s Camden Lock. London. Camden. My obsession. I often dreamt about moving there to teach English to the myriads of  Spaniards that seek a future in the cultural capital of Europe –if not the world.

            The smell had gotten to me.

I let the others do their job –at that point I could be nothing more than an obstruction- and I turned to a massive bookcase on the corner of the room. More photos of England decorated the shelves. Nottingham, Wiltshire, Liverpool, Cambridge. The other tenants housed by this shelving system were distributed in categories that dangerously resembled the ones that governed my personal library. A shelf for travel guides. A shelf for English grammar and study guides. A shelf for Spanish grammar and study guides. A shelf for novels in English, grouped, not alphabetically, but by authors’ nationalities... And the titles! I had read and owned almost all those novels, even those I found to clash with the rest of the selection seemed to be new: unread.

            I wanted to meet the lonely woman who once lived in a small, lonely flat, found “so early” simply because some neighbour thought it strange that she hadn’t come out to wish her a good day in the last few revolutions of a planet that won’t stop spinning for anybody, but at the time seemed to turn increasingly faster.

            Pause.

            Her parents arrived. Alien parents. Sad, quiet father. Angry, straight-to-business mother. She didn’t care. She was worried about paperwork and expenses. The man cried silently. It was obvious they had known this day would come sooner or later, but one could look at the father on his chair and see pure regret. The other chair was empty. Someone who once had surely been called “Mum” as a first and last name ran around trying to move on to the next issue: selling the apartment. Her empty chair and her busy tongue didn’t show regret, but anticipation.

            I wanted to scream at her, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the right and, as she would have rightfully pointed out if I had opened my big mouth, I did not know the hows and whys. I know I didn’t. I still don’t. But if I had to guess, I would say that only the shrivelled up, weeping old man knew the right answers to these questions.

            My work was done and I sneaked out of the kitchen, where people were now smiling. I went back into the smell.

I said goodbye, and just as I was leaving the room, I saw a little plastic box full of coins. There were old coins from different countries, nothing special, but one caught my eye. 25 Spanish Pesetas sat atop the coin pile. Before the diseased Euro landed on Spain we had Pesetas. Their value seems worthless nowadays but when I was little, those coins –worth about 15 cents- meant a bag of sunflower seeds and some candy. At first I thought that money felt foreign, but now I know it wasn’t. Euros are foreign. The leaking carcass on the bed had once exchanged Pesetas so she could buy some novels in English. There was probably at least one of those Twenty-fives in her pocket the day she smiled for a photo at the Camden Lock Market.

Fast forward.

            I spend a night in London at least once a year. It’s my favourite layover in a neverending commute between the United States and Spain. That time -like most times- I left my bags at a hostel in Tavistock Square and then I took the 214 to Camden Town Station. I got off the bus and I left the tattoo parlours behind. I stood under the bridge, the one with the big yellow letters, and I took an imaginary picture. I kissed the coin that hangs from my neck. It had a metallic taste. It was made of bronze, but that’s not what I tasted.

I took a look at the photo I’d just taken. It was blurry, but that didn’t matter. I have tons of them: one for every visit to Camden to remember someone who reminded me of myself.

---

[1] You kids don’t see that we’re doing all of this for you

[2] I told you so

[3] The lady in the second floor died

[4] Dead

[5] Suicide

[6] Let’s flip her