Southern Seas (9 page)

‘Will you eat with me, Señor Carvalho? My partner, Señor Planas, tells me that you breakfast on fried eggs and chorizo.’

‘I said that to beat off his dietary assaults.’

‘Planas has never learnt the pleasure of eating. It has to be learnt around the age of thirty. That’s when human beings cease to be imbeciles—and in return, they have to pay the price of growing old. This afternoon, I’ve decided to have some morteruelo and chablis. Do you know what morteruelo is?’

‘It’s a kind of pâté from Castille.’

‘From Cuenca, to be precise. A most striking pâté. Made of hare, pork shoulder, chicken, pig’s liver, walnuts, cloves, cinnamon and caraway. Caraway! A fine word for an excellent flavour!’

The mulatto had the scent of a homosexual stud—a solid, fragrant, woodish kind of smell. He placed before Carvalho a tray with a tall, clear, shapely quartz crystal glass on it.

‘You will doubtless agree with me that it is quite unspeakably bad taste to drink white wine from green glasses. I’m against the
death penalty except in cases of nauseating bad taste. How can people deny wine the right to be seen? Wine must be seen and smelt before it can be tasted. It requires transparent crystal, as transparent as possible. It was some vulgar French
maître
who started the fad for green glass. Then the more vulgar elements of the aristocracy took it up, and since then, it’s moved down to department-store windows and the caterers who do weddings for social nonentities. There’s nothing so infuriating as a lack of culture when people have the means to avoid it.’

It seemed to Carvalho that the purple veins had grown a shade darker beneath the thin layer of face powder. The Marquess of Munt had a graceful sort of voice, like that of a Catalan radio actor who is continually trying to conceal his accent and ends up with a weird Castilian pronunciation. The mulatto brought two dishes full of morteruelo, two sets of cutlery, and two baskets containing small rolls.

‘Drink, Señor Carvalho, before the wine comes to an end, before the world comes to an end. Remember what Stendhal said: you do not know what it means to live unless you have lived before the revolution.’

‘Are we living before the revolution?’

‘Without a shadow of a doubt. A revolution will come soon. Its shape still has to be decided. But it will come. I know, because I have devoted a lot of time to political science. And then I have Richard, my Jamaican servant. He’s a great expert in drawing up astrological charts. A great revolution is approaching. Is something disturbing you? The Carbero sculpture?’

The menacing needle was a sculpture. Carvalho felt more secure.

‘I’ve spent years and years trying to educate my class by force of example. They’ve defended themselves by accusing me of being an exhibitionist. While I was racing hot-rods, my classmates were begging in Madrid for permission to import an Opel or a Buick. When I separated from my wife and went to live with
some gypsies in Sacromonte, word went out to all the high-class homes in Barcelona that I was never to be received again.’

‘Where did you live in Sacromonte?’

A shadow of vexation passed across the marquess’s eyes, as if Carvalho had tried to cast obscure doubts on something as clear as crystal.

‘In my cave.’

He drank some more wine, and contentedly watched Carvalho do the same.

‘The aristocracy and high bourgeoisie of Barcelona are scouting for servants in Almunecar or Dos Hermanas. I look for mine in Jamaica. Rich people have to display what they’re made of. Here everyone’s afraid of displaying it. During the civil war, some FAI people came looking for me here, and I received them in my best silk dressing-gown. Their leader asked me: “Don’t you feel ashamed to be living a life like this, with everything that’s happening in the country?” I answered that I’d feel ashamed to be going round dressed up as a worker without being one. He was so impressed that he allowed me twenty-four hours to pack and leave. I went over to the
nacionales
and was unlucky enough to get involved with the Catalan group in Burgos. A bunch of upstarts who changed sides in order to remain ambassadors. As soon as I entered Barcelona with the
nacionales
, I lost interest in their whole operation and took advantage of World War Two to do some spying for the Allies. I have the Légion d’Honneur, and every 14th July I go to Paris for the Champs d’Elysée parade. My style of life ought to merit some attention from this fat ruling class in Catalonia. But not a bit of it. Now they’ve discovered bottled wine and goose with pears. They’re a million miles from their grandparents. The ones who made Barcelona a modernist city, big tuna fish in a land of sardines. They too were rather uncouth, but their blood pounded in rhythms that were Wagnerian. Nowadays it pounds to the rhythm of some TV jingle. You are a plebeian who drinks chablis in fine style. I have been watching you.’

‘Did you pay a low rent for your cave in Sacromonte?’

‘It was the biggest one I could find with no one in it. I went to a luxury shop in Granada and bought a turn-of-the-century English iron bed at three times the price that I paid for the cave. I put the bed in the cave, and spent some very happy years trying to promote gypsy singers and dancers. Once I collected a folk group and took them to London in their performing clothes. Imagine: flowing dresses, thick country boots, Cordoban sombreros, false beauty marks, carnations blossoming from their hair. At London Airport, they wouldn’t let us through immigration. “You’re not coming into the country looking like that.” I asked to be shown the laws which banned people from coming into Britain in their work clothes. There was no such law, but they still wouldn’t let us through. Finally I rang Miguel Primo de Rivera, who was then ambassador in London, and explained what was happening. They sent us some embassy cars and escorted us into the country under the protection of the diplomatic corps.’

‘Have you been as imaginative in your business life?’

‘It hasn’t been necessary. While my father was alive, it was all plain sailing. He respected my personality. He knew that I was creative and that I needed to change my life and other people’s. When he died, I was nearly fifty years old, and came into an absolutely staggering inheritance. I put a lot of it into fixed-interest securities, so that I could live like a prince for the rest of my life. I used some more to compensate my wife for bearing me five children, and I made them my heirs. With the remainder, I set myself up in business, always using fellows like Planas or Stuart Pedrell. Fellows with drive, with a fierce ambition for power, but with the possibility of gaining only economic power. Planas is an impressive and dangerous operator: in four years he can triple any sum of money you care to give him. Eat and drink, Señor Carvalho, before the revolution comes.’

He gave no opportunity for the conversation to take a different track. His observations were entirely self-centred, and he went on to talk of his travels.

‘Yes, Señor Carvalho, I stand guilty of having travelled three times around the world—by ship, by plane and by land. I know all the worlds there are to know on this earth. I don’t have time today—Caballé is singing
Norma
at the Liceo and I don’t want to miss it. But another day, I’ll take you round my private museum. It’s in my ancestral home at Munt de Montornés.

‘It alarms me that the possibility of enjoying life seems to be disappearing. It’s not just a question of money, although that’s not unimportant. When I was a child, I discovered what happiness was, what pleasure was—in a piece of pumpkin and a slice of salami. Have you read
Cuore
by D’Amicis? Nowadays, the educational experts rule it out of court, but it was part of the sentimental education of my generation, and probably yours too. I remember one scene where Enrico, the young hero, goes on a trip to the country with some of his school friends, including Procusa, the son of a bricklayer. In fact it’s Procusa’s father who organizes the trip, and at one point he gives them a slice of pumpkin with salami on top. How does that strike you? I find it truly marvellous. A simple joy in nature and in spontaneous eating. You have to wait for Hemingway before there’s an eating scene that even compares. In
Beyond the River and Into the Trees
, he describes in simple language a scene with a fisherman eating a plate of beans and bacon that he has cooked over a fire by the river. None of the great banquets of baroque literature come anywhere near the meals in
Cuore
and Hemingway’s short story. But such possibilities of enjoyment are coming to an end. The stars don’t lie. Everything is carrying us towards death and extinction.’

‘But you’re still making money …’

‘It’s my duty.’

‘You’d be ready to defend your heritage by every available means. Even war.’

‘I don’t know. It depends. Not if it was a very dirty war. Although I suppose that any war can be made to look attractive. But no, I don’t think that I’d come round to supporting violence.’

‘So? What are you afraid of?’

‘That an era in which necessity rules over imagination will deprive me of this house, this servant, this chablis and this morteruelo—although the morteruelo may just survive, because the left has recently promised to preserve the “hallmarks of popular identity”, and cooking is one of those.’

‘Stuart Pedrell tried to escape from his condition. You take yours on, and try to turn it into an aesthetic. Planas is the only one who works.’

‘He’s the only one who’s alienated, although he doesn’t recognize it himself. I’ve tried to help him. But he has the balance of an unbalanced mind. The day he looks in the mirror and says “I’m mad”, he’ll fall apart.’

‘I imagine that your pessimism stems from a fear that the forces of evil—the communists, for instance—will become masters of the things that you love and possess.’

‘Not just the communists. The Marxist horde is more diverse nowadays. It even contains bishops and flamenco dancers. They’re fighting to change the world, to change man. If the struggle between communism and capitalism keeps to the road of peaceful competition, communism is bound to win. The only escape open to capitalism is war, so long as it’s a conventional war without nuclear weapons. But that’s going to be very difficult to achieve by agreement. So, there’s no solution. Sooner or later there will be a full-scale war. The survivors will be very happy. They will live in a sparsely populated world and enjoy the technological legacy of
millennia. Automation plus a low population. Perfect! Just keep the demographic pressure under control, and happiness will become a real possibility.

‘You may ask what kind of political regime will prevail in this heavenly future. Well, I’ll tell you. A very liberal social democracy. If there’s no war, and we continue along the path of co-existence, we’ll reach a blockage of growth in the capitalist system, and maybe in the socialist system too. Have you read Wolfgang Harich’s
Communism Without Growth
? It’s just been published in Spain, but I’d already read it in German. Harich is a German communist, and he predicts: “If the present rhythm of world growth continues unchanged, mankind will disappear in two or three generations.” He advocates a communism of austerity—a model for economic survival that is opposed both to the capitalist programme of continual growth and to the Eurocommunist idea of an alternative controlled development, financed by taxation of the masses and designed to secure the rule of the working class. I’m already an old man and I won’t live to see it.

‘I’m not particularly worried about what will become of my family. What does sadden me, though, is the thought that Barcelona and my beloved landscapes will disappear. Have you ever seen the sun go down over Mykonos? I have a house on Mykonos, built on rocks which face the setting sun and the island of Delos. I love beautiful views. But there are very few people that interest me—in an emotional sense, I mean. Stuart Pedrell and Planas are like children to me. I could almost be their father. But they have too many ties to this century and the one to come. They believe in the rising curve of history, that humanity is progressing. Of course, they see it from a capitalist perspective, but they still believe in it. Planas is standing in the elections to the CEOE—the “Employers’ Union”, as the press calls it. I’d never have done anything like that.’

‘Of your alternatives for the future, which would you lay your money on?’

‘I’m too old for betting. Everything will happen after I’m dead. I haven’t got long to go.’

He poured Carvalho some more wine and filled his own glass to the brim.

‘It was a Goytisolo,
Distinguishing Marks
, which taught me to drink white wine between meals. White wine was also used to sensational effect in the Resnais film
Providence
. Until then, I’d always stuck to strong-bodied ports and sherries. But this is a real blessing. It’s also the alcoholic drink with the fewest calories—if one excludes beer. Which white wine do you drink?’

‘
Blanc de blancs
, Marqués de Monistrol.’

‘I don’t know it. I’m a fanatic for chablis. This one in particular. And if it can’t be chablis, then let it be an Albariño Fefiñanes. It’s an impressive hybrid, with roots in Alsace or Galicia. One of the best things they brought us along the road from Santiago de Compostela.’