The Boys (7 page)

“Mind telling me what you're doing with that?” his father asked. “You can take it with you, alright? You can throw it into the woods, you hear me? I don't ever want to see it again!”

I was playing with the shotgun. It went off. It would be
the prosecutor's word against mine. And who wants to kill his own father? And why? They would let him off precisely because it was his father.

What difference is there between any old guy and your father? Why should it be any less natural to want to blow your father away? Children have power over their parents, because children are the only ones who know the truth about them. They have a lot of information—not only genetic—they have knowledge, they know better than anyone what's going on inside their parents. It's not parents who know their children—parents know their kids through themselves, like a replica, not an original, and anyway, they've gotten too old, they're muddled up, can't keep things straight—it's the children who know their parents: they have inherited the secret codes, the incriminating information, the definitive proof.

If he left the shotgun on the table for his father, was there any possibility that he would use it? None. His father had always known where the shotgun was. Miqui put on the safety, covered it with his jacket, and left the apartment. As he went down the stairs —there was still time to go back—an embolism started to form in his brain, the pool of blood that would have emerged from his father's pajamas; blood that spread over the floor, so clean he could see himself in it, blood of his blood drawn in blood, father and son, each mirroring the other.

II

The truck was waiting for him at the back of the lumber warehouse. He jumped into the cab, put the shotgun down on the seat beside him, started the engine, and went out onto the street with the feeling that he was opening tunnels with the nose of his truck.

He floated over life's miseries. He could see abandoned yards behind the fences, with yellow grass and pools covered with blue tarps waiting for summer. He could see into the houses through their windows and searched among the shadows for the silhouette of a married woman, welcoming in her nest. He extended his hand and touched the cold metal of the shotgun, gave it his warmth, made it his, real, sensitive, and powerful as an erection. He was against emasculated life: only discomfort and discord opened your eyes, you had to set up a disconnect with the world if you didn't have one, a personality that allowed you to separate yourself so you could see it. But you also had to have the courage to accept the world, accept the bribe of light-filled days like today. Days when you
pull back the curtains and the world is fucking awesome. Pull back the curtains and find it crystal clear, set up perfectly for you to live in, all of it in perfect harmony with you.

He had a CD of romantic ballads, Celine Dion, R.E.M., Mariah Carey, songs to get you in the mood that he'd downloaded a few years back, the music of the moments that gave life meaning. He put it on and imagined himself the day before, the truck seen from the heavens like in a film, the bird's-eye view of a boat transporting bales of hay, a merchant ship with its deck covered in golden containers, big gold ingots crossing the smooth sea of the fields of Vidreres. Every day was harder, every day it cost him more to fill the tank, it was true, but most of the other truckers had it worse; he had seen it coming and had come up with a plan in time, printing up some cards and giving them out before business was a total bust:
MIQUEL TRUCKING
/
TRANSPORT ALL TYPES
. He had to put up with his father, but it could be a lot worse. His father had stagnated, but he'd been saved by mixing it up; with Ahmed, anytime they could, they alternated another trip to the construction site with some other kind of transport job: a piano for a promoter, some friend of a friend moving houses, the kind of jobs that at the time were of no interest to the construction truckers, who would only take them on for exorbitant sums. He'd gotten clients by handing out cards and posting ads on the Internet, and so now he could just as easily be asked to transport refrigerators for a store as five hundred folding chairs for an event, six tons of dirt, dead trees and shrubs cleared out of a garden, a few hundred boxes of potatoes, a load of hay bales, or a small boat.

He wasn't the only one who suffered attacks of optimism.
In recent months, balconies and windows had filled with independence flags, and the local center-right and center-left governments had hoisted Catalan flags at the traffic circles leading into their towns. He saw them constantly in his truck, some bright and new and others already faded by sun and rain. The cowardly Catalans were now lifting their heads, counting each other, and discovering there were enough. It's not that they'd gotten any braver: the enemy was off his game. They pointed each other out, recognized each other. For every real estate agency or bank that closed, a half-dozen independentist flags appeared in windows and on balconies. Near every flag was a sign or two that read
FOR SALE
. Apartments for sale. Commercial spaces, industrial warehouses. The whole country for sale, like a whore.

They consoled themselves by hanging up flags; he knew a few people who were trapped by their mortgages, title-holders of apartments filled with useless rooms, owners of second homes they'd never pay off in towns they'd only been to two or three times in their lives. They couldn't visit their properties because they couldn't afford the gas. For ten years everybody was rich. What a scam. Four bricks slapped together on any open patch of ground was the business of the century. There was some for everybody. You walked over diamond mines. People bought apartments like they were buying shoes—every street had a real estate agency. Everything was a great opportunity. You found brochures with residential offerings at the hairdressers', in bars, in dentists' waiting rooms, and in public bathrooms. The local governments kept enlarging the area zoned for construction, everyone was lining their pockets. Miqui could do seven
trips a day carrying construction materials. Maçanet, Sils, Vidreres, Riudarenes, Santa Coloma de Farners, big towns inland, this armpit of the world was filled with cranes, giant crosses for the crucifixion no one was expecting. The politicians came out on TV to say that everything was going gangbusters. Buy! Get into debt! The Catalan president, a socialist, when everything was already starting to crumble, still kept it up: Buy! Spend! What bastards. It was part of the business. Now, along the road you saw the last construction projects, stopped. The cranes still there for a few months before they started to take them down, whether or not the buildings were finished. There wasn't a single one left. Just construction sites. Concrete skeletons. Abandoned streets with sidewalks, streetlamps, and trash cans, lots ready for houses that would never be built. Housing developments in the middle of the woods that would be covered over by vegetation like prehistoric cities. Houses and apartments for sale on the one hand, people evicted on the other. Young people living with their parents or emigrating. A real model society. And now they were talking about independence, now that they'd gone bankrupt.

Who had set all this up? Passing through the square he saw retirees stooped over golden pétanque balls, the lines they made etching tangled squiggles. Selfish old men…with their sun hats, they lived the same lives as the retired Germans who came here to live like kings while our young people had to emigrate to Germany to work in their Nazi factories. Only the old people were left. Buses filled with teenagers set off for Mindelheim, Dresden, and Frankfurt; they signed agreements to deport kids for professional training. They would
never return. It was for the young people's own good, according to their parents and grandparents, but the truth was their pensions depended on it. They went to say good-bye to their children and grandchildren at the bus, and then they came back to continue the game.

What could you expect from towns like Sils? That's the way it was. Some car accidents, some flashers, some embezzlements, some robberies at some farmhouses, some pederasts, and a few crimes of passion. Married women whose kids were at school chatted all day with men like him, until they were found out by their husbands, the ones who had jobs to support the family, who couldn't devote their time to such amorous refinement. Who knew what fantasies they entertained about their wives' affairs after those wives informed them they were leaving them for someone else. The first thing that went through the husband's head was to run to the kitchen and find a knife. There was a case every year, in Sils or Riudarenes or wherever; not long ago it was a policeman in Caldes, his wife had left him and gone to live with her sister: the cop slit his sister-in-law's throat in the yard, in front of his nieces—It's your fault! You filled her head with lies! Then he stabbed his wife, but immediately regretted it: he drove her to the emergency room where they saved her life; meanwhile, the sister-in-law bled to death as her daughters screamed and cried.

He turned off the music. In the Serramagra industrial park, also empty, its large buildings covered with
FOR SALE
/
FOR RENT
signs, an independence flag waved above a concrete wall covered in graffiti. He stopped the truck in front of the gate. He honked the horn, and Isma came out to open
it for him. The walls enclosed a large lot filled with piles of tires. There were hundreds, piled up by size: truck, car, and touring motorcycle. Isma was a guy his age. He made his living from his contacts with mechanics and dealers. When a junker came down the pipeline they called him and gave him a couple of hours to switch the tires for some completely worn out ones from the shop. For Isma, the accident in Vidreres was a business opportunity.

Today, Miqui hadn't come to get tires for his truck, but rather twenty or thirty useless ones for a moving job. There was a huge mountain in the middle of the yard, and on top hung the independentist flag he'd seen from outside, shiny and new at the top of a long pole.

“I have to go pick up a boat,” Miqui said. “The owner hasn't paid rent on the mooring for months, and they don't have a boat trailer. It'll fit on the flatbed, but I need some cushioning for the base and sides.”

They threw some tires onto the truck bed. Then they spread them out on the floor and tied some to the walls.

“Any news from Ahmed?” asked Isma.

“He must be in Morocco.”

“He's lucky he can leave this piece-of-shit country.”

“Yeah, like the rats.”

“Fuck off, you antisocial jerk. You want to stay here, don't you? Look what I do to make a living. I had to sell my motorcycle. All I have is this shitty van to go pick up tires. It's even older than your truck. I sold off my car for next to nothing and then my bike. Not you, you're not married. I walk here every day, I've got enough dough for three or four months, and then it's over: I'll have to sell the apartment at a loss, and
I'll be lucky to find a buyer. What do you think they'll give me for it? They're lying in wait. I'm in hot water up to my neck and all because of fucking Spain and this den of thieves. Holy hell, Miqui, they screwed us every chance they got, and now they're squeezing the last bit of life out of us; soon we won't even be able to complain, because we won't have any strength left. They've fucked up my whole life, and yours, and your father's too—they made out like bandits. I don't understand where you get your patience. Look at the king and his family. Millions and millions of euros in their pockets, the whole government is corrupt, everyone here is on the take . . . everyone except us, we're the ones who pay the price. I really don't get you. They fucking screwed your father! They stole everything; they've been making trains nonstop so they can get the commissions, high-speed rail in a country that needs to keep buying cars, for fuck's sake, they don't care that they're ruining our industry, they couldn't care less, they've killed the hen that lays golden eggs . . . look at me. You think I deserve this? You know how hard I've worked? We've got to open our eyes, Miqui. I'm up to my neck. I can get by for four months, tops, then I've got nowhere to go except back to my parents', and Tere and the boy will go to her parents', because we won't all fit in my in-laws' apartment . . . We need to move toward independence, everybody knows that, and fast.”

“They'll line you all up against the wall in front of a firing squad.”

“Fuck you. Europe won't let that happen.”

“No, they'll rush to save you all. That's why you put up the flags. Never seen such a thing. You guys have put up your own targets.”

“Now you're telling me you're afraid. You? You want a flag? Why don't you put a flag in your cab? Maybe you've got it wrong and they'll shoot everyone who doesn't have one. We're past fear. Young people have nothing to lose, and a lot to gain.”

“Young people never get off the Internet. They have no idea about the world.”

“If we have to defend ourselves, we will. I have a 3-D printer. You know what that is, right? You can make a gun.”

“A plastic gun? You're an idiot,” said Miqui, opening the passenger-side door so Isma could see his shotgun. “I want to hang it from the roof. Can you help me?”

“Are you getting ready?”

“I'm always getting ready.”

He passed Llagostera on the left, with its church above a row of houses, then went down the Alou glen and entered the Aro valley. In Castell d'Aro they'd put up a Catalan flag as large as a swimming pool. It overshadowed the valley and waved in the tramontane, the dry, luminous, cleansing north wind that burnished the coast. Against the backdrop of the sea you could already see the small white skyscrapers of Platja d'Aro, the summer apartments that were now empty. He turned onto the tourist stretch, filled with deserted shop windows and closed bars. He crossed the Ridaura bridge and reached the canals of Port d'Aro. They had built up the whole area in recent years, putting in a complex with movie theaters, supermarkets, a gas station, a hotel, and new apartment buildings.

He passed a closed campground on the side of a hill, and found the chain-link fence at the end of the street open. Two
men were waiting for him at the foot of the launching crane. Miqui got out of the truck and glanced at the yachts, sailboats, and cruisers that swayed in their moorings. The port was deserted, the brunt of the tramontane was concentrated right there, he could see it and hear it, like the wind awakened the present moment. The tinkling of rigging, the creaking of naked masts, and the grazing of metal cables reached him so clearly that it was as if it were all right beside his ear. He would like to have a boat: offset the kilometers of asphalt with nautical miles; float freely on the weekends in a world made entirely of roadway; go fishing in the winter; speed off to the horizon with an outboard motor in the summer, the nose lifted and some chick sunbathing on the bow—a flesh figurehead. And then dive into the sea; the cruiser would be an island for the two of them, the sea a mattress of water, far from everyone, and one day they'd sail leisurely to Morocco to see Ahmed. Hey, Ahmed, take a look at this!

He consoled himself, watching the boat he'd come to take away arrive slowly. Beside the registration numbers there was a name in Cyrillic letters. Some fucking Russian was losing his pleasure cruiser. It was being towed by a teenager in a workboat. The boy stopped beneath the travel lift, tied up his vessel, and jumped onto the motorboat. It wasn't small, it had a command bridge for the driver, berths with portholes, and a Spanish flag on the front. The boy led the straps that hung from the crane down under the hull, first on the stern and then on the bow. He jumped on land, and the lift began to hoist. The boat rose out of the water like a large dead fish. The lift operator lowered it slowly, still dripping, onto the truck, fitting it between the tires. Miqui strapped it
down. The whole gunwale stuck out, white with a steel railing, and the command bridge was taller than the truck's cab.