uncomplicated but at least thinkable.
He was relieved of one pressure. He did not belong to the man he’d known as his father and yet … there had always been something. They were inextricably joined, but … by what? Had it been as simplistic as Julio had said? That Javier walked the earth as a constant reminder to his father of all his failings? Was he the emblem of hate? Or was his father’s final act as ambiguous as we all are. Our constant needs make us weak. Adversity leads us down some treacherous paths to worthlessness and despicable acts, but there is always that draw to the power of the original connection. Raul to Arturo. Ramon to Carmen. Francisco Falcon to Javier.
His father, in forcing the journals on him, could as easily have been saying: ‘Now you know the kind of man I was, feel free to hate me and absolve yourself.’
Javier turned. Julio was still standing in the doorway, waiting. Shaking, Javier stretched his arm out and pointed the gun at Julio’s face whose facile beauty had disappeared, leaving his features dislocated by his insanity.
‘Come to me,’ said Javier, not unkindly and Julio complied.
He walked right up to him until the gun barrel touched him between the eyes.
‘I’m not going to shoot you,’ said Falcon, whose other wrist was still tied to the chair.
It happened quickly. Before Falcon could even think of words that might penetrate the deranged mind before him, the boy’s hands flew up into his face. One gripped Falcon’s wrist and the other pressed his trigger finger and the colossal noise of the gun shot filled the room and the patio and echoed through the empty house.
Julio cannoned backwards and crashed through the glass doors on to the patio. His blood spread across the marble flagstones towards the stone circle of the fountain.
By 11.00 p.m. the levantamiento del cadaver had been completed and the Juez de Guardia, who was not Esteban Calderon, had left. Ramirez finished taking Falcon’s preliminary statement with Comisario Lobo in attendance while all the relevant evidence was removed.
By 11.30 p.m. Lobo was driving him to the hospital to have a stitch put in his eyelid. Lobo recounted how he’d secured Comisario Leon’s resignation. Javier didn’t respond.
‘You know,’ said Lobo, as they drew into the hospital, ‘there’s going to be heavy media interest in this case, especially … due to your father’s unusual involvement.’
‘That was Julio’s intention,’ said Javier. ‘He wanted the maximum and most shocking exposure possible … as any artist would. It’s out of my hands now. I’ll just …’
‘Well, I hope … I think I can help you control that.’
Javier raised an eyebrow.
‘We should confine the story to a single journalist,’ said Lobo. ‘That way you can put your version of events forward, rather than having it torn from your hands and transformed into some lurid fantasy.’
‘I have no fear of that, Comisario, only because I don’t think any editor could think of anything more lurid than my father being a brute, a pirate, a thief, an impostor, a double uxoricide and a fraud.’
‘At least, this way, the first airing of the story will be as close to the truth as possible. I think it’s always best that the first impression is the …’
‘Perhaps you’ve already reached an agreement with a journalist, Comisario,’ said Javier.
Silence. Lobo offered to go in to the emergency room with him. Javier turned him down.
He went into the hospital and sat under the bright neon of his new life while they put two silk stitches in his eyelid. His mind recoiled from the harsh operative light and he shut his eyes while his thoughts writhed. How would Manuela and Paco react to the media onslaught? What would he say to them? Your father … but not mine, was a monster? Manuela would throw it off or it would just bounce off her. She wouldn’t let it in. But Paco … His father had ‘saved’ him after his goring, given him the finca, set him up in a new life. There would be no easy rejection from Paco. And Javier was relieved to find that the connection was still there, that this would not change anything for him.
‘Am I hurting you?’ asked the doctor.
‘No,’ said Javier.
‘Nurse,’ said the doctor, ‘swab these tears.’
He was out by midnight, still in his bloody shirt. He took a taxi home. He stood in the middle of the patio looking at the bronze statue leaping out of the fountain. Always on the move, that boy. He went upstairs to the studio; the black pupil of the fountain followed him round the gallery. He went into the storeroom and removed all his father’s attempts at copying Chefchaouni’s work and the five canvases that made up the obscene painting of his mother. He threw them down into the patio. He followed them with the box of money and the pornography. He took a five-litre flagon of alcohol down and drew everything into a pile next to the fountain. He poured the alcohol on top and threw a match on it. The flames thumped into life and jaundiced light flickered in the silent patio.
He went into the study where the pewter box was still on the desk. He lifted out the priceless miniatures and laid them out one by one. His father’s work. His real father’s work. And for a moment he was up in the air again, looking down into the face he’d never remembered and seeing him for the first time.
He showered and put on a new shirt. He had no desire for bed or to stay in the house. He had a sudden need to be with people, even strangers … especially strangers. He walked out into the night and was drawn to the lights along the black leathery river and then across it into the Plaza de Cuba, where the crowds drew him on up Calle Asuncion towards the Feria ground.
He ended up in front of the Edificio Presidente where it had all begun, a lifetime ago, and Consuelo Jimenez came to mind with her daring eyes. He admired her strength. She had never wavered despite the continuous onslaught. Calderon was right, she’d held them all together. He remembered her dinner proposal and the click of her kitten heels on the marble flagstones. He shook his head. Too early for that.
He turned and entered the Feria de Abril through the massive, garishly lit portals of the main gate and walked into a surreal world, where everybody was beautiful and happy. Where the girls flounced in their figure-hugging
