The Blind Man of Seville

‘Genius is an interstice.’

‘A what?’

‘A crack. A tiny opening to which, if you are blessed, you may put your eye and see the essence of it all.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You wouldn’t, Javier, because you are blessed with normality. The interstice for a footballer is in that moment when he knows, without being conscious of it, exactly where the ball is going to be, how he should run at it, where he should place his feet, where the goalkeeper is, the precise moment he should strike the ball. Calculations that are seemingly impossible become fantastically simple. The movement is effortless, the timing sublime, the action so … slow. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed the silence in these moments? Or do you only remember the roar as the ball caresses the net?’

Another one of those endless conversations with his father. Falcon shook his head to rid himself of it. He went through all the boxes, vaguely uneasy at his father’s methodical organization. His father had usually worked in a great miasma of paint, hashish, music and, in Seville, mostly at night and yet in this storeroom he was the bean counter. And as if to confirm this fact he opened a box that was full to the top of money. He didn’t have to count it because there was a note on top that told him it contained eighty-five million pesetas. A huge sum of money, one that could have bought a small palace or a luxury apartment. He recalled Salgado’s talk of black money. Was this to be destroyed, too?

The last box contained more books, leather-bound but untooled and untitled. The spines were smooth, too. He flicked one open at random. The pages were covered in his father’s immaculate handwriting. A single line jumped out at him:

I am so close.

He snapped the book shut and reopened it at the first page, which was inscribed: Seville 1970 —. Journals. His father had kept diaries, which he’d never known about. Sweat popped out of his forehead again and he smeared it away. His hands were damp. He went back to the box to see what order they were in and realized he was holding the last one. He flipped through the pages to December 1972 and the last words of the journal:

I am so bored now. I think I will stop.

Down the side of the books he found an envelope addressed ‘To Javier’. Hairs bristled on his neck. He slit it open with a trembling finger. The date on the letter was 28th October 1999. The day before he died, three days after his final will.

Dear Javier,

If you are reading this letter, then you are considering disobeying the instructions and my specific wishes laid down in my last will and testament of 25th October 1999, which, in case you have forgotten, states in unambiguous language that the contents of my studio are to be completely destroyed.

Yes, there is a loophole in this for you, Javier, with your logical policeman’s brain. You may have decided that this offers the opportunity to inspect, appreciate, read and sniff over my belongings prior to destroying them. You know me better than any of my children. We have talked together in a way, with an intimacy, that I never achieved with either Paco or Manuela. You know what this means. You know why I have done this and left it in your hands.

For a start neither Paco nor Manuela could burn 85,000,000 pesetas, but you will, Javier. I know you will, because you know where this money comes from and, more important, you are incorruptible.

You may think that my profound trust in you gives you the right to read these journals. Of course, I can do nothing to prevent you and that is right, but I should warn you that what you’ll find in them could be destructive as well. I will not be responsible for this. You must decide.

The journals are incomplete. Detective work will be required. You are perfect for this task. Do not take it up lightly though, Javier, especially if you are strong, happy and invigorated by your present life. This is a small history of pain and it will become yours. The only way to avoid it is not to start.

Your loving father,

Francisco Falcon

13

Saturday, 14th April 2001, Falcon’s house, Calle Bailen, Seville

Falcon put the letter back in the envelope, tucked it in the box. He slashed out the lights in the two rooms, sensed the darkness gulping back his father’s work, hungry for it. He locked up the gates and left the house, wanting to walk off these developments, pace them out.

The gardens in front of the Museo de Bellas Artes were beginning to fill up with young people smoking joints and swigging from litre bottles of Cruzcampo. It was still early at 11 p.m.; in a few more hours the dark trees would roar with the noise of a massive open party. He set off from there away from the centre, away from anywhere he might be known.

A rhythm settled in him, one that demanded no thought, only the feel of the cobbles through the soles of his shoes. The words of his father’s letter rattled through him as endless as a freight train thudding over points in the track. He knew that he would do it, that he could not resist reading the journals.

After half an hour he found he was on Calle Jesus del Gran Poder — a big name for an unprepossessing street. He cut through to the Alameda, where the girls were out in amongst the trees, the parked cars and the open space where the flea market was held every Sunday morning. Music thumped from the clubs and bars on the far side. A girl stretching her spandex miniskirt over her bottom approached and asked him what he was looking for. Her face was black and white in the yellow street lighting, the breasts forced up into a graphic cleavage, a fishnet top, a bare, round stomach. Her lips were glossy black, her tongue came out probing as a sea creature from a rock. He was mesmerized. She made some suggestions, which surprised Falcon by working. He would like some sex. It had never occurred to him to buy it. She had his attention now, using all the tricks. His insides were all stirred up, but in the wrong position, the wrong colour — black tripe — seething like the coils of a snake, monstrous and silent, feeding ideas into his mind, terrible ideas that he didn’t know he could have. He was appalled but gripped by the live excitement of it. He had to wrench himself away.