The Angst-Ridden Executive by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Page A

to, he’s got no right to force her. Anyway, we had a shitter on our hands. We warned him. He tried it a second time, with another girl. And another. One day we took his underpants, filled them with shit, and sent them to his home address, with a card that said: “A Souvenir from Lulu”. And he never came back.’
    ‘How about it. Pepe, don’t we get a drink?’
    ‘What do you fancy, Bromide?’
    ‘One of those wines you’re always drinking.’
    ‘What about yourself?’
    ‘I don’t drink, thanks. If I start in the morning, I’d be at it all day, and I have to work at night. I’ll have a glass of mineral water. Non-fizzy. Or a pear juice, please.’
    Carvalho brought up from his cellar a 1969 Cote du Rhone , and Bromide watched him preparing to open it, with his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in expectation as if he was about to embark on some fantastic adventure.
    ‘Are you opening that bottle just for me, Pepiño?! What is it, French?’
    In the morning light the wine looked a little sleepy, like the face of a girlfriend who’s still half asleep and still smells of bed. The Valles light gave an edge to the wine’s warm red colour, and Bromide’s dirty white tongue slurped the wine down.
    ‘This is a hell of a wine, Pepiño. And how am I ever going to be able to drink another wine after this? They’ll all taste like tap water!’
    ‘Think of this as your first communion, Bromide.’
    ‘Can I drink all of it?’
    ‘All of it.’
    ‘You don’t owe me anything any more, Pepiño. What you’ve done for me here is better than all the tea in China. When I was in the Blue Division, one time they gave us a whole case of white Rhine wine. Very good it was. But we were just kids, and we didn’t appreciate it. Some of them said that it wasn’t a patch on Valdepenas. The ignorance of youth! They gave it to us at Christmas, just before they sent us off to the Russian front. Then they wanted us to put on a guard of honour so that General Munoz Grandes could review us. Well, I’m telling you, the soberest one among us was leaning like the Tower of Pisa! Anyway, Munoz Grandes passed in front of us, stiff as a rod, and he didn’t like what he saw. Some creep shouted “Arriba Espana”, to sober us up and get us to stand straight, but instead we just fell about in heaps, pissing ourselves laughing—I mean really pissing ourselves! Because our bellies were hot and our peckers were cold! And that’s a wicked combination, Pepiño, wicked . . .’
    A strikingly modernist flight of steps led up to two large carved wooden doors with gilded fittings. In the reception area a porter was sitting reading Luiz Cernuda’s Reality and Desire . Carvalho, being a man who was suspicious of life’s surprises, found himself momentarily in a state of suspended animation as he read and re-read the title of the book. Thereupon the porter raised an ironic smile over the book in his hands, and murmured:
    ‘Can I help you?’
    ‘Pedro Parra, please.’
    The porter used a bone paper-knife to mark his place, and shut the book as if it were the most precious thing in the world. He led Carvalho to a small waiting room and the detective barely had time to decide between Cambio 16 and Triunfo as his reading matter before Pedro Parra appeared in the doorway, looking every inch a real colonel, with the air of someone about to give a crucial order. Despite the chilly spring weather, or possibly thanks to a deluxe central heating system, the economist-colonel was in his shirtsleeves. He stood there, began to laugh, and slapped Carvalho on the back as if he were a lumpy mattress. The intervening years had done nothing to lessen his likeness to Rosanno Brazzi. He was greying elegantly, had the complexion of a mountain climber and skier, and beneath his shirt you could see the results of his daily work-out, one-two, one-two, in-out, in-out, in front of an open window every morning, summer or winter, rain or shine.
    ‘All that’s missing is