The Angst-Ridden Executive by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Page B

the uniform.’
    ‘A general’s uniform. If twenty-odd years ago you used to call me “colonel”, then I must surely be a general by now. It might even still happen. There’ll be a guerrilla war soon, and that’s a good time to go up in the world.’
    ‘A guerrilla war? Your only chance of going up in the world would be if you went and climbed the front of the Senate House!’
    ‘Still the same old knife-in-the-ribs Carvalho. But what have you been doing with yourself all this time? The last I heard was that when you came out of prison you went off traveling. They told me you were a private detective. Bogart-style, like in the films.’
    ‘Nothing so glamorous. Runaway adolescents. Jealous husbands wanting their wives trailed.’
    ‘Sounds a pretty reactionary job to me.’
    ‘No more reactionary than gathering economic statistics for the financial oligarchy.’
    ‘No need to get personal! Don’t forget I’m gathering statistics for you too. Here, I’ve prepared you a rundown on Petnay’s activities in Spain and its immediate ramifications. For example, part of their Latin American activities is controlled from Spain. Another part is controlled from San Francisco, and now they’re setting up a third head office, in Chile, in Santiago. As regards their key personnel, I would make a distinction between the managers and the politicians. Sometimes the two coincide, but not always. Unlike other companies, Petnay almost never conducts its negotiations via state apparatuses through diplomacy, for example. They have their own network, and only turn to the State Department in the last resort.’
    ‘Who’s in charge of things in Spain now?’
    ‘Antonio Jauma. He represents management’s public face. But somewhere close to him there must be the politico—the one who goes to talk to ministers, pulls strings and so on.’
    ‘Well, just for a start, Antonio Jauma has been murdered, so someone else must be running the show now.’
    ‘Our records aren’t entirely up to date.’
    ‘Carry on, then. Who’s the politico?’
    ‘Nobody knows. Or at least very few people know.’
    ‘Who’s going to be taking over from Jauma?’
    ‘How long ago did he die?’
    ‘A month and a half. No—a bit more. . .’
    ‘It’s probably a temporary stand-in. Companies like Petnay don’t make this kind of decision overnight. I’ll go and phone someone to find out.’
    ‘Hang on. The porter in reception. . . Do you only hire porters with degrees in literature? He was reading Reality and Desire .’
    ‘What’s that? You know I’m just a humble economist.’
    ‘The collected poems of Cernuda.’
    ‘Oh, right. He’s a poet. A porter poet. He’s had a few books published, in fact.’
    While he waited for Parra to return, Carvalho found himself thinking of other poets with unusual jobs. Emilio Prados, in exile, working as a playground supervisor for children in a secondary school in Mexico. Or the poet who ended up teaching infants in a school in Tijuana. Carvalho had met him in a bar at the border, as he was drinking tequila solos, with salt, interspersed with a sip of water and bicarbonate.
    ‘I’m not coming back,’ he had said, ‘until Franco’s dead. It’s a question of dignity. Maybe I am nothing here—but at least I have my pride. You’ll find me in a few pre-War anthologies. The name’s Justo Elorza—have you ever heard of me? No? I’ve only just had the chance to start being published again. I went from the Argeles to Bordeaux. Then I got on a boat, to Mexico. I ended up in Tijuana. A temporary teaching job in a school. Temporary! Thirty years, my friend, thirty years! Every time I heard a rumour that Franco was ill, or that he was about to be toppled. I gave up shaving. I packed my bags, and I stopped changing the sheets, so that I had even more reason to leave. Several months ago I just gave up. I’ve got twenty books of unpublished poems. I went to Mexico to talk with the Era publishing house. Renau,