Trafalgar (2 page)

“This time I didn’t go to Seskundrea, it wouldn’t do for the luxury to become a custom and then I’d have to think up something else, but I was taking aspirin to Belanius III, where aspirin has hallucinogenic effects. Must be a matter of climate or metabolism.”

“I’m telling you, you’ll end up in the slammer.”

“Unlikely. I convinced the police chief on Belanius III to try Excedrin. Imagine that!”

I tried, but I was unable to do so. The police chief of Belanius III abusing himself with Excedrin lies beyond the limits of my modest imagination. And then again, I didn’t make a great effort, because I was intrigued by the bit about the woman who probably wasn’t one and by the thing about the mess.

“Belanius III is not that close to Veroboar, but once I was there I decided to try with more magazines and a few books, just a few so as not to frighten them. Of course, now I was going to stay a while and I wasn’t going to offer them to the first monkey who might appear so he might sell them and keep my cut, forget it. I parked the clunker, put my clothes and the merchandise in a suitcase, and took a bus headed for Verov, the capital.”

“And customs?”

He looked at me condescendingly: “On civilized worlds there aren’t customs, old man. They’re cleverer than we are.”

He finished the second coffee and looked toward the bar but Marcos was waiting on another table.

“I was determined to talk to someone strategically situated who could tell me where and how to organize the sale. For a commission.”

“So, on civilized worlds there aren’t customs, but there are bribes.”

“Bah, more or less civilized. Don’t be so picky: everyone has their weaknesses. There, for example, I had a big surprise: Veroboar is an aristomatriarchy.”

“A what?”

“Just that. A thousand women—I assume they’re women; young—I assume they’re young; gorgeous.”

“You assume they’re gorgeous.”

“They are. That you can see from a mile away. Rich. You can see that from a mile away, too. They alone hold in one fist all of Veroboar. And what a fist. You can’t even sneeze without their permission. I’d been in the hotel two minutes when I received a note on letterhead with seals in which I was summoned to the Governor’s office. At 31 hours, 75 minutes on the dot. Which means I had half an hour to bathe, shave, and dress.”

Marcos arrived with the third double coffee.

“And unfortunately,” said Trafalgar, “save in the homes of The Thousand, although I did not have time to see them, on Veroboar there are no sophisticated grooming devices like those on Sechus or on Vexvise or on Forendo Lhda. Did I ever tell you that on Drenekuta V they travel in oxcarts but they have high-relief television and these cubicles of compressed air that shave you, give you a peel, massage you, make you up—because on Drenekuta men use makeup and curl their hair and paint their nails—and dress you in seven seconds?”

“No, I don’t think so. One day you told me about some mute guys that danced instead of talking or something like that.”

“Please. Anandaha-A. What a lousy world. I could never sell them anything.”

“And did you arrive in time?”

“Where?”

He drank half the cup of coffee.

“At the Governor’s office, where else?”

“A magnificent Governor. Blonde, green eyes, very tall, with a pair of legs that if you saw them, you’d have an attack.”

He’s telling
me
about splendid women. I married one thirty-seven years ago. I don’t know if Trafalgar Medrano is married or not. I will only add that my wife’s name is Leticia and go on.

“And two hard little apples that you could see through her blouse and some round hips.” He paused. “She was a viper. She wasted no spit on ceremony. She planted herself in front of me and said: ‘We wondered when you would return to Veroboar, Mr. Medrano.’ I thought we had begun well, and I was wrong like an asshole. I told her it was very flattering that they should remember me and she looked at me as if I were a piece of cow manure the street sweeper had forgotten to pick up, and she let fly—do you know what she said to me?”

“No idea.”

“‘We have not looked favorably upon your clandestine activities in the port of Verov.’ What do you say to that?”

I didn’t say anything.

“There’s no need to recite the whole conversation. Besides, I don’t remember it. Those witches had executed the poor guy who tried to sell my comic books,” he drank a little more coffee, “and they had confiscated the material and decided I was a delinquent.”

“And you took her to bed and convinced her not to execute you, too.”

“I did not take her to bed,” he explained very patiently.

“But you told me.”

“Not that one. After informing me that I had to address her by her title, which was Enlightened Lady in Charge of the Government of Verovsian.”

“Don’t tell me every time you spoke to her you had to say all that.”

“That’s what I’m telling you. After informing me, she told me I could not leave the hotel without authorization and that of course I must not try to sell anything and that they would advise me when I could return. If I ever could. And that the next day I had to present myself before the members of the Central Government. And that I should retire.”

“Wow.”

“I went to the hotel and smoked three packs of cigarettes. I wasn’t liking this at all. I had my food brought to my room. The hotel’s food was disgusting, and this was the best in Verov, and to top it off the bed was too soft and the window didn’t close well.”

The remaining coffee was surely cold but he drank it anyway. Marcos was reading the racing section in the paper: he knows everything there is to know about horses and a bit more. He has a son who’s a brand-new colleague of mine, and a married daughter who lives in Córdoba. There were no more than two other occupied tables, so the Burgundy was much more peaceful than Veroboar. Trafalgar smoked for a while without speaking and I looked at my empty glass, wondering whether this was a special occasion: I only drink more than two on special occasions.

“The next day I received another note, on letterhead but without seals, in which I was told that the interview was with the Enlightened and Chaste Lady Guinevera Lapis Lazuli.”

“What did you say?” I jumped in. “That was her name?”

“No, of course not.”

Marcos had put down the paper—he had collected at one of the other tables—and now he was coming with the fourth double coffee. He didn’t bring me anything, because this didn’t look like a special occasion.

“Her name,” said Trafalgar, who never puts sugar in his coffee, “was something that sounded like that. In any case, what they told me was that the interview had been postponed until the next day because the enlightened, chaste and so forth, who was a member of the Central Government, had begun her annual proceedings before the Division of Integral Relations of the Secretariat of Private Communication. The year there lasts almost twice as long as here and the days are longer and so are the hours.”

Frankly, I didn’t give a damn about Veroboar’s chronosophy.

“And what does all that mean?” I asked.

“What did I know?”

He fell quiet, watching three guys who came in and sat down at a table at the back. I’m not sure, but it seems to me one of them was Basilio Bender, the one who has a construction firm, you must know him.

“I found out later, bit by bit,” Trafalgar said with the cup of coffee in his hand, “and I don’t know if I understood it completely. So the next day, same story, because the enlightened one continued with her proceedings and the next day too and the next day the same. On the fifth day, I tired of the blonde matriarchs and their secretaries, and of being shut up in the hotel room, of the garbage I had to eat and of pacing twenty square meters thinking that likely they would hold me on Veroboar for an indefinite period. Or they’d shoot me.”

He broke off for a moment, irritated in retrospect, while he drank the coffee, and that made four.

“Then I bribed the waiter who brought me my food. It wasn’t difficult and I had already suspected as much because he was a skinny guy with a hungry face, rotten teeth, and threadbare clothes. Everything is wretched and sad on Veroboar. Everything except for The Thousand. I’ll never go back to that lousy world.” He thought about it. “That is, I don’t know.”

I was getting impatient: “You bribed him. And?”

“That scared the guy half to death but he found me a telephone book and he informed me that to interview a member of the Central Government you had to be formally dressed, damn it.”

“Traf, I don’t understand anything,” I practically shouted. “Marcos, another sherry.”

Marcos looked at me with surprise, but he took out the bottle.

“Ah, I didn’t tell you that in the last of those notes they informed me that since the enlightened one had finished her proceedings, she would remain shut up at home for five to ten days. And since they weren’t summoning me to the office, I wanted her home address so as to go see her there.”

“But they had forbidden you to leave the hotel.”

“Uh-huh.”

Marcos arrived with the sherry: a special occasion.

“I had to do something. Five to ten days more was too much. So that night, since I didn’t know what constituted formal dress on Veroboar and the skinny waiter didn’t either—how would he know?—I dressed as if I were going to be a groomsman: tailcoat, white shirt with pearl buttons, satin bowtie, patent leather shoes, top hat, and cape. And walking stick and gloves.”

“Go on.”

“You can’t imagine the things I carry in my luggage. Remind me to tell you what formalwear on Foulikdan is. And what you have to put on if you want to sell anything on Mesdabaulli IV,” he laughed; I won’t say hard, because Trafalgar isn’t very expressive, but he laughed. “Once dressed, I waited for the signal from the skinny guy and when he informed me over the house phone that there was no one downstairs, I left the hotel and took a taxi that was already waiting for me and that covered some five kilometers at a man’s pace. We arrived. My God, what a house. Of course, you don’t know what houses are like on Veroboar. Scarcely better than a slum. But Guinevera Lapis Lazuli was one of The Thousand and a member of the Central Government. Old man, what a palace. Everything in marble and crystal half a meter thick in a garden filled with flowers and fountains and statues. The night was dark. Veroboar has a rickety little moon that gives almost no light, but there were yellow lamps among the plants in the garden. I crossed it, walking briskly as if I lived there, and the taxi driver watched me open-mouthed. I reached the door and looked for a bell or a knocker. There was none. Nor was there a door handle, but if there was anything I couldn’t do, it was stand there waiting for a miracle. I pushed the door and it opened.”

“You went in?”

“Of course I went in. I was sure they were going to shoot me. If not that night, the next day. But I went in.”

“And?”

“They didn’t shoot me.”

“I had already noticed that.”

“There was no one inside. I coughed, clapped my hands, called. No one. I started walking randomly. The floors were marble. There were huge, round lamps hanging from the ceiling on chains encrusted with stones. The furniture was of gilded wood, very elaborately worked.”

“What do I care about the decoration of Lapis Lazuli’s house? Do me the favor of telling me what happened.”

As you see, I preach but I don’t practice. Sometimes Trafalgar drives me nuts.

“For a while, nothing happened. Until somewhere around there I pushed on a door and I found her.”

The sherry was good and cold, and the guy I think was Bender got up and went to the bathroom.

“Was she blonde, too?” I asked.

“Yes. You’ll excuse me, but I have to talk about the decoration of that room.”

“If there’s no other choice.”

“There isn’t. It was monstrous. Marble everywhere in various shades of pink on the walls and the floor, and black on the ceiling. Artificial plants and flowers sprouted from the baseboards. Plastic. In every color. Corner cupboards holding censers with incense. Above shone a fluorescent moon like a tortilla hung by transparent threads that swayed when I opened the door. Next to one wall there was a machine the size of a sideboard that buzzed and had little lights that turned on and off. And against another wall, an endless, golden bed, and she was on the bed, naked and watching me.”

I seriously considered drinking a fourth sherry.

“I had prepared a magnificent poem that consisted in not versifying, or in versifying as little as possible, but the scene left me breathless. I took off the top hat, I made a bow, I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. I tried again and I started to stammer. She kept looking at me and when I was about to set in with the whole Enlightened and Chaste Lady, et cetera, she raised a hand and made signs for me to come closer.”

I never noticed when, but he had finished the fourth coffee because Marcos arrived with another cup.

“I went closer, of course. I stopped at the side of the bed, and the machine that buzzed was on my right. I was nervous—do the math—and I reached out a hand and started to feel around to see if I could turn it off without taking my eyes off her. It was worth it.”

“She was just a woman. What’s the big deal?”

“I told you, I think she was. What I’m sure of is that she was really hot. By that point, I was too. With my right hand I found a lever and I lowered it and the machine shut off. Without the buzzing, I started to feel better. I bent down and I kissed her on the mouth, which evidently was the right thing under the circumstances because she grabbed me by the neck and started to pull downward. I tossed the top hat away and used my two free hands for the two little apples, this time without a blouse or anything.”

“Nice night.”

“More or less, you’ll see. I undressed in record time, I threw myself on top of her and I said something like girl, you’re the prettiest thing I’ve seen in my life, and I assure you I wasn’t lying, because she was pretty and warm and I already felt like a gaucho bard and king of the world all in one, and you know what she said to me?”

“How am I going to know? What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Mandrake, my love, don’t call me girl, call me Narda.’”

“Traf, cut the crap.”