Read Online Off Side by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán - Free Book Online

time, a hackneyed requiem for what had once been and what was no more, or for what might have been but never was. He recognized his old haunts, as he walked the streets reviewing a geography that had been his whole life, or almost his whole life, and everything seemed to be where it ought to be. He visited a couple of second-hand bookshops, and the feel of their dusty, mummified culture reminded him of his breathless hunger for books in the days when he’d been a cultural junkie. He skimmed through a large, expensive book about Barcelona sporting a label on which the scandalous original price had been reduced by the bookseller’s sense of common decency: ‘Is the dream of free men living in a free city really realizable? At the moment, Barcelona is humanizing itself in each strip that it recovers or constructs for leisurely walking — that relation of space and time which gives us the freedom to do nothing, to fear nothing and to expect nothing. In other words, what we could call a beatific
desideratum
. Here we have a people that enjoys free things, and to whom one of their own philosophers promised that one day they would have everything paid for, wherever they went, for the simple fact of their being Catalan. These are people who get enthusiastic just collecting snails, or picking mushrooms, or drinking from public fountains and strolling round the city without a penny to pay. The average citizen relates to this city like a son to a mother: he knows that Barcelona is a woman, and he feels himself to be a child of the virgin Mother and the prostitute, of the Bronze Venus and of Pepita with the umbrella, of señora Josefina, of Reus, and many others. Over the years the city’s philosophers have tried to persuade us that Barcelona was a marble city, or a city state, or a city-region … But they failed.People recognize this city as a motherland which each of them is able to possess through the hegemony of his own memory. Some were born here. Others came from elsewhere. But this possessive memory began on the day when, like the ancient Chaldeans, they understood that the basic elements of their world ended with the hills that constituted their encircling horizon.’ He either agreed or disagreed with this sentiment, but he couldn’t be bothered to decide which. He deflated the bookseller’s expectation of an impending sale and exited decisively en route to see Charo. When he arrived at her door, he called up on the entryphone. Two minutes later Charo came stampeding out and flung herself at him in a huge exhalation of rose water and warm flesh. It was a railway station embrace, a wife’s embrace for her returning husband, and Carvalho let himself be hugged and kissed, all the while giving her little pats on the back, because he was at a loss what to do with his hands and his guilty conscience. Charo made it easy for him, because she was in a happy, chatty mood, and Carvalho suggested that they celebrate in style. First a film, and then up to Vallvidrera, always assuming she didn’t have clients waiting for her.
    ‘Clients? What are you talking about? I’m in a worse crisis than those poor devils in the steel industry. I tell you, Pepe, this Aids business has really messed things up. I’ve got regular clients that I’ve had for years, but that’s not what you’d call a decent living. I don’t want you to think I’m complaining, but I’ve got some important decisions to make, and I wanted to talk to you.’
    Carvalho knew that she’d get her say eventually, for all that he tried to delay the moment. He was willing to talk, but not until they first went to the cinema to see a film in which various people were getting drugged on gazpacho, and a girl was losing her virginity in her dreams, and a bunch of Shiite conspirators were somewhere in the background, making life complicated for a fashion model who had eyes like a doe and skin the colour of cream. Then, as they were on their way up to Vallvidrera, she