Read Online Tattoo by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán - Free Book Online
Authors: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Tags: Mystery
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meet.’
‘That’s not the sort of thing you should ever say.’
‘Well, I’m saying it.’
Carvalho walked down the corridor trying to take in all the offices and to remember exactly what he had been doing there four years earlier.
‘Cor was a good man.’
Something akin to emotion shone in Max’s eyes.
‘He’s doing very well in Jakarta.’
‘I remember he was there before, when all the Reds were being killed in ’65 and ’66. Why is he there now?’
‘Reds spread like weeds. And even renegades still bear some traces.’
Carvalho reached out and brushed Max’s cheek. Max recoiled as though he had been clawed at.
‘I was never a renegade, Max. I was a cynical apostate, no more.’
T he northern sun proved Pio Baroja right. It softened colours rather than intoxicating them as the harsh brightness of the south did. This Nordic light brings out all the nuances in the sea of green, lends a sheen of age to the drunken roofs, and paints each leaf on the trees of Amsterdam with a different brushstroke. Carvalho had to make a great effort to leave the city for The Hague. For breakfast, he ate rollmops at a blue-and-white van outside the Central Station. As he munched his third slice of black bread with raw herring and onion, he could see the glass-sided boats manoeuvring into position as they set off to take tourists round the canals. He must not leave Amsterdam without taking the trip again himself, lying back and watching the city pass by above his head, a silent spectator at the ghostly parade of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century city.
Dutch trains always seem like suburban ones. They are more like an open-air metro than a proper railway. People get on and off as if they were on an underground train, and the towns go by in the same harmonious, uninterrupted style against the backdrop of an unvarying landscape. Carvalho remembered the story he had heard from Carrasquer, a professor of Spanish literature at Leyden University: Holland has only one mountain, and that’s only five hundred metres high, so to avoid wearing it out the Dutch do not climb it, but instead gaze at it like a national monument.
Carvalho’s carriage was filled with quiet, self-absorbed passengers. Every so often he caught the sound of a few words of Spanish, Italian or Greek, and some in another language he supposed was Turkish. But the placid Dutch seriousness seemed to impinge on the southern Europeans. In an environment where silence is so important, even Southerners are silent. Or perhaps, thought Carvalho, they are simply afraid of upsetting the Northerners’ psychological balance with the lewd phonetics of poor nations. In order to blend in better, and to enjoy some Dutch tobacco, Carvalho had brought a pipe. He soon noticed that the simple fact of smoking it made him more detached, and helped him look at other people and things with greater distance. He puffed on his obedient appendage and the rising smoke sealed his sense of well-being.
When he arrived at The Hague he decided to walk for a while, from the station down to the main shopping centre. He recognised a restaurant he had enjoyed the last time he had been here: The House of Lords. He studied the menu outside and resolved to come back and eat here if he had the opportunity. Among the daily specials were snails from Alsace and roast gigot of lamb, which made him feel nostalgic. He had not eaten a proper gigot since he had been in Dijon for the wine festival. He knew he could trust The House of Lords to do it justice. He remembered a turkey with pomegranate stuffing he had eaten among wood-panelled walls imitating an English club. The chef had been from Galicia too, he seemed to recall.
The lunch hour was approaching, so he hurried on to the Philips factory. While he waited for the workers to emerge, he flicked through his copy of the porno magazine
Suck
. The front cover seemed to be a paean to the carrot and its uses. As soon as the first men came out of the
‘That’s not the sort of thing you should ever say.’
‘Well, I’m saying it.’
Carvalho walked down the corridor trying to take in all the offices and to remember exactly what he had been doing there four years earlier.
‘Cor was a good man.’
Something akin to emotion shone in Max’s eyes.
‘He’s doing very well in Jakarta.’
‘I remember he was there before, when all the Reds were being killed in ’65 and ’66. Why is he there now?’
‘Reds spread like weeds. And even renegades still bear some traces.’
Carvalho reached out and brushed Max’s cheek. Max recoiled as though he had been clawed at.
‘I was never a renegade, Max. I was a cynical apostate, no more.’
T he northern sun proved Pio Baroja right. It softened colours rather than intoxicating them as the harsh brightness of the south did. This Nordic light brings out all the nuances in the sea of green, lends a sheen of age to the drunken roofs, and paints each leaf on the trees of Amsterdam with a different brushstroke. Carvalho had to make a great effort to leave the city for The Hague. For breakfast, he ate rollmops at a blue-and-white van outside the Central Station. As he munched his third slice of black bread with raw herring and onion, he could see the glass-sided boats manoeuvring into position as they set off to take tourists round the canals. He must not leave Amsterdam without taking the trip again himself, lying back and watching the city pass by above his head, a silent spectator at the ghostly parade of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century city.
Dutch trains always seem like suburban ones. They are more like an open-air metro than a proper railway. People get on and off as if they were on an underground train, and the towns go by in the same harmonious, uninterrupted style against the backdrop of an unvarying landscape. Carvalho remembered the story he had heard from Carrasquer, a professor of Spanish literature at Leyden University: Holland has only one mountain, and that’s only five hundred metres high, so to avoid wearing it out the Dutch do not climb it, but instead gaze at it like a national monument.
Carvalho’s carriage was filled with quiet, self-absorbed passengers. Every so often he caught the sound of a few words of Spanish, Italian or Greek, and some in another language he supposed was Turkish. But the placid Dutch seriousness seemed to impinge on the southern Europeans. In an environment where silence is so important, even Southerners are silent. Or perhaps, thought Carvalho, they are simply afraid of upsetting the Northerners’ psychological balance with the lewd phonetics of poor nations. In order to blend in better, and to enjoy some Dutch tobacco, Carvalho had brought a pipe. He soon noticed that the simple fact of smoking it made him more detached, and helped him look at other people and things with greater distance. He puffed on his obedient appendage and the rising smoke sealed his sense of well-being.
When he arrived at The Hague he decided to walk for a while, from the station down to the main shopping centre. He recognised a restaurant he had enjoyed the last time he had been here: The House of Lords. He studied the menu outside and resolved to come back and eat here if he had the opportunity. Among the daily specials were snails from Alsace and roast gigot of lamb, which made him feel nostalgic. He had not eaten a proper gigot since he had been in Dijon for the wine festival. He knew he could trust The House of Lords to do it justice. He remembered a turkey with pomegranate stuffing he had eaten among wood-panelled walls imitating an English club. The chef had been from Galicia too, he seemed to recall.
The lunch hour was approaching, so he hurried on to the Philips factory. While he waited for the workers to emerge, he flicked through his copy of the porno magazine
Suck
. The front cover seemed to be a paean to the carrot and its uses. As soon as the first men came out of the
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