Read Online Tattoo by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán - Free Book Online Page A

factory gates,Carvalho folded the magazine and put it in his pocket. He fell in with the labouring masses rushing in search of food, and soon heard Spanish being spoken. He discreetly followed two short, well-built men in their forties as they headed off determinedly towards the centre of town. He kept close behind, and as soon as they became separated from the others, caught up with them.
    ‘Excuse me. I heard you speaking Spanish. I’m passing through here and wanted to eat somewhere where they serve food from back home.’
    The two men looked at each other and shook their heads doubtfully, as if Carvalho had met them in Madrid and asked whether it was far to Barcelona.
    ‘There’s not much choice here. It’s different in Rotterdam or Amsterdam. But not here.’
    ‘Perhaps in that social centre.’
    ‘Yes, perhaps you’ll find some in a centre where him and me eat sometimes. We’ve just got to go and do something, but if you come with us we can tell you where it is, and we might even have lunch there ourselves.’
    Carvalho could sense the plate of six delicious Alsatian snails slipping away from him, but thanked them for the offer as though he had suddenly been granted a pardon. He tried to strike up a conversation based on food. The two men replied with all the parsimony of Iberian Comanches. From their accents, Carvalho deduced that one was from Galicia, and the other from not far away.
    ‘That’s right. My friend is from Orense, and yours truly from León,’ the less old and more talkative one told him.
    They were walking in a hurry, with a precise destination in mind. They had already travelled several blocks, but still seemed to have a long way to go. All at once they came to a short, tree-lined street. Carvalho followed them acrossit. They came to a halt in front of a nightclub window. The female attractions were displayed behind the glass. Five or six young women from exotic locations (from France to Kashmir) were showing off their breasts to passers-by. In a corner, a girl was showing only one breast. Her artistic name was Finita del Oro.
    ‘She’s one of us,’ said the man from León, choking with emotion.
    ‘From León?’
    ‘No, from Spain.’
    ‘She’s the best of them all,’ the Galician crowed. The two men looked at each other, then gazed one last time at their half-naked compatriot, and walked off back the way they had come. They had crossed most of the city just to ogle the charms of someone from home.
    ‘Have you got your families with you?’
    No, they did not. The man from Galicia was not married; the other one was, but his wife was back in León. He went home every two years and managed to make up for it.
    ‘I behave myself here. For one, because I want my wife to behave herself in León, so I do the same. And also because it’s expensive to have fun and we’re here to save.’
    The man from León had already bought a flat in his home town, and was giving his daughter a good education: she was studying French and typing.
    ‘Languages are very important. You realise that when you travel abroad.’
    Now that his sexual itch had been satisfied, the man from Léon was talking freely. He had left Spain when he was already forty because the sugar industry in Léon where he had worked was in crisis. He thought you could live well in Spain, except in four or five provinces. ‘People have it easywhere you’re from,’ they both said when Carvalho told them he lived in Barcelona.
    ‘But I come from Lugo.’
    ‘Which part of the province?’ asked the shy Galician, at last finding something he felt he could comment on.
    ‘From Souto, near San Juan de Muro.’
    ‘That’s poor land. It’s all very poor round there.’
    Carvalho could barely remember how poor the land or the people were, but nodded energetically. He asked how they were getting along in Holland. Whether they didn’t have any problems. The two men glanced at each other.
    ‘We’re not interested in politics. We’re