Read Online The Angst-Ridden Executive by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán - Free Book Online

friendship was immense, in the giving and the taking alike, both of which he executed with a hint of sadism; he was given to verbal aggression when describing friends or enemies, and there was a certain personal angst in his frenetic adjectival acrobatics.
    Carvalho went down the last of the stairs separating him from the gathering, and waited in the hope that during one of his leisurely eyebrow raisings Marcos Nuñez would raise at least one eye sufficiently to notice his presence. Some of the faces were familiar to him from his university days, and he even managed to put names to them with a fair degree of success. He was aware that people were trying to work out who he was. Carvalho came closer to the group and stopped when his eyes met those of Nuñez. He guessed that he was about to invite him to join the group, and pre-empted the invitation by indicating that they needed to speak in private. Nuñez did not break off his discourse immediately; he first cropped its wings and then killed it with a few well-turned phrases which caused a lady equipped with the large eyes of a nocturnal animal to laugh.
    ‘You’re a cynic, and you like people telling you so.’
    ‘Me? A cynic? I’m such a simple soul that you could twist me round your little finger.’
    Nuñez got up and followed Carvalho to an adjoining room in which two married couples were drinking double scotch with ice but no water, a gin and tonic, and a vodka and orange.
    ‘You seem to keep yourself amused.’
    ‘If I keep myself amused I don’t get bored. I see it as preventive medicine.’
    ‘I was wondering whether you could help me with an inquiry. I’ve been trying to track down a man who was an inspector for Petnay—a friend of Antonio Jauma—Dieter Rhomberg. Do you know him?’
    ‘I know the name. Jauma used to say that he had the biggest penis in the world.’
    ‘The day before yesterday he was in San Francisco. But then, this morning, they told me that he’d disappeared two months ago, and that his whereabouts were unknown.’
    ‘Are you sure he was in San Francisco?’
    ‘A voice told me, “He’s gone for dinner at the Fairmont, and he’ll be back later.” Then, the day after, another voice told me that he’d gone on leave and disappeared. Anyway, you’ve hardly told me anything about Jauma’s life and habits. What sort of people did he mix with?’
    ‘In part old friends from the university, particularly the ones who had achieved a social status similar to his own. Not because this was what Jauma particularly wanted, but because circumstances dictated it. Of those of us who haven’t made it, only I and one other ex-comrade still have dealings with him.’
    ‘As friends? Or politically?’
    ‘Jauma’s only remaining link with politics was financial. He used to contribute to Party funds. Occasionally we would discuss things to do with the unions and the labour movement. He didn’t want problems with his workers, and he used to ask our advice. The last political talk we had together was when the embryo of new organizations began appearing in his firm, operating outside the Comisiones Obreras. Anarchists for the most part.
    ‘Had he had labour problems recently?’
    ‘No. But he would have had, sooner or later. He usually showed his face in only a small number of the concerns under his control, but he always took special care in choosing his personnel managers, and he would follow every dispute, however small, very closely.’
    ‘Because he had a moral itch?’
    ‘Partly. He had a particular conception of history that he couldn’t get rid of, if you know what I mean. In other words, his political upbringing told him that the working class was always right, and that he was an administrator of a capitalism that was on the defensive. He also had an image problem. He didn’t want to lose the image that he had of himself, but the image was in contradiction with the reality—that he was an exploiter. Inevitably he became