Regis Tantum
Many people know this: I was in charge of stealing as much as I could from the possible advantage of having Margarita de Borbón as neighbour during my fight against the dummy king of Spain and the president of government, like the Greeks did cheating Troyans with a wooden horse, and I might have done it the very first day I went to Manuel’s at 9 Jorge Juan Street, with a door common in the kitchens that would be a sentence for Margarita and the dummy king his brother. The queen had visited Manuel’s when restoration was being made, what I considered a bait convenient to me.
I have filmed all my life, so you will see how I might since the very first day, leaving a token by which you all will understand I was ready to lead Revolution at any instant. It is therefore settled I have stolen for ever kingdoms, kings and queens, princesses and heiresses. Well, I did as everyone wanted me to do.
The story Isaac Asimov tells us about Guiscard of Bretagne is really interesting and very funny:
Guiscard went to Constantinople and the empress fell in love with him. She secretly ordered to kidnap him for herself and she had Guiscard in a den for a month. Guiscard convinced a soldier and he finally escaped.
Guiscard went to Sicilia and the queen and the princess fell in love with him. The queen secretly ordered to kidnap him for herself but the princess found out and let him escape after she enjoyed sex with Guiscard.
Guiscard went to Hungary and the Margrave threatened Guiscard with killing him if he didn’t marry her daughter that very instant. Guiscard didn’t know what to do, whether he had or he had not to appeal to his persuading occurrence. He started to speak to the Margrave and to the audience there saying that there was a reason by which the princess daughter of the Hungarian Margrave should get married much better than with him, for he was sterile, unable of having children, what made the Margrave to back down, not without grief.
When I was 6 my father took my brothers and I and Alfonso Romero too to the Christian Sanctuary of Covadonga, in Cangas de Onís, Asturias, where Don Pelayo and his wife, Gaudiosa, are buried. The kings and queens of Asturias are buried there too. My father said to us the names of kings and queens of Asturias that had been our ancestors while we had a look at the tombs in the grotto. Asturias was the only province in the peninsula not taken by berber tribes that had conquered our territory, from where the Reconquest started with the Christian victory in the battle of Covadonga.
I have known this about Don Pelayo, but never I had commented with nobody that I descended from him and from kings and queens of Asturias, León and Castilla, not even among my brothers and I have we ever talked about it.
When I moved to my friend Manuel’s at 9 Jorge Juan Street, I knew for sure the Spain’s king and queen themselves had been informed about me. They knew I was a Manuel’s friend and that I was born in Ourense and lived in Xinzo de Limia as a child, in Usera’s quarter my parents house. I don’t know if they were informed about my family ascendants when spying on me in Xinzo de Limia. Speaking about Asturias I had told Manuel my father had said to my brothers, to Alfonso Romero and to me that we descended from Don Pelayo. It is the first time I comment about it, I said to Manuel.
I went to England to study English for terms or periods. In Manuel’s I had my own photographic laboratory. Needless to say Manuel and I conspired to our liking, it was settled between us since we knew each other. He told me that his father had been fired during Civil War by Franco’s army and I told him of the vision of an explosion hitting full a multitude of black people locked tight inside a warehouse in Rhodesia, and it had left both of us pensive a good while the first time we spoke at his old place.
One day it happened in a way that I knew positively Margarita, Carlos her husband and Manuel were talking about me but I didn’t want to listen. Manuel said Leopoldo will be visiting cathedrals very soon, and the three of them laughed. I was at Margarita’s back and she turned her body to stretch hands with me. I let her with her hand in the air and she said Don’t you want to celebrate it with me? I remained still until Manuel told me Margarita is stretching your hand. I advanced my hand and touched hers. She tried to move my hand happily but I cut up her intention drily. I saw she made a resignation gesture with her arm. I interpreted that, my God, they must have been crazy, they might pretend to marry me with infanta Elena. I was sure Manuel had nourish surreptitiously this possibility. It was taking another weak point more. Still the three of them in the lounge I went to my room to phone my friend Pilar to appoint her for next day to buy plane tickets to go to England.
The case is that in the first days of July 1979 Manuel and I were invited by a Manuel’s friend to spend some days in Marbella. We went and stayed at Manuel’s friend house just for one day. I had a look at the luxurious, expensive yachts and cars in Puerto Banús. We sailed on a yacht in open sea. The following day at breakfast I read on Diario de Málaga that a retinue of cars of the Saudi Arabian royal family members and their guests would arrive in Marbella that night. Five chiefs of state of Arab regimes will arrive in Marbella today was the beginning of the two whole pages with news about them. King Faruk of Egypt, four princes and three princesses direct desdendants of Muhammad, sultans, emirs, sheiks, and the like. More or less at 09.30 p.m. they all were dead. I didn’t lose the opportunity of sending them all to hell. No one escaped. All the cars’ retinue were thrown off of the highway to Marbella. I did the trick as a kamikaze at 300 km per hour, with no hands and having a joint. Civil Guards at a traffic control seemed astounded by what they had just seen and hadn’t arrested me. They let us go on our way. Ten to me.
So when the snob Margarita’s husband invited Manuel and me to go to Mallorca and to be introduced to princesses Caroline and Stéphanie of Monaco I didn’t make any sign of joy. Margarita’s husband’s string was asking where we would spend a nicer Summer than in Mallorca and meeting Caroline and Stéphanie, that were going to stay in Mallorca for two months. When he was gone Manuel asked me if I liked Caroline. I told him: I do not, she’s kind of a diva. I don’t like divas. He insisted asking if I wouldn’t have a good time with Caroline in Mallorca. I then was cutting: I have said to you already I would not. Why not? Manuel asked me. Let us see, I said to him, all posh girls sink down themselves when they don’t get what they want or something doesn’t turn out to their liking, and a rictus of femme fatale appears on their lips forever. So you don’t want to go to Mallorca to spend Summer?, asked Manuel. Are not Caroline and Stéphanie coming to Mallorca for Summer?, I asked. After that I said: Come on, the last place I’d go to!
When Summer had finished one day Manuel said to me Caroline was coming to Margarita’s for lunch. I immediately phoned my friend Juan Varela Tornos, Alberto’s brother, to invite him to go to a poolroom to play billiards. Juan accepted. I had to pick his friend Jaime up first. I took my camera and picked them up to go to the poolroom. In the poolroom I told them Caroline was coming to Margarita’s for lunch. They asked me why I wasn’t at home to be precise for that very reason. I replied saying to them that I was capable of demonstrating that while Caroline sighed lying on my bed I was at a poolroom with friends to whom I had invited, that I had even carried my camera with me. I asked them if they doubted about whether Caroline would like to pose for me or not. We three were laughing with tears. I asked them at that moment: Wouldn’t you like to be witnesses? This question fit for the big scandal of laughter.
When I finally went back again to Manuel’s he told me Caroline had entered through the common door and had asked where my room was, she had gone to my room and she had lain down on my bed sighing. She said ‘I cannot breath’, and then later again: ‘I cannot breath’. I laughed. Manuel was telling. And then, she said: ‘I’m drowning’, and then later again: ‘I’m drowning’. In seeing her like this, Manuel offered to her his hand for her to stand up, but she said: ‘Just one minute more, please.’ I looked at Manuel and said to him: I knew you would finally leave me a shit. We were at the door of my room. I realised then. One minute more you said? I entered my room at once and took a look at the quilt. Bingo!
After this it was the turn of Stéphanie, sixteen at that time, for her to come to Manuel’s ringing up the bell and asking for me after she sang live on TV dressed all in leather and with a generous neckline. Manuel wasn’t at home. Doña Manolita went to the door and came back. She told me it was Stéphanie who had rung the bell. Doña Manolita told her I wasn’t at home. The bell rang up again. Doña Manolita came back from the door again and told me it was Stéphanie again. She said to doña Manolita that perhaps she had told her I wasn’t at home because I didn’t like to be disturbed. Perhaps she thinks she knows something, I said to doña Manolita. She’s waiting at the door, said to me doña Manolita. I shouted: You, whore! I know you are there! You will see how I tied your neck up with a wire to the exhaust pipe and I drag you through all Madrid’s streets!
She understood for sure I was capable of doing what I was saying, so she scared and in her attempt to run away quickly she tripped on the stairs and the wooden stairs creaked.
Then it was time for funny movies. I couldn’t stop laughing. Stéphanie was taken by two of the policemen downstairs to the clinic opposite to the flat’s balconies. She was limping and couldn’t walk alone but only with help. I was expecting her to come out with crutches from the clinic. Actually, after some 30 or 40 minutes she came out with crutches from the clinic, being accompanied by the two policemen. I burst out laughing with big scandal. One of the policemen heard and saw me in the balcony and said ‘The Rolls Royce is just around the corner’.
Well, I thought I had settled things with princesses of Monaco, but I wasn’t that lucky. One day in arriving to Manuel’s I saw a Rolls Royce on the entrance door, parked in the opposite direction and with rear privacy curtains that someone opened at that moment. I saw Grace Kelly, Caroline’s and Stéphanie’s mother behind the curtains. In a split second I decided to let Manuel to handle himself the business of parking his car in the hallway.
I had taken for granted that Manuel had said to Margarita and Carlos her husband that I was descendant of king Pelayo and of the kings and queens of Asturias, León and Castille. It was evident I had the advantage of knowing the dummy king and his family entire had many times let pass as good the information about their descendance from king Pelayo. I don’t know much about this side of my family nowadays, but much more than I knew. It is for this very reason that it took me by surprise Manuel recommended to me to read a biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine and everything Jorge Luis Borges had written. I wanted to know why he had recommended to me a biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. It was the first time we went to buy books together. We have been talking about Cervantes, Lorca and Arturo Barea. I didn’t expect Eleanor, but he said to me that she was a woman with great influence on her people, admired by troubadours and minstrels, and believer in the child Jesus’s presence in the world.
Some time after this I read The shaping of England, by Isaac Asimov. Manuel had told me an anecdote of Hrólf the Walker, first viking chieftain who converted to Christianity. I told Manuel I had read the anecdote about Hrólf. I congratulated him for telling me about it such as it was in the book. Then he told me about Normandy and the Plantagenet family. Henry II Plantagenet of England had married Eleanor of Aquitaine. Both queen Elizabeth II and his son Charles prince of Wales had sent to Isaac Asimov handwritten letters of thankfulness for having mentioned their ancestors in the book. Manuel joked saying he could guess which were the words of Charles…: It would not be necessary that my mother Her Majesty the Queen… Manuel went on joking, this time about the queen’s words…: Hrólf the Walker and Eleanor of Aquitaine, of whom we are especially proud… Manuel laughed when he said this and I suspected something because it was again that he had mentioned Hrólf and Eleanor, and our dedication to conspiracy against kings and queens had started it had taken already a bit of a time until then. I thought I was able to damage England’s royal family showing in public the two handwritten letters sent to Isaac Asimov. It would be a big shock for Elizabeth and Charles and for English public opinion. No doubt that if it was so, I would be stealing nicely.
With respect to stealing nicely, things hadn’t had a stop. I supposed Manuel had carefully shown the photos I took of myself the night we arrived in Madrid after my kamikaze’s race in Marbella, on which I appear multiplied due to the small pieces of mirrors in my bathroom and with big eyeballs due to my grandiose night without sleeping. The case was that Gustave Adolf, king of Sweden, wanted me to be his successor and marry me with princess Victoria her daughter. Victoria was twelve years old only and his father the king pretended to appoint me her tutor. Well, I said to Manuel, it would be tutor-fucker, that is hired for infanticide. Manuel was smiling but started laughing. I can guess what the king must be saying to himself…: Victoria will fall in love with him as soon as she sees him. Manuel was crying with laughter. His laughter infected me. I am sure, he said, the king has given orders for you to know that Victoria is a virgin. Here I could not resist and burst out laughing, of course at thinking the king had in fact been recorded when he had given orders.
People shouldn’t be taken aback by what I tell, I have no reasons to lie or to exaggerate like you will see by yourselves. The thing is I say this because I stole nicely for everyone to enjoy it forever.
When my father put me on a microfilm in my room at the Regency Hotel School of Ramsgate, Kent, England, in March 1980, I saw my brothers and friends carrying out terrorist actions and scenes of other actions that at its time caught up the attention of everyone round the world: Killings of Carrero Blanco, Franco’s president of the Spanish government, of Aldo Moro, Italian prime minister, of John Kennedy and of his brother Robert Kennedy, John’s after a brief speech by Lee Harvey Oswald from the Book Depository in Dallas, and after war’s scenes from the Second World War and the explosions of Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s bombs, the killing of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.
I had the power of reproducing all the scenes of the microfilm for two days, but later some way or other I was made to forget them and I could remember only the reactions I had at every new scene. The case is I couldn’t forget my brothers Arturo and Miguel, and a girl whose name had to be Ana, inside a lorry my parents had bought to deliver potatoes from the village to do business, Arturo driving at the steering wheel, Miguel pushing forward the girl and shooting twice in her back.
There are more yet funny happenings. When I had already forgotten the scenes my mother called me by phone to the Regency Hotel School and she told me Arturo and Miguel had had an accident and a girl called Ana, who was inside the lorry too, had died. I began to laugh and my mother shouted to me through the wire saying I was a fool and I couldn’t help my laughter and my mother hang me up. Just at that moment I was remembering my brother Miguel telling me he was going to kill a fascist girl, Ana her name, at the poolroom beside my brothers Miguel’s and Ignacio’s college, while facing the fascist girl dressed in blue.
Once again in Madrid, Carlos, Margarita’s husband, came in through the common door and told Manuel and me he had been running up more than ever. On TV the presenter had announced the death of exqueen Federica of Greece, mother of the queen of Spain, Sofía of Greece, in reality Sofía Hohenzollern. I took for granted the king and the queen of Spain had killed Federica to compensate for the killing of the fascist girl Ana. So that was the much the queen wanted me badly. Some days later I said to Margarita’s husband that Spain was going to be a Republican State and I flew away from Manuel’s to my parents.
I had by then two girls in mind. One was Belén, to whom I had scared coming back in a Mini Cooper from Madrid’s Sierra, telling her while I was driving that I had killed the whole retinue of the Saudi Arabian royal family members and their guests in Marbella, and she scared very well, ten to me happily.
Another was Patricia, a girl daughter of a fascist candidate in elections who served as a hook for us revolutionaries to have me entertained while we were shooting at those times. What Patricia didn’t know is that I knew more about her than she thought. Moreover, all the times we met up we were with someone else who knew more about her than she thought. One day in the same Mini Cooper I asked her at a traffic light if her father was a fascist. She responded: I don’t know…Why do you ask? I said to her that ETA had killed a Manuel’s friend and that I didn’t know what was going to happen. Some days later, before I flew away to my parents, I paid to her a visit at her grandmother’s place. At her place she had insinuated to me to lie down on her bed. It was then that I said to her that my friend Jesús Pérez López had asked me her phone number and things changed instantly. She offered me the roach of the joint she was smoking and made a disagreeable grin. Then the bell rang and her boyfriend and her grandmother too appeared there.
So it was how I returned to my parents house in Usera and waited for my friends Alfonso, Pablo and Jorge to start carrying out revolutionary actions for Spanish people to rebel against cruel and haughty capitalism.
Of course I hadn’t had left any opportunity for no enemy to argue against since I have carried on a corporal camera during all my life. Enjoy then almost 2.000 movies from 1 hour to 2 hours each, 600 humour’s and 1.100 cult movies. What do enemies think they can do or they could have done? How well you did, my friends will say to me. I did my best, I will say to them. I just tried to leave scenes for us to laugh with big scandal, like when Hitler says to Eva: ‘How cold all night here’. Or when we watch Jackie stretched out on top of the car trying to fish Jack’s brains. If they don’t want me to talk about it, it is for envy. Everyone knows today whatever I say is true . Not pedantry, not a lie. I did remember the time we went to the Schweppes factory and you said to me to go to the Schweppes office to flirt with the Schweppes heiress… You told me you were sure I would be successful…
