Minks

            It had been some time since I was looking for a job in order to afford my outings expenses, in view that for the moment time for Revolution hadn’t come yet. I would have to work anyway finally, of course. I couldn’t spend my time only reading, although the truth is I used to read, and read, enthusiastically always, but I needed some money to pay for my outings. I used to go out often alone by nights, and I went to drink and to smoke on weekends to the quarter of Malasaña. Sometimes I scribbled something, neither revolutionary pamphlets nor proclamations for the Advent of the Third Republic as I had been doing during the last five years, but attempts to procure myself the satisfaction of having hand-written autobiographical texts and short stories.

            Well, the case is I had a lot of books already and I read much, sometimes during months all day, but I wanted also to come out on weekends by nights and I didn’t want to ask for money in the streets to get something with which to pay for my beers and my joints as I had done before to buy books, pay for teas and coffees at cafés I went to read to in the afternoons, and of course for the always essential weekends by nights in Malasaña.

                For a time my mother gave to me 100 or 200 pesetas and I spent the money having a tea or a coffee, usually at The Limbo or at Café Comercial, taking advantage much of the circumstance since I used to stay reading for two hours and sometimes more. I had become acquainted with boys and girls of the quarter where my parents had their business and began to come out accompanied to the quarter of Malasaña on weekends.

              One day Belén came to see me and we went together to Malasaña. On the bus I told Belén a summary of Honoré de Balzac's Père Goriot, and another day I went to see her at her place at two in the night completely stiffened from a chemical reaction in my brain due to mixing psycotropics and beer, and Belén's mother had had the congenial delicacy of giving me a massage. It is the best remembrance of that time, and almost all recalls are good. Another day I went to her place at night, knowing there was a demonstration of Communist Party militants in the same street where she lived, and I had told her about it on the phone. I liked her and I had thought of her as revolutionary companion.

The case was I was working since it had been a time at my parents business and with what they paid me I had enough. I went on reading in spite of my work and one day it occurred to me to go to buy books at Antonio Machado bookshop and I got on a bus up to Plaza de Colón. Walking I went along Paseo de Recoletos up to Bárbara de Braganza Street and... I saw Miguel, the bookseller, going towards the bookshop and reading a book as he walked. As far as I remember I went to him and exchanged some words. It was 5 p.m. I bought some twenty books I was interested in or interested me.

I reminded myself of years I used to buy books almost compulsively, and besides, I selected them and I read them, of course. During those years dedicated to Revolution, I wrote proclamations, sent pro-Revolutionary articles to newspapers, letters to members of the Communist Party, attended demonstrations and shot up to the sky with fake guns throughout Madrid streets while I shouted: Live Spain! Live the Republic! Live Revolution! Live the People! Well, I spent some time reading and some time writing, and I didn’t work, I was almost feverishly consacrated to Revolution. With respect to books, I had a lot already and many to read yet.  Even so, always I got some money I bought a book, essential or indispensable, interesting or important, and in French and English too.

One day I was seated at a table in Café Comercial reading and at a table close to mine they were speaking of translating a text in English about cut and confection. I offered myself and a teacher gave me some photocopied pages. He told me they would give me 20.000 pesetas for a typewritten translation into Spanish. The case was I hadn’t got good English dictionaries and in the pages they spoke about furs of many animals which didn’t appear in my pocket’s dictionary. First fur was mink, which did appear, but all the others didn’t appear, and then, before becoming desperate with the problem of furs names and losing the 20.000 pesetas, translated visón for all different furs; you can guess the surprise of scholars in the cut and confection course on seeing so much visón and visón only. As though I was in a hurry, at the School I handed the teacher the typewritten pages and he gave me 20.000 pesetas at once and I went out nearly running.

I was very near to the area of bookshops from where I supplied myself; I could go to Turner, to Paradox, to Sagasta, to the old books bookshop at Pelayo Street, to Antonio Machado. I went to Antonio Machado. I was there half an hour choosing books. Miguel and the cashier knew me already. After paying 19.900 pesetas for some 20 books which the kind cashier put in two bags I was still looking for others at the central exhibitor. I saw one I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t dare to ask for the book on loan to Miguel and the cashier. I came out in the street and remained by the door with the two plenty bags. A woman went by and I asked her for 100 pesetas. A middle-aged couple went by. A mature man went by, and later a woman. No one of them gave me, or couldn’t give me the 100 pesetas. I saw that from an expensive car that had just been parked very close to the bookshop came out a man saying to me to go away from there. I told him he could see I had just bought 20 books and I didn’t want to go away not buying another of 200 pesetas, that I had got 100. He said to me he didn’t care and came into the bookshop and I heard him say to the cashier I was asking for money in the street. She cut him short saying to him he should be grateful to have given it to me. The embittered man came out from the bookshop and the cashier looked out to ask me if I needed anything. I said to her that there was certain book I couldn’t not taking with me and she said to me to take it with me anyway and I got into the bookshop again, took the book and wanted to pay 100 pesetas and let owing another 100. They told me to take it with me.

I went home by bus, from Paseo de Recoletos up to Legazpi and then up to the quarter on another bus. At home there was a man talking to my parents and some of my brothers. He was Eduardo Fuentes, colonel of the Spanish Army and father of my brother Miguel's friend of the same name. By that time they were judging the people involved in the assault of the Deputies Congress. We spoke about the assault and the trial. I said what I thought I knew. I gave the colonel my opinion. Of course I didn’t know so much as my father or Eduardo Fuentes, but I ventured that Santiago Carrillo, general secretary of the PCE (Spanish Communist Party) was up in what happened, and that the king had solved the assault turning out as it did, him appearing on television scared shit. My father let me speak and smiled. Eduardo Fuentes did the same. They exhanged a glance. I wanted a little to impress my brothers although I knew they knew what I had done. I thought it would have to be once more. I said to Eduardo Fuentes I had tried as well to do what Tejero had done; in fact I had already been in the Deputies Congress at the invited attendants benches shouting up Live Spain!, Live Revolution! during not a session but a plenary session and I had obligated all deputies save the communists to leave their seats and evaporate. As all them burst out laughing, I followed this way: Tejero's assault was a prank they played on Tejero or Tejero on us. He had to assault Congress gun in hand, he did, and pulling up the neck of vicepresident Gutiérrez Mellado Tejero said to him he was not the handsome one to whom they expected to address a speech to everybody. Tejero believed the handsome one would be present in Congress that same night. It caught me taking a bath. My friend Manuel said to me he had to leave immediately and Margarita, dummy king of Spain's sister was coming in. I did not want to be alone with Margarita. I went to my room, dressed up and went to the main lounge to say to Margarita, who had come in already, I was leaving to my friend Ängel's and there I remained all night. The tanks were mobilised in Valencia under the command of general Miláns del Bosch and it seemed nobody knew what was going to happen. Had I been present in Congress that 23 February I would have unmasked Adolfo Suárez, Cebreros's sneaker that came to Madrid and went to Movimiento's headquarters to tell on those of Cebreros, has made a career as sneaker until reaching minister general secretary of Movimiento with Franco. And having said this I would have shot him dead. The people would understand how were things for him, he sent policemen under his direct command to newspaper libraries to hijack all Movimiento's posts. And after that I would do the same with Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, monarchical asslicker that that day would be appointed president and would make Spain enter NATO, like all of us knew was going to happen, since the appetizing Europe and the appetizing NATO will procure us a bourgois society that suits us. We shall go on being important and very rich. And having said this I would have shot him dead. Well, the colonel asked, what would be the prank Tejero played on us? That is something top secret. I think he knew the coup would not be carried out that day, but nobody knows when for the moment being. And you would be the president?, asked the colonel again. Of course, yes indeed, I said. I am the handsome one Tejero and everybody want me to be president. And I burst out laughing and everyone laughed in contagion. Do you usually buy so many books?, asked the colonel changing the conversation. Yes, I do, although not so many as today. Do you want to have a look at them?, I offered. No, don't worry. My son likes Literature but I don't have so much time, said the colonel.

It occurred to me to tell them the anecdote about the book they gifted me at the bookshop. I said to them Miguel was probably the most known bookseller in Madrid, that to me he had given advice about authors and titles that had impressed me. Then I told them I had met him up while going both walking towards the bookshop and that he was reading while he was walking along the street. They all were listening to me attentively and smiling and my mother laughed. I recalled suddenly the bookseller of Fuentetaja Bookshop and told them how I had met him up. I had gone to Fuentetaja Bookshop to buy Karl Marx doctoral thesis and at the bookshop they told me the owner of the bookshop had a small warehouse very near to the bookshop and I went there. The owner welcomed me kindly and was happy when I said to him I was in search of Karl Marx doctoral thesis. He founded it quickly and I said I wanted three copies. He gave them to me. We spoke for a while. I told him the book that had most impressed me was a short story by Jorge Luis Borges on which he writes about a sages group that could send messages by telepathy among them from any place where they stood at in the world. They kept silence. I went on: The owner of the bookshop had told me the warehouse had been clandestine during the dictatorship and that he had jewels of much importance, even Marx unpublished memoirs, that would cause commotion when they were published. The colonel asked me if it was true , I replied it was and then he asked me if I had seen some copy or I knew something of what appeared in the memoirs. I said to him he had shown me a book of typed pages, translation from original in German. Well, it is possible, why not? he said. I then changed the subject and told them the anecdote of the visones. Imagine the surprise, I said, the students of the cut and confection course must’ve had on seeing so much mink and mink only. Save astrakhan once, I said consciously then and we all laughed heartily, and I saw my mother taking.the tip of her tongue from one extreme to another of her lips.