Carolina and Stéphanie
During my staying at Manuel’s I was tempted to meet Carolina of Monaco and her sister Stéphanie. Summer has come and people make plans. I was half listening to Carlos Zurita speak to Manuel about where we may go if not but to meet up Carolina and Stéphanie in Palma de Mallorca. Carlos Zurita laughed clumsily and went to his flat. I remained with Manuel. Do you want to spend Summer in Mallorca and meet up Carolina? he asked me. No, I don’t, I said, she’s a diva. Manuel was going to say something. I don’t like divas, I said. Why not?, he asked. Let's see, I answered, and gesticulating as though imparting classes, I said: All posh girls finish by drowning themselves; when they don’t get what they want or something doesn’t turn out to their liking, a rictus of femme fatale appears on their lips forever. What about Stéphanie? Well, I said, I like her more, that she’s a little young girl. Manuel laughed and I said then: Better not to make her be with the illusion. So you don’t want to spend Summer in Mallorca?, he asked me. It would be the last place I would go to, I said. Why?, Manuel asked me. Haven’t you just told me Carolina and Stéphanie are going to spend Summer there? I asked him and added: Come on! Last place I would go to!
After Summer in Xàbia (Jávea), Alicante, Manuel told me one day Carolina of Monaco was going to come to Margarita and Carlos's to lunch with them. I went to my room and phoned Juan Varela, Alberto's brother, and I invited him to play billiards at Plaza de Santa Bárbara's poolroom. I took my just released camera and went out from the house not saying anything. I took the Mini Austin car. I had to pick Jaime up and Juan after. We three went to the poolroom. What for have you brought the camera with you?, they asked me. Well, I said to them, Carolina of Monaco is coming to my place this afternoon and I know too well she would like me to take a picture of her, but of course, I will not. Why not?, they asked. Because I will be capable to demonstrate that while Carolina was lying down on my bed, I was playing table-tennis at a poolroom with my friends. We burst out laughing.Let's take some pictures, I said. Don't you want to be witnesses?, I asked them to laugh a little more. Later we went to El Limbo and took some more pictures and had something. There usually were friends and people we knew. I was lengthening time already. I didn't think about how Manuel would deal with Carolina. When it was five o'clock I phoned my friend Ángel Pageo Rivas, with whom I used to meet up frequently at his place, friends being both of similar ideas in many aspects, and very convenient to me in my case, for he usually went to bed very late at night. I stayed at Ángel's place until four at night, when it was already almost impossible to meet Carolina. I was lucky. Manuel was awaken. He told me Carolina had been in our house, she had lied down on my bed and had sighed and said she couldn't breathe. Later she said she was drowning. Manuel tried to help her to stand up but she asked him to let her be lying one entire minute more. I said to Manuel I knew he would finally leave me a shit.
They made a joke to Carolina in Mallorca saying to her I was going to go too and she went to a discotheque asking for Leopoldo Barge, a microphone was made audible suddenly. After summer I was in the main lounge watching television when they announced the connection live with Montecarlo’s circuit, for they were going to transmit Formula 1 of Monaco’s Grand Prix. I stood up and the circuit appeared at once. I started to do my imperious gesture with my chin upwards and spoke to all them at the circuit saying these words at the same time I was levitating them: Let us hear the murmurs of Monegasques. I was a good while levitating everything beyond me, in the world and on the images of television and everything the circuit contained. I sent to them the reproduction of attacks and revolutionary actions and fusillades and I could listen to their murmurs once they understood at last someone with powers was speaking to them. I could not restrain; I could not wait although the race lasted for some two hours. I said: What about your diva? Divine? My telepathic messages left an impression in all the attendants at the circuit. She has lost herself forever, I said while gazing at the television screen. And I went on with the levitations and I got deflagrations and machine-gunning could be seen, terrorist actions I can reproduce very well. And the little young girl?, I asked to ones in the circuit. Right now you lose her forever too, this instant!, I said kicking out the floor and I made levitations with my chin for a good while and laughed with scandal, weeping. You have got a casino? I asked them listening to murmurs. That’s not a casino; that’s a casino lost forever. By then they had done the lap of recognition and were waiting for the race to start. I was reading newspapers, listening to the music and smoking hash. Sometimes I stood up and made levitations towards the ones in the circuit or put my headphones on to listen to the music and did the punch of NO PASARÁN. I had a very good time.
Stéphanie appeared one day live on the Spanish television and she sang in French, with her head put in a sleeping pretty boy it seemed rather, and she even came to my place in search of me, coming upstairs and downstairs twice. First was to ask for me. Second to say that may be they told her I wasn’t in because I didn’t want to be perturbed. I knew she was waiting at the door. I began to shout threatening her with stealing her car and tying her neck up to the car's exhaust pipe and dragging her throughout Madrid streets, not forgetting the legend Just Married well visible. She understood at once and she said to herself he is capable of doing what he's saying. Not almost, she did really stumble on the stairs. Manuel told me how it happened and I said to him I had heard the misstep, that the stairs had crunched. Two days later she appeared walking with crutches, in Hola magazine.
One day Manuel and I were in Manuel’s room and Manuel told me Juan Carlos Zurita, brother of our neighbour Carlos, brother-in-law to the dummy Spanish king, was going to come in and we saw him passing by the room’s door on his way to the sitting-room and having told me Manuel that the brother was very successful in Palma de Mallorca and even this Carolina had appointed with him several times, on seeing him and the image he had I burst out laughing at him.
Nowadays, after so many years, I keep on sending messages and orders by telepathy, although the moment of rebellion was not imminent before, with great tenderness towards children and towards the ones who love me, and being a potential terrorist to whom circumstances take to lead revolution always concentrated in revolutionary actions and speeches from the place wherever I am. Towards little boys and girls in the children’s playground I use by telepathy a language simple and easy to understand, procuring to make them witnesses of grave wrongs of capitalism and of communism goodness. The little boys and girls play in the children’s playground and sometimes their balls stick into our yard and I come out to give the ball back to them always. They have always been well educated with me and thanked me. Several times already they have cheered me up shouting: Long live Leopoldo! Leopoldo is the best! I think it was because one day I told them when I was handing them out the ball not to insult between them, that one must have good intentions always and that boys’ and girls’ friends have to admire each other.
Besides they see I have powers they see also I do carry books with me nearly always and they know I have been terrorist and leader of Revolution. They almost may guess what I am doing and when the ground moves much they are sure I am jumping for joy. When I took the Coca out from the bar, broke up his stick on his head and knocked him down, all little boys and girls came near to see how I beat him and even some of them cheered me up shouting: Rocky! Rocky! Rocky! Well, the case is we were precisely at this when the Coca took out a razor and people interfered. The children came to see me at night when they saw me out in the yard and they told me I had beat him up and that I was the best. One little boy of gipsy origin whose name is Quique, supporter of Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid’s football player, seemed the most enthusiastic with me.
When I am at home by daylight I can hear voices and screeches of little boys and little girls, I spend a good time listening to them, I do it too at dawn when I listen to birds’ language. I have listened to them while I wrote or read or watched news, and I know they have for me much esteem. Some of them are Real Madrid’s supporters and others Barcelona’s. Sometimes I have heard them dispute about their team and the other and they are sure always their one is the best. My friend Juan Carlos has told the little boys and little girls I am Barcelona’s supporter. Of course, I said then, after my father, because Messi is the best and the most skilled. Quique did not agree; he said Cristiano Ronaldo was better still, for he was pure power.
I was waiting the bus at the bus stop of Cristo de la Victoria Street when I saw going by a group of little boys of about eight to ten and I heard them say the little boy Quique I was going to be president of Spain, that I was communist. Quique stared at me with sympathy. The bus came. I got on and sat down on the side of children, who had already reached the corner of Cristo de la Victoria Street with Santuario Street. I kept pending of the little boys and didn’t lose them of sight before sitting. I saw how they were explaining to Quique how were things and Quique turned up his back towards the bus when this turned up already the opposite direction and they were in the corner. He didn’t see me already seated, but he made to me the signal of the thumb up from the corner.
Of course, the little boys and little girls know I jump up for joy at ecstatic moments common to all the poor of the world and to all the workers on earth. Sometimes I do this and they know I do it because Alfonso, Pablo and Jorge, my quarter’s old comrades, communist heroes, will come to my encounter some day, and that day Revolution in Spain will start. They know that if I stay in my room watching a Barcelona’s football match, I jump up for joy too if Barça scores and everything moves much as always and they didn’t ignore jumps for joy were in celebration of Barça’s goals. Hearing the little boys and little girls speak Quique always backed up Cristiano Ronaldo saying he was all muscles and power. When he scores or makes a good move he calls himself Ronaldo. The case is children understand me, they have listened to me by telepathy say Messi is more handsome, that football is not the most important, that the three major fortunes of the world possess as much capital as the annual budgets of the sixty poorer countries in the world, that the poor and the workers must be organised to put an end to capitalism; that, finally, all we knew the chief of the state was a ridiculous pedantic king and the president of the government another ridiculous pedantic, politicians worthless, assassins, invaders, genocides, consenters of slavery, famines, refugees, misery, poverty and exploitation. I did also sent them up telepathic messages in the sense that if we had to speak about Messi and Ronaldo, Messi instilled a big heart and Ronaldo seemed and almost sure he was a captive of his excesses and a smug. I finished by saying I was more handsome when Quique was playing in the playground and I was listening to him from my room that Ronaldo was the best.
Once again children’s ball had stick into our yard and I came out to give them it back. They said Leopoldo is the best and later they cheered me up: Leopoldo! Leopoldo! Leopoldo! I saw Quique was among them and he was staring at me and clapping his hands. When they went away to keep on playing I thought it didn’t exist no friction between Quique and I because of football. He had given me tokens of his esteem, but as I was telling telepathically about Ronaldo I had seen Quique passing along my place’s door and he looked at the yard, saw me, laughed and scratched his head.
Well, people know Real Madrid’s football player was dated by Paris Hilton, famous pop singer heiress of the Hilton, and apparently the date went so bad that the Hilton girl said Ronaldo ought to be sissy. One day I told the children the story and when I said: How bad it went to him with the Hilton girl, I heard Quique say Ha and insisted saying as he played: Big goal of Ronaldo. Then I sent by telepathy that the Manchester United was interested in Ronaldo signing for them and resigning from Real Madrid and playing again in Manchester, but there was someone who said that if Cristiano Ronaldo was not capable of parking his wry face somewhere before getting to Manchester, he better shouldn’t go back ever. Little boys and little girls understood this and then I sent up We have proofs. I think everyone and Quique too saw Ronaldo’s wry faces on TV and understood what happened to him. It seemed to me I had won already because some little girls and some little boys had laughed at it, but another day I came out and sat down in the playground. Quique was playing with the ball. I listened to him: This is Messi; stooping, looking at the ball, and the clumsy loses it. And this is Ronaldo; race and might, square, kicks, goal. I came back home and began I don’t know if writing or reading or organising books, probably the three things, and in the meanwhile I told with audible voice by telepathy the entire conversation with Manuel when he asked me if I wanted to spend summer in Mallorca and meet up Carolina and Stéphanie. When I mentioned I didn’t want to meet Carolina and Stéphanie I heard Quique and some little girls laughed at this.cheerfully. I became contagious and could be heard in the playgrounds. I said Carolina lied on my very bed and sighed irreprimably and she wore an ugly wry face at her very first wedding some time later. Quique laughed for ten seconds at least and the little girls too. I then told them with my telepathic audible voice that Stéphanie had come twice up and down the stairs at my place and left at nine steps jumps, and Quique said Ha. I thought it could have seemed a little to boast and I didn't want Quique think that that was what it was. Really, Quique, I could hear when the wooden steps creacked. The little girls and Quique laughed in a very good mood and contagiated me. I went on saying You will enjoy this: Stéphanie appeared on Hello review walking on crutches a week later. I laughed scornfully and contagiated them. Then I said I know you laughed with Carolina's wedding wry face and Stéphanie's crutches. I could hear Quique laughed at it and contagiated me and contagiated everybody. Stéphanie had to walk on crutches a lot of days. At this Quique and the little girls laughed scornfully.
Why not? I said to myself. Right now I will turn on TV Montecarlo’s Formula 1 Grand Prix in 1980 which lasts for two hours for us to see again the prodigies I got that day. The images deformations, the movements of the ground, the shot dead, bombs in plain explosion, levitations; at last, the perception of these who appear at the circuit grades, pilots in their cars, everyone, which consisted in listening a revolutionary leader with powers. Nothing less! I am seated in the yard and I have just seen Quique. He turned his head on passing by and laughed with sarcasm and then he made to me the signal of the thumb upwards.
