Handsomest in films ever
I was spending some days in a psychiatric clinic because a judge had decided it, because I did a big scandal during my nephew Luis and my niece Pilar wedding in Almería and wanted to kill a guy who came gifting everyone with a little cloth bag filled with sand. We were under a shield covering from excesive heat and the wedding was taking place a little way up on the upper explanade of the stronghold. Everyone took their little cloth bags filled with sand, but the guy did not give me one to me. They all were the marrying couple’s friends from many different countries. They started to talk and I kept silence. When they paused a moment I asked the guy if I may have a look at the little cloth bags at least and stretched my hand and fingers to take one from him. He made a sudden hostile movement and took away from me the disputed little bag. I reacted immediately, I went to him and said to him it was my wedding and pulling his shirt I ordered him airily to say his name. He asked me to go outside. Where do you think we are?, I said. It happened unexpectedly, my brothers Arturo and Miguel and Pablo, another nephew, Miguel’s son, beat me up so hardly I could not defend, only try not to receive so much. They took me to the hotel and left me alone lying on my bed in my room. I had some painful wounds in head, arms and legs, but I could not sleep. I stood up and searched for my cutter, found it and put it inside my trousers’ pockets. I came downstairs to the hotel’s terrace and took a seat at a table. I asked for something, lemon probably. After some minutes my brothers, sisters-in-law and nephews and nieces and some people invited at the wedding began to come. The swimming pool gardens on which the lunch was going to take place was beside the terrace and I could see from the terrace the people coming into the swimming pool’s gardens. My brothers reproached me my reaction and I tried to explain what had happened but they would not listen to me. When there was a pause I asked: Wasn’t he gifting everyone? Why not me? They talked and decided to take me to the gardens. We went and I sat down where most of the members of my family were. The place was big and I was watching my nephew Luis and my niece Pilar at the other extreme of the long swimming pool. I said to my mother I was going to congratulate and kiss both Pilar and Luis. On my way parallel to the pool I saw the guy standing by the counter and talking with someone. I went along to Luis and shouted to him why he consented bad people at their wedding. Luis embarrassed and asked me who for instance. I told him to come with me to the guy by the counter. He came with me and I pointed him out shouting at the same time There he is, the son of a bitch! Once again all my brothers caught me up and pulled me out. I had just made a last effort trying to produce my cutter in front of the guy. The case is we came back to Madrid and I was crushed. In Madrid I lied on bed for some time. My mother had told me to be quiet. Two policemen appeared in my room. They went away at once, they just looked at me to be witness. Then two ambulance’s employees took me to Ciempozuelos psychiatric clinic.
Well, I remember clearly almost everything that happened during my staying in the clinic. My mother and all my brothers came to see me in the clinic every day, they came with me for a walk through Ciempozuelos’ streets and seated at a table to snack in a cafeteria together when after some days, they allowed me to go outdoors, always accompanied. My beloved mother did not miss one day. First days I had been sleeping most of the time, but then I felt stronger and happier. I became friendly with some of my female and male companions. I remember especially Ali, a moroccan guy with whom I spent a funny time. Last time I saw him in the clinic he had to go, for they had allowed him to go outdoors, but I made him linger a little by me and I told him what had happened once to Kike, a friend of mine. Ali listened. I told him Kike was ambulance driver and in the evenings and some nights he used to be a taxi driver. The case is he became acquainted with a pickpocket girl who worked with drunkards in Montera street. First time they had met up Kike was there in his taxi and he had helped in her narrow escape. Montera street became boring and they decided to go to Chicote cocktail bar and give a big blow. First time was very easy and happily very quick. He was a foreigner leaving next day. It was waiting just five minutes. The recepcionist seemed surprised but she had told him she would be back soon. It pleased them so much they tried again, this time in Don Angelo. Kike was waiting in his taxi for her to come out from Don Angelo accompanied by someone to whom he should be taking somewhere to wait again the blow is done. Kike saw her friend coming out from Don Angelo accompanied by a man with a foreigner drunkard aspect who had surrendered to her enchantments and was thinking he would get something pleasurable. Kike had his driver’s window opened and said to them both: Shall I take you, couple? He did at the same time the movement of driving on the steering wheel. But to Kike’s surprise she went on walking down the street with the man taking not notice of him. Next day at the ambulances headquarters Kike’s companions were talking about a man who was drugged with a kiss in a pension near Don Angelo. Kike knew already where to search for her. They met up. She said it had been a big blow. She had convinced the man to go to the pension. He must be a big shot, a gold wrist watch and 2.000 €, she said.
I then did as if I were the taxi driver the movements of driving the steering wheel and asked while looking at Ali: Shall I take you, couple? Shall I take you? Shall I take you? And this made Ali laugh so much that he could not avoid some mucus come out from his nostrils and tears of big fun falling from his eyes. We at last could calm down and restrain our laughter. You will see how we shall laugh! I kept silence to hear the big news. Everyone is filmed, Ali said. I remained silent. I’ve got a camera in my brain that has been filming all my life. We exchanged our phone numbers and talked about meeting up in Usera, for he lived in Usera too. We said goodbye. I lingered in the room where I had told Ali the tale thinking about a camera in my brain. How lucky I would be had I got a camera in my brain all my life! So proud I would be to watch some deeds I have carried out which I called episodes!
Remembrances of Xinzo de Limia, the village where we lived: My father and I killing a man with two guns in the kitchen and my mother doing comedy; my mother and I killing with a gun a man seated at a lorry’s steering wheel in the presence of Alfonso; my father telling Alfonso and I that we were linked to each other and that we would be soldiers; the hidden door I used to search for in our house, where I last entered and saw the Apollo in ignition, my father on the Moon and a horrible massacre of a multitude of black people inside a slaughterhouse in Rhodesia; my grandfather Modesto, my mother’s father, telling me as we walked along a street together I would some day see him on a film; my brothers Luis, Arturo, Miguel and Ignacio, for Jesús was born in Madrid; my cousins Raquel and María Elena; our first teacher in the village, doña René. Remembrances of Ourense: Alfonso and I at the roller hockey matches at Jardín del Posío in Ourense and meeting up Alfonso in an Ourense’s hospital where we were vaccinated when we were five years old. Remembrances of Madrid: Some days Alfonso’s family and my family spent together in a pension at Plaza de Legazpi before they handed out our parents the keys of our new houses in Usera when we were six; Daoíz y Velarde School, where Alfonso and I were classmates; I telling another classmate, Vicente Mohedano his name, Alfonso and I had killed a man in the village, It was you, Alfonso had said; my father taking me to a street starting at Plaza de Legazpi always plenty of lorries and saying to me I would see him some day shooting up on a microfilm; my brothers and I playing records and listening to news on the radio in the little hall; the killing live of Robert F. Kennedy on a TV especially hired by my father the day it happened; the day I made Franco and his officers and soldiers flee away from Plaza de Cristo Rey, where they were celebrating a new fusillade when I was eight years old; my Summer in Baños de Molgas, Ourense, with my uncle Leopoldo and my aunt Maruja during which my aunt Maruja and I killed a Coelho de Portugal, an aspirant to Portugal’s throne, pushing him down a precipice where he found his death; Pablo Cabo and I guns in hand in an alley of Plaza de Oriente on 18 July 1968 during Franco’s speech shooting up to death I do not know yet today how many nauseating fascists; following day reading with Pablo Pueblo newspaper where they said only two people were killed and five people were injured; Pablo saying to me that a new terrorist group called FRAP was vindicating the action and that he and I were the group leaders; the journey Alfonso, Pablo, Jorge and I made throughout Madrid streets during which they told me I would see them some day carrying out terrorist actions on a microfilm; Alfonso and I planning my clandestine struggle against Capital inventing names to use on my binder's front; Alfonso, Antonio Cordero and I in Cobra discotheque where Alfonso shot dead a man seated on a stall by the counter; Jesús Martín and I throwing stones in Gran Vía against banks’ branches; Jorge taking me to Claudio Coello Street to the basement where they placed the bomb that killed Carrero Blanco, president of government appointed by Franco; Jorge beating up in Gran Vía five or six policemen who wanted to hit me with their truncheons; the day my GRAPO members comrades came to see me at the poolroom after they had killed five army officers in vengeance for the fusillade of five ETA and FRAP members for me to know they had been the killers; when I was introduced to Fernando Cotoner y Cotoner, Royal House Chief’s brother, to whom I passed under a table my telephone number annotated on a small piece of my newspaper; my show of strength in Santiago Bernabeú stadium, of Real Madrid’s football team, ordering to shut up nauseating, nasty and ugly Ultra Sur noisy fascists hooligans, being seen I by all the stadium’s spectators; Manuel Ordaz Bruzo and I being introduced to each other in Cerebro discotheque; Manuel and I walking along from Boccaccio discotheque to his place at 2 Almagro Street and later there speaking with him about the Spanish political situation; the revolutionary essay encouraging a Popular Front to remove the dummy king from power that was published as a pamphlet in a clandestine publication by the International Communist Party during the previous days to new Constitution referendum; my days in Manuel’s at 9 Jorge Juan Street where he had moved to, having as neighbours the dummy king of Spain’s sister and her family; the attempts of engaging me with any of the two king’s daughters and doing as if I hadn’t heard anything; my saying no to meet up princesses of Monaco Caroline and Stéphanie in Mallorca; my fabulous race in a highway on the lane contrary against a whole Saudi Arabian royal members retinue of luxurious cars nearly arriving to Marbella to spend a two months Summer and the mortal accidents we saw from which they could not get alive, for the grounds where their cars were diverted off from the highway were very irregular; watching up in my room at the Regency Hotel School of Ramsgate, Kent, England, my old comrades Alfonso, Pablo and Jorge, my father and my brothers carrying out terrorist actions and all the other sequences of executions and Second World War scenes that finished with the execution of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun and after this the fusillade of the Romanov’s family and Leonid Breznev, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sun issuing for me a communication saying Third World War would start when I meet up again Alfonso, Pablo and Jorge who appeared smiling inside a car at our Usera’s quarter Mirasierra Street; welcoming salutations to all world’s revolutionaries from the room where I wrote down my nine pages pamphlet to encourage Revolution; what I did during and after civil guard colonel lieutenant Antonio Tejero’s assault gun in hand of the Deputies Congress during Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo investiture as new president of the government; my coming back to Usera to wait for Alfonso, Pablo and Jorge to be appointed armed president of Spain’s Communist Party and leader of Revolution; visiting communist parties headquarters and Russian embassy; shooting up to the sky with fake guns in the most thronged streets and squares of Madrid while I used to give speeches; the time I horrified in a big room in the city center the dummy king’s father and some twenty of thirty Fuerza Nueva fascists that had machine guns, guns, katanas and machetes with the intention of killing me, but I did not let them have the chance, no one moved, I left them all petrified.
Well, I knew since Ali told me in the psychiatric clinic he had a camera inside his brain which had been filming all his life that I could be sure of being myself the star in these quite many events that I have just mentioned. The truth is I felt very proud of all the deeds I call episodes in my writings but I did not understand why my waiting for the start of Revolution should take too long. At least, I said to myself to relax, the episodes were really spectacular, everyone will be able to watch them and I shall be the star. A few days after I left the psychiatric clinic I went to spend some time at my nephew's and niece's house. My niece and Samanta the little girl were sleeping upstairs already. Luis put on an U2 concert in Los Angeles and we watched it entire. Later he put on a film of their wedding at Almería's stronghold. On seeing them all happy at their wedding, my parents, my brothers, my sisters-in-law, my nephews and nieces, all their friends, female and male Portuguese, Italian and Irish friends, enjoying the meal seated at their tables and dancing later very cheerfully, I began to weep, in so an irrepressible way, Luis did a dear approach to console me and I stopped weeping little by little. You are so emotive, Leopoldo, he told me, I know these tears makes you feel better. I did not want to miss all that under no circumstances, but the guy invited to the wedding spoiled it up. Yes, uncle Poldo, he said, you told me already how it was, and I do not think your reaction was any good. Luis, It was not my fault, I can tell you once more how it happened. What was the matter, uncle Poldo? You should not have treated the guy so badly and less of course to produce the cutter in front of him. Well, Luis, as for that, I said, let me say that perhaps it was not the best reaction, but you must understand it was your wedding, so mine as well, and the guy denied to me the little cloth bag filled with sand he gifted everybody with to all the people there with an aggresive movement. You should have to have contained, he said. Well, Luis, listen to me please. I tell you he was not emulating no revolutionary existing. Or was it because your friends endured the heat and I had taken off tie, jacket and shirt not to be sweating and so uncomfortable? Now you have to forget, Poldo, he said. The wedding images were going on on the screen. I wept again unable to contain myself. Calm down, Poldo. You are a very good person, everyone loves you, you should not suffer now from it. Well, as for that I am really disappointed for not having been with you all at the wedding, and besides, what was the guy's problem? Was it that I was naked from head to waist? Everyone wanted to do the same I did and besides your friends were sweating and uncomfortable and envious of my nakedness. Well, Poldo it's time to go to bed. My little wife is waiting for me. Tomorrow I will show you some pictures we have taken last year during our trip to Jamaica and Argentina. Doesn't it remind you that you had asked us to buy in Argentina a book entitled The book of landscapes written by Leopoldo Lugones? Yes, I do. What? We went to four of five bookshops in Buenos Aires and they told us the book was out of print, and when we found it at last in an old books shop they were asking for € 300. It took nearly a whole day and we wanted to buy a copy for you, but we thought it was so expensive, we decided not to buy it, knowing you would not approve such a high price.
