Forensic Anatomical Institute
Alfonso Romero is a friend and old comrade who lived in the village, that is, Xinzo de Limia, province of Ourense, region of Galicia, in north-west Spain. When we went to live in Ourense, the capital of the province, being both five years old, his family went too.When we came to live in Usera, Madrid’s south quarter, being both six years old, his family came too. I remember him in the same pension days before they handed us the houses keys. We have lived together experiences recorded in our minds of happenings in the village, in Ourense and later many in Madrid, to build a man’s life.
We went to the same school near to our houses. After two years I went to a religious college Alfonso and I were classmates again in another college. Sometimes we went to the quarters poolrooms and listened to some records in the jukebox Alfonso wanted me to hear. Taking into account he was having fun with me, I had since then kept in my memory well known old songs we have always enjoyed. Choose among the late 60s and the beginning of the 70s hits and they are what almost everyone enjoyed listening to by then. So when I heard again the old songs Alfonso Romero put on for me at our quarter’s poolrooms they sounded to me throughout all my life like something I should be longing for, something like an ecstasy of cheerfulness, a paradise of plenitude to be spread everywhere.
It was 1972 and we were fourteen. First it was Alfonso who tried to get a job, and it was his father, who worked in a chemistry company, to whom Alfonso must be grateful, because Alfonso’s first job was in the same his father’s company. I remember the first day we went to Alfonso and Alfonso’s father’s company. Antonio Cordero, Alfonso’s friend his neighbour, came with us that day. Alfonso didn’t know where it was although his father worked in it and the company was where he was going to work at. Neither Antonio had idea nor I. We laughed with two girls to whom we asked where it was Cea Bermúdez Street and one of them said to the other not to tell us. Why not?, we asked her. Don’t tell them, don’t tell them, she said, taking the other by the arm and the two went away. Madrid was not like it is today, the place was rather an open with a few scattered buildings and almost nobody in the streets. We were at Cea Bermúdez Street! The girls surely thought we were on the moon.
One day we three, Alfonso, Antonio and I, went to the city center to stroll through the streets, with much complicity in looking at places and taking things the same way. We started to walk along Mayor Street from Puerta del Sol, where it begins towards its end. We were talking about studying and working. He told Antonio and I he had been fired from the company because he had killed several Guinea pigs destined for investigation the second day he was working for them. I asked him about what his father had done. He told us his father said that it was a good thing if he founded another job. We three laughed. I said I wanted to work to have pocket money. I told them I would like to have a part time job and go on studying in the mornings or evenings. Alfonso said it wouldn’t be difficult for me to find a job. We were nearly getting to the end of Mayor Street and we agreed in turning into the first street right where there was a grocery that had attracted the attention of both my friends. We went to read the advertising note on the window screen. They were looking for an orders deliverer, part time. I told my friends I wanted the job. We came into the grocery. I said to one of the two grocers I wanted the job. They asked me my age and if I was a student. I told them I was fourteen and a student. I would have to wear a white jacket and to carry a wheelbarrow to deliver orders.
I started to work as a grocer’s deliverer in the mornings and went on studying in the evenings. From tips I used to get the much I earned in salary. Some of the money I gave to my parents, but I had enough to pay for daily newspaper, cinemas, invitations at bars, vanilla and strawberry milkshakes, coffees and buns and refreshments. By that epoch Alfonso and I used to meet frequently and got on very well with each other, but we spoke no more about the experiences we lived together in Xinzo de Limia and in Ourense. Another day we were walking down towards Plaza de Atocha along Santa Isabel Street, which is parallel to Atocha Street. I remember it quite clearly. He was telling me he was working at the Forensic Anatomical Institute and was earning a lot of money, I asked him which was his job. He said he had to clean up dead bodies, 50.000 pesetas every stiff. So much you earn for that?, I asked him. Yes, that much. Only cleaning up? Well, I say cleaning but there is formalin too. What is it, formalin? Formalin is for making the bodies disappear, he said. I don't like that kind of job, it is something funereal, but it is good the money you can get making disappear dead people, I said, and added: Well, it depends on the number of corpses, but only one is a fortune. The Forensic Anatomical Institute is just behind that block, at the Carlos III University Center, he said to me, at Atocha Street. I know the building, I said, and I continued: If you earn a lot of money you can retire soon in life. Nobody wants my job, that’s why it is very well paid. This way it won’t take me too long to earn money enough to retire, true , he said. I remained silent, but seeing him smiling first and later laughing, I said: So we shall be being friends and I will have then a rich friend?, I asked. Alfonso said to me: If you work at it you will be able to afford a Rolls Royce and more whims.
One day the three of us again went to Cobra dicotheque in the afternoon. In Cobra discotheque Antonio and I were dancing on the dance floor. There were two girls kind of posh and I didn't want to dance. Alfonso made me a gesture and I went to him. He told me to wait for him just an instant in the same place I was. Actually, he came in into the toilet and came out instantly and showed me a gun. Look what I do!, he said to me. He pointed at a bearded man's forehead who was seated on a stall by the counter and very quickly he shot at the man's forehead and hit him full.
Days after I was going on a bus along Atocha Street and I suddenly decided to get off the bus and go to see how were things in the Institute. It didn’t take too much time to think about speaking with a responsible of the Institute and tell him I wanted to work as dead bodies cleaner. When I reached the building I saw as I well knew it had the letters above the entrance door Carlos III University Center and on the wall on a plate the letters say Anatomical Forensic Institute, which was what I had always known. The door was closed but I knocked on the door. It was late evening and I thought it wasn’t rare they were close because of the kind of job they did. What to say about the dead bodies. A man in his forties opened up the big door at last. Hello. Good evening, sir, I said. Hello. We didn’t expect nobody. Who do you want to see? Well, I wanted to speak with a responsible. What for? To ask him for a job. A job? How old are you? I am fourteen, but I am not scared of dead bodies. Dead bodies? Yes, I know what you are doing here, a friend of mine works here, Alfonso Romero his name. What is it according to you that dead bodies stuff and what you know about what we do here? I understand it must be kept kind of secret, but I want a job as dead bodies cleaner. I want to earn a lot of money and to retire soon. I know down here is where the Forensic Anatomical Institute clean some dead bodies and make some disappear. The man hadn’t opened up the big door completely and he watched me with interest although distant. How do we according to you make dead bodies disappear? With formalin, I said quickly a kind of defiant. The man seemed to react from a strange situation and said to me: You haven’t come to the right place, I tell you. Apart from that, formalin is for keeping the bodies, not for making them disappear.
At its time I told Alfonso what had happened and he told me he was still working at it, in the same place and doing the same, that was cleaning dead bodies and making them disappear. First time Alfonso spoke to me about formalin I knew about it but I had forgotten. I would like to have said to him what I was told by his coworker about formalin. He wanted to cheat me, I would have said to Alfonso, so I suppose it must be a secret the real liquid you use. Is it? What?, he asked. You told me formalin is for making your dead bodies disappear, I said, and your coworker told me it is for keeping them. Well..., I realised now... I remember, yes, true . How can I possibly have forgotten. You tried to confuse me, I know formalin is for keeping the bodies... You are not really working for the Forensic Anatomical Institute... I can only tell you this: Keep in mind the story and you will catch more of what is to come..., he said. I understood instantly but I said nothing. Of course I attributed the fact of Alfonso working cleaning dead bodies with dead bodies of people he was going to liquidate, and each time I heard the word formaline I always thought of Alfonso and of people he had killed..
Twice I went to Alfonso’s house in search of him. First time he wasn’t in or nobody opened the door. Second time his mother told me Alfonso was in Ibiza and later in Switzerland. That was so. Because I asked her when he was coming back from Ibiza and she must have gotten confused and told me they didn’t know when he would come back from Switzerland. I told them to please give their son my telephone number and I offered my pen to his mother. His mother said she too had a pen and she took it out from her handbag and asked which was it. I quoted then my number and she wrote it down on her fist.
Some days after this I was told Alfonso and another friend, Liquen, had been shot dead by a jeweler when my friends were trying to rob gun in hand the nearer jewelry to my house. In the afternoon I went by the jewelry and I saw some police cars. Next day I bought daily El País newspaper and I saw a picture of both. I bought El Caso and they also narrated facts giving more information. The jeweler had come up the stairs on hearing them ask her wife to give them all the money, the gold and the jewels. My friend Alfonso’s gun was a fake gun and the jeweler’s wife had shouted in panic and the jeweler had come upstairs and shot them to death and Alfonso died instantly and Liquen after a few seconds.
If all these facts were a plot is something almost everyone understands already. When I meet up Alfonso again I will ask him, how could it not be so, if he earned much money cleaning dead bodies to retire soon and to buy a Rolls Royce and other whims, and most probably we shall laugh at it till our mucus come out uncontrollably. Both together again will mean the start of Revolution. The Communist Party has illuminated all struggles in our lives.
