Belén’s lips

            I had killed a lot of Saudi Arabians and their guests in Marbella throwing off of the highway all their retinue’s cars, consisting of, you can imagine, luxurious cars, and escorted by Civil Guard throughout their journey, but in the middle of lawlessness I did the trick with a Renault 5 Copa and they were the kamikazes with hard luck. I had stopped when I had finished at a control and Civil Guards hadn’t arrested me. I felt a chased man by the Saudi Arabian royal family and by the families of those I killed with a big crash of mortal accidents, ten to me. I had my hair divided in two, a stripe just in the middle as I had done it in Marbella. We had had the experience of our lives. Probably it will be the most famous race ever, because it’s been filmed. I went to my room and loaded a roll film in my camera and took pictures of myself doing movements and gestures with the shutter open. In the negatives the sequences appear multiplied, one would think to the infinite, effect caused by the multiple small mirrors with different size and shape. I didn’t sleep and I didn’t want either. I felt I was a hero for all the poor of the world and for all enemies of the Saudi Arabian royal family. It made me laugh and I shared this with the people watching me. I listened to the radio. I always dialled La Havana, Moscow and East Germany. I realized I was a good element, good comrade Poldo.

            During the campaign of the referendum for or against the ratification of the Constitution in 1978 the International Communist Party had edited a leaflet on which they had included a manifest I had written denouncing the Constitution and encouraging people to revolutionary actions, to armed struggle. I had now killed a lot of enemies, proprietors of oil wells selling daily an inmense quantity of barrels of oil. These people live with luxury and ostentation, they are guilty of world’s cruel wars and famines. Carlos Ilich Ramírez had kidnapped all the attendants to the OPEC summit in Viena and had escaped in a helicopter. I had made a funny contribution to Revolution killing all those people on the highway. I couldn’t have but success all the time, so powerful I felt. The Communist Party would appoint me armed president and Revolution would start. By that time there were already many people with telepathic powers.

            In the morning I called my friends by phone. We met up and Belén was with us too. I liked Belén. I didn’t tell them anything at that moment. In two cars we went to Navacerrada, in Madrid’s Sierra, 57 kms. from Madrid. I was the pilot of a Mini, of Pilar’s mother. We parked our cars just beside the rock that limits the provinces of Madrid and Segovia. We stood there just for a while. We wanted to see only. We took some pictures. I have very remarkable eyeballs. I hadn’t slept but I wasn’t tired; more yet, I felt I was a courageous feline, feline of course I had well been. We got into our cars to come back to Madrid. I started up the engine and moved the car to the very winding road and drove down from so high spot. Belén was seated at the back. Suddenly, the red car bonnet rose up by itself and we couldn’t see through the car’s front window but the red car bonnet only. What happened then happened so fast that it may be taken for a crazy situation due to unusual circumstances and dialogue. Pilar was the co-pilot and she asked me very scared, What’s happened? I don’t know, I replied It must be excited, I said. It? What you mean? asked Pilar confused. The car, I said replying to Pilar. All them at the back were very scared too because they couldn’t see and were shouting to me: Stop, please! Stop, please! Stop, please! I didn’t stop the car but I tried to put down the car bonnet from my place at the steering wheel. My friends and Belén were shouting. Stop, please! Stop, please! Stop, please! The car bonnet didn’t go down. Belén was shouting. Nothing happens, I said. I am a good driver. Please, stop! Stop! She was touching my shoulder as if she was in a great danger. I had no other but stop, get off the car and put the car bonnet down at last. After this I got into the car and started the engine again and began to drive ahead. All them were scared. Be careful, Leopoldo, please, Pilar said to me. I had to, I then confessed: Yesterday I threw off of the road all the cars of the Saudi Arabian royal members retinue on the highway to Marbella! Stop! Stop! Please, stop! Leopoldo, stop, please! Pilar was shouting too. I’m saying I killed them all! Stop, please! Leopoldo, please, stop! Come on, no one passed! On saying this I stopped and said: We have been going down the road with the car bonnet impeding our vision but I knew nothing bad could happen to us. They didn’t want me to drive the car. I said I was a good driver and I started to go on driving at a normal speed in our return to Madrid. What a scare! We’ve passed a dangerous situation. We've run a risk! they said. I’m a good driver. I drive my friends cars, you all know, I said. I knew what I was doing all the time, I tell you: Yesterday I threw off the highway all the retinue of the most expensive cars of the Saudi Arabian royal family members nearly arriving in Marbella and I killed them all. They listened and I began to give details of my race but they preferred not to hear about it. Pilar was admired. She knew it was true , that in spite of my most probable narrow escape, I had succeded, and they hadn’t imprisoned me. She knew it had been a full attack. Belén was still nervous. I could see her through the rear-view mirror. They didn’t want me to speak about Marbella. Only Pilar asked me which car it was. I told her, a Renault 5 Copa.

In reality I wanted to impress Belén jovially of course, but I rather gave to her the impression of being dangerous. I know she was scared and it made me smile surreptitiously. If the race was discovered I would be no doubt a hero for all poor people in the world, for all enemies of capitalism and I thought Belén wouldn’t say no if I asked her to be my companion in the struggle, this in the event I wasn’t going to be taken to prison.

            After I wrote in Ramsgate the pamphlet calling to armed struggle and encouraging a frontal opposition to the Bourbon dummy king and the sneak president Adolfo Suárez, I went into a feverish state of mind of immediate revolutionary action waiting for Alfonso, Pablo and Jorge to come and start carrying out revolutionary actions to take the power in Spain. I knew I was the appointed armed president of the Spanish Communist Party, and this since I was a child. So many times I was told throughout my life I would be some day that I had it engraved on my mind, so clear I have been the president since I was a child.

            Belén and I had been seeing each other for some time. We had a funny time. We were arrested at the PCE (Spain’s Communist Party) yearly meeting and concert in the Casa de Campo grounds in Madrid. There was a misunderstanding. They thought that I had tried to strain. Someone shouted to warn the police and Belén and I were taken to the Police headquarters. I had taken with me a written speech I had the intention of addressing to the comrades attendants. Being things different without my friends I didn’t tell Belén about old shots. One day there was an illegal concentration of the communist revolutionary comrades in action near to where she lived and I told her to come with me. I went to her place and when I took her hand something very impressive happened: An electric light discharged over our bodies in the middle of a blinding light. Down at the end of the street there were a very large number of comrades I knew had the power to go ahead to Victory, and they were shouting my name: Poldo! Poldo! Poldo!, encouraging me to go on soldier. I don’t well know why it happened but when Belén and I reached the end of the street my comrades had dispersed and most of them had gone away. I smiled to Belén seeing her as my wife and companion and relying on my friends to be standing in my house with my parents and my brothers. One day she told me there was a concert of James Brown in the University and we went and we enjoyed it a lot. While I danced with my rhythm everything moved, so much I moved the musicians on the stage to hear the murmurs. I don’t remember quite well what I told her exactly in those days of a deep revolutionary fever. We were destined to be happy. The old shots had been the old shots and they would happily be with me forever. No doubt Belén wasn’t scared any longer knowing I had killed in Marbella all the Saudi Arabian retinue’s members and I knew she liked me seeing I distilled love. I loved her truly, more because she didn’t mind to come with me to Madrid’s city center to ask people for money, just enough to sit down in a bar or a cafeteria to speak and to have something. Of course I told her about Alfonso, Pablo and Jorge, the microfilm in Ramsgate, my parents and brothers, my intention to be the leader of the Revolution in Spain. Of her face and figure, of her name too, I have always kept the vision of that ray that protected us with its light on taking up her hand. She can't say I waited much in telling her about my ability in Marbella at the steering wheel of a Renault 5 Copa...