Quim Monzó
TRANS. BY Peter Bush
Instability
Fed up with thieves wrenching out his car radio time after time, Sr Trujillo had one installed you could remove and put back. That way they’d never steal his again.
He drove out of the repair shop, listening to a program. It was a good radio. When he reached home and parked in the community lot, he’d always take out the radio, stick it under his arm, and go up to his apartment. When he went to the office, he’d do likewise. So, all in all, he carried the radio under his arm for a very short while. From the community lot to home, from the office lot to the office: in each case, short walks plus an elevator ride. That’s why it was hardly a pain to carry it. If he’d had to carry it along the street, he’d have thought differently. He’d always felt contempt for people who walked everywhere with their car radio under their arm. They made him fume, when he saw them at the bar, with the radio beside their glass. Or in shops, dragging it from counter to counter, never losing sight of it, even though the shop assistant concealed it under fifteen shirts.
That’s why, a week and a half later, he suddenly stopped in the middle of the street and surveyed his armpit. What was he doing with a radio under his arm? How come he hadn’t noticed until he was fifteen yards from his car? He’d driven to the city center to do some shopping and, after spending an exasperating amount of time driving around looking for a parking space, when he’d finally found one, he’d automatically taken the radio out. The tension that had built up as he circled about had caused his brain autonomously (for a moment) to decide that his reluctance as regards carrying his radio down the street under his arm was nonsense. That’s why it had taken him fifteen yards to realize. He felt ridiculous. He turned back, opened the car door, and sat down holding his radio. Where could he leave it? Under the seat? Would a potential thief perhaps see it through the rear window? In the glove compartment? He looked down the street to see whether anyone was looking. Nobody was. He opened the glove compartment, put the radio inside, and closed it. Then he got out. He checked that the door was properly shut and headed to the first shop, where he bought some green shoes.
When he came back to his car forty-five minutes later, he discovered that the left window had been broken and his radio stolen.
He went back to the repair shop the next morning. He asked them to fit a new window and another radio. He went to pick up the car that afternoon and drove home full of doubts. What would he do from now on? If he only had to go home or to the office, it wasn’t a problem: he would pop in the radio and, once he’d arrived, he’d take it out and carry it up to his flat or office. However, if he went anywhere else (shopping or a restaurant), he wouldn’t leave it in the car, because if he did, it would be stolen.
That’s why the following night he drove without his radio. Something he hated doing; he really liked to listen to music when he was driving. I mean, why had he had a radio installed if in the end he had to leave it at home? He decided that, until he’d solved that dilemma, he’d leave the car in the lot and travel by taxi.
It was precisely in a taxi, five days later, that he concluded it was foolish to spend a fortune every day on taxis while his car gathered dust in the lot. He thought about selling the car. But soon dismissed the idea: it was generated by indignation and was consequently OTT. There must be a solution that perhaps his nerves were blocking out. For the moment, he would take one step: as he was reluctant to take a taxi when his car was in the lot (so as not to take his car without the radio, or with the radio and then have to carry it around), he’d stay at home and not go out. Besides, if he really must, he could always walk to the bar, the shop, the restaurant, or wherever he wanted to go. However, this decision seriously limited his field of action—unless he was ready to spend three hours getting somewhere and three hours getting back.
On the eighth day of staying in at night, he felt so bored he extracted the TV from the junk room, where he’d put it weeks before, when he started dating that girl who reckoned it was trendy again not to watch television. He dusted it. He plugged it in. They were showing a movie with Jean-Louis Trintignant. After a quarter of an hour the screen turned magenta. He switched it off. He unplugged it and put it back in the junk room. He grabbed his jacket, went out, walked to an emporium three streets away and bought a television (a huge one with a rectangular screen); he came home with the technician, connected it, and looked for the channel that was showing the Jean-Louis Trintignant movie.
When the movie finished, it was followed by a made-for-TV movie whose main character was the son of a policeman who, without his father realizing, was helping him solve his cases. Then, the news. Then, a word-guessing competition. In order to participate, you had to send in a label of a well-known vegetable canning company inside an envelope with your name, address, and telephone number. They would select one envelope from the pile. If it was yours, they called you and you had to answer one simple question (live). If you got the right answer, you could participate in the game and try to guess, letter by letter, the word made by the blank squares on the panel. Every square carried a letter and a photo. The photos: different amounts of money, an apartment on the coast, a set of home appliances, a temple in Bangkok, a video camera, a bicycle, a car, and a beach in the Caribbean. Each one indicated the prize won. The simpler the letter, the lower the prize. The trickier the letter, the more valuable the prize. If a competitor opted for easy vowels or consonants, he’d win very little. If you tried to win the big prizes, it involved more unusual letters, and you probably wouldn’t get them and you wouldn’t complete the word, meaning you wouldn’t win any prize at all.
The next morning he bought a can of vegetables of the requisite brand, removed the label, and sent it off. A week later, he watched as they selected his letter. They called him immediately. They asked him the simplest question. Which of the following products didn’t the sponsoring firm can: peas, green beans, tuna, or carrots? He chose the correct answer: tuna. They went on to the panel with the mystery word. Sr Trujillo said the letters. He completed the word: “instability.” The A won him bundles of twenty-five thousand pesetas. The Ts, bundles of a hundred thousand. The S, a television with teletext, and the N, an apartment on the coast.
The apartment was in a three-story building with a communal garden. The neighbor downstairs was a bald Dutchman who spent the day tending his flowers, one of those retired Northerners who decide to spend the last years of their lives in a cheap, warm country, where retirement money goes a lot further. The upstairs neighbors were a couple. He often met them on the stairs, or heard them moving about in their place. They arrived on Saturday morning and left on Sunday evening. Sr Trujillo went every weekend. He left the city on Friday evening (in his car, with the radio installed) and returned on Sunday at dusk.
One Saturday, the upstairs neighbors invited him to dinner. He accepted. She was Raquel. He, Bplzznt. They dined on avocado and prawn cocktails and roast beef with gravy. They drank two bottles of wine. They put on some music. The couple danced. Afterwards, while Bplzznt poured their whiskies, Raquel, all smiles, forced Sr Trujillo to dance with her. He was aroused by being cheek to cheek. When the song was finished, he sat on the sofa. So did the couple. They told him about their line of work and how long they’d been married. They wanted to have lots of children. Sr Trujillo left at 1:00 a.m. He went to sleep, listening to the couple chatting a good long time.
At midday the next morning, somebody knocked on his door. It was Raquel and Bplzznt, who were going to the beach. They invited him to join them. As he had nothing else to do, he agreed. They went to a cove that Raquel and Bplzznt knew, out of the way, with three big, equidistant rocks in the water. Nobody else was on the beach. They stretched out on their towels. The couple went for a swim. They swam out to one of the rocks, some hundred yards away. Sr Trujillo dozed off. He was woken up by shouting. He stood up. A few yards from the rock, Raquel was waving her arms, asking for help. Sr Trujillo jumped into the sea. He was hardly a strong swimmer. When he reached her, he felt exhausted, but he joined in Raquel’s efforts to search for Bplzznt. To no avail. On the way back to the beach, Raquel sobbed as she told him that Bplzznt had started swimming towards the other rock and, half way, had started to call for help. Cramps, no doubt.
The police found the corpse a few hours later. He was buried two days later. His wife didn’t return to the apartment for three weekends. On the fourth, she did. When Sr Trujillo heard footsteps overhead, he went up. The woman threw herself into his arms and burst into tears. He was aroused by being cheek to cheek. He stroked her hair to console her and they started kissing. They sat on the sofa holding hands. Now and then, one, then the other, removed a hand, picked up a handkerchief, and wiped the tears away. They decided on marriage that same night. They married the following Friday. Once married, they decided to sell one of the apartments. They sold Sr Trujillo’s, because if they sold Raquel’s and went to live in Sr Trujillo’s, their new upstairs neighbors might prove to be very noisy. With the money they made, they refurbished Sr Trujillo’s apartment in the city. Two years later they had a baby boy. They named him Bplzznt, in memory of her dead husband. A year later, they had a baby girl. The ideal pair! They named her Clara, after Sr Trujillo’s mother. Their third child (two years later) was also a girl. They named her Chachacha.
Every weekday morning, before going to the office, Sr Trujillo grabs his briefcase and the boy with one hand and the girls with the other and takes them to school. Bplzznt is now six, Clara, five, and Chachacha, three. First he leaves the boy at the junior high, then the elder girl at elementary school, and the youngster at kindergarten. Then Sr Trujillo walks down the stairs, greets the odd father or mother he meets on the way, ruffles the hair of a boy he knows, and goes back to their block. He gets into his car, takes the radio from his briefcase: he purchased the briefcase so he could conceal the radio inside when he walks his children to school. He inserts the radio, switches it on, tunes in to a program, puts his hands over his face, and, with all the strength he can muster, tries to cry, but the tears never come.
Quim Monzó was born in Barcelona in 1952. He has been awarded the National Award, the City of Barcelona Award, the Prudenci Bertrana Award, the El Temps Award, the Lletra d’Or Prize for the best book of the year, and the Catalan Writers’ Award, and he has been awarded Serra d’Or magazine’s prestigious Critics’ Award four times. He has also translated numerous authors into Catalan, including Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, and Ernest Hemingway.
Peter Bush’s award-winning translations include Juan Goytisolo’s Níjar Country, Teresa Solana’s A Shortcut to Paradise, Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love, and Josep Pla’s The Gray Notebook. He lives in Barcelona.