The Silent and the Damned. Robert Thomas Wilson

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      ‘I’ll talk to Sr Ortega now…he’s the other neighbour,’ said Falcón, unable to resist the sarcasm.

      ‘I know who Sr Ortega is,’ said Calderón.

      Falcón went to the front door. By the time he turned back Calderón was already lost in labyrinthine thoughts.

      ‘I meant what I said this morning, Esteban.’

      ‘What was that?’

      ‘I think you and Inés will be very happy together,’ said Falcón. ‘You’re very well suited.’

      ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We are. Thanks.’

      ‘You’d better come with me,’ said Falcón. ‘I’m going to lock up now.’

      They left the house and parted ways in the drive. Falcón shut the electric gates with a remote he’d picked up from the kitchen. The entrance to Ortega’s house was to the left of the Vegas’ driveway and covered by a large creeper. He watched Calderón from its shade. The man hovered by his car and appeared to be checking his mobile for messages. He headed off in the direction of the Krugmans’ house, stopped, paced about and gnawed on his thumbnail. Falcón shook his head, rang Ortega’s bell and introduced himself over the intercom. Calderón threw his hands up and went back to his car.

      ‘That’s the way, Esteban,’ said Falcón to himself. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

      The smell of raw sewage had already reached Falcón’s nostrils as he stood by the gate. Ortega buzzed him in to a stink gross enough to make him gag. Large bluebottles cruised the air as threatening as heavy bombers. Brown stains crept up the walls of the corner of the house where a large crack had appeared in the façade. The air seethed with the busy richness of decay. Ortega appeared from around the side of the house which overlooked the lawn.

      ‘I don’t use the front door,’ said Ortega, whose hand grip was bone-cracking. ‘As you can tell, I have a problem with that side of the house.’

      Pablo Ortega’s whole body expressed itself in that handshake. He was compact, unyielding and electric. His hair was long, thick and completely white and fell below the neck of his collarless shirt. His moustache was equally impressive, but had yellowed from smoking. Two creases ran from the entradas of his hairline to his eyebrows and had the effect of pulling Falcón into his dark brown eyes.

      ‘You’ve only just moved in, haven’t you?’ asked Falcón.

      ‘Nine months ago…and six weeks later, this shit happens. The house used to have two rooms built over a cesspit, which holds the sewage for the four houses you can see around us. Then the previous owners built another two rooms on top of them and, with the extra weight, six fucking weeks after they sold me the house, the roof of the cesspit cracked, the wall subsided and now I’ve got the shit of four houses bubbling up through the floor.’

      ‘Expensive.’

      ‘I have to take down that side of the house, repair the cesspit, strengthen it so it can take the additional weight and then rebuild,’ said Ortega. ‘My brother sent somebody round who’s told me I’m looking at a bill for twenty million, or whatever the fuck that is in euros.’

      ‘Insurance?’

      ‘I’m an artist. I didn’t get round to signing the vital piece of paper until it was too late.’

      ‘Bad luck.’

      ‘I’m an expert in that particular commodity,’ he said. ‘As I know you are. We’ve met before.’

      ‘We have?’

      ‘I came to the house on Calle Bailén. You were seventeen or eighteen.’

      ‘Most of Seville’s artistic community passed through that house at some stage or other. I’m sorry I don’t remember.’

      ‘Bad business, that,’ said Ortega, putting a hand on Falcón’s shoulder. ‘I’d never have believed it. You’ve been through the media mill. I’ve read everything, of course. Couldn’t resist it. Drink?’

      Pablo Ortega was wearing blue knee-length shorts and black espadrilles. He walked with his feet splayed and had immense, bulbous calf muscles, which looked as if they could support him through long stage runs.

      They entered round the back of the house through the kitchen. Falcón sat in the living room while Ortega fetched beer and Casera. The room was chill and odourless apart from the smell of old cigar butts. It was stuffed full of furniture, paintings, books, pottery, glassware and rugs. On the floor leaning against an oak chest was a Francisco Falcón landscape. Javier looked at it and felt nothing.

      ‘Charisma,’ said Ortega, returning with beer, olives and capers, and nodding at the painting, ‘is like a force field. You don’t see it and yet it has the power to suspend everybody’s normal levels of perception. Now that the world has been told that the emperor has no clothes it’s easy, and all those art historians that Francisco so despised are endlessly writing about what an evident departure the four nudes were from his other work. I’m with Francisco. They’re contemptible. They delighted in his fall but do not see that now all they’re doing is writing about their own failures. Charisma. We are kept in such an ordinary state of boredom that anybody who can light up our life in any way is treated like a god.’

      ‘Francisco used to substitute the word “genius” for “charisma”,’ said Falcón.

      ‘If you have mastered the art of charisma you don’t even need genius.’

      ‘He certainly knew that.’

      ‘Quite right,’ said Ortega, guffawing back into the armchair.

      ‘We should get down to business,’ said Falcón.

      ‘Yes, well I knew something was going on when I saw that rat-faced bastard out there, smug and comfortable in his expensive lightweight suit,’ said Ortega. ‘I’m always suspicious of people who dress well for their work. They want to dazzle with their carapace while their emptiness seethes with all forms of dark life.’

      Falcón scratched his neck at Ortega’s melodrama.

      ‘Who are we talking about?’

      ‘That…that cabrón…Juez Calderón,’ said Ortega. ‘It even rhymes.’

      ‘Ah yes, the court case with your son. I didn’t…’

      ‘He was the cabrón who made sure that Sebastián went down for such a long time,’ said Ortega. ‘He was the cabrón who pushed for the maximum sentence. That man is just the letter of the law and nothing else. He is all sword and no scales and, in my humble opinion, for justice to be justice you have to have both.’

      ‘I was only told about your son’s case this morning.’

      ‘It was everywhere,’ said Ortega, incredulous. ‘Pablo Ortega’s son arrested. Pablo Ortega’s son accused. Pablo Ortega’s son blah, blah, blah. Always Pablo Ortega’s son…never Sebastián Ortega.’

      ‘I was preoccupied at СКАЧАТЬ