lighting, almost everyone knows that. It’s always coming up in films, didn’t you ever go to any Tarantino films? Or that other one starring Al Pacino where there’s a shot of the stuff in little piles?’
‘That much I know, dear María,’ he retorted, rather stung. ‘I do live on this grubby planet of ours, you know, even though it may not seem so when I’m in full creative flow. But please don’t undersell yourself, you who not only make books, like your colleague Beatriz and so many others, but read them too, and show excellent judgement if I may say so.’ He used to come out with such comments occasionally, I imagine so as to win me over; I had never actually given my opinion on any of his books, that wasn’t what I was paid to do. ‘I’m just worried about not choosing the right adjectives. Can you tell me, for example, is it milky white or more calcareous? And what about the texture? Is it like chalk dust or sugar? Like salt or flour or talcum powder? Come on, tell me.’
Given the susceptibility of the Nobel Laureate-to-be, I found myself embroiled in an absurd and dangerous conversation. And it was entirely my fault.
‘It’s like cocaine, Señor Garay Fontina. There’s no point in describing it these days, because even if someone hasn’t tried it, they will have seen it. Apart from old people, of course, but they’re sure to have seen it on television thousands of times.’
‘Are you telling me how I should write, María? Whether I should or should not use adjectives? What I should describe and what is superfluous? Are you trying to give lessons to Garay Fontina?’
‘No, Señor Fontina …’ I was incapable of calling him by his two surnames every time, it took too long, was hardly a sonorous combination of words and, more to the point, I simply didn’t like it. Oddly, he seemed less put out if I omitted the Garay.
‘I have my reasons for asking you for those two grams of cocaine today. Probably because tonight the book is going to need them, and you want there to be a new book and you want it mistake-free, don’t you? All you have to do is get me the cocaine and send it to me, not argue with me. Or must I speak personally to Eugeni?’
Here I took a risk by digging my heels in, and came out with a Catalan turn of phrase. I picked them up from my boss, who was Catalan by birth and full of Catalanisms, despite having lived in Madrid all his life. If Garay’s request reached his ears, he was capable of sending us all out into the street to pick up drugs (in dodgy areas and places where taxi drivers refuse to go) just to please the author. He took his most conceited author far too seriously; it never ceases to amaze me how these vain people manage to persuade so many others of their worth; it’s one of the world’s great enigmas.
‘¿Que nos toma por camellos?’ I said. ‘What do you take us for, Señor Fontina? Drug-pushers? I don’t know if you realize it, but you’re asking us to break the law. As I’m sure you’re aware, you can’t buy cocaine at the local tobacconist’s nor in your local bar. And what are you going to do with two whole grams? Do you have any idea how much two grams of cocaine is, how many lines of coke you could get out of that? You might overdose, and imagine what a loss that would be! To your wife and to literature. You might have a stroke. You could become an addict and be unable to think of anything else, not even writing, a mere piece of human flotsam unable to travel, because you can’t cross frontiers if you have drugs on you. You could kiss goodbye to the ceremony in Sweden and to that impertinent speech of yours to Carl Gustaf.’
Garay Fontina remained silent for a moment, as if weighing up whether or not he had overstepped the mark with his request. But I think he was more concerned by the dreadful prospect of never treading the red carpets of Stockholm.
‘No, not drug-pushers,’ he said at last. ‘You would just have to buy it, not sell it.’
I took advantage of his hesitation to clarify in passing an important detail of the operation he was proposing: