The Angst-Ridden Executive by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Read Free Book Online

executive farts in Chelsea, it’s a dead cert they’ll smell it in Calcutta. You have no idea what goes into a company like Petnay. They gather more information than most governments, and they’ve got as much political pull as the State Department. The Petnay Empire. Capital: San Francisco.’
    ‘I thought Petnay’s headquarters were in London.’
    ‘That’s just for show. The real HQ is in San Francisco.’
    Rhomberg looked at Jauma reproachfully, but Jauma’s eyes were on the passing countryside, as if he was reading the text of his speech off it.
    ‘I find it very relaxing to take a pleasure trip in the company of a socialistically-inclined senior executive and an intelligent fellow countryman. Did you know that Spaniards make the best foremen in the world? Would you agree that this is to be our role in the brave new world?’
    ‘When I was younger I used to think that Spaniards were cut out to be only executioners or their victims. I wasn’t aware of our role as foremen.’
    ‘Oh there’s no doubt of it. The history of Spain’s economic and political emigration is full of foremen. From the nineteenth century onwards Europe and America were supplied with excellent foremen in the shape of Spanish political and economic émigrés. My father went into exile in 1939, and he was a forestry overseer in the south of France, until he had to run from the Germans, from Dieter and his pals.’
    Rhomberg’s grunt indicated the routine disapproval of a person reacting to an overworked joke.
    ‘That’s interesting—my father went into exile in ‘39 too, and he also ended up as a foreman. In a quarry near Aix-en-Provence.’
    ‘You see? And I’ve got the explanation. In part it relates to your theory about Spaniards being either executioners or victims. The victim ones are particularly suited to being foremen in foreign countries. They’ve got the fears of a born loser, the determination of a survivor, and the hardness of a person who knows he can’t turn back. I’m the same. I’m a foreman. And Dieter is an inspector of foremen.’
    ‘Are you a loser, a survivor, a man who can’t turn back?’
    ‘I would say so, yes. Almost all the students in my year at the Law Faculty have ended up either as labour lawyers of such standing as to merit a ten-line entry in the Encyclopaedia Sovietica , or as affluent business lawyers. I was a wanderer, who dedicated himself neither to “defending the working class” nor to making a brilliant social career. I’ve got a survivor’s instinct, and I’ve got myself a foreman’s position in the most powerful multinational in the world. I can’t go back. It would mean going back to square one: taking the children out of a nice school with trees round it where they learn French up to the age of ten and English from eleven onwards, not to mention having to give up my chalet, my fifteen-metre yacht, and membership of my golf club. What would Reclus and Quimet do without me?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Reclus and Quimet. They’re the two sailors that I’ve hired for my yacht. I keep the boat in the marina at L’Estartit, and I use it once in a while to go for a quick trip to the Medas islands—which, by the way, you can reach just as easily by rowing, or even swimming.’
    Spring was multiplying the flowers on the low fences surrounding the wooden houses that were built in the so-called Californian style. Houses of dark, seasoned timber, each with a seal of individuality, in contrast with the mile after mile of prefabricated chalets that they had left behind on entering Carmel. The eucalyptus, orange and lemon trees would have given the place an almost Mediterranean air were it not for the more northerly light, which gave things a sharper edge. As far as Carvalho was concerned, the way this landscape ran down to great long beaches and white sand was as mock as Californian or New York State champagne—a sea and beach that seemed to go on forever, in a bright, unbroken stretch of blue,