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

restaurant. A sudden telephonic idleness prevented him from ringing Charo to invite her out, whereupon a restless nervous energy took him to the Ramblas and a thoughtful deliberation regarding a possible choice of restaurant. He had a beer on Plaza Real, and pined after the long-lost tapas that used to be the speciality of the most crowded bar in the neighbourhood—squid in a spicy black pepper and nutmeg sauce. Instead he had to make do with squid floating in a brown, watery liquid, which was all that was on offer under the new management. The problem with cultures of the transient is precisely that they are transient. This restaurant had once witnessed a genius in the art of cooking squid, a man who had created the illusion of a taste that would last forever—but then he had gone, leaving a void. There was no one left who could match his genius. Once lost, a good barman is gone forever—especially these days, when all you need to be a waiter is to wear a white jacket that is dirtier than yesterday’s but not as dirty as tomorrow’s. As he tormented his brain in mourning for the squid of yesteryear, Carvalho decided to eat at the Agut d’Avignon, a restaurant which he appreciated for the quality of its cooking, but which disappointed by the paucity of its helpings. When Gracian wrote that ‘a good experience is doubly enjoyable when it’s short-lived’, he can’t have been thinking of food. Or, if he was, then he must have been one of those intellectuals who are happy living on alphabet soup and eggs that are as hard and egg-like as their own dull heads. More than one musty philosopher has declared that ‘man should eat to live, not live to eat’, a sentiment nowadays taken up by dieticians, whose principal endeavour seems to consist in the oppression of fat people.
    ‘A soft garlic tortilla to start with, followed by a plate of pork belly, and then codfish a la llauna , and a portion of raspberries on their own.’
    ‘On their own?’
    ‘On their own…’
    He enjoyed the clitoral look of raspberries, and their fleshy texture and acidity, which was less gritty on the teeth than the mulberry, and with more of a physical consistency than the strawberry. The owner of the Agut d’Avignon had the air of a 1920s dandy who had ruined himself with one mad night of gambling at baccarat and had only been saved by this restaurant, which he seemed to cherish as if it were his wife or a good fountain pen. Carvalho had a vague memory of him wandering about the university campus during the years of the Terror, with his guitar slung across his back and his moustache an irresistible attraction for girls who were wild about music. One night he must have gone into this restaurant with a gang of fellow-students, and, in between one stupid song and another, he must suddenly have realized that a restaurant is the best home that a man can have, and he must have decided to stay forever. Carvalho often saw him in the Boqueria market, casting an expert’s eye over the produce, always dressed as if he were about to pose for a postcard in which a young English lord has his arm round the waist of a fresh-faced girl in some Sussex meadow, and over their heads an angel carries a scroll saying: ‘I love you, milady.’ The owner of the Agut d’Avignon chose the same produce that Carvalho would have chosen, with an aloof self-assurance that was probably explained by the fact that he never said anything, but just pointed at what he wanted to buy. One gesture from this dandy was sufficient for fishmongers and butchers to save the required items for him, and it meant that Carvalho could now eat the best that the market had to offer, complemented by a variety of interesting contributions from the owner’s market gardens, which he cultivated with a sense of professional dignity worthy of the best of French restaurants. The quality of the food and the manner in which it was served excused the smallness of the helpings, which Carvalho