Free Off Side by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Page A

two of them to pretend to be scanning other horizons.

 
    Dorothy arrived with six suitcases in tow and an aunt who had reared her like a mother. The aunt was drinking Irish whiskey from a silver hip flask and assuring everyone within earshot that she would only be staying in Barcelona long enough to make sure that her niece was well installed and that the city had good specialists in liver complaints. Since the onset of puberty Dorothy had been afflicted by a delicate liver. This, however, had not prevented her from becoming a good sportswoman and a star dancer at Soho parties until the moment she met Jack, whereupon she had been forced to cool her arse, so to speak.
    ‘Thus spake Zarathustra,’ Camps O’Shea announced, as he concluded his unasked-for report on Dorothy’s impending arrival. ‘Have you heard of Sarah Ferguson? A daughter-in-law of the Queen of England.’
    ‘I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.’
    ‘You must have read about her in the papers. Oh no — I forgot — you don’t read newspapers.’
    ‘I know the name.’
    ‘Well, Dorothy is like Sarah Ferguson, but a bit less chunky. For my taste the Ferguson woman has always seemed a bit on the fat side.’
    The word ‘fat’ was a serious insult when it came from the lips of the fastidious Camps.
    ‘And as for the aunt, let’s hope that she leaves as soon as possible, because she insists on sticking her nose in everywhere. She even wanted to see the dressing rooms where Jack will be changing. I told her that Aids is running rampant in Spain, and particularly in club changing rooms. Speaking of changing rooms, we’ve hired a company to put security guards at all the entrances to the ground, on the pretext that there’s been a lot of thieving at theclub recently, and we’re concerned for the security of our players. Have you made any progress?’
    ‘Yes and no. To tell you the truth, I’m at a bit of a loss. I used to know where I was with Spanish criminals, but with this new breed of imported criminal I don’t know if I’m coming or going. The message I get from them isn’t capable of being translated. It’s very weird.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘The contacts that I’ve made have so far led me to a non-Spanish Mafia, and from talking with them it’s obvious that they know nothing about what we’re hoping they know about, but they certainly know something that they don’t want
us
to know about.’
    ‘Isn’t the one the same as the other?’
    ‘No.’
    Camps had arranged to meet him at the gates of the Montjuich stadium, and they were strolling like a pair of sightseers past the building site where the rebuilding was taking place: the perimeter of the place was to be maintained intact, with the original façade, but the inside of the stadium was to be rebuilt entirely. A homage to memory, as Camps commented unenthusiastically.
    ‘It’s not that I think that all museums should be burned and the Parthenon knocked down once and for all. But I do think you can go too far in conserving heritage. If humanity had spent all its energies on conserving its heritage, we’d still be living in caves. Do you find anything particularly striking about this stadium?’
    ‘I couldn’t imagine walking through Montjuich without expecting to see it there.’
    ‘Imagine the scene here seventy years ago — what a surprise this building would have been for travellers who happened to come across it. I’m more interested in what our new buildings are going to look like, though. Barcelona is going to be a showcase for world architecture. The new is generally less banal at the start, although sometimes the new is already dead at birth. When I was in France this year, I visited a nuclear power station which isapparently never going to be operational. It was a frightening experience. Rather like walking round some abandoned ancient city. Palenque. Pompeii. Machu Picchu. Spoleto. Have you ever been to Spoleto? The city began life around a temple to