Free Tattoo by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Page A

purely visual and did not even offer any human contact. Some are born to make history, others to suffer it. Some are winners, others are losers. Carvalho felt a rush of blind anger towards his own countrymen. After a while, though, he began to feel angrier still at the phlegmatic Dutch cycling past: they had no need to go and work in the cane fields of Murcia or in the Cartagena refineries. He muttered, ‘What an easy life you have!’ so loudly it caught the attention of a gentleman with briefcase and tie, who gave him a look of smiling condescension. Carvalho felt depressed, but realised his body had not betrayed him, and was pointing him in the right direction. It was taking him unerringly towards The House of Lords, determined to allow his stomach to make up for the fake Turkish stew.
    The burgundy cost an arm and a leg, but Carvalho would have torn off both if he had missed the opportunity to anoint the roast lamb with it. He had reached the restaurant just as the waiters were relaxing their professional demeanour and seeking refuge in that strange no man’s land where waiters and cooks go between sessions. Carvalho’s sudden appearance brought them flocking to his table. The only other customers were an Indonesian family. The woman had the dark beauty of a Gauguin portrait, and the two daughters held the promise of womanly charms to come. The paterfamilias looked like a badly worn Sukarno weighing five hundred kilos too much. As they were leaving, they all bowed to Carvalho, who tried not to make it too obvious he was avidly watching the splendid woman’s exit from therestaurant. He watched as she swished her way between the tables, and then turned ninety degrees towards the doorway. This angle allowed Carvalho to ascertain that her profile was as pleasing as her back view. She narrowed her slanted eyes in order to hasten this minute examination from a foreigner. On similar occasions, Carvalho had often regretted not carrying with him a stock of those business cards where you can scrawl a passionate declaration of love and slip it into the apparently unconcerned hand of a woman restrained by the chains of erotic convention. He must try it some day. A shame he could not start today.
    He tucked into the lamb without any mental reservations. Well-cooked meat is first and foremost a tactile pleasure for the roof of the mouth. Roast gigot of lamb is the least elaborate way of preparing the meat. It does not have the fake comradeliness of gigot country-style, with potatoes and beans, or the all too often flat fanfare of a leg of lamb, or the purely visual pleasures of gigot with spinach. Lamb roasted this way is above all well-cooked and well-condimented meat. When the aroma of the burgundy hit the delicate skin of his palate and rose to fill his nostrils with the heady perfume of red wine, it was like having a velvet fluid wipe away the tiny wounds that the pieces of meat had caused.
    Carvalho ate with the calm enthusiasm of all real, unhistrionic gourmets. His imagination was on fire, but his lips and face moved only to the slow chewing of the morsels he was consuming. Carvalho kept his emotions to himself partly because he had always felt that solitary pleasures could not be communicated. A pleasure shared can become a spectacle, but never one enjoyed in private. But there was another reason: showing too plainly how much enjoyment a meal is giving you has a direct influence on the size of the tip you leave. Waiters are subtle psychoanalysts. As soonas they see from your expression that you are approaching ecstasy, they ask you to confirm it out loud, and peer into the recesses of your mind and your wallet with the intensity of a soulmate who will not achieve their own orgasm unless you leave at least fifteen per cent tip on the bill.
    Carvalho ended his lunch with a piece of unripe Brie, but then could not resist the temptation of crêpes with marmalade. He had two coffees and two genevers to wipe away the last traces