Free The Faint-hearted Bolshevik by Lorenzo Silva Page B

say?”
    Rosana laughed.
    “I’m not promising anything. I get up late on Saturdays. If you were still here at noon, I might be here, but I still couldn’t promise.”
    “Eleven fifteen, not a minute later. If you’re not here at eleven fifteen then I’ll know you don’t care. Sweet dreams, sleep tight.”
    “I’m too old for sweet dreams. I had my first period three years ago.”
    “ Wow.”
    “And I know what you’re after, in case you think I haven’t noticed,” she announced proudly.
    “I don’t think you really know. And if you get here after eleven fifteen tomorrow you’ll never find out.”
    “Of course I will. When one of these days you go back to catch a glimpse of the girls’ panties when they skip rope at the playground. Then don’t pretend you’re a policeman.”
    “I didn’t make it up. But you can think whatever you like, Rosana. You’re too pretty to have regrets.”
    “Goodbye.”
    “See you tomorrow.”
    She left and when night fell over the park completely I was still sitting on the bench, lost in memories of her shoulders and conjuring unmentionable dreams.
    That Friday night I skipped my usual pastimes and stayed home, drowning my sorrows in a bottle of Black Bush I’d bought in some airport somewhere. My body managed to absorb about half of it: I poured the rest ceremoniously down the toilet. My CD player was on at full blast in the background, the final nail in the coffin of any civilized relationship with my neighbors, playing the low notes of that sumptuous melody the world owes to Alison Moyet with the most perfect title anyone has ever come up with: “Winter Kills”.

In this day and age, overwhelmed by the media, that either drone on about how we should go and see a film about that pretentious cornball Beethoven, or instead beatify some English-speaking lout who died of an overdose despite the fact that he didn’t even know how to hold a guitar properly, people don’t dare say what they really think about music. It’s tough to admit that what Mahler did and what Mick Jagger does are the same thing, but you realize that you can’t say anything against either of them, so most people come to believe they don’t have any taste and they’d better keep quiet or repeat whatever the TV or the press tells them.
    I am aware that like everyone else I’ve been gagged in this way, and the few times I’ve tried to rise up against it, the person I was talking to hurled such a ton of official crap that I was almost left without any arguments. I say almost because I always had at least one, which I used to keep to myself, but I don’t mind sharing now: the only worthwhile music is music that moves me, and the kind of music that moves me is the music that I fucking want to be moved by.
    During my lost years, many different types of music moved me, partly because I didn’t correctly identify what music was and partly because I didn’t correctly identify what it meant to be moved. I even thought myself moved by Haydn, which is clearly a slip-up. Having reflected on the matter, I now understand that a man needs to travel light, so I’ve stuck with the essentials. I’ve reduced the entirety of musical history to the following list, which is more than enough for my needs:
Upstairs at Eric’s
by Yazoo,
The Number of the Beast
by Iron Maiden, and Schubert.
    The fact that the list is so short doesn’t mean I don’t listen to other types of music. As you will remember, this whole ill-fated story began with a smash caused by Judas Priest. What it means is that, except for the music I’ve just listed, I refrain from
listening
.
    I’ll start with Schubert. How is it possible that nothing he composed is unnecessary? Perhaps the trick is to barely eke out a living, to be as lonely as a dog and to die at thirty. To give a contrasting example, Bach lived to a ripe old age, had a bunch of kids and stuffed his face (you only need to look at his double chin to see that). With regard to the