The Great Captain understood before anyone else that the coronavirus would change everything.
Juan Francisco Martínez Sarmiento had published a pseudonym. By the age of forty-seven, he had quickly reached a professional career with two appointments almost simultaneously. In the third week of 2020, he became the CEO of a major energy company, a national leader in renewable energy, and the most valuable vice president replacing the CEOE president. He had reason to be proud of his achievements, for not only did he stand out among the great Spanish businessmen for his intelligence, which could be compared to a dare bordering on recklessness. He also drew attention to his origins. Nothing was inherited from his parents, except for the accidental harmony of surnames. The third of five children of a dedicated woman who owns a hardware store in the Tetuán neighborhood, she had to fight like a beast for every scholarship, every position, every promotion. Until now. because Just now, when he no longer had to gamble, risk his life in every move, everything was going to hell.
He got up from his office chair, his favorite place to think, and went to the living room for another drink. One of his most prized prizes, perhaps the most gracious, was his wife, the only daughter of a country banker who had managed to sell to a major national bank at the best of times, reclining in a naturally authentic Imperial-style chaise longue, watching television. covered with yellow velvet. The Great Captain stopped at the door to admire him from afar. Cuca was a living emblem of the natural aristocracy, where the best breeding influenced a select few. No one who looked at her with the eyes of a neighborhood boy, with the plebeian ambition he was trying to protect under his self-made golden eagle forehead, could not believe that this peachy, lethargic and delicate girl was admirably proportioned underneath. a tight burgundy silk jumpsuit, he was forty-one years old, had three children, was not born blond. He knew that, but at times like these, he liked to delve into ambiguity.
-Hello! The sound of ice cubes hitting the cut-glass walls caught his attention, and he sat halfway to stare at her in a riot of two-tone gold stripes, the secret to perfect editing. Run, come see…
The Great Captain approached him and thought of an unusual sight, another. At the door of a hospital in Leganés, a national police officer sang the improvised anthem of the resistance to the virus with a megaphone. On the other side of the street, on the access stairs to the building, before the fifty toilets that recorded the event with cell phones. The policeman’s voice was beautiful, he was tall, he was handsome, there was applause.
“Exciting, isn’t it?” His wife sent him a pure smile, the most original of his repertoire. How bad are we going…
—Of course—you?, he asked himself, kissing his head, having a bad time, Cuca?—. I’m going back to the office.
Some police officers use the announcement system of their patrol vehicles to tell a different story every night to the children who are locked up in their homes. Two civilian guards get into the fire truck to bring a birthday cake and a bouquet of flowers to an elderly woman who lives alone on the seventh floor. And now, in case something was missing, a national police officer was singing. i will resist In front of Severo Ochoa.
–But what is this? After closing the door, he said, “Fucking Soviet Army?
This was actually the smallest part of a big problem. In recent years, with the connivance of more or less corrupt parties large and small, the Grand Captain’s peers had succeeded in convincing the Spaniards that private enterprise was the only recipe for creating wealth and prosperity. Entrepreneurship, that ridiculous word had come into vogue to the point where many unemployed people invested their poor dupes’ compensation into building businesses that were doomed to fail. But such spectacular economic growth was built on so many minor ruins that no one remembered the ashes that infuriated Spain’s entry into the European Union and warned that the country would become a dependent region without industry, without its own resources. Clay feet, fragile colossal statue of leisure and tourism. The coronavirus justified them. Feet were crunching. The giant was collapsing. The Big Captain had heard that his thirteen-year-old eldest son had intervened in a telematics school discussion just a week ago. What has the coronavirus taught us? The importance of public health, the welfare state, the need to support it at all costs, was his response, warmly applauded by the rest of his classmates, all the private school students, it was too expensive, frankly useless. But the worst was yet to come.
The Big Captain gave up on a third whiskey, ate quietly, pondered his worries without paying attention to the regular two episodes of the show his wife had chosen that week, and went to bed to avoid sleep. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep for a moment because he knew before anyone else that his story was over. Capitalism did not give more than itself. The planet did not give more than itself. Growth did not give more than itself. The consumer society did not give more than itself. They didn’t just kill the goose that laid the golden egg. They had killed him He had been crushed to pieces to eat it alive, drink its blood, and chew on its bones. Everything was going better than good, but the globalized world of information highways and planetary networks could not prevent a Chinese from cooking a pangolin bitten by a bat and vice versa. He didn’t learn much because he didn’t care. If it wasn’t a bat, it would be another insect. It would be another mistake next time.
“It’s over, Cuca.” He didn’t even realize he was speaking out loud. We’re trapped, we have no way out.
Oh, John Francis! He scolded her in a deep voice, closer to sleep than wakefulness. Shut up and let me sleep.
He let her sleep. He even allowed himself to snore as he tossed and turned in bed without finding a spark in his destiny. Until, at any moment in the early morning hours, which made it eternal, without warning, he trembled with fear. His Egyptian cotton pajamas, like the best, were already a puddle of cold sweat when he realized an idea that had flashed the red light of panic in his head. He tried to think of something else and couldn’t. He decided to improve it himself, and the pieces began to fit together so perfectly that he even heard the rattling rattle of it as it joined together in a delicate, extremely dangerous mechanism. It was an almost suicidal bet, like all bets that took him from a hardware store in Tetuán to the bedroom of a mansion in Somosaguas. It was wonderful, a harmonic melody, fragile and bright, difficult and complex, sublime like a little masterful symphony. While listening to it she fell asleep by her chords and started yawning. He slept less than three hours but woke up with an energy that made him doubt his true age.
“What did you say to me last night?” Cuca frowned at breakfast and smiled. I think it was something important, but I don’t remember.
“This capitalism was an exhausted system, I told you that.” He got another Neapolitan to celebrate. The cycle is over and nothing will ever be the same.
“What nonsense, Juan Francisco!” He nodded, clasped his arm, and spoke to her with the sweetness of a sullen child. Like everything else, this too will pass, you’ll see. And sooner than you think.
The Great Captain kissed his wife. He knew most of his colleagues, almost all of them, would give him the same answer, but he didn’t worry. God had created the world in seven days, and he would need a little more time.