The Great Captain understood early on that the coronavirus would reshape everything.
Juan Francisco Martínez Sarmiento published under a pseudonym. By forty-seven, he had rapidly built a notable career, snagging two major appointments nearly at once. In the third week of 2020, he rose to CEO of a leading energy company, a national champion in renewable power, and he became the most influential vice president, succeeding the CEOE president. He could be justifiably proud of his ascent, for he stood out among Spain’s top businessmen not only for sharp intelligence but for a daring, almost reckless audacity. Yet his rise also drew attention to his humble beginnings. Nothing was handed to him; his mother, a tireless woman who runs a hardware store in the Tetuán district, fought for every scholarship, every seat, every promotion. Until now. Because suddenly, as he no longer needed to gamble with his life in every move, everything started to unravel.
He stood up from his office chair, his preferred place to think, and wandered into the living room for another drink. One of his most valued possessions, perhaps the finest, was his wife, the only daughter of a country banker who had managed to sell to a major national bank at the peak of prosperity, lounging on a chaise in a room bathed in natural light, covered in yellow velvet. The Great Captain paused at the doorway to admire her from afar. Cuca embodied a living symbol of old-fashioned aristocracy, where lineage still carried weight in a modern era. Anyone who looked at her with the eyes of a neighborhood lad—who had once nursed modest ambitions under a self-made, golden-eagle forehead—could hardly believe that this poised, delicate woman wore a burgundy silk jumpsuit that clung beautifully to her figure. She was forty-one, a mother of three, not naturally blond. He knew this, yet in moments like these he enjoyed leaning into ambiguity.
What is Almudena Grandes’ posthumous novel about?
—Hello! The clink of ice in the cut-glass walls drew him back, and he half rose to catch a glimpse of his wife, who wore a riot of two-tone gold stripes, a testament to flawless editing. Run, come see…
The Great Captain approached with a wary eye and imagined a scene stranger still. Outside a Leganés hospital, a national police officer led the crowd with a megaphone, singing a makeshift anthem of resistance to the virus. Across the street, on the stairway to the building, a line of phones recorded the event, while fifty toilets watched through cameras. The officer’s voice carried, he stood tall, and the crowd applauded.
“Exciting, isn’t it?” his wife offered with a pure, amused smile. “How bad are we going…”
—Of course—he wondered to himself, kissing her temple, in a moment of doubt about the day ahead. —I’m going back to the office.
Some police officers used the patrol vehicle loudspeakers to tell nightly stories to children locked in their homes. Two civilian guards climbed into a fire truck to bring a birthday cake and a bouquet to an elderly woman living alone on the seventh floor. And now, a national officer was singing, a small act of defiance in front of Severo Ochoa.
—But what is this?—he muttered after closing the door, as if waking from a dream. —Fucking Soviet Army?—
This was only a sliver of a much larger problem. In recent years, with the tacit support of both big and small political players, the Great Captain’s peers had managed to persuade Spaniards that private enterprise was the sole engine of wealth. Entrepreneurship—once a buzzword—had become fashionable. Many unemployed people poured their modest unemployment checks into new ventures doomed to fail. Yet the growth they celebrated rested on buried ruins, forgotten ashes that reminded Spain of the fragility of its ties to the European Union and warned that the country could become a mere consumer region, lacking its own industry and resources. A clay-footed, fragile monument to leisure and tourism. The coronavirus justified those fears. The earth underfoot creaked. The giant faltered. Rumors reached him that his eldest son, then thirteen, had joined a telematics class debate just a week earlier and asked, What has the coronavirus taught us? Public health, the welfare state, and the need to protect them—these answers were warmly applauded by classmates, most of them private-school students who found the expense reasonable, if not essential. Yet the worst was still to come.
The Great Captain poured a third whiskey, ate quietly, and considered his anxieties while the two episodes his wife had chosen that week played in the background. He went to bed hoping to avoid sleep, certain that his story was ending before anyone else could tell it. Capitalism offered little beyond itself. The planet offered little beyond itself. Growth offered little beyond itself. The consumer society offered little beyond itself. They hadn’t merely killed the goose that laid the golden eggs; they crushed it, devoured it, and gnawed on its bones. Everything had seemed to be going well, yet the global information highways and planetary networks could not save a pangolin-sickened bat or any other cause from crossing a line. He didn’t learn much because he chose not to. If not a bat, it would be another creature, another mistake tomorrow.
—It’s over, Cuca. We’re trapped, with no way out.—
Oh, John Francis!—she scolded him with a husky voice, half asleep—Shut up and let me sleep.
He let her sleep, even letting himself snore as he rolled over, unable to find a spark of destiny. Then, in the early hours, a thought hit him with the force of a red alert and fear. His Egyptian cotton pajamas, the best, were damp with cold sweat when a plan formed in his mind, a plan so precise and dangerous it felt almost suicidal. It was a bet that would take him from a hardware store in Tetuán to the bedroom of a Somosaguas mansion. A melody—delicate, brilliant, fragile, complex—unfolded in his head as if he were composing a masterful symphony. He slept less than three hours, yet woke with an energy that seemed to outpace his own years.
—What did you say to me last night?—Cuca frowned at breakfast, then smiled. I think it was something important, but I don’t remember.
—This capitalism is an exhausted system, I told you that.—He poured another Neapolitan to celebrate. The cycle is over, and nothing will be the same again.
—What nonsense, Juan Francisco!—she replied, and he nodded, gripping her arm with the soft sweetness of a stubborn child. If anything, this too shall pass, you’ll see. Sooner than you think.
The Great Captain kissed his wife. He suspected most of his colleagues would echo that sentiment, and yet a small part of him hoped for more time. God had created the world in seven days, and perhaps a little more would be required.