Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas Page B

he has in an investment fund to another account in the same bank, one called External Cash Fund. First he confirms with the bank manager that the bonded capital in this new account is fully guaranteed. Then he carries out the transaction. Then he instructs her to transfer some of the money in his current account to another bank, the Santander. The manager knows she can’t ask him to explain this treacherous gesture, but it’s very likely she’s wondering what they’ve done wrong to make him undertake it. Finally, he signs some more forms and asks for the checkbook they forgot to give him on his last visit. He takes his leave very politely and cynically. Out on the street, he hails a taxi and goes to the other end of the city, to the neighborhood of Sants, to a branch of the Santander bank where Celia’s younger brother, who has worked there for a while, has offered him a pension plan with an excellent seven percent return. Having a pension plan already depresses him, as he’d never imagined growing old, but he prefers to be practical about it.
    In the branch of Santander, with the money he’s transferred from Bilbao Vizcaya, he takes out the plan and also signs a good number of forms. The bank manager appears, Celia’s brother’s immediate boss, and shows polite interest in Riba’s longstanding, famous, and now finished publishing work. Riba distrusts so much politeness and suspects it is actually because the manager is on the verge of asking him straight out if the whole book trade is going really badly now. He looks at him almost rudely, and then abruptly starts to talk about New York and about how much he’d like to live there. His excessive praise of this city ends up irritating even the phlegmatic manager, who interrupts him:
    “Listen, just one question, and forgive me, sir, but I’m dying to know. . . . Couldn’t you be happy living in Toro, in the province of Zamora? What is Toro or Benavente lacking to make you not want to go and live there? And sorry for asking — it’s probably because I’m from Toro.”
    Riba thinks for just a few seconds, and finally embarks upon the rocky Zamoran path of his answer. He replies in a deliberately gentle, poetic, anti-banking, vindictive tone of voice considering the financial space in which he finds himself.
    “It’s a difficult question, but I’ll answer it. I’ve always thought that, when it gets dark, we all need somebody.”
    A formidable silence.
    “I get the impression,” Riba goes on, “that in New York, for instance, if it gets dark and you’re all alone, the loneliness would always be less dramatic than in Toro or Benavente. Now do you see what I mean?”
    The bank manager looks at him, his face almost expressionless, as if he hasn’t understood a thing. He slides some more forms across for Riba to sign. Riba signs and signs. And then, in the same soft voice as a moment ago, Riba requests that tomorrow they withdraw the amount still in the Bilbao Vizcaya fund, and transfer it to one in Santander itself.
    An hour later, and he’s carried out all the transfers. It’s better this way, he thinks. Better to have the money spread about than all in one place. He gets into another taxi and goes home. He finds he’s rather exhausted, because it’s been two years since he’s carried out financial transactions or set foot in a bank. It seems to him he’s made a superhuman effort this morning. He starts noticing how incredibly thirsty he is. He’s tired and incredibly thirsty. He has a thirst for evil, for alcohol — well, for water, for calm, for being home again — but above all a thirst for doing wrong, for alcohol. He’d like to have a drink and launch back into his evil ways. After two years of abstinence, he’s confirming an old suspicion: the world is very dull, or — and this is the same — what happens to him is devoid of interest if not told by a good writer. But it was a real drag having to go out and hunt for all those writers, and on