The "black"

The worst thing was that I could talk about your profession with anyone. His was not a high risk activity, which would require a secrecy obligation. Nor was deliberately concealed work, whose life depended on the discretion of others. In other words, it was not a spy for the government or a police officer infiltrated a dangerous criminal organization, or anything like that. In a way, other than with their silence protected the reputation of some people. Exactly that of those who had placed their hands on their personal credit, his renown as indefinable and that today is called public image. These people do that they could show off and brag shamelessly any of the work he performed. Moreover, they attributed it shamelessly. With pleasure, even. He did the work hidden, silent, and they enjoyed the success of their work, they took all the credit for a task that hardly had anything to do. What he did had a metaphorical name, literary, almost poetic black. He was a fine complexion and black skinned because hardly gave the sun as busy as he was, locked in a cubicle, give it give it to your computer, filling thousands of pages.

A black, you know, is that individual who writes on behalf and on behalf of another. That is, who creates, who invented, who imagines, is black, which does so from an absolute opacity, without knowing even its existence. Then he signs the text appropriates and displays like it, is white, if you can do that crude Manichaeism and use language that would be politically incorrect today, obviously, but it becomes clearer than water. He was a magnificent black. The best black had ever been. Do not think that such a literary institution is a recent product of the dizzying rush of modern society or the inevitable and throwing telegenic miracle forced to fame preliterate characters, practically illiterate. Then, of course, they need someone that gives them ideas that they lack, to expose in public, and even write the texts they then pass into history as of his own staff. Black, clerks employed person, has always been. If not, what would have been possible the enormous work of Honore de Balzac, for example, or does the writing of Dostoyevsky overflowing?, He told himself Anselmo Gutierrez, who was named as the man.

He knew the anecdote attributed to Alexandre Dumas did not know whether father or son, who one day, after the death of one of several anonymous scribes, was presented with a subject saying that he was the black of black, or subtenant is a kind of intellectual, and came to occupy the starting job because of the death of another. Anselmo had begun in that office almost by accident. In his native Seville cuttings he performed for weddings of friends, composed for Seville letrillas Nasty and imitated the famous prose authors, usually of a festive nature, which made the delight of his teammates. That was just a fun, of course. Work, work, did it in a bank, which was right and what he had done before him his father rest in peace. Everything was so smooth, until a former classmate called him home. 'I'm Felipe Gonzalez. We need to talk. Not everyone has a classmate who has become prime minister of his country, so Anselmo was to see him at Moncloa Palace. There, the prime minister described the situation will clearly bluntly: 'I need you to write a series of speeches to justify Spain's continued membership in NATO.

Perfectly remembered Anselmo Gonzalez while he was in opposition, had lashed out mercilessly against the country's entry into NATO. Radically change its position now was not therefore an easy argument. - What do I say? Asked the president. Well ... Laconically replied his interlocutor, anticipating that should save their energy to face the daunting task that was coming. Anselmo not only did as he asked his friend at school, but the speeches written for him and he gave Gonzalez as their own were most brilliant. While, as everyone remembers, the prime minister won against the referendum outcome which had convened on the subject. That was just the beginning. Since then, Anselmo, apolitical by definition and, above all, early and persistent conviction, he began writing articles, conferences, meetings, ... whatever was needed. The only condition was not to put it exclusively for his boss. I do not want ankylosing was his reasoning, and become someone so mannered and predictable like all politicians, not spontaneous and full of ideas and repetitive phrases. I want to be free and to write for other people. Your employer was not at all funny, but Anselmo was blunt: 'Either that, or switch back to the bank.

At the prospect of running out of black, his employer agreed to the request. So our man became moonlighting. Anonymous, yes, but with more pages behind it Corín Tellado. At the time came to write many interventions of some ministers, a couple of secretaries of state, government delegate in Navarra, playing bocce, like him, the president of the College of Pharmacists and ... most importantly, so did for the Royal Household.

With this dedication as varied, our man or ossified, as he had feared at first, or bored, or had time even to go to the movies, his other lifelong passion, next to the alley. But it did not matter, since in his feverish activity played all kinds of subjects, using a wide range of literary styles and rhetorical and opened to new experiences in the art of dialectic. He never knew how it happened, but the news of his skills came to the head of the main opposition party, José María Aznar, a dour character trying to make a name in the national political scene, which was still a stranger: 'I want to help me prepare for the televised debate that I have with Felipe Gonzalez told Antena 3-a tone that would become expedient well known in the future. Anselmo, with that sheepish stupidity of someone used to do what you say, he wrote virtually all of its intervention. No one knew better than he what was to argue in each case the President of the Government, so it was not at all difficult to prepare Aznar, better even than he was Casius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, the day he knocked out then current heavyweight champion, Sonny Liston.

For our man in that change of coat, purists would say, there was no hint of incompatibility. Even less of misconduct or any other trifles of those moral character. He had permission to work for other people and simply exercised that right. During the ensuing TV debate, to the surprise of everyone, including his own supporters, Aznar spanking a dialectic sheepskins Gonzalez had come to hand in hand with your opponent, without any previous preparation, convinced of his superiority over that little boy of Valladolid, who would win no muss. Chastened from bitter experience, the president of the Government appealed to Anselm for the next debate, which was to take place in another private television channel Tele 5. For our black a cinch to win his boss had only to turn around all the arguments he had used two weeks earlier in favor of his opponent in the first televised confrontation between the two. Despite the secrecy and the recesses of his activity, Anselmo's prestige skyrocketed among the few who knew what he did. His name began to be known in the catacombs where teemed with your guild, or rather sinks that circulate throughout the apocryphal writing, if we seek to take the finolis with metaphors.

One day he went to visit Juan Lopez. -I am also a black-was presented to himself, though in another branch. And I must say without false modesty that I am the first in my specialty. The prolific writer of La Moncloa and few politicians are so requested, that name and that face is not sounded at all. He told the visitor. I am not surprised, 'said he,' although I have been published under the name of more than sixty other novels, twenty plays and a lot of input speech at the Royal Spanish Academy. - In the Academy ...? Yes. What did you think? Most scholars of language have one or two blacks who write their texts, even though I, and I say without vanity, I'm the most versatile of all and I can write for different authors. - Do not tell me! -I say this because you're the only one who can understand the terrible frustration of being in darkness and anonymity when others shine as lights at the expense of a talent. Well ... You end up getting used. - You can say that! The worst, however, is not that, but the gentlemen for whom one writes sometimes come to believe that they are the authors of what they sign, hesitated a moment before continuing.

Do you know the fashion historian who has so much success with his books on medieval Spain? In fact, John Smith cited the full name of the professor of history, a guy who appeared on television all evening parties and all the country's intellectual sauces. But discretion, lowered the tone of his voice until it almost inaudible. Anselmo, because of its proximity, perfectly heard the name, although he had not read any of his works, I knew that it was a world authority on the subject and that his books were selling like hotcakes. 'Well you see, he continued telling the black of the famous historian. Before you go to work for him, the man ate an editorial thread, if I may say so. I changed his style, I did it more streamlined and understandable, truffle anecdotes and endowed with a brisk pace, as if that were so remote that it has going on now. A success, you see. As the writer of political speeches was a lot of homework that he was accumulating, tried to shorten the conversation: 'But you will not come to talk about these things ... 'Not exactly. All this I told you to put in a position, explaining that many of us dedicate ourselves to this ungrateful and thankless job of blacks.

Ours, rather than economy, economists say haughty and pompous, is an underground economy. Pure underground, hey, like a cult perteneciésemos infamous or we had an infectious disease of the old days. Then he told what had been: 'We should unionized. Yes, he reiterated, to the amazement of the other side. In order to have copyright and stuff, ... already know: social security, paid vacation, ... and come together in conventions that give birth to the illiterate who hire us. Your partner did not seem a good idea: 'If we publicize our condition, our business is over. We're like secret agents, that once you discover your name have to be removed because they no longer serve any purpose. -I had not considered this point of view, was justified by the other, who had just become aware of their blunder. Finally, we will continue in the closet, in the sewers instead. But in any case, you know where I am, ... That conversation, however, was very much out of sorts the speechwriter. Just realize that his work was ephemeral and dangerous, exposed to the accusation and denunciation, with the uncertainty of not knowing the day nor the hour when his activity would surface and then truncate his magnificent career.

The unrest that led to these thoughts soon began to take its toll. From the outset, because he undertook an effort to multiply their work to the imminence of the fateful day when, to his regret, would have to stop doing it. He was therefore accepting all kinds of orders for them to be contradictory. Since, moreover, in the strange sector in which he moved had acquired a reputation, the task was missing. One day, even went to seek his services the German ambassador. -Is for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who is increasingly more difficult ballot. 'But I do not know German ... -We do. For this part do not worry, we will translate it. You See to write a speech resounding and illuminating of how to reconcile the reduction of social benefits while maintaining the welfare state. I know it's difficult, yes, justified, seeing the other's expression, but precisely why we come to you. Many orders and so overwhelmed him back somewhat careless and inaccurate. Worse still, he was forced to commit the unpardonable sin of the unwritten law of his profession, plagiarism. General secretary of a labor union saddled him, without realizing it, the speech of a cardinal of the Roman Curia.

That speech a little surprised the hardened metal workers who heard him, but accustomed to union discipline not say a word. Another day, he used an old text of Kennedy for the opening of a few days of R & D by the Minister of Industry. In his haste to deliver it, forgot to translate it. When the minister had already started reading it, you saw the mess. Unable to turn back, had no choice but to continue reading it in English until the end. That, instead of putting in evidence, it would have been logical, was granted "an added credibility?, As one of those cheesy inextricable and political analysts talk radio. Since then, some people felt that the Minister polyglot was the right man to lead the necessary renewal of his party. Those errors were not decisive. The cake was only discovered in the last and final blunder of our black. In his egregious mess of own and other texts of original writings and kidnapped, sent to President of Government a wrong pages for speech that was delivered to the military leadership of the country in an emotional ceremony military.

This time he had the exquisite care of translating the original English text. What is not said is that it was a Hillary Clinton speech at a convention of U.S. single mothers. At first all went well. The vagueness and common topics in all types of ceremonies for the same thing served that for a tattered broken. The pitot was armed when he told the brave and manly generals who heard him: 'You, who are women are also mothers, and that you see men deprived of their contribution ... So much for the careers of black Anselmo Gutierrez. And it was also about to end of step with the political career of Prime Minister. Before the scandal reached higher, Anselmo became the sly, almost surreptitiously, to his native Seville. There, nobody knew that at some point his writings had come to rule the consciences of half of Europe. Now, prematurely aged and a bit dazed, our man is engaged to carry cuttings back to the weddings of friends, composed for Seville letrillas Nasty and imitated the famous prose authors, generally festive.

However, those who know him think of another era that no longer has the grace of yesteryear and have lost the genius he had before he temporarily left Sevilla it is unclear to what or where. This story won third place in the "International Prize Stories Demetrius Canizares (2005). belongs to the anthology" Nothing is as it seems "(ARIAS ENRIQUE VEGA Beta III Millennium Editions .- .- .- 2008 .- 211 Bilbao pages .- 15 euros).

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