SHERLOCK HOLMES THE LONDON CAFARD

I remain blocked, in the clutches of abstinence, I give neither hand nor foot, not even two reales for my life. It is what the French called “le cafard” (the cockroach). Whether it is because of the heat or because of the world around me, so cruel and so different from the one for which I fought and for which I dreamed. However, I throw the cauldron into the well of my memories and extract the living water of memorable experiences. In my time I was passionate about the Sherlock Holmes novels and I remember that the most famous detective of all time, the creator of the crime novel, felt afflicted by cafard. He spent entire days sitting in his armchair in the living room of his home at 221b Baker Street, looking out the window wrapped in his Macintosh or Pelerina (in London houses in those times and in mine, the ones I lived in in the mid-70s). centuries ago, without central heating, it was cold as hell) wrapped in the transverse scrolls of his pipe to disperse the clouds of his boredom.

Good old Conan Doyle forgot about his deductive qualities, his divination skills, and his penchant for spiritualism. The popularity of such a distinguished character became so precise that many of his readers believed that the Scotland Yard agent was real and that number 221b Baker Street existed.

In those years the standard of living of the Spanish people had increased so much – the peseta was a stronger currency than the pound sterling – that trips to London became very popular. All of Madrid came to shop at Harrods, you could hear Spanish spoken with an Asturian accent in the Tower of London.

 I had to act as a espolique and guide some weekends and a case occurred to me with Genaro, the son of the Arévalo tailor who had been a seminarian with me in Segovia.

"For whatever you want, Antoñito, take me to see Sherlock Holmes' house," he told me as soon as we landed at Heathrow.

I smiled to myself. Since his teenage days, Genaro was an inveterate reader of Agatha Christie's novels and Sherlock Holmes represented the eponymous hero, his particular one with Quixote, but the poor guy didn't know what he was up to.

 Maybe his brain had dried out from so much reading, the days from light to light and the nights from cloudy to cloudy. I didn't want to disappoint him. We took a taxi and I told the taxi driver the indicated address. Our automedonte jumped up and answered in the purest English with a Cockney accent:

─ iaint such a place, mate. Baker street finish at number sixty (there is no such place, compadre; the street number ends at 60)

Genarín couldn't believe it but he knew that in London there are many houses inhabited by ghosts.

We ended up in Picadilly watching a striptease. That was more real and we ended the night in a nightclub called “La Balbone”. I think we hooked up with two Swedes. The cafard the black cockroach disappeared. Conan Doyle with his deductive boasting taught us that life can be beautiful.

Sunday, July 7, 2024