No-Mad by Pablo Reig Mendoza

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About the author:

Globetrotter, former Business Intelligence and strategy consultant EU-wide, a freelance journalist in Spain, entrepreneur, and experienced chef in South America. I am also another silent bearer of many yet unwritten books. Two fiction novels, three books of quotes, many articles… The road ahead is very long. Come and share the vision, the art, and the fun!

What inspired you to write your book?

I wanted to organize a party with no budget limit. I hope that the mayor of Milan will not take it badly, and I also wanted, by mentioning them, to pay my heartfelt tribute to the victims of L'Aquila and do my bit to keep them in the collective memory. Human suffering is always a catastrophe.
I am currently a BI consultant, which I certainly enjoy. Still, BI is not dramatic enough to make a novel protagonist unless you, dear reader, are a fellow professional: data is alive. I like Leo's work somewhat better for these purposes, and it has forced me to study a few things which, since you have been so kind, I will mention briefly.
The protagonist is named Leonardo in honor of his brilliant Renaissance namesake. I think that in the times we live in, the digital revolution is changing many things. The one that strikes me the most is that all the information is available so that learning the data loses meaning in favor of learning the way to look for it: Renaissance 2.0.
Archetypes are a whole world that we humans are still far from fully understanding, but they work very well. In this book, there are many nods to archetypes, and, in all cases, they are the result of careful studies. As a first example, I will tell you that I have been thinking for many years that, thanks to a brand of consoles, we now have more than one generation trained to work with the cross, the circle, the square, and the triangle with the right thumb with the ease with which others snap their fingers. The applications for this training would fill ten books or more. That is the power of archetypes.
The king, the warrior, the magician, and the lover and their female equivalents are also archetypes. You are free to identify which character is performing which task in each moment of NO-MAD. All mythological stories, fables, and children's tales are also archetypal. I didn't get Sandra and Pietro together because it was too obvious to me. Who knows in some possible sequel how their story ends.
Regarding the Nomad Party, I believe that it would be the only party I would take my membership card in this moment of political disbelief. Because I am a mix, and because I believe in integration and in the benefits of non-tourist travel as a way of getting to know and learn from each other.
My experience in writing NO-MAD is the following: you own the first third, and you, dear reader, own the second third. Beyond that, the novel owns itself and writes the ending on its own. I recommend anyone to try the exercise, and I ask those who know how to write to tell me their opinion about it.
The characters are all fictional. Nothing is autobiographical, or almost. The only character named after his alter-ego is Jéjé. Jérôme makes movies, he's a great guy, and he inspired his namesake in NO-MAD. This animal has the lazy laugh of the ferret and the turkey and the tic of the petit père. We share quite a few anecdotes, and I wish we share many more over the years. A hug from here, loco. Thanks for dropping the camera to run the newspaper in the novel.
I would also like to apologize if anyone, because of their nationality, feels biased opinions. Opinions are biased by definition, and there are opinions for all tastes. You can always do like Bismarck, who, as soon as he received an opinion or a piece of advice, gave it to a third party so as not to accumulate garbage, according to his own words.
I thank Robert Graves for his Claudius, which always accompanies me and has given me this ugly writing vice. Also for his other works, citing as the basis of my tireless attempts to understand women, his compilation of poetry called "MAN DOES, WOMAN IS".

Here is a short sample from the book:

1 Euro-babel

Juan Mari Arzak, the renowned Basque chef, once said that the best dish in the world is undoubtedly the croque-madame sandwich made with special care. What at first glance may seem like a "boutade", from certain angles, it becomes a Templar truth. Throughout my short existence, some characters who were fond of trying the same dish in every restaurant in the world had gained in-depth knowledge on the subject, and even today, they can still correct some great chefs' hands.
I was especially impressed by a couple, he a prestigious journalist and she a psychologist now separated by those twists and turns of life, who had been studying the famous Waldorf salad for ten years. Against all odds, he was able to make an exquisite version with his own hands. It's something that can be said of very few wannabe gastronomes, who have tried everything but cannot execute a scrambled egg, nor a fried egg since the latter's good preparation requires basic knowledge of thermodynamics.
Another prominent figure of the Spanish Transition, also a journalist, has been tasting every Asturian fabada on sale on the face of our planet. I do not want to imagine the displeasure to which such a singular purpose will have led him, not because of the proverbial heaviness of this regional dish, but because this admired friend has traveled a lot. There are cooks out there who deserve to be beaten.
In this frantic beginning of the millennium, the occasional emigrant, especially the new generations, are in the habit of killing the saudade of their mother country by opening some canned specialty. In Spain's case, the Litoral fabada, a national icon, takes the palm without competition. The French are more inclined towards cassoulet and the Maghrebis towards couscous. I don't want to mention all the world's peoples at this point so as not to prostitute the argument, but God will recognize his own. In passing, I will limit myself to comment that the brownest Italians are only satisfied with sauces since it is a country of delicious starters and execrable main courses. Saxon peoples are still a step away from refining their taste; "the Renaissance has not passed through here", as another friend settled in London for a long time would say. Other lights the Saxons have, but not this one.
The fact is that with the aforementioned canned fabada it happens like with fast-food hamburgers. The first spoonful takes you directly to your grandmother's arms in the case of fabada, as does the first bite of the dirt-mac at New York's Fifth Avenue, even if you have never set foot on it. In this way, as you go along, the fabada turns into a disgusting paste with the tempered paprika, and the American sandwich confesses its undeniable resemblance to cardboard, both in taste and texture. Whoever speaks from the authority of a promiscuous life will be able to observe the astonishing resemblance of this gustatory effect with the memory of many of his fleeting lovers.
Each of us, therefore, to a greater or lesser extent, has a few dishes that we try throughout our lives, and we form a judgment of how, for example, the immortal archetype of the croque-madame sandwich should be. So far, in my case, the best is undoubtedly the one from the Casa da Guia pastry shop in Cascais: dry-toasted village bread, a brush of warm butter, and an unbeatable Atlantic Ocean. There is another problem of gastronomy as a major art. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce the same sensation twice.
Egg Benedict itself marks you in many ways depending on one's mood, the place, the company, and the surroundings. So one tries to remember the soft curves, the fine hair, and Anne's sidelong complicit glances that morning at the Hotel du Louvre having oysters with brioche and Billecart-Salmon for breakfast…. they never taste the same to me since then. What's more, ever since Anne stood me up with a "good riddance" and then her lawyers let me know about our son's visitation schedule for the next ten years, in the few "old times" relapses we've had, Anne doesn't taste the same to me either. I guess it's mutual. The truth is that I have never again accompanied oysters with brioche.
Is this text you're reading a novel? I don't know. Somehow I am committed to writing in the first person in front of a PC screen, just as you are committed to letting yourself be carried away by these lines. Words have an extraordinary power. Now that hypnosis has been renamed NLP, and everyone seems to be able to lecture on the subjects of suggestion, the power of body language, and other animals, few have noticed the birth of a priori suspicion in social and professional relationships. Let me explain: raising an eyebrow for your interlocutors is enough for them to wonder if you are creating an anchor of influence to implant a mental virus in them. They don't know you usually raise your eyebrow three hundred and fifty-four times a day, simply because you have the tic and because you can do it, with both eyebrows. While they think of defending themselves from your underhand attack, they miss what you wanted to tell them, even if the latter was not worth much either.
I have started this text talking about the croque-madame sandwich for the simple reason that we are at the beginning of the rant, and I am at the beginning of the day. In all the good households I know, the day begins with a more or less copious breakfast. So, for the sake of good vibes, I beg you to lower your defenses. You are not going to be hypnotized while reading this text to the end. I do not have ten mythology notebooks that will activate your cultural triggers for you to go out to the street to ask your government to do something so that absolutely nothing happens. I intend to share a stretch of the road and make it fun for both of us, me writing and you reading. I have finished my breakfast and can start the day with a bang; it begins in a borrowed apartment in front of Via Fatebenefratelli in Milan and will surely end with some emotions.
For a few weeks now, Jérôme has been organizing a party for the newspaper he runs, and it's a themed party on a budget. As it is the anniversary of the illustrious newspaper's founding, they have rented the Vittorio Emanuele gallery's great crossing for a few hours. They are going to bring an international personality representative of each section who will give a short talk. Closing a public space for a party was almost unfeasible, so Jérôme – from now on Jéjé, as he is familiarly known – managed to apply for a filming license at the town hall. I must say that Jéjé is admirable in his ease of affectionate cajoling. He is Belgian but could be Totó's distant nephew and moves around Italy like one more of them. Not only has he convinced them that the shoot is for a Paramount blockbuster, but he has managed to get a fee waiver so that the daughter of a friend of the prime minister receives a few minutes of tape. Tangentopoli.
Jéjé and I met young and poor, which is the only real way to enjoy the European continent without being a millionaire, a tourist, or a pensioner. We coincided in an obscure office in Bonn, doing telemarketing for several multinationals. It was not easy, back then, to invade the privacy of homes to work the minds of housewives, and the cell phone was still a luxury available to few. On second thought, housewives still existed, and mortgages longer than ten years were a metaphysical impossibility.
I will not confess my age, but for what it's worth, in Germany, they still circulated hard and heavy German Marks. I always wonder why the coins were not square… The fact is that we made friends, and our friendship lasts until today. I guess it's because of intermittency, which gives time to miss each other and have juicy things to tell in further encounters. We were poor to the point of boredom then. Our meager savings were for drinking, but that did not prevent us from making lavish feasts of risotto with mushroom powder soup or pasta with grated bratwurst, not to mention the evenings of vegetarian sauerkraut. He was already announcing his journalistic vocation to the four winds, and I was beginning my dalliances with business psychology.
Before Bonn, Jéjé had made his debut in Rome as personal assistant to a die-hard politician, one of those who will never win an election. He was the first to talk about the legalization of drugs by setting an example, getting himself arrested for selling marijuana loudly in the Piazza Espagna. There is always something to learn from others. From all that Jéjé learned from such a commendable gentleman, the following comment was engraved in my mind: "The only reason for public service is to create difficulty to sell ease". I was recently reminded of this pearl when, in the queue of a ministry, I heard a Russian civil servant respond to the story of a hairy case: "Did he manage to make the whole thing up?" It is not the civil servant, it's the function.
So we met about a month ago in Paris. He was finalizing the details of a report on the latest student conflicts, and I had to give some assertive reorientation seminars in an American film distribution company. We met at about five o'clock in the afternoon at Le Trappiste, for the sake of tasting some abbey malts. It had been about a year since we had seen each other. He showed up on time, as usual. As always in his case, precisely at half past five because, according to him, half an hour late was the perfect compromise between the time that women who know how to assert themselves are usually late, and the usual British punctuality. I confirm that I have never seen or heard of a delay of less than fifteen minutes in the greater London area for those who have never waited for a train in the English Isles.
–Leonardo! Comment ça va, mon petit père? – he looked sincerely excited as he shook the water off his black raincoat. It was raining outside in that uncomfortable rain of the Aprils in this city.
–Great Jéjé! Nice to see you around these parts, balder and fatter! I reckon you still don't have time to take care of yourself. I saw you arrive by car and I ordered you a Lambic. Sit down and tell me the latest.
He instinctively reached a hand to the thinning blond locks that still lined his forehead as if to make sure of their presence. He took a seat shakily and planted a thumb on my glasses to return the "compliment". I just left the glasses on the table, and we both burst out laughing. His laugh is very characteristic, somewhere between the whine of a horny ferret and the victory cry of a turkey that manages to survive Christmas. A burst of contagious and exuberant laughter that never goes unnoticed and that, in the past, even cost us some nasty tavern brawls.
–Leo, Leo, Leo, Leo, petit père, you're not bald, you're not bald, but you're no thinner than last time. I come conveniently overexcited. In France, being a student and protesting always go hand in hand, and this time they have burned fifteen cars in the Bois de Boulogne.
–Fifteen cars! But don't the guys know about the displeasure of the owner, who is just another taxpayer? Even if the insurance pays, it seems nonsense to me. In Spain, public furniture has always been violated, with a particular preference for containers.
–No, mon cher ibère, insurance no longer pays in these cases, at least in the metropolitan area, since one law firm filed an appeal to qualify street protests as acts of terrorism. Another law firm, I think from the same owner, added to the dossier an argument on how student protests should be considered a natural disaster because university belongs to the city's ecosystem. The issue has been blocked in cour d'assises for three years because of some death that had nothing to do with the burned car. Car owners are in deep shit.
–I don't even want to know if you're pulling my leg or you're serious, you old savage. How is Silvia? That woman deserves heaven three times over for putting up with you for so long.
Jéjé took a long drink and pulled out his proverbial little packet of Drum, which he started buying in Bonn to stop smoking cigarettes, relying on his disgust for rolling tobacco, which he has not let go of to this day. I ordered another round while he answered me.
–Silvia deserves heaven, and I'm doing everything I can to make sure she earns it so that I have someone to intercede for me. The last one is that she wants to get married, you know? The thing is, I love her as I've never loved anyone and, if we didn't live in Italy, I wouldn't ask many questions, but her family makes me shudder. They are too Catholic.
–Too Catholic? How come? You are the son of a Marists's real estate contractor, with all the comfort involved. – I interrupted him – Besides, what is the yardstick for being too much or not enough Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, or whatever? – He burst out laughing again and solemnly opened his glazed clear eyes.
Do you remember her sister's psychological pregnancy, for which I was unjustly made the main suspect? Well, many years later, in front of the firing squad, sorry, in front of the whole family at a dinner in Rome, they made me a philosophical trap remembering the incident, and I almost didn't make it. One is too catholic when one uses morality as a weapon against one's neighbor. God is love, et point final. But we were talking about Silvia. I wouldn't know how to live without her, and while you will see her at the party in Milan, you will both discuss doctrine and, by the way, practice your Italian. Order something salty, je t'en prie, and tell me what brings you to Paris, you tendentious punk!
–I'm coming out of an assertive reorientation seminar on Avenue Montaigne. Middle management is a tough nut to crack. I'm almost later than you, so the round of questions has been stretched out. – Another laugh à la Jéjé.
–Assertive reorientation? What are you inventing now, mon petit père? The butter-cutting thread or the hiccup-removing thong?
–We are like your law firms, we have a coaching team that teaches assertiveness in large companies, and I am part of the SWAT team that leads it. With that, we manage to keep the perfect mental balance of their teams. You know that multinationals' turnover is accelerating lately, and that creates imbalances.
–This year will not end without me dedicating a special issue of our weekly magazine to you, mon petit père. Do you bill what you bill for this crap you are telling me?
I always have a hard time explaining the nature of my work to a layman. It is usually a layman who signs the estimates, so I live in a permanent conflict between this personal difficulty and my billing objectives. Fortunately, it has been a few years since sales are closed by others, and I limit myself to giving my eclectic talks between planes, but that does not free me from having to justify my services on some occasions, and I have a reasonably well-defined speech.
–It's not that simple, you little fool! Your profession still has a creative component that serves to heal your neurosis, even though you make a living from selling advertising and politics rather than selling newspapers. Notwithstanding your cynicism, I know you care about keeping an editorial line that brings freshness to your readers, so you also end up resembling me in your function as an escape valve, but not in the other ones. In most professions, this is far from being the case. It is a matter of remembering that, even if business means numbers, those who go to meetings and run the day-to-day are human beings whose good performance also affects the profit and loss account. In an environment of global budget cuts, my job is to keep the troops' morale at acceptable levels and optimize groups and individuals' psychosocial lubrication. This does not make me Dietrich going to see the Marines, Doctor Caligari, or Charlie Rivel. Still, I try to ensure that my interlocutors learn to be like Houdini and strengthen their mental health without negatively affecting the company and their colleagues. Get it now, mussel graveyard with fries?
–You indeed remind me of many law firms with your description, and they certainly don't do badly either. All the more reason for you to have that space to explain your market to my readers. They also laughed at Columbus's egg and Brel's teeth. Seafood or steak tartare, mon cher ibère?
And so, between the ferret and the turkey, we finished our beers and went to review the always delicious meats of La Maison de l'Aubrac and its regional wines. The night lasted until the wee hours at the Folies Pigalle. It was a fairly well-balanced VA session, which we were told about by Martine, Philippe's wife, while we had dinner, and Jéjé gave me the details of the party's organization in Milan.
"Dear friend,
On the twentieth anniversary of Giornale del Mondo, we are pleased to invite you to the party's shooting that will take place at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, access Duomo, on May 29th, from 22:30 and up until the Carabinieri Corps kicks us out.
For the occasion, several personalities will delight us with a brief talk. We have asked them to develop an imaginary news item without each one extending more than fifteen minutes. Anyone who wants to be bored can come to our editorial office any day after closing time, but the party is designed to leave you with an unforgettable memory.
We count on your presence. Etiquette, good disposition, and a taste for quality music and surprises are requested.
Jérôme Van der Linden – Director".