“I’ve phoned your father and told him that Fermín had a minor accident and that you’d brought him here.”
“Did he believe you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Right.”
The bookseller lit his pipe and sat back in the armchair behind his desk. At the other end of the apartment, Clara was tormenting Debussy. Barceló rolled his eyes.
“What happened to the music teacher?” I asked.
“He got fired. Seems like there were not enough keys on the piano to keep his fingers busy.”
“Right.”
“Are you sure you haven’t had a beating too? You’re being pretty monosyllabic. When you were a kid, you were much more talkative.”
The study door opened, and Bernarda came in carrying a tray with two steaming cups of coffee and a sugar bowl. She was swaying from side to side as she walked, and I was afraid of getting caught under a shower of boiling-hot coffee.
“May I come in? Will you take yours with a dash of brandy, sir?”
“I think the bottle of Lepanto has earned itself a break for tonight, Bernarda. And you, too. Come on, off you go to sleep. Daniel and I will stay up in case anything is needed. Since Fermín is in your bedroom, you can use mine.”
“Oh, no, sir, I wouldn’t hear of it.”
“It’s an order. And no arguing. I want you to be asleep in the next five minutes.”
“But, sir…”
“Bernarda, you’re risking your Christmas bonus.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Barceló. But I’ll sleep on top of the cover. That goes without saying.”
Barceló waited ceremoniously for Bernarda to retire. He helped himself to seven lumps of sugar and began to stir the coffee with the spoon, his catlike smile discernible behind dark clouds of Dutch tobacco.
“As you see, I must run my house with a firm hand.”
“Yes, you’re certainly a tough one, Don Gustavo.”
“And you’re a smooth talker. Tell me, Daniel, now that nobody can hear us. Why isn’t it a good idea to report what has happened to the police?”
“Because they already know.”
“You mean…?”
I nodded.
“What kind of trouble are you two in, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I sighed.
“Anything I can help with?”
I looked up. Barceló smiled at me without malice, for once putting aside his ironic stance.
“Does all this have, by some chance, anything to do with that book by Carax you didn’t want to sell me when you should have?”
The question caught me totally by surprise.
“I could help you,” he offered. “I have a surplus of what you both lack: money and common sense.”
“Believe me, Don Gustavo, I’ve already got too many people involved in this business.”
“One more won’t make much difference, then. Come on, confide in me. Imagine that I’m your father confessor.”
“I haven’t been to confession for years.”
“It shows on your face.”
·33·
GUSTAVO BARCELÓ HAD A WAY OF LISTENING THAT SEEMED BOTH contemplative and Solomonic, like a doctor or a pope. He observed me with his hands joined under his chin and his elbows on his desk, as if in prayer. His eyes were wide open, and he nodded here and there, as if he could detect symptoms in the flow of my narrative and was composing his own diagnosis. Every time I paused, the bookseller raised his eyebrows inquisitively and beckoned with his right hand for me to continue unraveling my jumbled story, which seemed to amuse him enormously. Every now and then, he would raise a hand and take notes, or he would stare into space as if he wanted to consider the implications of what I was telling him. More often than not, he would lick his lips and smile ironically, a gesture I attributed either to my ingenuousness or to the foolishness of my conjectures.
“Listen, if you think this is nonsense, I’ll shut up.”
“On the contrary. Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.”
“Who said that? Seneca?”
“No. Braulio Recolons, who runs a pork butcher’s on Calle Avignon and has a great talent for both making sausages and composing witty aphorisms. Please continue. You were telling me about this lively girl….”
“Bea. And that is my business and has nothing to do with everything else.”
Barceló tried to keep his laughter to himself. I was about to continue the narration of my adventures when Dr. Soldevila poked his head around the door of the study looking tired and out of breath.
“Please excuse me. I’m leaving now. The patient is well, and, for lack of a better expression, he’s full of beans. This gentleman will outlive us all. He’s even saying that the sedatives have gone to his head and given him a high. He refuses to rest and insists that he must have a word with Daniel about matters he has not wished to explain to me, claiming that he doesn’t believe in the Hippocratic, or hypocritical, oath, as he calls it.”
“We’ll go and see him right away. And please forgive poor Fermín. He’s obviously still in shock.”
“Perhaps, but I wouldn’t rule out shamelessness. There was no way of stopping him pinching the nurse’s bottom and reciting rhymed couplets in praise of her firm and shapely thighs.”
We escorted the doctor and his nurse to the door and thanked them effusively for their good offices. When we went into the bedroom, we discovered that, after all, Bernarda had challenged Barceló’s orders and was lying next to Fermín on the bed. The fright, the brandy, and the exhaustion had finally sent her to sleep. Covered in bandages, dressings, and slings, Fermín held her tenderly, stroking her hair. His face carried a bruise that hurt to look at, and from it emerged his large, unharmed nose, two ears like sails, and the eyes of a dispirited mouse. His toothless smile, through lips covered in cuts, was triumphant, and he greeted us with his right hand raised in the sign of victory.
“How are you feeling, Fermín?” I asked.
“Twenty years younger,” he said in a low voice, so as not to wake Bernarda.
“Stop pretending, damn it. You look like shit, Fermín. You scared me to death. Are you sure you’re all right? Isn’t your head spinning? Aren’t you hearing voices?”
“Now you mention it, sometimes I thought I could hear a discordant and arrhythmic murmur, as if a macaque was trying to play the piano.”
Barceló frowned. Clara went on tinkling at the piano in the distance.
“Don’t worry, Daniel. I’ve survived worse sticks and stones. That guy Fumero can’t even kick a bad habit.”
“So the person who’s sculpted you a new face is none other than Inspector Fumero,” said Barceló. “I see you two move about in the highest circles.”
“I hadn’t got to that part of the story,” I said.
Fermín looked at me in alarm.
“It’s all right, Fermín. Daniel is filling me in about this little play that you two are taking part in. I must admit, it’s all very interesting. What about you, Fermín, how are you on confessions? I warn you I spent two years in a seminary.”
“I would have said at least three, Don Gustavo.”
“Some things get lost along the way. Shame, for a start. This is the first time you come to my house, and you end up in bed with the maid.”
“Look at her, poor little thing, my angel. You must understand that my intentions are honest, Don Gustavo.”
“Your intentions are your business and Bernarda’s. She’s quite old enough. And now, let’s be frank. What kind of charade are you involved in?”
“What have you told him, Daniel?”
“We got to act two: enter the femme fatale,” Barceló explained.
“Nuria Monfort?” Fermín asked.
Barceló smacked his lips with delight. “But is there more than one? This sounds like The Abduction from the Seraglio.”
“Please lower your voice. My fiancée is present.”
“Don’t worry, your fiancée has
half a bottle of brandy in her veins. The trumpets of doom wouldn’t wake her. Go on, ask Daniel to tell me the rest. Three heads think better than two, especially if the third one is mine.”
Fermín attempted to shrug his shoulders under dressings and slings. “I’m not against it, Daniel. It’s your call.”
Having resigned myself to have Don Gustavo on board, I continued with my narrative until I reached the point when Fumero and his men came upon us on Calle Moncada a few hours earlier. When the story ended, Barceló got up and began pacing up and down the room, pondering. Fermín and I observed him cautiously. Bernarda snored like a baby calf.
“Little angel,” whispered Fermín, entranced.
“A few things have caught my attention,” the bookseller said at last.
“Evidently Inspector Fumero is in this up to his neck, although how and why is something that escapes me. On the one hand, there’s this woman—”
“Nuria Monfort.”
“Then there’s the business of Julián Carax’s return to Barcelona and his murder in the streets of the city—after a month in which nobody knows anything about him. It’s obvious that the woman is lying through her teeth. Even about the time of day.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying from the start,” said Fermín, casting a glance at me. “Trouble is, some of us suffer from an excess of juvenile ardor and a lack of strategic grasp of the situation.”
“Look who’s talking: Saint John of the Cross.”
“That’s enough. Let’s calm down and stick to the facts. There’s one thing in Daniel’s narrative that seemed very strange to me, even stranger than the rest of it. It has nothing to do with the gothic spin of this whole saga, but with an essential and apparently banal detail,” Barceló said.
“Dazzle us, Don Gustavo.”
“Well, here it is: this business about Carax’s father refusing to identify Carax’s body, claiming that he didn’t have a son. That seems very odd to me. Almost unnatural. No father in the world would do that. Never mind the bad blood there might have been between them. Death does that: it makes everyone feel sentimental. When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.”
“What a great quote, Don Gustavo,” Fermín said. “Do you mind if I add it to my repertoire?”
“There can always be exceptions,” I objected. “From what we know, Mr. Fortuny was rather peculiar.”
“All we know about him is thirdhand gossip,” said Barceló. “When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he’s a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.”
“The trouble is, you’ve taken a shining to the hatter just because he’s dense,” said Fermín.
“With all due respect to the profession, when the description of a rogue is based solely on the caretaker’s statement, my first instinct is not to trust it.”
“But that means we can’t be sure of anything. Everything we know is, as you say, third-, or even fourth-hand. Caretakers or otherwise.”
“Never trust he who trusts everyone,” Barceló added.
“What an evening you’re having, Don Gustavo,” Fermín applauded. “Pearls of wisdom offered in abundance. Would that I had your crystalline insight—”
“The only crystalline thing in all this is that you need my help—logistical and probably monetary as well—if you’re hoping to bring this Christmas play to a conclusion before Inspector Fumero reserves a suite for you in San Sebas Prison. Fermín, I assume you’re with me?”
“I follow Daniel’s orders. If he orders it, I’d even play the part of Baby Jesus.”
“Daniel, what do you say?”
“You two are doing all the talking. What do you propose, Don Gustavo?”
“This is my plan: as soon as Fermín has recovered, you, Daniel, pay a casual visit to Nuria Monfort and put your cards on the table. You let her see that you know she’s lied to you and that she’s hiding something, a lot or a little—that remains to be seen.”
“What for?”
“To see how she reacts. She won’t say anything to you, of course. Or she’ll lie to you again. The important thing is to thrust the banderilla into her—forgive the bullfighting image—to see where the bull will lead us or, should I say, the young heifer. And that’s where you come in, Fermín. While Daniel is sticking his neck out, you position yourself discreetly where you can keep watch on the suspect and wait for her to take the bait. Once she’s done that, you follow her.”
“You’re assuming she’s going to go somewhere,” I protested.
“O ye of little faith! She will. Sooner or later. And something tells me that in this case it will be sooner rather than later. It’s the basis of feminine psychology.”
“And in the meantime, what are you planning to do, Dr. Freud?” I asked.
“That’s my business, and in good time you’ll know. And you’ll thank me for it.”
I looked for reassurance in Fermín’s eyes, but the poor man had slowly been falling asleep hugging Bernarda while Barceló was drawing up his triumphant plan. Fermín’s head was tilted to one side, and dribble was leaking onto his chest from the edge of a beatific smile. Bernarda was snoring loudly.
“I do hope this one proves good,” Barceló murmured.
“Fermín is a great guy,” I said.
“He must be, because I don’t think he can have won her over with his looks. Come on, let’s go.”
We turned out the light and left the room quietly, closing the door and leaving the two lovers in the hands of sleep. I thought I could see the first glimmer of daybreak through the gallery windows at the end of the corridor.
“Suppose I say no,” I said in a low voice. “Suppose I tell you to forget this.”
Barceló smiled. “Too late, Daniel. You should have sold me that book years ago, when you had the chance.”
Day was dawning when I reached home, dragging myself in that absurd loaned suit through damp streets that shone with a scarlet hue. I found my father asleep in his dining-room armchair, with a blanket over his legs and his favorite book open in his hands—a copy of Voltaire’s Candide, which he reread a couple of times a year, the only times I heard him laugh heartily. I observed him: his hair was gray, thinning, and the skin on his face had begun to sag around his cheekbones. I looked at that man whom I had once imagined almost invincible; he now seemed fragile, defeated without knowing it. Perhaps we were both defeated. I leaned over to cover him with the blanket he had been promising to give away to charity for years, and I kissed his forehead, as if by doing so I could protect him from the invisible threads that kept him away from me, from that tiny apartment, and from my memories, as if I believed that with that kiss I could deceive time and convince it to pass us by, to return some other day, some other life.
·34·
I SPENT NEARLY ALL MORNING DAYDREAMING IN THE BACK ROOM, conjuring up images of Bea. I visualized her naked skin under my hands, and it seemed to me that I could almost savor her sweet breath. I caught myself remembering with maplike precision every contour of her body, the glistening of my saliva on her lips and on that line of fair hair, so fair it was almost transparent, that ran down her belly and that my friend Fermín, in his improvised lectures on carnal logistics, liked to call “the little road to Jerez.”
I looked at my watch for the umpteenth time and realized to my horror that there were still a few hours to go before I could see, and touch, Bea. I tried to sort out the month’s invoices, but the rustle of the sheets of paper reminded me of the sound of underwear slipping down the pale hips and thighs of Doña Beatriz Aguilar, sister of my childhood friend.
“Daniel, you’ve got your head in the clouds. Is anything worrying you? Is it Fermín?” my father asked.
I nodded, ashamed of myself. My best friend had lost a few ribs to save my skin a few hours earlier, and all I could think of was the fastener of a bra.
“Speaking of the devil…”
; I raised my eyes, and there he was. Fermín Romero de Torres, the one and only, wearing his best suit and with that ragged posture of a cheap cigar. He was coming in through the shop door with a victorious smile and a fresh carnation in his lapel.
“But what are you doing here? Weren’t you supposed to be resting?”
“Rest takes care of itself. I’m a man of action. And if I’m not here, you two won’t even sell a catechism.”
Ignoring the doctor’s advice, Fermín had come along determined to take up his post again. His face was yellow and covered in bruises; he limped badly and moved like a broken puppet.
“You’re going straight to bed, Fermín, for God’s sake,” said my horrified father.
“Wouldn’t hear of it. Statistics prove it: more people die in bed than in the trenches.”
All our protests went unheeded. After a while my father gave in, because something in poor Fermín’s eyes suggested that even though his bones hurt him terribly, the prospect of being alone in his pensión room was even more painful.
“All right, but if I see you lifting anything besides a pencil, I’ll give you an earful.”
“Yes, sir! You have my word of honor that I won’t even lift a finger.”
Fermín proceeded to put on his blue overalls and arm himself with a rag and a bottle of alcohol. He set himself up behind the counter, planning to clean the covers and spines of the fifteen secondhand books that had arrived that morning. They were all copies of a much-sought-after title, The Three-Cornered Hat: A History of the Civil Guard in Alexandrine Verse, by the exceedingly young graduate Fulgencio Capón, acclaimed as a prodigy by critics all over the country. While he devoted himself to his task, Fermín kept throwing me surreptitious looks, winking like a scheming devil.
“Your ears are as red as peppers, Daniel.”
“It must be from hearing you talk so much nonsense.”
“Or from the fever that’s gripped you. When are you seeing the young maid?”
“None of your business.”