“As if he wore a leather mask,” she said.
“You’re making that up, Clara.”
Clara would swear again and again that it was true, and I would give up, tortured by the image of that phantom who found pleasure in caressing her swan’s neck—and heaven knows what else—while all I could do was long for it. Had I paused to reflect, I would have understood that my devotion to Clara brought me no more than suffering. Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most. During that bleak postwar summer, the only thing I feared was the arrival of the new school term, when I would no longer be able to spend all day with Clara.
BY DINT OF SEEING ME SO OFTEN AROUND THE HOUSE, BERNARDA, whose severe appearance concealed a doting maternal instinct, became fond of me and, in her own manner, decided to adopt me.
“You can tell this boy hasn’t got a mother, sir,” she would say to Barceló. “I feel so sorry for him, poor little mite.”
Bernarda had arrived in Barcelona shortly after the war, fleeing from poverty and from a father who on a good day would beat her up and tell her she was stupid, ugly, and a slut, and on a bad one would corner her in the pigsty, drunk, and fondle her until she sobbed with terror—at which point he’d let her go, calling her prudish and stuck up, like her mother. Barceló had come across Bernarda by chance when she worked in a vegetable stall in the Borne Market and, following his instinct, had offered her a post in his household.
“Ours will be a brand-newPygmalion, ” he announced. “You shall be my Eliza and I’ll be your Professor Higgins.”
Bernarda, whose literary appetite was more than satisfied with the church newsletter, looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
“One might be poor and ignorant, but very decent, too,” she said.
Barceló was not exactly George Bernard Shaw, but even if he had not managed to endow his pupil with the eloquence and spirit of a salon dame, his efforts had refined Bernarda and taught her the manners and speech of a provincial maid. She was twenty-eight, but I always thought she carried ten more years on her back, even if they showed only in her eyes. She was a serial churchgoer with an ecstatic devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes. Every morning she went to the eight o’clock service at the basilica of Santa María del Mar, and she confessed no less than three times a week, four in warm weather. Don Gustavo, who was a confirmed agnostic (which Bernarda suspected might be a respiratory condition, like asthma, but afflicting only refined gentlemen), deemed it mathematically impossible that the maid should be able to sin sufficiently to keep up that schedule of confession and contrition.
“You’re as good as gold, Bernarda,” he would say indignantly. “These people who see sin everywhere are sick in their souls and, if you really press me, in their bowels. The endemic condition of the Iberian saint is chronic constipation.”
Every time she heard such blasphemy, Bernarda would make the sign of the cross five times over. Later, at night, she would say a prayer for the tainted soul of Mr. Barceló, who had a good heart but whose brains had rotted away due to excessive reading, like that fellow Sancho Panza. Very occasionally Bernarda had boyfriends, who would beat her, take what little money she had stashed in a savings account, and sooner or later dump her. Every time one of these crises arose, Bernarda would lock herself up in her room for days, where she would cry an ocean and swear she was going to kill herself with rat poison or bleach. After exhausting all his persuasive tricks, Barceló would get truly frightened and call the locksmith to open the door. Then the family doctor would administer a sedative strong enough to calm a horse. When the poor thing woke up two days later, the bookseller would buy her roses, chocolates, and a new dress and would take her to the movies to see the latest from Cary Grant, who in her book was the handsomest man in recorded history.
“Did you know? They say Cary Grant is queer,” she would murmur, stuffing herself with chocolates. “Is that possible?”
“Rubbish,” Barceló would swear. “Dunces and blockheads live in a state of perpetual envy.”
“You do speak well, sir. It shows that you’ve been to that Sorbet university.”
“The Sorbonne,” he would answer, gently correcting her.
It was very difficult not to love Bernarda. Without being asked, she would cook and sew for me. She would mend my clothes and my shoes, comb and cut my hair, buy me vitamins and toothpaste. Once she even gave me a small medal with a glass container full of holy water, which a sister of hers who lived in San Adrián del Besós had brought all the way from Lourdes by bus. Sometimes, while she inspected my head in search of lice and other parasites, she would speak to me in a hushed voice.
“Miss Clara is the most wonderful person in the world, and may God strike me dead if it should ever enter my head to criticize her, but it’s not right that you, Master Daniel, should become too obsessed with her, if you know what I mean.”
“Don’t worry, Bernarda, we’re only friends.”
“That’s just what I say.”
To illustrate her arguments, Bernarda would then bring up some story she had heard on the radio about a boy who had fallen in love with his teacher and on whom some sort of avenging spell had been cast. It made his hair and his teeth fall out, and his face and hands were covered with some incriminating fungus, a sort of leprosy of lust.
“Lust is a bad thing,” Bernarda would conclude. “Take it from me.”
Despite the jokes he made at my expense, Don Gustavo looked favorably on my devotion to Clara and my eager commitment to be her companion. I attributed his tolerance to the fact that he probably considered me harmless. From time to time, he would still let slip enticing offers to buy the Carax novel from me. He would tell me that he had mentioned the subject to colleagues in the antiquarian book trade, and they all agreed that a Carax could now be worth a fortune, especially in Paris. I always refused his offers, at which he would just smile shrewdly. He had given me a copy of the keys to the apartment so that I could come and go without having to worry about whether he or Bernarda were there to open the door. My father was another story. As the years went by, he had got over his instinctive reluctance to talk about any subject that truly worried him. One of the first consequences of that progress was that he began to show his obvious disapproval of my relationship with Clara.
“You ought to go out with friends your own age, like Tomás Aguilar, whom you seem to have forgotten, though he’s a splendid boy, and not with a woman who is old enough to be married.”
“What does it matter how old we each are if we’re good friends?”
What hurt me most was the reference to Tomás, because it was true. I hadn’t gone out with him for months, whereas before we had been inseparable. My father looked at me reprovingly.
“Daniel, you don’t know anything about women, and this one is playing with you like a cat with a canary.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t know anything about women,” I would reply, offended. “And much less about Clara.”
Our conversations on the subject rarely went any further than an exchange of reproaches and wounded looks. When I was not at school or with Clara, I devoted my time to helping my father in the bookshop—tidying up the storeroom in the back of the shop, delivering orders, running errands, or even serving regular customers. My father complained that I didn’t really put my mind or my heart into the work. I, in turn, replied that I spent my whole life working there and I couldn’t see what he could possibly complain about. Many nights, when sleep eluded me, I’d lie awake remembering the intimacy, the small world we had shared during the years following my mother’s death, the years of Victor Hugo’s pen and the tin trains. I recalled them as years of peace and sadness, a world that was vanishing and that had begun to evaporate on the dawn when my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Time played on the opposite team. One day my father discovered that I’d given Carax’s book to Clara, and he rose in anger.
“Yo
u disappoint me, Daniel,” he said. “When I took you to that secret place, I told you that the book you chose was something special, that you were going to adopt it and had to be responsible for it.”
“I was ten at the time, Father, and that was a child’s game.”
My father looked at me as if I’d stabbed him.
“And now you’re fourteen, and not only are you still a child, you’re a child who thinks he’s a man. Life is going to deal you a great many blows, Daniel. And very soon.”
In those days I wanted to believe that my father was hurt because I spent so much time with the Barcelós. The bookseller and his niece lived a life of luxury that my father could barely dream of. I thought he resented the fact that Don Gustavo’s maid behaved as if she were my mother, and was offended by my acceptance that someone could take on that role. Sometimes, while I was in the back room wrapping up parcels or preparing an order, I would hear a customer joking with my father.
“What you need is a good woman, Sempere. These days there are plenty of good-looking widows around, in the prime of their life, if you see what I mean. A young lady would sort out your life, my friend, and take twenty years off you. What a good pair of breasts can’t do…”
My father never responded to these insinuations, but I found them increasingly sensible. Once, at dinnertime, which had become a battleground of silences and stolen glances, I brought up the subject. I thought that if I were the one to suggest it, it would make things easier. My father was an attractive man, always clean and neat in appearance, and I knew for a fact that more than one lady in the neighborhood approved of him and would have welcomed more than reading suggestions from him.
“It’s been very easy for you to find a substitute for your mother,” he answered bitterly. “But for me there is no such person, and I have no interest at all in looking.”
As time went by, the hints from my father and from Bernarda, and even Barceló’s intimations, began to make an impression on me. Something inside me told me that I was entering a cul-de-sac, that I could not hope for Clara to see anything more in me than a boy ten years her junior. Every day it felt more difficult to be near her, to bear the touch of her hands, or to take her by the arm when we went out for a walk. There came a point when her mere proximity translated into an almost physical pain. Nobody was unaware of this fact, least of all Clara.
“Daniel, I think we need to talk,” she would say. “I don’t think I’ve behaved very well toward you—”
I never let her finish her sentences. I would leave the room with any old excuse and flee, unable to face the possibility that the fantasy world I had built around Clara might be dissolving. I could not know that my troubles had only just begun.
An Empty Plate
1950
·7·
ON MY SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY, ISPAWNED THE MOST ILL-FATED idea that had ever occurred to me. Without consulting anybody, I decided to host a birthday party and invite Barceló, Bernarda, and Clara. In my father’s estimation, the whole thing was a recipe for disaster.
“It’s my birthday,” I answered sharply. “I work for you all the other days of the year. For once, at least, you could try to please me.”
“Suit yourself.”
The preceding months had been the most bewildering in my strange friendship with Clara. I hardly ever read to her anymore. Clara would systematically avoid being left on her own with me. Whenever I called by her apartment, her uncle popped up, pretending to read a newspaper, or else Bernarda would materialize, bustling about in the background and casting sidelong glances. Other times the company would take the form of one or several of Clara’s friends. I called them the “Sisterly Brigade.” Always chaste and modest in appearance, they patrolled the area around Clara with a missal in one hand and a policeman’s eye, making it abundantly clear that I was in the way and that my presence embarrassed Clara and the entire world. Worst of all, however, was Neri, the music teacher, whose wretched symphony remained unfinished. He was a smooth talker, a rich kid from the snobby uptown district of San Gervasio, who, despite the Mozartian airs he affected, reminded me more of a tango singer, slick with brilliantine. The only talent I recognized in him was a badly concealed mean streak. He would suck up to Don Gustavo with no dignity or decorum, and he flirted with Bernarda in the kitchen, making her laugh with his silly gifts of sugared almonds and his fondness for bottom pinching. In short, I hated his guts. The dislike was mutual. Neri would turn up with his scores and his arrogant manner, regarding me as if I were some undesirable little cabin boy and making all sorts of objections to my presence.
“Don’t you have to go and do your homework, son?”
“And you, maestro, don’t you have a symphony to finish?”
In the end they would all get the better of me and I would depart, crestfallen and defeated, wishing I had Don Gustavo’s gift of the gab so that I could put the conceited so-and-so in his place.
ON MY BIRTHDAY MY FATHER WENT DOWN TO THE BAKERY ON THE corner and bought the finest cake he could find. He set the dinner table silently, bringing out the silver and the best dinner service. He lit a few candles and prepared a meal of what he thought were my favorite dishes. We didn’t exchange a word all afternoon. In the evening he went into his room, slipped into his best suit, and came out again holding a packet wrapped in shiny cellophane paper, which he placed on the coffee table in the dining room. My present. He sat at the table, poured himself a glass of white wine, and waited. The invitation specified dinner would be served at eight-thirty. At nine-thirty we were still waiting. My father glanced at me sadly. Inside, I was boiling with rage.
“You must be pleased with yourself,” I said. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“No.”
Half an hour later, Bernarda arrived. She bore a funereal expression and a message from Miss Clara, who wished me many happy returns but unfortunately would be unable to attend my birthday dinner. Mr. Barceló had been obliged to leave town on business for a few days, and she’d had to change her music lesson with Maestro Neri. Bernarda had come because it was her afternoon off.
“Clara can’t come because she has a music lesson?” I asked, quite astounded.
Bernarda looked down. She was almost in tears when she handed me a small parcel containing her present and kissed me on both cheeks.
“If you don’t like it, you can exchange it,” she said.
I was left alone with my father, staring at the fine dinner service, the silver, and the candles that were quietly burning themselves out.
“I’m sorry, Daniel,” said my father.
I nodded in silence, shrugging my shoulders.
“Aren’t you even going to open your present?” he asked.
My only response was the slam of the front door as I left the apartment. I rushed furiously down the stairs, my eyes brimming with tears of rage as I stepped outside. The street was freezing, desolate, suffused in an eerie blue radiance. I felt as if my heart had been flayed open. Everything around me trembled. I walked off aimlessly, paying scant attention to a stranger who was observing me from Puerta del Ángel. He wore a dark suit, right hand buried in the pocket of his jacket, eyes like wisps of light in the glow of his cigarette. Limping slightly, he began to follow me.
I wandered through the streets for an hour or more, until I found myself at the base of the Columbus monument. Crossing over to the port, I sat on the stony steps that descended into the dark waters, next to the dock that sheltered the pleasure boats. Someone had chartered a night trip, and I could hear laughter and music wafting across from the procession of lights and reflections in the inner harbor. I remembered the days when my father would take me on that very same boat for a trip to the breakwater point. From there you could see the cemetery on the slopes of Montjuïc, the endless city of the dead. Sometimes I waved, thinking that my mother was still there and could see us going by. My father would also wave. It was years since we had boarded a pleasure boat, although I knew that sometimes he did the trip o
n his own.
“A good night for remorse, Daniel,” came a voice from the shadows. “Cigarette?”
I jumped up with a start. A hand was offering me a cigarette out of the dark.
“Who are you?”
The stranger moved forward until he was on the very edge of darkness, his face still concealed. A puff of blue smoke rose from his cigarette. I immediately recognized the black suit and the hand hidden in the jacket pocket. His eyes shone like glass beads.
“A friend,” he said. “Or that’s what I aspire to be. A cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Good for you. Unfortunately, I have nothing else to offer you, Daniel.”
He had a rasping, wounded voice. He dragged his words out so that they sounded muffled and distant like the old 78s Barceló collected.
“How do you know my name?”
“I know a lot about you. Your name is the least of it.”
“What else do you know?”
“I could embarrass you, but I don’t have the time or the inclination. Just say that I know you have something that interests me. And I’m ready to pay you good money for it.”
“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
“No, I hardly think so. I tend to make other mistakes, but never when it comes to people. How much do you want for it?”