“I think it’s a wise decision.”
“What about you? Are you going to live your life?”
“I’m afraid I’ve already lived quite a lot of it.”
“What about that woman? Cristina?”
I took a deep breath.
“Cristina has left. She’s gone back to her husband. Another wise decision.”
Isabella pulled away and frowned at me.
“What?” I asked.
“I think you’re mistaken.”
“What about?”
“The other day Gustavo Barceló came by and we talked about you. He told me he’d seen Cristina’s husband, what’s his name …”
“Pedro Vidal.”
“That’s the one. And Señor Vidal had told him that Cristina had gone off with you, that he hadn’t seen her or heard from her in over a month. As a matter of fact, I was surprised not to find her here, but I didn’t dare ask.”
“Are you sure that’s what Barceló said?”
Isabella nodded.
“Now what have I said?” she asked in alarm.
“Nothing.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me …”
“Cristina isn’t here. I haven’t seen her since the day Señor Sempere died.”
“Where is she then?”
“I don’t know.”
Little by little we grew silent, curled up in the armchair by the fire, and in the small hours Isabella fell asleep. I put my arm round her and closed my eyes, thinking about all the things she had said and trying to find some meaning. When the light of dawn appeared through the windowpanes of the gallery, I opened my eyes and saw that Isabella was already awake.
“Good morning,” I said.
“I’ve been meditating,” she declared.
“And?”
“I’m thinking about accepting Sempere’s proposal.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.” She laughed.
“What will your parents say?”
“They’ll be upset, I suppose, but they’ll get over it. They would prefer me to marry a prosperous merchant who sold sausages rather than books, but they’ll just have to put up with it.”
“It could be worse,” I remarked.
Isabella agreed.
“Yes. I could end up with a writer.”
We looked at each other for a long time, until she extracted herself from the armchair. She collected her coat and buttoned it up, her back turned to me.
“I must go,” she said.
“Thanks for the company,” I replied.
“Don’t let her escape,” said Isabella. “Search for her, wherever she may be, and tell her you love her, even if it’s a lie. We girls like to hear that kind of thing.”
She turned round and leaned over to brush my lips with hers. Then she squeezed my hand and left without saying good-bye.
5
I spent the rest of that week scouring Barcelona for anyone who might remember having seen Cristina over the last month. I visited the places I’d shared with her and traced Vidal’s favorite route through cafés, restaurants, and elegant shops, all in vain. I showed everyone I met a photograph from the album Cristina had left in my house and asked whether they had seen her recently. Somewhere, I forget where, I came across a person who recognized her and remembered having seen her with Vidal sometime or other. Other people even remembered her name, but nobody had seen her in weeks. On the fourth day, I began to suspect that Cristina had left the tower house that morning after I went to buy the train tickets and had evaporated off the face of the earth.
Then I remembered that Vidal’s family kept a room permanently reserved at Hotel España, on Calle Sant Pau, behind the Liceo theater. It was used whenever a member of the family visited the opera and didn’t feel like returning to Pedralbes in the early hours. I knew that Vidal and his father had also used it, at least in their golden years, to enjoy the company of young ladies whose presence in their official residences in Pedralbes would have led to undesirable rumors—due to either the low or the high birth of the lady in question. More than once Vidal had offered the room to me when I still lived in Doña Carmen’s pension in case, as he put it, I felt like undressing a damsel somewhere that wasn’t quite so alarming. I didn’t think Cristina would have chosen the hotel room as a refuge—if she knew of its existence, that is—but it was the only place left on my list and nowhere else had occurred to me.
It was getting dark when I arrived at Hotel España and asked to speak to the manager, presenting myself as Señor Vidal’s friend. When I showed him Cristina’s photograph, the manager, a gentleman who mistook frostiness for discretion, smiled politely and told me that “other” members of Vidal’s staff had already been there a few weeks earlier, asking after that same person, and he had told them what he was telling me now: he had never seen that lady in the hotel. I thanked him for his icy kindness and walked away in defeat.
As I passed the glass doors that led into the dining room, I thought I registered a familiar profile. The boss was sitting at one of the tables, the only guest there, eating what looked like lumps of sugar. I was about to make a quick getaway when he turned and waved at me, smiling. I cursed my luck and waved back. He signaled for me to join him. I walked through the dining room door, dragging my feet.
“What a lovely surprise to see you here, dear friend. I was just thinking about you,” said Corelli.
I shook hands with him reluctantly.
“I thought you were out of town,” I said.
“I came back sooner than planned. Would you care for a drink?”
I declined. He asked me to sit down at his table and I obeyed. The boss wore his usual three-piece suit of black wool and a red silk tie. As always, he was impeccably attired, but something didn’t quite add up. It took me a few seconds to notice what it was—the angel brooch was not in his lapel. Corelli followed the direction of my gaze.
“Alas, I’ve lost it, and I don’t know where,” he explained.
“I hope it wasn’t too valuable.”
“Its value was purely sentimental. But let’s talk about more important matters. How are you, my dear friend? I’ve missed our conversations enormously, despite our occasional disagreements. It’s difficult to find a good conversationalist.”
“You overrate me, Señor Corelli.”
“On the contrary.”
A brief silence followed, those bottomless eyes drilling into mine. I told myself that I preferred him when he embarked on his usual banal conversations—when he stopped speaking his face seemed to change and the air thickened around him.
“Are you staying here?” I asked to break the silence.
“No, I’m still in the house by Güell Park. I arranged to meet a friend here this afternoon, but he seems to be late. The manners of some people are deplorable.”
“There can’t be many people who dare to stand you up, Señor Corelli.”
The boss looked me straight in the eye.
“Not many. In fact, the only person I can think of is you.”
The boss took a sugar lump and dropped it into his cup. A second lump followed, and then a third. He tasted the coffee and added four more lumps. Then he picked up yet another and popped it in his mouth.
“I love sugar,” he said.
“So I see.”
“You haven’t told me anything about our project, Martín, dear friend,” he cut in. “Is there a problem?”
I winced.
“It’s almost finished,” I said.
The boss’s face lit up with a smile I tried to ignore.
“That is wonderful news. When will I be able to see it?”
“In a couple of weeks. I need to do some revisions. Pruning and finishing touches more than anything else.”
“Can we set a date?”
“If you like.”
“How about Friday? That’s the twenty-fourth. Will you accept an invitation to dine and celebrate the success of our venture?”
&nb
sp; Friday, 24 January, was exactly two weeks away.
“Fine,” I agreed.
“That’s confirmed, then.”
He raised his sugar-filled cup as if he were drinking a toast and downed the contents in one gulp.
“How about you?” he asked casually. “What brings you here?”
“I was looking for someone.”
“Someone I know?”
“No.”
“And have you found the person?”
“No.”
The boss savored my silence.
“I get the impression that I’m keeping you here against your will, dear friend.”
“I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Then I won’t take up any more of your time. Sometimes I forget that although I enjoy your company, perhaps mine is not to your liking.”
I smiled meekly and took the opportunity to stand up. I saw myself reflected in his pupils, a pale doll trapped in a dark well.
“Take care of yourself, Martín. Please.”
“I will.”
I took my leave with a quick nod and headed for the exit. As I walked away I heard him putting another sugar lump in his mouth and crunching it between his teeth.
…
When I turned into the Ramblas I noticed that the canopies outside the Liceo were lit up and a long row of cars, guarded by a small regiment of chauffeurs in uniform, was waiting by the pavement. The posters announced Così fan tutte and I wondered if Vidal had felt like forsaking his castle to attend. I scanned the circle of drivers that had formed on the central pavement and soon spotted Pep among them. I beckoned him over.
“What are you doing here, Señor Martín?”
“Where is she?”
“Señor Vidal is inside, watching the performance.”
“Not ‘he.’ ‘She.’ Cristina. Señora de Vidal. Where is she?”
Poor Pep swallowed hard.
“I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
He told me that Vidal had been attempting to find her and that his father, the patriarch of the clan, had even hired various members of the police force to try to discover where she was.
“At first, Señor Vidal thought she was with you …”
“Hasn’t she called or sent a letter, a telegram … ?”
“No, Señor Martín. I swear. We’re all very worried, and Señor Vidal, well … I’ve never seen him like this in all the years I’ve known him. This is the first time he’s gone out since Señorita Cristina, I mean Señora Cristina—”
“Do you remember whether Cristina said something, anything, before she left Villa Helius?”
“Well …” said Pep, lowering his voice to a whisper. “You could hear her arguing with Señor Vidal. She seemed sad to me. She spent a lot of time by herself. She wrote letters and every day she went to the post office in Paseo Reina Elisenda to post them.”
“Did you ever speak to her alone?”
“One day, shortly before she left, Señor Vidal asked me to drive her to the doctor.”
“Was she ill?”
“She couldn’t sleep. The doctor prescribed laudanum.”
“Did she say anything to you on the way there?”
Pep hesitated.
“She asked after you, in case I’d heard from you or seen you.”
“Is that all?”
“She just seemed very sad. She started to cry, and when I asked her what was the matter she said she missed her father, Señor Manuel.”
I suddenly understood, berating myself for not having figured things out sooner. Pep looked at me in surprise and asked me why I was smiling.
“Do you know where she is?” he asked.
“I think so,” I murmured.
I thought I could hear a voice calling from the other side of the street and glimpsed a familiar figure in the Liceo foyer. Vidal hadn’t even managed to last the first act. Pep turned to attend to his master’s call, and before he had time to tell me to hide I had already disappeared into the night.
6
Even from afar it looked like bad news: the ember of a cigarette in the blue of the night, silhouettes leaning against a dark wall, the spiraling breath of three figures lying in wait by the main door of the tower house. Inspector Víctor Grandes, accompanied by his two guard dogs Marcos and Castelo, led the welcome committee. It wasn’t hard to work out that they’d found Alicia Marlasca’s body at the bottom of her pool in Sarriá and that my place on their list had gone up a few notches. The minute I caught sight of them I stopped and melted into the shadows, observing them for a few seconds to make sure they hadn’t noticed me—I was only some fifty meters away. I could distinguish Grandes’s profile in the thin light shed by the streetlamp on the wall. Retreating into the darkness, I slipped into the first alleyway I could find, disappearing into the mass of passages and arches of the Ribera quarter.
Ten minutes later I reached the main entrance to the Estación de Francia. The ticket offices were closed, but I could still see a few trains lined up by the platforms under the large vault of glass and steel. I checked the timetables. Just as I had feared, there were no departures scheduled until the following day and I couldn’t risk returning home and bumping into Grandes and Co. Something told me that on this occasion my visit to police headquarters would include full board, and not even the good offices of the lawyer Señor Valera would get me out of there as easily as the last time.
I decided to spend the night in a cheap hotel opposite the old Stock Exchange, in Plaza Palacio. Legend had it that the building was inhabited by a number of walking cadavers, one-time speculators whose greed and poor arithmetic skills had proved their undoing. I chose this dump because I imagined that not even the Fates would come looking for me there. I registered under the name of Antonio Miranda and paid for the room in advance. The receptionist, who looked like a mollusk, seemed to be embedded in his cubbyhole, which also served as a linen closet and souvenir shop. Handing me the key and a bar of El Cid soap that stank of bleach and looked as if it had already been used, he informed me that if I wanted female company he could send up a serving girl nicknamed Cock-Eye as soon as she returned from a home visit.
“She’ll make you as good as new,” he assured me.
I turned down the offer, claiming the onset of lumbago, and hurried up the stairs, wishing him good night. The room had the appearance and shape of a sarcophagus. One quick look was enough to persuade me that I should lie on the old bed fully clothed rather than getting under the sheets to fraternize with whatever was growing there. I covered myself with a threadbare blanket I found in the wardrobe—which at least smelled of mothballs—and turned off the light, trying to imagine that I was actually in the sort of suite that someone with a hundred thousand francs in the bank could afford. I barely slept all night.
…
I left the hotel halfway through the morning and made my way to the station, where I bought a first-class ticket, hoping I’d be able to sleep on the train to make up for the dreadful night I’d spent in that dive. Seeing that there were still twenty minutes to go before the train’s departure, I went over to the row of public telephones. I gave the operator the number Ricardo Salvador had given me—that of his downstairs neighbor.
“I’d like to speak to Don Emilio, please.”
“Speaking.”
“My name is David Martín. I’m a friend of Señor Ricardo Salvador. He told me I could call him at this number in an emergency.”
“Let’s see … Can you wait a moment while we get him?”
I looked at the station clock.
“Yes. I’ll wait. Thanks.”
More than three minutes went by before I heard the sound of footsteps and then Ricardo Salvador’s voice.
“Martín? Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Thank goodness. I read about Roures in the newspaper and was very concerned about you. Where are you?”
“Señor Salvador, I don’t have much time now. I need to leave Barcelona.??
?
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. Listen. Alicia Marlasca is dead.”
“The widow? Dead?”
A long silence. I thought I could hear Salvador sobbing and cursed myself for having broken the news to him so bluntly.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes …”
“I’m calling to warn you. You must be careful. Irene Sabino is alive and she’s been following me. There is someone with her. I think it’s Jaco.”
“Jaco Corbera?”
“I’m not sure it’s him. I think they know I’m on their trail and they’re trying to silence all the people I’ve been speaking to. I think you were right.”
“Why would Jaco return now?” Salvador asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know. I have to go now. I just wanted to warn you.”
“Don’t worry about me. If that bastard comes to visit me, I’ll be ready for him. I’ve been ready for twenty-five years.”
The stationmaster blew the whistle: the train was about to leave.
“Don’t trust anyone. Do you hear me? I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”
“Thanks for calling, Martín. Be careful.”
7
The train was beginning to glide past the platform as I took refuge in my compartment and collapsed on the seat. I abandoned myself to the flow of tepid air from the heating and the gentle rocking of the train. We left the city behind us, crossing the forest of factories and chimneys and escaping the shroud of scarlet light that covered it. Slowly the wasteland of railway depots and trains abandoned on sidings dissolved into an endless plain of fields, woodlands, rivers, and hills crowned with large, rundown houses and watchtowers. The occasional covered wagon or hamlet peered through a bank of mist. Small railway stations slipped by; bell towers and farmhouses loomed up like mirages.
At some point in the journey I fell asleep, and when I woke the landscape had changed dramatically. We were now passing through steep valleys with rocky crags rising between lakes and streams. The train skirted great forests that climbed the soaring mountains. After a while, the tangle of hills and tunnels cut into the rock gave way to a large open valley with never-ending pastures where herds of wild horses galloped across the snow and small stone villages appeared in the distance. The peaks of the Pyrenees rose up on the other side, their snow-covered slopes set alight by the amber glow of evening. In front of us was a jumble of houses and buildings clustered around a hill. The ticket inspector put his head through the door of my compartment and smiled.