Nobody had photographed Don Mauricio or seen him in public after that night in the Círculo de Bellas Artes. However hard I tried, I didn’t find a single appearance. Tired of pursuing avenues that seemed to lead nowhere, I went back to the beginning and pieced his story together, until I got to know it as if it were my own. I sniffed his trail in the hope of finding a clue, some sign that might tell me where he was. Where was that man who smiled in photographs and paraded his vanity through endless pages with an entourage of flatterers, hungry for favours?
My hatred grew during those solitary afternoons in the old Ateneo library, where not so long ago I’d devoted my cares to nobler causes, like the smooth skin of my first impossible love, the blind Clara, or the mysteries of Julián Carax and his novel The Shadow of the Wind. The harder it became to follow Valls’s trail, the more I refused to admit that he had the right to disappear and erase his name from history. From my history. I needed to know what had happened to him. I needed to look him in the eye, even if it was just to remind him that someone, a single person in the entire universe, knew who he really was and what he had done.
8
One afternoon, tired of chasing ghosts, I cancelled my session at the newspaper library and went out for a stroll with Bea and Julián through a clean, sunny Barcelona I had almost forgotten. We walked from home to Ciudadela Park. I sat on a bench and watched Julián play with his mother on the lawn. As I gazed at them I reminded myself of Fermín’s words. A fortunate man, that was me, Daniel Sempere. A fortunate man who had allowed blind resentment to grow inside him until he felt sick at the very thought of himself.
I watched Julián devote himself to one of his grand passions: crawling about on all fours until he was filthy. Bea kept a close eye on him. Every now and then he would pause and turn towards me. Suddenly, a gust of air lifted Bea’s skirt and Julián burst out laughing. I clapped and Bea gave me a disapproving look. I searched my son’s eyes: soon, I thought, they’ll begin to look at me as if I were the wisest man in the world, the bearer of all answers. I decided never to mention the name of Mauricio Valls again or pursue his shadow.
Bea came over and sat down beside me. Julián crawled after her as far as the bench. When he reached my feet I picked him up and he set about cleaning his hands on the lapels of my jacket.
‘Just back from the dry cleaner’s,’ said Bea.
I shrugged, resigned. Bea leaned over and took my hand.
‘Nice legs,’ I said.
‘I don’t see what’s so amusing. Your son will pick that up from you. Thank goodness there was nobody around.’
‘There was a little old grandad hiding behind a newspaper over there. I think he’s collapsed with tachycardia.’
Julián decided that the word ‘tachycardia’ was the funniest thing he’d heard in his life and we spent a good part of the journey home singing ‘ta-chy-car-dia’ while Bea walked a few steps in front of us, fuming.
That night, 20 January, Bea put Julián to bed and then fell asleep on the sofa next to me, while I reread, for the third time, one of David Martín’s old novels. It was the copy Fermín had found during his months of exile, after his escape from the prison, and had kept all those years. I liked savouring every turn of phrase and dissecting the architecture of every sentence. I thought that if I could decode the music of his prose I might discover something about that man whom I’d never known and whom everyone assured me was not my father. But that night I couldn’t do it. Before reaching the end of a single paragraph, my thoughts would fly from the page and all I could see in front of me was that letter from Pablo Cascos Buendía, arranging to meet my wife the following day at the Ritz, at two o’clock in the afternoon.
At last I closed the book and gazed at Bea, sleeping by my side, sensing that she held a thousand times more secrets than David Martín’s stories about the sinister city of the damned. It was after midnight when Bea opened her eyes and caught me scrutinising her. She smiled at me, but a flicker of anxiety crossed her face.
‘What’s on your mind?’ she asked.
‘I was thinking about how lucky I am,’ I said.
Bea stared at me, unconvinced.
‘You say that as if you didn’t believe it.’
I stood up and put out a hand to her.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ I invited.
She took my hand and followed me down the corridor to the bedroom. I lay down on the bed and looked at her in silence.
‘You’ve been acting strangely, Daniel. What’s wrong? Have I said something?’
I shook my head and gave her a smile as innocent as a white lie. Bea slowly began to undress. When she removed her clothes she never turned round, or hid in the bathroom or behind a door, as the official marriage-guidance booklets advised. I watched her calmly, reading the lines of her body. Bea’s eyes were fixed on mine. She slipped on that nightdress I detested and got into bed, turning her back on me.
‘Goodnight,’ she said, her voice tense and, to someone who knew her well, annoyed.
‘Goodnight,’ I whispered.
Listening to her breathing I knew that it took her over half an hour to fall asleep, but in the end she was too exhausted to dwell on my peculiar behaviour. As I lay by her side, I wondered whether I should wake her to beg her forgiveness or simply kiss her. I did nothing. I remained there, motionless, gazing at the curve of her back and feeling that dark force inside me whispering that in a few hours Bea would go to meet her ex-fiancé and those lips and that skin would belong to another, as his corny letter seemed to insinuate.
When I awoke, Bea had left. I hadn’t managed to get to sleep until daybreak and when the church bells struck nine o’clock I woke up with a start and got dressed in the first clothes I found. Outside, a cold Monday awaited me, sprinkled with snowflakes that drifted in the air and settled on passers-by like glass spiders hanging from invisible threads. When I walked into the bookshop, my father was standing on the stool he climbed on to every morning to change the date on the calendar. 21 January.
‘Oversleeping is not acceptable when you’re over twelve,’ he said. ‘It was your turn to open up today.’
‘Sorry. Bad night. It won’t happen again.’
I spent a couple of hours trying to occupy my mind and my hands with menial tasks in the bookshop but all I could do was think of that damned letter that I kept reciting to myself. Halfway through the morning Fermín came over to me surreptitiously and offered me a Sugus sweet.
‘Today’s the day, isn’t it?’
‘Shut up, Fermín,’ I shot back at him, so brusquely that my father raised his eyebrows.
I took refuge in the back room and heard them murmuring. I sat at my father’s desk and stared at the clock. It was one twenty in the afternoon. I tried to let the minutes go by but the hands of the clock seemed unwilling to move. When I returned to the shop Fermín and my father gave me a worried look.
‘Daniel, you might like to take the rest of the day off,’ said my father, ‘Fermín and I will manage on our own.’
‘Thanks. I think I will. I’ve hardly slept and I’m not feeling very well.’
I didn’t have the courage to look at Fermín as I slipped out through the back room. I walked up the five flights of stairs with leaden feet. When I opened the front door of the apartment I heard water running in the bathroom. I dragged myself to the bedroom and stopped in the doorway. Bea was sitting on the edge of the bed. She hadn’t seen me or heard me come in. I watched her as she slipped on her silk stockings and got dressed with her eyes fixed on the mirror. She didn’t notice my presence for a couple of minutes.
‘I didn’t know you were there,’ she said halfway between surprise and irritation.
‘Are you going out?’
She nodded as she put on scarlet lipstick.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have a couple of errands to do.’
‘You’re looking very pretty.’
‘I don’t like going out looking a mess,’ she replied.
I regarded her as she applied her eyeshadow. ‘A fortunate man,’ said the sarcastic voice.
‘What errands?’ I asked.
Bea turned to look at me.
‘What?’
‘I was asking you what errands you have to do.’
‘A few things. This and that.’
‘And Julián?’
‘My mother came to fetch him. She’s taken him out for a walk.’
‘I see.’
Bea came closer and, putting aside her irritation, gave me a worried look.
‘Daniel, what’s the matter with you?’
‘I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’
‘Why don’t you take a nap? It will do you good.’
‘Good idea,’ I agreed.
Smiling wanly, Bea took me round to my side of the bed. She helped me lie down, covered me with the bedspread and gave me a kiss on the forehead.
‘I’ll be late,’ she said.
I watched her leave.
‘Bea …’
She stopped halfway down the corridor and turned round.
‘Do you love me?’ I asked.
‘Of course I love you. Don’t be silly.’
I heard the door close and then Bea’s feline footsteps in her stiletto heels going down the stairs. I picked up the phone and waited for the operator to speak.
‘The Ritz Hotel, please.’
The line took a few seconds to connect.
‘Ritz Hotel, good afternoon, how can I help you?’
‘Could you check whether you have someone staying at the hotel, please?’
‘May I have the name of the guest?’
‘Cascos. Pablo Cascos Buendía. I think he must have arrived yesterday …’
‘Just a minute please …’
A long minute’s wait, hushed voices, echoes down the line.
‘Sir …’
‘Yes?’
‘I can’t see any reservation in that name, sir …’
I felt enormously relieved.
‘Could the reservation have been made under a company name?’
‘I’ll just check.’
This time the wait was shorter.
‘Yes, you were right. Señor Cascos Buendía. Here it is, Continental Suite. The reservation was made by the Ariadna publishing company.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I was saying, sir, that Señor Cascos Buendía’s booking is in the name of Ediciones Ariadna. Would you like me to put you through to his room?’
The phone slipped out of my hands. Ariadna was the publishing firm Mauricio Valls had started up years ago.
Cascos worked for Valls.
I slammed down the phone and went out into the street following my wife, my heart poisoned with suspicion.
9
There was no trace of Bea among the crowd filing past Puerta del Ángel towards Plaza de Cataluña. I assumed that was the way my wife would have chosen to go to the Ritz, but with Bea you never knew. She liked trying out different routes between destinations. After a while I gave up and guessed she must have taken a taxi – a bit more in keeping with the stylish clothes she’d chosen for the occasion.
It took me fifteen minutes to get to the hotel. Although it can’t have been more than ten degrees Centigrade I was perspiring and short of breath. The doorman eyed me suspiciously, but he opened the door and allowed me in with the merest hint of a bow. The layout of the lobby puzzled me: it looked like the setting for a spy story or a decadent romantic saga. My limited experience of luxury hotels had not prepared me to work out what was what. I noticed a counter, behind which stood a conscientious receptionist observing me with a mixture of curiosity and alarm. I walked over to him with a smile that failed to impress him.
‘The restaurant, please?’
The receptionist examined me with polite scepticism.
‘Do you have a reservation, sir?’
‘I have a meeting with a hotel guest.’
The receptionist smiled coldly and nodded.
‘You’ll find the restaurant at the end of that corridor, sir.’
‘Much obliged.’
I made my way there with my heart in my mouth. I had no idea what I was going to say or do when I came face to face with Bea and that man. I was met by the head waiter who stopped me in my tracks. His expression, behind a stiff smile, betrayed scant approval of my attire.
‘Do you have a reservation, sir?’ he asked.
I shoved him aside and walked into the dining hall. Most tables were empty. An elderly couple with a mummified air and nineteenth-century manners interrupted their solemn soup-sipping to stare at me in disgust. A few more tables were occupied by what seemed to be dull businessmen accompanied by one or two incongruously attractive ladies, most likely to be billed as corporate expenses. There was no sign of Cascos or Bea.
The head waiter was approaching, flanked by two assistants. I turned round to face him and smiled politely.
‘Didn’t Señor Cascos Buendía have a reservation for two o’clock?’ I asked.
‘Señor Cascos asked to have his meal taken up to his suite,’ the head waiter informed me.
I checked my watch. It was twenty past two. I made my way to the corridor with the lifts. One of the doormen had his eye on me but before he could reach me I’d already slipped into one of the lifts. I pressed the button for one of the upper floors forgetting that I had no idea where the Continental Suite was.
‘Start at the top,’ I told myself.
I got out of the lift on the seventh floor and began to wander down grand corridors, all of them deserted. After a while I came across a door leading to the fire-escape stairs and walked down to the floor below. I went from door to door, looking unsuccessfully for the Continental Suite. It was two thirty by my watch. On the fifth floor I came across a maid dragging a trolley filled with feather dusters, bars of soap and towels and asked her where the suite was. She gave me a worried look, but I must have frightened her enough for her to point upwards.
‘Eighth floor.’
I preferred to avoid the lifts in case the hotel staff were looking for me. Three flights of stairs and a long corridor later I reached the doors of the Continental Suite dripping with sweat. I stood there for a second to catch my breath, trying to imagine what was going on behind the thick wooden door and wondering whether I still had enough common sense to walk away. I thought I could see someone observing me from the other end of the corridor and feared it might be one of the doormen, but when I looked closer the figure disappeared round the corner. It must have been another hotel guest, I imagined. Finally I rang the doorbell.
10
I heard footsteps. The image of Bea doing up her blouse flashed through my mind. A turn of the doorknob. I clenched my fists. A guy with slicked-back hair, wearing a white bathrobe and five-star hotel slippers, opened the door. Some years had passed, but one never forgets faces one wholeheartedly detests.
‘Sempere?’ he asked incredulously.
The punch landed between his upper lip and his nose. I felt his flesh and cartilage tearing under my fist. Cascos put his hands to his face and staggered, blood spouting through his fingers. I pushed him hard against the wall and stepped into the room. I heard Cascos tumble to the floor behind me. The bed was made and a steaming plate of food lay on a table facing the terrace with a privileged view of the Gran Vía. Only one place had been set. I turned and confronted Cascos, who was trying to get up by holding on to a chair.
‘Where is she?’
Cascos’s face was deformed with pain, blood dripping down on to his chest. I could see I’d cut his lip open and almost certainly broken his nose. I noticed a sharp burning sensation on my knuckles and when I looked at my hand I saw I’d grazed my skin when I smashed his face in. I felt no remorse whatsoever.
‘She didn’t come. Happy?’ spat Cascos.
‘Since when do you devote your time to writing to my wife?’
I thought he was laughing and before he cou
ld utter another word I hurled myself against him again and dealt him a second punch with all my pent-up anger. The blow loosened his teeth and left my hand feeling numb. Cascos groaned in agony and collapsed into the chair he had been leaning on. When he saw me bending over him he covered his face with his arms. I sank my hands into his neck and pressed my fingers into his flesh as if I were trying to rip out his throat.
‘What have you got to do with Valls?’
Cascos stared at me with a terrified expression, convinced that I was going to kill him then and there. He mumbled something unintelligible. Saliva and blood dripped from his mouth on to my hands.
‘Mauricio Valls. What have you got to do with him?’
My face was so close to his I could see my reflection in his pupils. The capillaries in his eyes were starting to burst and a web of black lines opened up towards the iris. Realising I was choking him, I let go of him abruptly. Cascos made a rasping sound as he took in air and felt his neck. I sat down on the bed opposite him. My hands were trembling and covered in blood. I went into the bathroom and washed them. I splashed my face and hair with cold water and when I saw my reflection in the mirror I barely recognised myself. I’d been on the point of killing a man.
11
When I returned to the room, Cascos was still slumped on the chair, panting. I filled a glass with water and handed it to him. Seeing me approach again he moved to one side, expecting another blow.