Jausà vanished one November night of that year during a storm. Nobody knew what had become of him. Apparently he was exposing one of Gelabert’s special rolls of film himself when he met with an accident. Don Ricardo Aldaya asked Gelabert to recover the roll. After viewing it in private, Aldaya opted to set fire to it personally. Then, with the help of a very generous check, he suggested to the technician that he should forget all about the incident. By then Aldaya was already the owner of most of the properties of the vanished Jausà. There were those who said that the deceased Marisela had returned to take Jausà with her to hell. Others pointed out that a beggar, who greatly resembled the deceased millionaire, was seen for a few months afterward on the grounds of Ciudadela Park, until a black carriage with drawn curtains ran over him in the middle of the day, without bothering to stop. The stories spread: the dark legend of the rambling mansion, like the invasion of Cuban music in the city’s dance halls, could not be contained.
A few months later, Don Ricardo Aldaya moved his family to the house in Avenida del Tibidabo, where, two weeks after their arrival, the couple’s youngest child, Penélope, was born. To celebrate the occasion, Aldaya renamed the house “Villa Penélope.” The new name, however, never stuck. The house had its own character and proved immune to the influence of its new owners. The recent arrivals complained about noises and banging on the walls at night, sudden putrid smells and freezing drafts that seemed to roam through the house like wandering sentinels. The mansion was a compendium of mysteries. It had a double basement, with a sort of crypt, as yet unused, on the lower level. On the higher floor, a chapel was dominated by a large polychrome figure of Christ crucified, which the servants thought looked disturbingly like Rasputin—a very popular character in the press of the time. The books in the library were constantly appearing rearranged or turned back to front. There was a room on the third floor, a bedroom that was never used because of the unaccountable damp stains that showed up on the walls and seemed to form blurry faces, where fresh flowers would wilt in just a few minutes and one could always hear the drone of flies, although it was impossible to see them.
The cooks swore that certain items, such as sugar, disappeared from the larder as if by magic and that the milk took on a red hue at every new moon. Occasionally they found dead birds or small rodents at the door of some of the rooms. Other times things went missing, especially jewels and buttons from clothes kept in cupboards and drawers. Sometimes the missing objects would mysteriously reappear, months later, in remote corners of the house or buried in the garden. But usually they were never seen again. Don Ricardo was of the opinion that these incidents were but pranks and nonsense. In his view a week’s fasting would have curbed his family’s fears. What he didn’t regard so philosophically were the thefts of his dear wife’s jewelry. More than five maids were sacked when different items from the lady’s jewelry box disappeared, though they all cried their hearts out, swearing they were innocent. Those in the know tended to think there was no mystery involved: the explanation lay in Don Ricardo’s regrettable habit of slipping into the bedrooms of the younger maids at midnight for playful extramarital purposes. His reputation in this field was almost as notorious as his fortune, and there were those who said that at the rate his exploits were taking place, the illegitimate children he left behind would organize their own union.
The fact was that not only jewels disappeared. In time the family lost its joie de vivre entirely. The Aldaya family was never happy in the house that had been acquired through Don Ricardo’s dark arts of negotiation. Mrs. Aldaya pleaded constantly with her husband to sell the property and move them to a home in the town or even return to the residence that Puig i Cadafalch had built for Grandfather Simón, the patriarch of the clan. Ricardo Aldaya flatly refused. Since he spent most of his time traveling or in the family’s factories, he saw no problem with the house. On one occasion little Jorge disappeared for eight hours inside the mansion. His mother and the servants looked for him desperately, but without success. When he reappeared, pale and dazed, he said he’d been in the library the whole time, in the company of a mysterious black woman who had been showing him old photographs and had told him that all the females in the family would die in that house to atone for the sins of the males. The mysterious lady even revealed to little Jorge the date on which his mother would die: April 12, 1921. Needless to say, the so-called black lady was never found, but years later, on April 12, 1921, at first light, Mrs. Aldaya would be discovered lifeless on her bed. All her jewels had disappeared. When the pond in the courtyard was drained, one of the servant boys found them in the mud at the bottom, next to a doll that had belonged to her daughter, Penélope.
A week later Don Ricardo Aldaya decided to get rid of the house. By then his financial empire was already in its death throes, and there were those who insinuated that it was all due to that accursed house, which brought misfortune to whoever occupied it. Others, the more cautious ones, simply asserted that Aldaya had never understood the changing trends of the market and that all he had accomplished during his lifetime was to ruin the robust business created by the patriarch Simón. Ricardo Aldaya announced that he was leaving Barcelona and moving with his family to Argentina, where his textile industries were allegedly doing splendidly. Many believed he was fleeing from failure and shame.
In 1922 The Angel of Mist was put up for sale at a ridiculously low price. At first there was a strong interest in buying it, as much for its notoriety as for the growing prestige of the neighborhood, but none of the potential buyers made an offer after visiting the house. In 1923 the mansion was closed. The deed was transferred to a real-estate company high up on the long list of Aldaya’s creditors, so that it could arrange for its sale or demolition. The house was on the market for years, but the firm was unable to find a buyer. The said company, Botell i Llofré S. L., went bankrupt in 1939 when its two partners were sent to prison on unknown charges. After the unexplained fatal accident that befell both men in the San Viçens jail in 1940, the company was taken over by a financial group, among whose shareholders were three fascist generals and a Swiss banker. This company’s executive director turned out to be a certain Mr. Aguilar, father of Tomás and Bea. Despite all their efforts, none of Mr. Aguilar’s salesmen were able to place the house, not even by offering it far beneath its already low asking price. Nobody had been back on the property for over ten years.
“Until today,” said Bea quietly, withdrawing into herself for a moment. “I wanted to show you this place, you see? I wanted to give you a surprise. I told myself I had to bring you here, because this was part of your story, of the story of Carax and Penélope. I borrowed the key from my father’s office. Nobody knows we’re here. It’s our secret. I wanted to share it with you. And I was asking myself whether you’d come.”
“You knew I would.”
She smiled as she nodded. “I believe that nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their secret plan, even though we don’t understand it. Like you finding that novel by Julián Carax in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books or the fact that you and I are here now, in this house that belonged to the Aldayas. It’s all part of something we cannot comprehend, something that owns us.”
While she spoke, my hand had slipped awkwardly down to Bea’s ankle and was sliding toward her knee. She watched it as if she were watching an insect climbing up her leg. I asked myself what Fermín would have done at that moment. Where was his wisdom when I most needed it?
“Tomás says you’ve never had a girlfriend,” said Bea, as if that explained me.
I removed my hand and looked down, defeated. I thought Bea was smiling, but I preferred not to make sure.
“Considering he’s so quiet, your brother is turning out to be quite a bigmouth. What else does the newsreel say about me?”
“He says that for years you were in love with an older woman and that the experience left you brokenhearted.”
“All I had broken was a lip and my pride.”
“Tomás says you haven’t been out with any other girl because you compare them all with that woman.”
Good old Tomás and his hidden blows. “Her name is Clara,” I proffered.
“I know. Clara Barceló.”
“Do you know her?”
“Everyone knows a Clara Barceló. The name is the least of it.”
We fell silent for a while, watching the fire crackle.
“After I left you, I wrote a letter to Pablo,” said Bea.
I swallowed hard. “To your lieutenant boyfriend? What for?”
Bea took an envelope out of her blouse and showed it to me. It was closed and sealed.
“In the letter I tell him I want us to get married very soon, in a month’s time, if possible, and that I want to leave Barcelona forever.”
Almost trembling, I faced her impenetrable eyes.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to tell me whether I should send it or not. That’s why I’ve asked you to come here today, Daniel.”
I examined the envelope that she twirled in her hand like a playing card.
“Look at me,” she said.
I raised my eyes and met her gaze. I didn’t know what to answer. Bea lowered her eyes and walked away toward the end of the gallery. A door led to the marble balustrade that opened onto the inner courtyard of the house. I watched her silhouette fade into the rain. I went after her and stopped her, snatching the envelope from her hands. The rain beat down on her face, sweeping away the tears and the anger. I led her back into the mansion and to the heat of the blaze. She avoided my eyes. I took the envelope and threw it into the flames. We watched the letter breaking up among the hot coals and the pages evaporating in spirals of smoke, one by one. Bea knelt down next to me, with tears in her eyes. I embraced her and felt her breath on my throat.
“Don’t let me fall, Daniel,” she murmured.
The wisest man I ever knew, Fermín Romero de Torres, had told me that there is no experience in life comparable to the first time a man undresses a woman. For all his wisdom, though he had not lied to me, he hadn’t told me all the truth either. He hadn’t told me anything about that strange trembling of the hands that turned every button, every zip, into a superhuman challenge. Nor had he told me about that bewitchment of pale, tremulous skin, that first brush of the lips, or about the mirage that seemed to shimmer in every pore of the skin. He didn’t tell me any of that because he knew that the miracle happened only once and, when it did, it spoke in a language of secrets that, were they disclosed, would vanish again forever. A thousand times I’ve wanted to recover that first afternoon with Bea in the rambling house of Avenida del Tibidabo, when the sound of the rain washed the whole world away with it. A thousand times I’ve wished to return and lose myself in a memory from which I can rescue only one image stolen from the heat of the flames: Bea, naked and glistening with rain, lying by the fire, with open eyes that have followed me since that day. I leaned over her and passed the tips of my fingers over her belly. Bea lowered her eyelids and smiled, confident and strong.
“Do what you like to me,” she whispered.
She was seventeen, her entire life shining on her lips.
·29·
DARKNESS ENVELOPED US IN BLUE SHADOW AS WE LEFT THE mansion. The storm was receding, now barely an echo of cold rain. I wanted to return the key to Bea, but her eyes told me she wanted me to be the one to keep it. We strolled down toward Paseo de San Gervasio, hoping to find a taxi or a bus. We walked in silence, holding hands and hardly looking at each other.
“I won’t be able to see you again until Tuesday,” Bea said in a tremulous voice, as if she suddenly doubted my desire to see her again.
“I’ll be waiting for you here,” I said.
I took for granted that all my meetings with Bea would take place between the walls of that rambling old house, that the rest of the city did not belong to us. It even seemed to me that the firmness of her touch decreased as we moved away, that her strength and warmth diminished with every step we took. When we reached the avenue, we realized that the streets were almost deserted.
“We won’t find anything here,” said Bea. “We’d better go down along Balmes.”
We started off briskly down Calle Balmes, walking under the trees to shelter from the drizzle. It seemed to me that Bea was quickening her pace at every step, almost dragging me along. For a moment I thought that if I let go of her hand, Bea would start running. My imagination, still intoxicated by her touch and her taste, burned with a desire to corner her on a bench, to seek her lips and recite a predictable string of nonsense that would have made anyone within hearing burst out laughing, anyone but me. But Bea was withdrawing into herself, fading a world away from me.
“What’s the matter?” I murmured.
She gave me a broken smile, full of fear and loneliness. I then saw myself through her eyes: just an innocent boy who thought he had conquered the world in an hour but didn’t yet realize that he could lose it again in an instant. I kept on walking, without expecting an answer. Waking up at last. Soon we heard the rumbling of traffic, and the air seemed to light up like a flame of gas with the heat from the streetlamps and traffic lights. They made me think of invisible walls.
“We’d better separate here,” said Bea, letting go of my hand.
The lights from a taxi rank could be seen on the corner, a procession of glowworms.
“As you wish.”
Bea leaned over and brushed my cheek with her lips. Her hair still smelled of candle wax.
“Bea,” I began, almost inaudibly. “I love you….”
She shook her head but said nothing, sealing my lips with her hand as if my words were wounding her.
“Tuesday at six, all right?” she asked.
I nodded again. I saw her leave and disappear into a taxi, almost a stranger. One of the drivers, who had followed the exchange as if he were an umpire, observed me with curiosity. “What do you say? Shall we head for home, chief?”
I got into the taxi without thinking. The taxi driver’s eyes examined me through the mirror. I lost sight of the car that was taking Bea away, two dots of light sinking into a well of darkness.
I DIDN’T MANAGE TO GET TO SLEEP UNTIL DAWN CAST A HUNDRED TONES of dismal gray on my bedroom window. Fermín woke me up, throwing tiny pebbles at my window from the church square. I put on the first thing I found and ran down to open the door for him. Fermín was full of the insufferable enthusiasm of the early bird. We pushed up the grilles and hung up the OPEN sign.
“Look at those rings under your eyes, Daniel. They’re as big as a building site. May we assume the owl got the pussycat to go out to sea with him?”
When I returned to the back room, I put on my blue apron and handed him his, or rather threw it at him angrily. Fermín caught it in midflight, with a sly smile.
“The owl drowned, period. Happy?” I snapped.
“Intriguing metaphor. Have you been dusting off your Verlaine, young man?”
“I stick to prose on Monday mornings. What do you want me to tell you?”
“I leave that up to you. The number of estocadas or the laps of honor.”
“I’m not in the mood, Fermín.”
“O youth, flower of fools! Oh, well, don’t get irritated with me. I have fresh news concerning our investigation on your friend Julián Carax.”
“I’m all ears.”
He gave me one of his cloak-and-dagger looks, one eyebrow raised.
“Well, it turns out that yesterday, after leaving Bernarda back home with her virtue intact but a nice couple of well-placed bruises on her backside, I was assailed by a fit of insomnia—due to those evening erotic arousals—which gave me the pretext to walk down to one of the information centers of the Barcelona underworld—i.e., the tavern of Eliodoro Salfumán, aka ‘Coldprick,’ situated in a seedy but rather colorful establishment in Calle Sant Jeroni, pride of the Raval quarter.”
“The abridged version, Fermín, for
goodness’ sake.”
“Coming. The fact is that once I was there, ingratiating myself with some of the usual crowd, old chums from troubled times of yore, I began to make inquiries about this Miquel Moliner, the husband of your Mata Hari Nuria Monfort and a supposed inmate at the local penitential hotels.”
“Supposed?”
“With a capital S. There are no slips at all ’twixt cup and lip in this case, if you see what I mean. I know from experience that when it comes to the census of the prison population, my informants in Coldprick’s tabernacle are much more accurate than the pencil pushers in the law courts, and I can guarantee, Daniel, my friend, that nobody has heard mention of the name Miquel Moliner as an inmate, visitor, or any other living soul in the prisons of Barcelona, for at least ten years.”
“Perhaps he’s serving in some other prison.”