“Vous avez poison au coeur, mademoiselle.”
When I tried to pay him his fee, he shook his head gently, and instead it was he who kissed my hand.
I GOT TO THE GARE D’ AUSTERLITZ JUST IN TIME TO CATCH THE TWELVE o’clock train to Barcelona. The ticket inspector who sold me the ticket asked me whether I was feeling all right. I nodded and shut myself up in the compartment. The train was already leaving when I looked out the window and caught a glimpse of Julián on the platform, in the same place I’d seen him for the first time. I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again until we had lost sight of the station and that bewitching city to which I could never return. I arrived in Barcelona the following morning, as day was breaking. It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and I knew that the best part of my life was already behind me.
·2·
AFTER I RETURNED TO BARCELONA, I LET SOME TIME PASS BEFORE visiting Miquel Moliner again. I needed to get Julián out of my head, and I realized that if Miquel were to ask me about him, I wouldn’t know what to say. When we did meet again, I didn’t need to tell him anything. Miquel just looked me in the eyes and knew. He seemed to me thinner than before my trip to Paris; his face had an almost unhealthy pallor, which I attributed to the enormous workload with which he punished himself. He admitted that he was going through financial difficulties. He had spent almost all the money from his inheritance on his philanthropic causes, and now his brothers’ lawyers were trying to evict him from his home, claiming that a clause in old Mr. Moliner’s will specified that he could live there only providing he kept it in good condition and could prove he had the financial means for the upkeep of the property. Otherwise the Puertaferrissa mansion would pass into the custody of his brothers.
“Even before dying, my father sensed that I was going to spend his money on all the things he most detested in life, down to the last céntimo.”
His income as a newspaper columnist and translator was far from enough to maintain that sort of residence.
“Making money isn’t hard in itself,” he complained. “What’s hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one’s life to.”
I suspected that he was beginning to drink secretly. Sometimes his hands shook. Every Sunday I went over to see him and made him come out into the street and get away from his desk and his encyclopedias. I knew it hurt him to see me. He acted as if he didn’t remember that he’d offered to marry me and I’d refused him, but at times I’d catch him gazing at me with a look of mingled yearning and defeat. My sole excuse for submitting him to such cruelty was purely selfish: only Miquel knew the truth about Julián and Penélope Aldaya.
During those months I spent away from Julián, Penélope Aldaya became a specter that stole my sleep and my thoughts. I could still remember the expression of disappointment on the face of Irene Marceau when she realized I was not the woman Julián was waiting for. Penélope Aldaya, treacherously absent, was too powerful an enemy for me. She was invisible, so I imagined her as perfect. Next to her I was unworthy, vulgar, all too real. I had never thought it possible to hate someone so much and so despite myself—to hate someone I didn’t even know, whom I had never seen in my life. I suppose I thought that if I met her face-to-face, if I could prove to myself that she was flesh and blood, her spell would break and Julián would be free again. And I with him. I wanted to believe that it was only a matter of time and patience. Sooner or later Miquel would tell me the truth. And the truth would liberate me.
One day, as we strolled through the cathedral cloister, Miquel once again hinted at his interest in me. I looked at him and saw a lonely man, devoid of hope. I knew what I was doing when I took him home and let myself be seduced by him. I knew I was deceiving him and that he knew, too, but had nothing else in the world. That is how we became lovers, out of desperation. I saw in his eyes what I would have wanted to see in Julián’s. I felt that by giving myself to him I was taking revenge on Julián and Penélope and on everything that was denied to me. Miquel, who was ill with desire and loneliness, knew that our love was a farce, but even so he couldn’t let me go. Every day he drank more heavily and often could hardly make love to me. He would then joke bitterly that, after all, we’d turned into the perfect married couple in record time. We were hurting each other through spite and cowardice. One night, almost a year after I had returned from Paris, I asked him to tell me the truth about Penélope. Miquel had been drinking, and he became violent, as I’d never seen him before. In his rage he insulted me and accused me of never having loved him, of being a vulgar whore. He tore my clothes off me, shredding them in the process, and when he tried to force himself on me, I lay down, offering my body without resistance, crying to myself. Miquel broke down and begged me to forgive him. How I wished I were able to love him and not Julián, able to choose to remain by his side. But I couldn’t. We embraced in the dark, and I asked forgiveness for all the pain I had caused him. He then told me that if it mattered so much to me, he would tell me the truth about Penélope Aldaya. Another one of my mistakes.
That Sunday in 1919, when Miquel Moliner went to the station to give his friend Julián his ticket to Paris and see him off, Miquel already knew that Penélope would not be coming to the rendezvous. Two days earlier, when Don Ricardo Aldaya had returned from Madrid, his wife had confessed that she’d surprised Julián and their daughter, Penélope, in the governess’s room. Jorge Aldaya had revealed this to Miquel the next day, making him swear he would never tell anyone. Jorge explained how, when he was given the news, Don Ricardo exploded with anger and rushed up to Penélope’s room, shouting like a madman. When she heard her father’s yells, Penélope locked her door and wept with terror. Don Ricardo kicked in the door and found his daughter on her knees, trembling and begging for mercy. Don Ricardo then slapped her in the face so hard that she fell down. Not even Jorge was able to repeat the words Don Ricardo hurled at her in his fury. All the members of the family and the servants waited downstairs, terrified, not knowing what to do. Jorge hid in his room, in the dark, but even there he could hear Don Ricardo’s shouts. Jacinta was dismissed that same day. Don Ricardo didn’t even deign to see her. He ordered the servants to throw her out of the house and threatened them with a similar fate if any of them had any contact with her again.
When Don Ricardo went down to the library, it was already midnight. He’d left Penélope locked up in what had been Jacinta’s bedroom and strictly forbade anyone, whether members of his staff or family, to go up to see her. From his room Jorge heard his parents talking on the ground floor. The doctor arrived in the early hours. Mrs. Aldaya led him to Jacinta’s room and waited by the door while the doctor examined Penélope. When he came out, the doctor only nodded and collected his fee. Jorge heard Don Ricardo telling him that if he made any comments to anyone about what he’d seen there, he would personally ensure that his reputation was ruined and he was unable to practice medicine ever again. Jorge knew what that meant.
Jorge admitted that he was very worried about Penélope and Julián. He had never seen his father so beside himself with rage. Even taking into account the offense committed by the lovers, he could not understand the intensity of his father’s anger. There had to be something else, he said. Don Ricardo had already ordered San Gabriel’s School to expel Julián and had got in touch with the boy’s father, the hatter, about sending him off to the army immediately. When Miquel heard all this, he decided he couldn’t tell Julián the truth. If he disclosed to Julián that Don Ricardo was keeping Penélope locked up and that she might be carrying their child, Julián would never take that train to Paris. He knew that if his friend remained in Barcelona, that would be the end of him. So he decided to deceive him and let him go to Paris without knowing what had happened; he would let him think that Penélope was going to join him later. When he said good-bye to Julián that day in the Estación de Francia, even Miquel wanted to believe that not all was lost.
Some days later, when it was discovered that Julián had disappeared, all hell broke l
oose. Don Ricardo Aldaya was seething. He set half the police department in pursuit of the fugitive, but without success. He then accused the hatter of having sabotaged the plan they had agreed on and threatened him with total ruin. The hatter, who couldn’t understand what was going on, in turn accused his wife, Sophie, of having plotted the escape of that despicable son and threatened to throw her out of their home. It didn’t occur to anyone that it was Miquel Moliner who had planned the whole thing—to anyone except Jorge Aldaya, who went to see him a fortnight later. He no longer exuded the fear and anxiety that had gripped him earlier. This was a different Jorge Aldaya, an adult robbed of all innocence. Whatever it was that hid behind Don Ricardo’s anger, Jorge had discovered it. The reason for his visit was clear: he knew it was Miquel who had helped Julián to escape. He told him their friendship was over, that he didn’t ever want to see him again, and he threatened to kill him if he told anyone what he, Jorge, had revealed to him two weeks before.
A few weeks later, Miquel received a letter, with a false sender’s name, posted by Julián in Paris. In it he gave him his address, told him he was well and missed him, and inquired after his mother and Penélope. He included a letter addressed to Penélope, for Miquel to post from Barcelona, the first of many that Penélope would never read. Miquel prudently allowed a few months to go by. He wrote to Julián once a week, mentioning only what he felt was suitable, which was almost nothing. Julián, in turn, told him about Paris, about how difficult everything was turning out to be, how lonely and desperate he felt. Miquel sent him money, books, and his friendship. In every letter Julián would include another one for Penélope. Miquel mailed them from different post offices, even though he knew it was useless. In his letters Julián never stopped asking after Penélope. Miquel couldn’t tell him anything. He knew from Jacinta that Penélope had not left the house on Avenida del Tibidabo since her father had locked her in the room on the third floor.
One night Jorge Aldaya waylaid Miquel in the dark, two blocks from his home. “Have you come to kill me already?” asked Miquel. Jorge said that he had come to do him and his friend Julián a favor. He handed him a letter and advised him to make sure it reached Julián, wherever he was hiding. “For everyone’s sake,” he declared portentously. The envelope contained a sheet of paper handwritten by Penélope Aldaya.
Dear Julián,
I’m writing to notify you of my forthcoming marriage and to entreat you not to write to me anymore, to forget me and rebuild your life. I don’t bear you any grudge, but I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t confess to you that I have never loved you and never will be able to love you. I wish you the best, wherever you may be.
Penélope
Miquel read and reread the letter a thousand times. The handwriting was unmistakable, but he didn’t believe for a moment that Penélope had written that letter willingly: “…wherever you may be.” Penélope knew perfectly well where Julián was: in Paris, waiting for her. If she pretended not to know his whereabouts, Miquel reflected, it was to protect him. For that same reason, Miquel couldn’t understand what could have induced her to write those words. What further threats could Don Ricardo Aldaya bring down on her, on top of keeping her locked up for months in that room like a prisoner? More than anyone, Penélope knew that her letter was a poisoned dagger for Julián’s heart: a young boy of nineteen, lost in a distant and hostile city, abandoned by all, surviving only through his false hopes of seeing her again. What did she want to protect him from by pushing him away in that way? After much consideration, Miquel decided not to send the letter. Not without first knowing the reason for it. Without a good reason, it wouldn’t be his hand that would plunge that dagger into his friend’s soul.
Some days later he found out that Don Ricardo Aldaya, tired of seeing Jacinta waiting like a sentry at the doors of his house, begging for news of Penélope, had used his contacts to get her admitted into the Horta lunatic asylum. When Miquel Moliner tried to see her, he was denied access. Jacinta Coronado was to spend the first three months in solitary confinement. After three months of silence and darkness, he was told by one of the doctors—a young, cheerful individual—the patient’s submission was guaranteed. Following a hunch, Miquel decided to pay a visit to the pensión where Jacinta had been staying after her dismissal. When he identified himself, the landlady remembered that Jacinta had left a note for him and still owed her three weeks’ rent. He paid the debt, whose existence he doubted, and took the note. In it the governess explained that she had been informed that Laura, one of the Aldayas’ servants, had been dismissed when it was discovered that she had secretly posted a letter from Penélope to Julián. Miquel deduced that the only address to which Penélope, from her captivity, would have sent the letter was the apartment of Julián’s parents on Ronda de San Antonio, hoping that they, in turn, would make sure it reached him in Paris.
So he decided to visit Sophie Carax to recover the letter and forward it to Julián. When he arrived at the home of the Fortunys, Miquel was in for an unpleasant surprise: Sophie Carax no longer lived there. She had abandoned her husband a few days earlier—that, at least, was the rumor that was doing the rounds of the neighbors. Miquel then tried to speak to the hatter, who spent his days shut away in his shop, consumed by anger and humiliation. Miquel told him that he’d come to collect a letter that must have arrived for his son, Julián, a few days earlier.
“I have no son” was the only answer he received.
Miquel Moliner went away without knowing that the letter in question had ended up in the hands of the caretaker and that many years later, you, Daniel, would find it and read the words Penélope had meant for Julián, this time straight from her heart: words that he never received.
When Miquel left the Fortuny hat shop, one of the residents in the block of apartments, who identified herself as Viçenteta, went up to him and asked him whether he was looking for Sophie. Miquel said he was and told her he was a friend of Julián’s.
Viçenteta informed him that Sophie was staying in a boardinghouse hidden in a small street behind the post office building, waiting for the departure of the boat that would take her to America. Miquel went to that address, where he found a narrow, miserable staircase almost devoid of light and air. At the top of the dusty spiral of sloping steps, he found Sophie Carax, in a damp, dark, fourth-floor room. Julián’s mother was facing the window, sitting on the edge of a makeshift bed on which two closed suitcases were lying like coffins containing her twenty-two years in Barcelona.
When she read the letter signed by Penélope that Jorge Aldaya had given Miquel, Sophie shed tears of anger.
“She knows,” she murmured. “Poor kid, she knows….”
“Knows what?” asked Miquel.
“It’s my fault,” said Sophie. “It’s my fault.”
Miquel held her hands, without understanding. Sophie didn’t dare meet his eyes.
“Julián and Penélope are brother and sister,” she whispered.
·3·
YEARS BEFORE BECOMING ANTONI FORTUNY’S SLAVE, SOPHIE CARAX had been a woman who made a living from her talents. She was only nineteen when she arrived in Barcelona in search of a promised job that never materialized. Before dying, her father had obtained the necessary references for her to go into the service of the Benarenses, a prosperous family of merchants from Alsace who had established themselves in Barcelona.
“When I die,” he urged her, “go to them, and they’ll take you in like a daughter.”
The warm welcome she received was part of the problem. Monsieur Benarens indeed received her with open arms—all too open, in the opinion of his wife. Madame Benarens gave Sophie one hundred pesetas and turned her out of the house, not without showing some pity toward her and her bad luck.
“You have your whole life ahead of you, but I have only this miserable, lewd husband.”
A music school on Calle Diputación agreed to give Sophie work as a private music and piano tutor. In those days it was considered desirable for gi
rls of well-to-do families to be taught proper social graces and a smattering of music for the drawing room, where the polonaise was less dangerous than conversation or questionable literature. That is how Sophie Carax began her visits to palatial mansions, where starched, silent maids would lead her to the music rooms. There the hostile offspring of the industrial aristocracy would be waiting for her, to laugh at her accent, her shyness, or her lowly position—the fact that she could read music didn’t alter that. Gradually Sophie learned to concentrate on that tiny number of pupils who rose above the status of perfumed vermin and to forget the rest of them.
At about that time, Sophie met a young hatter (for so he liked to be referred to, with professional pride) called Antoni Fortuny, who seemed determined to court her, whatever the price. Antoni Fortuny, for whom Sophie felt a warm friendship and nothing else, did not take long to propose to her, an offer Sophie refused—and kept refusing, a dozen times a month. Every time they parted, Sophie hoped she wouldn’t see him again, because she didn’t want to hurt him. The hatter, brushing aside her refusals, stayed on the offensive, inviting her to dance, take a stroll, or have a hot chocolate with sponge fingers on Calle Canuda. Being alone in Barcelona, Sophie found it difficult to resist his enthusiasm, his company, and his devotion. She only had to look at Antoni Fortuny to know that she would never be able to love him. Not the way she dreamed she would love somebody one day. But she found it hard to cast aside the image of herself that she saw reflected in the hatter’s besotted eyes. Only in them did she see the Sophie she would have wished to be.