Kolvenik knelt down by the bride and took her in his arms. Eva Irinova’s features were melting away under the acid like a freshly painted watercolour fading under water. The smoking skin fell off like charred parchment and the stench of burned flesh filled the air. The acid hadn’t reached the young woman’s eyes. They revealed all the horror and the agony. Kolvenik tried to save his wife’s face by pressing his hands on it. All he achieved was to pull off bits of dead tissue as the acid burned through his gloves. When at last Eva lost consciousness, her face had become a grotesque mask of bone and raw flesh.
The renovated Teatro Real never opened its doors. After the tragedy Kolvenik took his wife to the unfinished mansion in Güell Park. Eva Irinova would never set foot outside that house again. The acid had completely destroyed her face and damaged her vocal cords. People said she communicated by means of notes written on a pad and that she spent entire weeks without leaving her rooms.
By then the financial problems at Velo-Granell Industries had begun to surface and were more serious than had at first been suspected. Kolvenik felt cornered and soon stopped going to the firm. It was rumoured that he’d picked up some strange illness that kept him increasingly confined to his mansion. Numerous irregularities in the Velo-Granell management came to light, as well as a number of strange transactions carried out in the past by Kolvenik himself. Gossip and malicious accusations reared their ugly heads. Secluded in his refuge with his beloved Eva, Kolvenik slowly turned into a character straight out of a dark legend. A pariah. The government expropriated the Velo-Granell partnership and the legal authorities were investigating the case: with its one-thousand-page dossier, the investigation had only just begun.
In the years that followed, Kolvenik lost his fortune. His mansion became a shadowy castle in ruins. After months without pay, the servants abandoned the couple. Only Kolvenik’s personal chauffeur remained loyal. All kinds of horrific rumours started to spread. It was said that Kolvenik and his wife lived among rats, wandering through the corridors of the tomb in which they had buried themselves alive.
In December 1948 a fire devoured the Kolveniks’ mansion. The flames could be seen from as far away as Mataró, or so the papers stated. Those who remember it swear that the skies of Barcelona turned into a scarlet canvas and clouds of ash swept through the city at dawn while the crowds gazed in silence at the smoking skeleton of the ruins. The charred bodies of Kolvenik and Eva were discovered in the attic, locked in an embrace. The image appeared on the front page of La Vanguardia under the headline: THE END OF AN ERA.
By early 1949 Barcelona had already started to forget the story of Mijail Kolvenik and Eva Irinova. The great metropolis was changing irrevocably and the mystery of Velo-Granell Industries belonged to a legendary past, for ever condemned to oblivion.
CHAPTER 11
BENJAMÍN SENTÍS’S ACCOUNT STAYED WITH ME ALL week like a furtive shadow. The more I thought about it, the more I had the feeling that there were key pieces missing in his story. What the pieces were and why he might have left them out was another matter. These thoughts gnawed away at me from dawn to dusk while I waited impatiently for Germán and Marina’s return.
In the afternoons, once my classes were over, I went along to their house to make sure everything was all right. Kafka was always there, waiting for me by the main entrance, sometimes holding the spoils from a hunt between his claws. I would pour milk into the cat’s bowl and we’d chat; that is to say, Kafka drank the milk while I went into a monologue. More than once I felt tempted to take advantage of its owners’ absence to explore the house, but I resisted. The echo of their presence could be felt in every corner. I got used to waiting for nightfall in the rambling empty house, feeling the warmth of their invisible company. I would sit in the room with the paintings and spend hours gazing at Germán Blau’s portraits of his wife, painted some fifteen years earlier. I could see an adult Marina in them, the woman she was already becoming. I wondered whether one day I’d be able to create anything as worthy as that. Anything worthy at all.
On Sunday I turned up bright and early at the Estación de Francia. There were still two hours to go before the express train from Madrid was due. I spent them exploring the building. Under its vaulted ceiling trains and strangers gathered together like pilgrims. I’d always thought that old railway stations were one of the few magical places left in the world, where ghosts of memories and farewells mingled with the start of hundreds of one-way journeys to faraway destinations. ‘If I’m ever lost, the place to look for me would be a railway station,’ I reflected.
The whistle from the Madrid express train rescued me from my sentimental musings. The train burst into the station at full gallop, making straight for its platform. A groan of brakes flooded the air as the train gradually came to a halt with all the slow deliberation corresponding to its tonnage. Soon the first passengers began to appear – nameless silhouettes. I looked down the platform with my heart pounding. Dozens of unknown faces filed past. Suddenly I hesitated, thinking I might have got the day wrong, or the train, or the city or the planet. Then I heard an unmistakable voice behind me.
‘This is a surprise, dear Oscar. We’ve missed you.’
‘Same here,’ I replied, shaking the old painter’s hand.
Marina was stepping down from the carriage. She was wearing the same white dress she had on the day she left. She smiled at me silently, her eyes shining.
‘How was Madrid?’ I asked, taking Germán’s briefcase.
‘Beautiful. And seven times larger than the last time I was there,’ said Germán. ‘If it doesn’t stop growing, one of these days it will spill over the plateau.’
Germán’s voice seemed charged with good humour and energy. I hoped it meant that the news from the doctor at La Paz was encouraging. On our way to the exit, while Germán chatted away with an astonished porter about the improvements in railway technology, I had the chance to be on my own with Marina. She pressed my hand tightly.
‘How did it all go?’ I murmured. ‘Germán seems cheerful.’
‘Well. Very well. Thanks for coming to meet us.’
‘Thank you for coming back,’ I said. ‘Barcelona seemed very empty these last few days . . . I have lots to tell you.’
We hailed a taxi outside the station, an old Dodge that was noisier than the express train from Madrid. As we drove up the Ramblas, Germán gazed out at the people, the markets and flower stalls and smiled contentedly.
‘They can say what they like, Oscar, but there isn’t another street like this one in any city in the world. Nothing can compare.’
Marina agreed with her father’s comments. He seemed revived and younger after the trip.
‘Isn’t tomorrow a holiday?’ Germán asked out of the blue.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘So you don’t have classes . . .’
‘Technically, no . . .’
Germán burst out laughing and for a second I thought I could glimpse the boy he had once been, decades ago.
‘And tell me, my good friend, are you very busy tomorrow?’
By eight in the morning I was already at their house, just as Germán had requested. The previous night I’d promised my tutor that I would spend twice as many hours studying every evening of that week, if – as it was a holiday – he’d allow me go out on Monday.
‘I don’t know what you’ve been up to recently. This isn’t a hotel, but it isn’t a prison either. Your behaviour is your own responsibility . . .’ Father Seguí remarked suspiciously. ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing, Oscar.’
When I reached the Sarriá villa I found Marina in the kitchen preparing a basket with sandwiches and Thermos flasks with drinks. Kafka followed her movements carefully, licking his chops.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, intrigued.
‘Surprise,’ said Marina.
Shortly afterwards Germán appeared, dressed like a rally driver from the 1920s, looking euphoric and jovial. He shook my hand and asked me wh
ether I could help him in the garage. I nodded. I didn’t realise they had a garage. In fact, they had three, as I saw when I walked round the property with him.
‘I’m glad you were able to join us, Oscar.’
Germán stopped in front of the third garage door, a shed the size of a small house, covered in ivy. The metal bar squeaked when we lifted it to open the door and a cloud of dust filled the darkness inside. The place looked as if it had been closed for twenty years. It contained the remains of an old motorcycle, rusty tools and boxes piled up under a blanket of dirt as thick as a Persian carpet. Then I glimpsed a grey piece of canvas covering what looked like a car. Germán took one end of the canvas and gestured to me to do the same.
‘Count to three?’ he asked.
At his signal we both gave a strong tug and the canvas came off like a silk veil. When the cloud of dust had scattered in the breeze, the faint light filtering through the trees revealed a vision. A stunning wine-coloured 1940s Tucker with chrome wheels slept inside that cave. I stared at Germán in astonishment. He smiled proudly.
‘They don’t make cars like this one any more, Oscar.’
‘Will it start?’ I asked, staring at what looked to me like a museum piece.
‘What you see here is a Tucker, Oscar. It doesn’t just start. It eases into a canter.’
An hour later we were cruising along the coastal road. Germán sat in the driver’s seat like a pioneer of early motoring with a million-dollar smile. Marina and I sat next to him, in the front. Kafka had the whole of the back seat to himself and slept peacefully. All the other cars overtook us, but their passengers turned round to stare at the Tucker in astonishment and admiration.
‘Where there is class, speed is a minor detail,’ Germán explained.
We were nearing Blanes, and I still didn’t know where we were going. Germán was concentrating on his driving and I didn’t want to bother him. He drove with the same politeness that characterised everything he did, giving way even to crawling ants and waving to cyclists, pedestrians and Civil Guard motorcyclists. After Blanes a signpost indicated the seaside village of Tossa de Mar. I turned to look at Marina and she winked at me. I thought we might be going to the old Tossa Castle perched on the cliffs, but the Tucker circled the village and took the narrow road that continued northwards, following the coast: it was more like a ribbon than a road, suspended between the sky and the cliffs, curling round hundreds of sharp bends. Through the branches of the pine trees that hugged the steep slopes the sea could be seen extending like a carpet of incandescent blue. A hundred metres below, dozens of remote coves and inlets sketched a secret route between Tossa de Mar and the cape of Punta Prima, next to the port of Sant Feliu de Guíxols, some twenty kilometres ahead.
After driving on for another twenty minutes or so, Germán stopped the car by the side of the road. Marina looked at me as if to signal that we had arrived. We stepped out of the car and Kafka wandered off towards the pine trees as if he knew the way. While Germán was checking the Tucker’s handbrake to make sure the car wasn’t going to roll down the hill, Marina walked over to the edge of a slope that tumbled down to the sea. I joined her and gazed at the view. At our feet a cove in the shape of a crescent moon curved round an expanse of transparent blue sea. Beyond it, low rocks and beaches formed an arc as far as Punta Prima, where the country chapel of Sant Elm could be seen standing like a sentinel on the hilltop.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ Marina urged me.
I followed her through the pines. The path cut across the grounds of an old abandoned house now entirely overgrown with bushes. From there a series of steps hollowed into the rocks led us down to a beach of golden pebbles. A flock of gulls took to the sky when they saw us, retreating to the cliffs that crowned the cove and formed what looked like a cathedral of rock, sea and light. The water of the cove was so clear one could see all the ripple lines of the sand beneath its surface. In the centre the tip of a rock rose up like the prow of a ship that had run aground. The smell of the sea was intense and a salty breeze combed the coast. Marina’s gaze was lost in the silvery mist of the horizon.
‘This is my favourite place in the world,’ she said.
Marina insisted on showing me every nook and cranny along the cliffs. It didn’t take me long to realise that I was likely to end up cracking my head open or falling head first into the sea.
‘I thrive on the plain. I’m not a goat,’ I remarked, trying to add a touch of sanity to our ropeless mountaineering.
Ignoring my pleas, Marina climbed up walls smoothed by the sea and slid through holes where the swell could be heard breathing like a stone whale. I knew I was in danger of losing face and kept thinking that at any moment fate would strike with the full force of the laws of gravity. My forecast didn’t take long to come true. Marina had jumped to the other side of a tiny islet to inspect a cave among the rocks. I told myself that if she could do it, I’d better give it a try too. A second later my clumsy legs were plunging into the Mediterranean Sea. I shook with cold and embarrassment. From the rocks Marina stared at me in alarm.
‘I’m all right,’ I moaned. ‘I didn’t hurt myself.’
‘Is it cold?’
‘Oh no,’ I stammered. ‘It’s as warm as a bath.’
Marina smiled and before my astonished eyes removed her white dress and dived into the lagoon. She surfaced next to me, laughing. It was madness at that time of the year, but I decided to imitate her. We swam with energetic strokes and then lay down in the sun on the warm pebbles. I could feel my heart racing, though I couldn’t be sure whether it was due to the icy water or to the near-transparency of Marina’s wet underwear. She caught me looking at her and got up to fetch her dress, which was lying on the nearby rocks. I watched her step over the pebbles, every muscle in her body visible under her damp skin as she jumped from rock to rock. I licked my salty lips, then realised I was as hungry as a wolf.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on that beach, hidden away from the world, devouring the sandwiches from the basket while Marina narrated the peculiar story of the woman who owned the farmhouse we’d seen abandoned among the pine trees.
The house had belonged to a Dutch writer who suffered from a rare illness that was slowly making her blind. Aware of her fate, she decided to build herself a shelter on the cliff top where she could retire and spend her last days of light facing the beach and gazing at the sea.
‘She lived here alone, her only companions being an Alsatian called Sacha, and her favourite books,’ Marina explained. ‘When she lost her sight altogether, knowing that her eyes would never see another sunrise over the sea, she asked some fishermen who used to drop anchor in the cove to take care of Sacha. A few days later, at dawn, she took a rowing boat and rowed out to sea. She was never seen again.’
For some reason I suspected that the story of the Dutch writer was an invention of Marina’s, and I told her so.
‘Sometimes, the things that are most real only happen in one’s imagination, Oscar,’ she said. ‘We only remember what never really happened.’
Germán had fallen asleep with his hat over his face and Kafka at his feet. Marina looked sadly at her father. Taking advantage of Germán’s nap, I clutched her hand and together we walked off to the other end of the beach. There, sitting on a long rock smoothed by the waves, I told her all the things that had happened during her absence. I didn’t leave anything out, from the strange appearance of the lady in black at the station, to Benjamín Sentís’s story of Mijail Kolvenik and the Velo-Granell firm. I even described the ominous apparition I’d witnessed during that stormy night in the Sarriá house. She listened to me in silence, absent, her eyes fixed on the small whirlpools of water at her feet. We remained there for a while, quietly gazing at the faraway outline of the hilltop chapel.
‘What did the doctor at La Paz say?’ I asked at last.
Marina looked up. The sun was beginning its descent and an amber glow illuminated her tearful eyes.
‘That there
isn’t much time left . . .’
I turned and saw Germán waving to us. I felt my heart shrink and an unbearable knot seemed to tighten round my throat.
‘He doesn’t believe it,’ said Marina. ‘It’s better that way.’
When I turned back I noticed she was quickly drying her tears with a cheerful gesture. I realised I was looking straight into her eyes and, without knowing where I found the courage, I leaned over her, searching for her mouth. Marina placed her fingers on my lips and stroked my face, gently rejecting me. A second later she stood up and I watched her walk away. I sighed.
I got to my feet and went back to Germán. As I drew closer, I noticed that he was sketching in a small notebook. I remembered that it had been years since he’d picked up a pencil or a paintbrush. Germán looked up and smiled at me.
‘See what you think of the likeness, Oscar,’ he said in a carefree manner, showing me the notebook.
Germán’s pencil strokes had captured Marina’s face with astonishing perfection.
‘It’s wonderful,’ I murmured.
‘Do you like it? I’m glad.’
Marina’s motionless silhouette stood out against the light at the other end of the beach, as she faced the sea. Germán looked first at her, then at me. He tore the page out and handed it to me.
‘It’s for you, Oscar, so that you don’t forget my Marina.’
During the return journey the setting sun turned the sea into a pool of molten copper. Germán smiled as he drove, telling us endless stories about his years at the wheel of that old Tucker. Marina listened to him, laughing at his witty remarks and keeping the conversation going with invisible threads, like a sorceress. I sat in silence, my forehead leaning against the window, my soul deep inside my pocket. When we were halfway back, Marina quietly took my hand and held it between hers.