The Color of a Dog Running Away

by Richard Gwyn

  As I neared the church I began to feel that I was being drawn towards it like a nail to a magnet. I realised that it had been my intention to come here since leaving the flat in Carders, and that my dawdling on the way had been, in a sense, necessary, because only now, in the failing light, was the time right for me to enter the church. A peculiar sense of anticipation guided my final steps, and when I stepped inside I experienced a physical sense of relief.

  At the far end of the vast church, near the altar, a wedding ceremony was in progress, but the sheer scale of the place meant that even with a congregation of a hundred or so the gathering took up only a fraction of the total space. A handful of spectators stood behind the pews at the rear of the church, near the door through which I had just come in. As I walked past them, towards the aisle on the right, one of them, a girl in her late teens, with shoulder-length Botticelli curls, turned towards me and smiled. She could not have seen me come in, and I was treading quietly, one of a handful of visitors, several of them tourists carrying cameras or camcorders. But she turned abruptly, looked straight at me, and smiled, as though she had been waiting for me. Her smile was the most arresting and breathtaking expression of joy that I had seen in my life: it was a smile simply bursting with light. It managed to convey compassion, humanity and sensuality from the raw nucleus of somewhere imponderably good. Her eyes lingered on me for a moment longer, and then she turned around, apparently to watch the wedding.

  I was stunned into complete sobriety, while my insides filled rapidly with hot foam. I walked a few paces on, then stopped and sat on the low inner wall that marked the border of the outer aisle. I looked over at her, where she stood beside one of the giant pillars, her attention now focussed on the events taking place at the other end of the church. The service, which was in Catalan, was being relayed by loudspeaker, but the priest spoke quite softly and the distance was such that an echo of his actual speech could be heard a fraction of a second after the same words came over the speakers. When the music started a minute later, the same thing happened, the sounds doubling back on themselves, making the folksy accompaniment of guitar, piano and cello collide with the melody taken up by the rather unconvinced singing. But the watching girl was apparently enjoying herself too much to care: she rocked back and forth on her heels and toes in undulating, subtle movements; not actually dancing, but unable to stand still either. There was something of the street urchin about her. She was very slim, wore black cotton jeans, white trainers and a grey hooded fleece. She had a dark complexion and glowing mahogany eyes, made all the more striking in contrast with her golden-brown hair. At a guess, I would have said she was of gipsy blood, but she was without the sullen arrogance of the southern gitanas.

  While I was sitting there, feet crossed, wondering how I had been reduced to a human wreck by a single smile, she turned around, with the music droning on in the background, and set off decisively towards the main door, away from me. I felt desperately sad that she was leaving, but realised there was nothing I could do to prevent it. As she reached the revolving door, she stopped, turned sharply in a perfect pirouette, looked straight at me, and then came towards me, not walking but dancing. She danced as though barely touching the ground, and although the distance from the main doors to where I sat must have been twenty metres or so, she appeared to take only three steps, or jumps, both arms lifted vertically, and twisting with a little shimmy on the second beat of her three-step dance. Her movements resembled a balletic version of the jota, the wild and jubilant dance of Navarra. Her eyes remained fixed on me. And she smiled her smile. I felt as though my chest were about to burst apart with sheer gratitude. She slowed in front of me, and with the slightest gesture of her head, beckoned me to follow. Still dancing, but with arms lowering to her waist, she headed for the side door, just down the aisle from where I sat.

  Of course, I followed. After a few seconds’ hesitation. I had remembered the fire-eater’s words: “I swear to God. An angel…” words which, at the time, had indicated nothing more than an overexcited imagination. Now I too, I could have sworn, had seen an angel. But when I got to the door and stepped outside, I could not see her. A sea-mist had arisen, and as I stared through the murky light of the street-lamps it occurred to me that if witches were abroad, it would be tonight, on Halloween, of all nights. Then I caught a glimpse of her, at the far side of the small square which was designated as a memorial to the dead of Catalan insurrections in centuries past. She beckoned to me, and I skirted the little square towards her. When I reached the corner where she had been, she had again moved on, walking quick and light-footed down the narrowing streets. As I hurried to catch up with her, heart pumping, she stopped again, beside a garbage trolley, lifted the lid, and retrieved a lightweight black rucksack. Twenty paces on, with me alongside her, she stopped again, away from the beams of the nearest street-light, and unzipped the rucksack. Without looking at me or saying a word, she took out a grappling hook, identical in design to the one that the roof-dwellers had shown me back on Santa Caterina, attached to a length of strong nylon rope. She unfolded its claws by flicking the instrument away from her once, and cast the piece of iron high into the air towards the top of a three-storey building, next to which we were standing. Her movements were expert and unhesitating. She pulled hard on the rope two or three times to ensure that the hook would hold fast, and again, without a word, scurried up the ten metres or so to the rooftop, kicking twice against the wall of the building as her weight on the rope caused it to swing into the stonework. Once at the top, she disappeared for a few moments. Then she returned to view and must have lain down, as I could see only her head, neck and arms hanging over the edge of the flat roof. I assumed she had tied the rope to some fixed object, since she now gave me the thumbs-up signal. She was waiting for me to follow.

  At that moment the street was empty, but I could see the need to act quickly, since somebody might pass by, on foot or in a car, at any time. Alternatively one of the building’s residents might come out into the street, or have heard the movements on the roof. Either way, if I was to follow, I had to climb up that rope.

  I grabbed it in both hands and hoisted myself a couple of metres off the ground, wrapping my feet around the rope in the way I remembered being taught at school. From then on, progress became slower. The truth was, in spite of my moment of apparent mental clarity in the church, I was still drunk, and even if I had not been, I would have been toxic from earlier that day, only having gone to sleep, or passed out, at around seven in the morning. My body wasn’t used to this kind of exertion. I had reached the first floor when I slammed against the shutter of a window. There was a light on inside the room. I heard somebody shout, and with legs flailing, attempted to gain a toe-hold on the window-sill. My arms were aching and hands redraw from clinging to the rope. I knew that within a matter of seconds I would be discovered, unless I scrambled quickly to the top of the building. But all the strength had gone out of my arms, I was beginning to shake, and at that moment I made the mistake of looking down. The street was only five or six metres below me, but in my condition the distance seemed treble that. Flooded by an acute sense of vertigo, I had a fleeting vision of myself lying crumpled in the road below with a smashed skull. There was an urgent pull on the rope as the angel beckoned me. I stared upwards and saw that she was making frantic climbing gestures, placing one hand above the other in sequence, urging me to hurry.

  Instead I panicked, slipping rapidly down the rope and landing on the pavement with a muffled thump. I had landed on my arse, and immediately felt acute pain shooting through my body. My hands stung. The rope was pulled out of sight at once, and I peered upwards again through the thickening mist to see the angel looping the last of it around her arm. In the dim light I could just make out her wave of farewell. Then she blew me a kiss, and was gone. I realised with absolute certainty that the girl on the rooftop was the same figure I had seen in the grey light of dawn, against the chimney-stacks of an adjacent building, when Ric, F
ionnula and Ninja boy had taken their leave of me back in May.

  Hearing the street door being unlocked from the inside, I sprang to my feet and bolted in the direction I had come. A man shouted some abuse after me, but did not give chase. I found a bar on the square fronting the great church, brushed myself down, and went in.

  I was shaking so badly that I needed both hands to down the first brandy. With the second I found myself a seat at a corner table, took off my leather jacket, and my nerves began to settle.

  The events of the last twenty minutes had caused a tumult of contradictory emotions and fears to erupt in me at once. I had been so easily persuaded to follow the angelic girl, without her uttering a word, that I had risked my life in the attempt. Only my ineptitude and unfitness had prevented me from now being high above street level in the company of I knew not who. I had so effortlessly convinced myself that the angel was the personification of purity and good that it had not occurred to me until now that she might have been an emissary of Pontneuf, especially if, as I believed, she was the dancing girl referred to by the fire-eater, the girl who had danced at the incendiary ritual on the roof above Assaonadors. In short, I had become bewitched, and only the painful landing on the roadside had brought me back to my senses.

  On the other hand, my fears might have been totally unfounded: she may even have been a messenger from Nuria, or else no kind of messenger at all. Presumably not all angels are necessarily messengers of anything.

  As I left the bar, I brushed against the figure of a man who seemed to be hesitating in the doorway. I turned to mutter an apology, but he had already gone inside. Through the glass I saw him take a seat at the table I had just vacated. He wore a green overcoat and a red silk scarf. He was staring at me, and making a gesture for me to return inside. I recognised him as the man who had stopped me in Via Laietana the day the cattle were being herded through the city centre.

  I didn’t think twice. Re-entering the bar, I took the free seat opposite him.

  The man facing me had a sophisticated and charming manner. I could picture him as the owner of a shop of rare and antiquarian books.

  “I was hoping we would be able to meet again,” he said, after ordering tea for both of us. “Perhaps it would have saved you a lot of trouble if we had done so months ago, but it is pointless to pursue such possibilities in retrospect.”

  He smiled for the first time: a thoroughly convincing smile that solicited nothing. I began to feel comfortable in the presence of this man, and was only mildly alarmed by the manner in which he plunged directly into his account.

  “I do not want to bore you with a great deal of unnecessary personal history, so I will try to be direct. I have been aware of the activities of a man known as André Pontneuf for a considerable time now. I knew him personally once: indeed, considered him a close friend, if not my closest. We studied law together, some time before his decision to apply for the priesthood. I was best man at his wedding. But there was always an edge to him, something that acted like a warning beacon to me. His is not an entirely benevolent guiding spirit, let us say. But we shared an interest in the Cathars, one which led him, to my mind, to erroneous and harmful conclusions. I don’t think I need to tell you what those conclusions were. Not long ago, he had a group of followers here in Barcelona, and led them into all manner of strange and misguided beliefs. This need not have bothered me: there are cranks of his kind operating in every city in the world. He was, at the time, still in the process of, shall we say, ‘collecting’ his little band of reincarnated Cathars. One or two of them were to be found among those vagrants known locally as the roof people.

  “Unfortunately I became involved, although quite involuntarily. You see, my granddaughter, María del Mar, became involved in his group, fell under his sway, and I had to put a stop to it. She lost both her parents at the age of twelve, in an aeroplane crash. At the time of Pontneuf’s activities here she had already been exposed to a variety of dubious cultish influences. She was an only child, and her parents meant everything to her, as did she to them. She became, briefly, an acolyte of Pontneuf’s, though I hardly think she knew what he was about. My granddaughter is not in any way dim-witted—far from it—but she possesses an otherwordly quality that at times makes me wonder whether she is really here with us at all. Moreover, since her parents’ death, she has lost the power of speech.”

  He answered my unvoiced question. “She has become a mute.”

  This onslaught of information had shocked me, for the second time that evening, into a sudden and unexpected sobriety. I remembered the fire-eater, and his infatuation with the dancer on the rooftops. I was in no doubt now as to the identity of the angel I had so recently, and unsuccessfully, pursued.

  “Anyhow,” continued the man, “without false modesty, I do have influence in this city, and I put a stop to Pontneuf’s activities among the homeless, the phantom-seekers and the vulnerable within the Gothic quarter. That, of course, was a while before I accosted you in Via Laietana, Lucas.” It was the first time he had used my name. “In fact, I’d spotted you once or twice before. I don’t know…” Here he paused to sip his tea carefully, before resuming: “I felt a certain affinity towards you, which I simply cannot explain, and I sensed—and I believe events proved me right—that you were in some kind of danger.

  “When I saw you in Laietana I knew I had to make contact, at the very least. The document I gave you: a hobby of mine,” he confessed, almost shyly, “composing these pamphlets against everything I consider wrong in this society of ours. I suppose it’s my own eccentric and milder equivalent of throwing a brick through the windows of a McDonald’s restaurant.” He laughed gently. “Allow me to get to the point. I fear I have been rambling, a bad failing in a lawyer.” He cleared his throat. “I am aware of who Pontneuf thinks he is, and of who he thinks you are, Lucas. And your friend Nuria too. I wanted you to know that his activities, and your ordeals, have not gone totally unnoticed.”

  I needed to speak, but hardly knew where to begin. So I began with what was uppermost in my mind.

  “Do you know where Nuria is?”

  “No, I’m afraid I do not.”

  I sensed that this was a man who needed to be approached with more subtlety. “Do you know,” I continued, trying hard not to sound too insistent, “what has become of Pontneuf and his Cathars?”

  He stirred his tea.

  “No. Although I imagine he has returned to France. He is a powerful man. France is his home. But he has connections on both sides of the Atlantic.”

  “So you know of the community he set up in the Pyrenees? You know of the Refuge?”

  “As I said, I am a lawyer. I have friends in the police force. One in particular. A senior officer who has also had the misfortune to have a family member involved in some kind of millenarian cult, not related to Pontneuf’s own brand of insanity. I have heard that Pontneuf’s little community has, er, dispersed.”

  “And are you, as a lawyer, in a position to tell me anything you know about Nuria?”

  “As a lawyer, no, I can see no problem. But for different reasons, I hesitate. Firstly, I simply do not know where she is. Secondly, because her involvement with Pontneuf is such that…” Here he broke off, and resumed stirring his tea. “It would be irresponsible of me to pass on to you information about which I am uncertain. So I will tell you what I know, but on condition that you do not breathe a word of this to anyone, including Nuria. You see, I know her family, and they would regard it, her mother in particular, as a breach of confidence.”

  I could see no difficulty in agreeing to that.

  “I lost contact with Pontneuf shortly after his marriage. This is not uncommon. People move on after they marry, lose touch with their old friends. I lost my wife when she was young, and our only child was killed in a plane crash as I have explained, while still quite young herself. If it had not been for my formal adoption of María del Mar following her parents’ death, I would no doubt have settled into solitary l
ife as a widower. But Pontneuf’s marriage ended in an entirely different way, when he deserted his family for his brief career in the priesthood. He left behind, as it happened, two small children, a girl and a boy. Thereafter they took their mother’s family name, Rasavall.”

  He raised a hand to silence my spluttered profanity. “Her mother would not even have her ex-husband’s name mentioned in her presence after he had abandoned them, though she continued to accept his generous payments to the family, made through their lawyer.” He cleared his throat again, and looked mildly embarrassed by this last admission. “So the re-union of father and daughter, years later, caused a great deal of pain to the forsaken wife. The son, who was younger than Nuria, and had no memory of his father, sided with his mother.”

  I wanted to speak, to voice at least the beginnings of a question, but found that I had nothing at all to say.

  “That is all I am able to tell you. Whatever transpires between yourself and Nuria is none of my business. I cannot help you, though I would like to. Nuria, like her father, has vanished before. More than once. It’s possible she has inherited his proclivity for wandering. I have no idea where she is.”

  I settled back in my seat, ordering a brandy from the waiter. My ten minutes of sobriety was losing its novelty value.

  But the man had not finished. It seemed he had another agenda, which I could only dimly recognise as being relevant to my current situation. He had shifted key, and was talking about the Cathars in an almost conversational manner. I was barely listening, finding it difficult to absorb all the new information I had just been given.

  “I find the subject of the Cathars particularly interesting,” he was saying, “for my own reasons, which may or may not be of concern to you, Lucas. Perhaps you will feel you want to leave such things behind you. It is not for me to say. However, if you are interested in pursuing any study into the history of the Cathars, or should I say, any involvement with the Cathars that Pontneuf imputes to you, or to Raymond Gasc, please contact me and I will try to help.”