The Color of a Dog Running Away

by Richard Gwyn

  He handed me his business card. It informed me that his name was Xavier Joan Vidal i Vilaferran, and that he held the title of Baron. The address was on Carrer Provença, in the Eixample district.

  20. LA CAZA DEL CONEJO

  One evening in November I was walking home from Poble Sec, having spent the morning and early afternoon doing some detective work. Following my meeting with the angel and her grandfather earlier in the week, I had spent the day camped opposite Nuria’s old address, spying on her house. I had alternated between a cafeteria, a convenient bench, and the window seat of a run-down bar, from all of which places I was able to see the front door of the building. There had been plenty of time to absorb the information that Nuria was Pontneuf’s daughter. I couldn’t pretend that it made me happy, but it made a kind of sense, and certainly helped to explain Nuria’s behaviour towards me up at the Refuge, if not to justify it. It did nothing to help me understand why she accepted the task of reeling me in for her father in the first place, and nor could I assess whether her apparently passionate feelings towards me had been genuine or feigned, or an ambiguous mix of both.

  Nothing happened to raise my hopes that either Nuria or Pontneuf had any contact with the apartment I was watching. The young woman who had taken Nuria’s flat left with her boyfriend and returned alone at midday, setting out again shortly after three o’clock. I recognised nobody else among the residents who came and went at various stages throughout the day, and when the woman left the house the second time, I had had enough.

  On my way home I made a detour, on impulse, to the little square where Nuria and I had sometimes met for lunch. I could see from a distance that our bench was empty. This gratified me slightly, as though some residual magic from our time together had remained attached to the inanimate world of benches, but the feeling did not last. I sat down, allowing my memories of the place and all that it signified to reduce me to a state of abject misery, and, when approached for a cigarette by a menacing young vagrant, I didn’t linger, but made my way down the Ramblas and up Ferran towards Sant Jaume Square.

  I arrived in the square at the same moment as a white van, which pulled up at a little distance from the mayor’s palace. A policeman stood outside. Businesses were just re-opening after the long lunch-break. It had been a crisp autumn day, and the sun was now low, casting an amber light over the square and the softly tinged stone buildings. The street-lights were not yet on.

  A man in overalls had got out of the van, and, with his back towards me, opened the vehicle’s rear door. I turned away for a moment to avoid an oncoming motor-cycle and when I looked again, the area between the white van and the city hall was swarming with rabbits. The man was carrying a short-barrelled and ancient-looking shotgun, and, I realised to my horror, he was Manu, my neighbour. At once I recalled the date: it was the day of Manu’s trial, which he had asked me to attend. Of course, in my state of utter self-absorption I had forgotten to go to court to support him. By now there were at least thirty rabbits hopping randomly outside the building, with more still jumping from the van. The solitary policeman had reached for his walkie-talkie, keeping a close eye on Manu while he did so. But there was no way he was going to stop what was about to happen. Manu started blasting off into a cluster of rabbits. Fur and blood spattered the cobblestones, and other rabbits stopped in their tracks, sitting up petrified on their haunches to observe the mayhem. Others fled, while others still had found some pots of cabbage-like plants outside the front door of the city hall and were busily munching on the leaves, unaware of the catastrophe that had overtaken others of their number. Manu reloaded clumsily, spilling cartridges from the top pocket of his overalls, but had enough time to let off another double salvo, this time obliterating the cabbage-eaters. With this second explosion the square emptied out fast, pedestrians and tourists rushing for cover in the streets leading towards the cathedral and back down in the direction of the Ramblas. At the far end of Sant Jaume there was similar confusion.

  Simultaneously two groups of armed police converged on Manu and the rabbits, four emerging from the city hall and another, larger group from the direction of the presidential palace facing it. Looking around, I realised I was the only civilian remaining in the centre of the square. I began walking towards Manu at the same time as the second group of armed police dived to the ground and took up firing postures. I also glimpsed a marksman on the roof of the palace, aiming down at the square, and imagined there were others similarly positioned.

  A voice from a loud-hailer ordered Manu to stop firing, to drop his weapon, and to stay where he was. Manu looked around with a satisfied grin at the carnage on the cobblestones. Rabbits scurried away in all directions, some even returning to the van and jumping in through the open back doors. Manu held two cartridges in his hand and was holding the shotgun in the broken position, about to re-load. When he heard the order to disarm he seemed to notice the police for the first time.

  “Joder!” he bellowed, obviously intent on enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame. “Fuck you. Fuck the mayor. Fuck the pope!”

  The policeman with the loudspeaker repeated the order for Manu to put down his weapon.

  Then Manu spotted me. Automatically, he raised his gun arm in greeting, calling my name. His expression was one of bemused relief. At that moment a single shot rang out, and, not thinking of my own safety, I ran towards my neighbour. He had dropped the gun and fallen to his knees, clutching his shoulder and grimacing. Within a couple of seconds we were surrounded by a circle of armed police, who stood with guns pointing towards us. I was relieved to see that Manu only had the single wound. If the marksman had been aiming for the upper arm, he had done a good job. Blood was seeping through the blue overalls, and Manu, still kneeling, was muttering a stream of Andalusian curses.

  We were both bundled into the back of a police van, which had drawn up in the meantime, and driven to police headquarters on Via Laietana. We had to wait for a police surgeon to come and look at Manu’s wound. He was given an injection and the wound was cleaned. The bullet had gone clean through the biceps.

  We were then separated, Manu being taken to the hospital for treatment to his wound, while I was led into an office and subjected to a range of preposterous questions concerning any affiliations I might have with terrorist organizations. I explained that Manu was my neighbour and I had happened to be passing across Sant Jaume Square at the time that he arrived to carry out his massacre. I gave a summary account of Manu’s unhappiness over the issue of his keeping rabbits, and his, to my mind, understandable view that he was being harassed by the city authorities. I said, after further questioning, that I did not believe he was mentally unbalanced, but conceded that he may have suffered an attack of temporary insanity. I thought I would then be released, but the officer requested that I provide the name of a witness to my good character, some kind of guarantor to my bona fide status as a member of the human race. Under normal circumstances I would have given the name of the publisher for whom I worked, but since my return from the Refuge I had not had any contact with him and was reluctant to get him involved in this bizarre incident. Then I remembered the Baron: he was a lawyer and he seemed well-disposed towards me. I still had his card in my wallet and showed it to the police officer. He looked at the name and raised his eyebrows.

  Within twenty minutes the Baron Xavier Joan Vidal i Vilaferran had swept into the police station with the quiet authority that his patrician name and profile demanded. He vouched for my good character and dismissed the incident of the rabbit slaughter out of hand. It was established that I was not under suspicion of being Manu’s accomplice in crime so I signed a brief statement to that effect, and the Baron asked me if I could spare half an hour with him. He led me out of the building to a nearby café, where he discreetly chose us a corner table.

  He ordered tea and sat down opposite me.

  “How are you?” he began. “You look terrible. Sick. Are you sick?”

  I shrugged.

  “I
t’s been a difficult time,” I said.

  The Baron paused, as if wondering whether to pursue the issue of my health, but then thought better of it, and moved on to the subject he was clearly anxious to speak to me about.

  “I heard yesterday that your friend Pontneuf has been located by the Canadian police. It would appear he has a group of followers over there. The police are keeping their eyes on him, but he hasn’t done anything illegal. I have faith in them. Don’t they say ‘the mounties always get their man’?”

  I nodded, slightly bewildered by the Baron’s rendering of the English adage. “Technically, if I was your lawyer, and we were to consult the Spanish police, we could apply for an extradition order on the grounds of your abduction and illegal imprisonment, although it might look rather odd so long after the event. Would you be interested in pursuing this?”

  I hesitated before answering. My main concern was that if Pontneuf was brought to trial, Nuria would be implicated as an accomplice. I didn’t want this to happen. “No,” I replied. “If Pontneuf was to be charged it would be a lengthy process. He’s sure to have the best legal advice available. A lot of unpleasant details about Pontneuf’s past would have to be dragged up and I suspect the Church does not willingly share the contents of its files on reprobate priests. The case would go on and on. Newspapers and all that. And what of Nuria Rasavall? Although I believe her to be a victim of Pontneuf’s deranged beliefs, a court might not see it that way.”

  I paused for a long time, trying to imagine the disruption and upset this would cause to my chances of ever being with Nuria again, and of her tearful mother up in Maçanet following the lurid news reports. “Her family might suffer also,” I added, offering him a chance to volunteer additional information. I was curious how he could serve the interests of the Rasavall family at the same time as providing me with the offer of prosecuting Pontneuf. But when he did not respond, I continued. “People like Pontneuf always float to the surface. He’d probably avoid extradition, and there would still be an age before all the evidence could be got together. So the short answer is no, I’d rather not press charges. Thank you for asking.”

  But while I said this, I was also thinking of the content of my story, and of Sean Hogg’s insinuation, weeks ago, and Eugenia’s more gracious suggestion that the whole episode, as described by me, was a fiction. Pontneuf and his lawyers would no doubt find an alternative explanation to completely discredit my version of events.

  The Baron was silent for a moment, then smiled at me.

  “There was something else,” he confided. “Along the lines I was pursuing when we met the other week. About Pontneuf and his belief that he is Bernard Rocher.”

  “Yes?”

  “I have, over the past few years, been able to lay my hands on copies of texts that do make mention of Bernard Rocher, but he was nothing like the man that Pontneuf has made him out to be. I thought you might be interested to know this.”

  He looked at me quizzically, as though wanting permission to continue. I decided to help out. “Pontneuf insisted that Rocher was regarded with such reverence by his fellow perfecti that he was even encouraged to escape from the siege of Montségur,” I said. “In order to preserve the faith intact.”

  “I see,” said the Baron. “It’s much as I thought. André was forging a cult based on an erroneous or delusional reading of history. You see, the Cathars set no store by individual achievement of the kind he attributes to Rocher, and regarded humility, poverty and freedom from the bonds of the material world as the only aspirations a perfectus should hold. Therefore, while certain perfecti did leave the besieged stronghold of Montségur undetected by the crusaders who had surrounded the place, they were sent out on specific and fairly straightforward missions such as the breaking of bread, or administering the consolamentum to local believers. It would have been unthinkable to allow a single evangelical and egomaniacal priest to escape the fate of his fellows at the stake, to save his own skin in order to engineer an unfeasible group reincarnation among his own selected group of followers.”

  “So,” I said, “the ‘evidence’ of Rocher’s importance within the Cathar movement which Pontneuf insisted upon was a fabrication?”

  “Precisely. Bernard Rocher was a renegade from both Catharism and Catholicism. His was a sect within a sect. He made up his own rules. He was not well-regarded by his fellow Cathars, nor was he airbrushed from history by the annalists of the Inquisition. But he was protected. His aristocratic background was rather elevated. He claimed kinship with the Kings of Aragon, to whom the Lords of Languedoc, including the Count of Toulouse and many others in the region, were vassals.”

  “So what became of Rocher? And of Gasc?”

  “At the intervention of these royal Spanish cousins, Rocher was spared burning at the stake after his capture. Unlike his sixteen followers, two of whom were also perfecti. The group, it was true, had been betrayed by Raymond Gasc, a shepherd of Mélissac, who claimed that Rocher had bewitched his wife, Clare. Rocher had had, according to the scrupulous accounts of the annalists, improper relations with her. Rocher, for his part, denied these accusations, claiming that Clare Gasc was in fact his own daughter, conceived during his years as a student, before he was constrained by the laws of chastity.

  “The outcome of the trial was that all the Cathars of the group except Bernard Rocher and Raymond Gasc were burned at the stake. Gasc pleaded for his wife, Clare, to be pardoned also, on the grounds of Rocher’s bewitchment of her, but was unsuccessful. Precious little consideration was given to the possible innocence of women in the Catholic Inquisitorial worldview. After all, had not Adam been beguiled by Eve? So Clare Gasc burned, alongside her fellow villagers. Rocher was handed over to the Kingdom of Aragon, where, to appease relations with the Vatican, he was confined to life imprisonment. The conditions of his imprisonment, however, are strange indeed. With a rare display of irony in their sentencing, the Inquisition required that the heretic Raymond Gasc was to act as Rocher’s gaoler, and never leave the place of his charge’s incarceration until the latter was deceased, on pain of death. A dual imprisonment then: the once-faithful follower now the keyholder to his master’s cell. The place chosen for their detention was the tower of Vilaferran. Of which I,” the Baron added, with a gentle smile, “am the heir and owner.

  “I would happily lend you somewhere to stay if at any point you wished to spend time out of the city. This tower, La Torre de Vilaferran, might be of particular interest. It is a pleasant place, quiet and remote. Please come and see me should you wish to take a break, get some mountain air. I will instruct my secretary with the necessary details, if I myself am not available. In the meantime, why don’t you go home and get some sleep?”

  Then, as though imparting this information for the first time, he added, “You look rather unwell.”

  I caught sight of myself in the mirror the other side of the café. Circles under the bloodshot eyes, long unkempt hair, face unshaven for a week. He was right.

  “I have to check what’s happening with my neighbour. Tell his wife what’s been going on.” I stood and pulled my coat on. “I guess he’s in big trouble.”

  The Baron made a gesture of indifference. “If he knew what he was doing, he’s a criminal; if he didn’t, he’ll probably be declared insane. Either way, it doesn’t look good.”

  He returned with me to police headquarters and we spoke again with the officer who had interrogated me. He told us that Manu was under police guard in one of the city hospitals. There was nothing to stop me visiting him briefly, as long as I was accompanied by another police officer, or a lawyer.

  “I’ll take you,” interceded the Baron, to my surprise. “It’s not far out of my way.”

  We drove to the Hospital Clínic, as the university hospital is known, in the Baron’s chauffeur-driven Mercedes, and stopped near the front entrance. Manu was being kept on one of the upper floors. The policeman guarding him put down his newspaper when we came in, and waited outside the do
or.

  Manu was sitting up in bed, his arm in a sling. He was dressed in pale blue pyjamas with the hospital’s name displayed on the breast pocket. He sighed up at me, glanced at the Baron, and decided to ignore him. I pulled up a chair while the Baron remained standing at a little distance, his back to the window.

  “Oy, you missed the trial this morning,” he started, accusingly.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. I forgot. Something cropped up.”

  He stared at me a moment.

  “Coño, you look terrible.”

  “Don’t you start. I know.”

  “Who’s the cop?” This loud enough for the Baron.

  “He is not a cop. He’s a lawyer.”

  “Is he?” Then, to the Baron, “Pardon me, chief. You will understand my slight aversion to policemen just at present.” He nodded his head towards the bandaged arm.

  The Baron made light of it. “Nothing compared with the aversion rabbits must have towards you.”

  “I know. I was wrong to do what I did. But I had to express myself. My blood was boiling.”

  He turned to me, grimacing.

  “Would you do me a favour? Pour me a glass of water?”

  There was a jug of water and an empty glass on the bedside cabinet. I poured out a glass, and put it in his free hand.

  “They let me call my wife,” he continued, “but she must have been out. If you’re going home, do me another favour and ask her to bring an overnight bag.”

  “Sure. What’s going to happen to you?”

  “I don’t know. Probably go to prison for a few weeks. A fine if I’m lucky. I don’t know which is worse. In the court this morning, they granted me bail. I doubt they’ll make the same mistake twice.”