The Whispering City

by Sara Moliner

  That was the first time Ana made her opinion known. ‘Yes, it even makes you wish he wore a uniform.’

  ‘Do you have something against uniforms?’ The barb came from Dolores Antich.

  ‘No, no. Why would I?’

  ‘Because I know who you are. Your family isn’t exactly distinguished by their fondness for the Regime.’

  The steely tone of her words cut short the other women’s frivolous curiosity. Two of them suddenly realised their cava glasses were empty and melted away. Isabel Mira returned to the sculpture of the faun, trying to divert the attention of the woman with the icy voice whose dour countenance hid the fact that she was not yet thirty years old. She spurned Isabel’s efforts and marched off. Her dark blue organza dress revealed a pair of stiff shoulders.

  ‘Party pooper!’ said Comamala between gritted teeth.

  ‘Why did she act that way towards me?’ asked Ana.

  ‘How do I know! She went and married a man from Castile, from Ávila. What can you expect of such people!’

  With that explanation, apparently losing interest in Ana, she abandoned her there beside Isabel Mira and the statue of the faun.

  Before Isabel could try to recruit her to her moral crusade, Ana trotted away. She looked for one of the waiters serving drinks and grabbed the first glass she came upon, just to have something in her hand.

  Dolores Antich had gone over to her husband, Fernando Sánchez-Herranz. Ana was aware that behind Sánchez-Herranz’s soft, gluttonous face there lay a ruthless officer, a representative of the Falange’s hard line. His wife interrupted the conversation he was having with a tall man whose back was to Ana. She whispered in his ear. Then Fernando Sánchez-Herranz looked openly in Ana’s direction. The man he was speaking to also turned and Ana instantly forgot about Dolores Antich and her husband. Framed by silvery temples, two dark eyes, very close to his nose, shot her a predatory look. It was Joaquín Grau, the public prosecutor. He made a gesture for her to approach them, a mere motion of his fingers towards the palm of his hand that he repeated twice. Come here. The hand that tirelessly signed death sentences. Now the hand was ordering her to come over.

  She took a step in his direction. Before she could take a second, a waiter with a tray loaded down with drinks stepped between her and the prosecutor and quickly turned towards the trio. They hadn’t been talking about her, and Grau hadn’t gestured towards her; it was the waiter he was calling over. She immediately turned around and looked for a place where she could get out of Dolores Antich’s sight.

  At that point she would happily have left the party and gone home, but she was there to work, so she had to stay and observe. Perhaps there was a spot near the orchestra where she could mingle among those who pretended to be listening to the music, seated beside pedestal tables filled almost entirely with bouquets of flowers. Gathered there were a girl who was possibly fleeing her parents’ watchful eyes, an older woman whose feet were surely hurting, as she sat on a low armchair, concealing the fact that she’d slipped her shoes off underneath her long skirt. There too was the eightysomething banker Lluch, who everyone knew was almost completely deaf, but who followed the movements of the violin bow with the demented look of a cat watching a mouse’s tail.

  In the corner, between the orchestra and the wall, sat a man of about fifty who wore a very well-cut tuxedo that was starting to be tight on him. Although he moved his foot to the rhythm of the music, his attention was on the people filling the main salon of the consulate. He had a glass of wine in his hand. As soon as he set it down in the tiny space left by the floral centrepiece on the table beside him, a waiter rushed over to refill it. Ana saw that behind the flowers there was a half-hidden chair, and she decided that she would sit there and disappear for a little while.

  Dolores Antich’s words were echoing in her head: Because I know who you are. Your family isn’t exactly distinguished by its fondness for the Regime.

  The orchestra embarked on a new piece, with little enthusiasm. Ana sat behind the enormous bouquet of flowers and polished off her drink, which turned out to be red wine. The vase, a pot-bellied piece of porcelain, hid her from direct view, and the flowers made sure that those standing in the room couldn’t see her, such as Dolores Antich and the two men with her. She sighed with relief. She leaned back in the chair and discovered a bottle of wine hidden behind the vase. She touched it. It was a white, and still cold. She discreetly filled her glass. This time she drank in short sips as she observed Prosecutor Grau, who was still conversing with Fernando Sánchez-Herranz and his wife.

  Grau had complained to Sanvisens. Again she remembered the conversation they’d had that morning. If she had to give it a headline, it would be ‘His Master’s Voice’. Actually, now that she thought about it, she could attach a similar headline to herself, since after leaving her boss’s office she had applied herself to writing the article he had asked for exactly the way he’d asked for it. As she wrote it she felt as if he had his hand on her shoulder, as if he were behind her, controlling every word.

  ‘I will not talk in class. I will not talk in class. I will not talk in class. I will not talk in class. I will not talk in class.’ Copy that a hundred times in your notebook, Señorita Martí. That was how she had felt while writing the article.

  ‘I will not talk in class,’ she repeated in a soft voice a couple of times, following the orchestra’s melody.

  She was starting to feel the effects of the wine. She had barely eaten anything since breakfast; the conversation with Sanvisens had destroyed her appetite. What was she doing there, taking cover behind a vase? Paying for her mistake, that’s what. Punished and in a corner, not with her face to the wall, but surely the two fronds of gladiola sticking out from the bouquet looked like donkey ears emerging from her head. She lifted her cup as if toasting Grau and exclaimed, ‘Yes, sir. His master’s voice.’

  ‘You are absolutely right, señorita.’

  The words came from her right, on the other side of the vase. She craned her neck and looked through the flowers. It was the man in the well-tailored tuxedo.

  ‘There’s no need for you to get up, señorita, we can introduce ourselves like this.’ The man in the tuxedo’s voice sounded jovial and a bit tipsy. ‘Jaime Pla.’

  ‘Ana Martí.’

  ‘Ana Martí Noguer, I presume. Would you like a little more wine? Put your glass on the table and I’ll pour you some. But never again do what you did before.’

  ‘What did I do?’

  ‘Mix it with red.’

  ‘Do we know each other?’

  Jaime Pla filled her glass. ‘We do now.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘A little bird told me.’

  ‘Señor Pla! I’m not five years old.’

  ‘That’s true, forgive me. I have to confess that this isn’t the first bottle the waiter “forgot” here. The young man to the right, near the door, talking to Aurelia Montané, told me.’

  Ana looked to where he had indicated. Aurelia Montané, middle daughter of Augusto Montané, owner of wine cellars and caves, patron of the Palau, among other things. And ugly. Toothy, horse-faced; those were the adjectives Ana mercilessly applied to her, because the young man she was chatting to was the good-looking one with the leather gloves whom she had seen at Blanca Noguer’s funeral. Toothy, horse-faced, flat-chested… She turned towards the vase and asked Pla, ‘And how does he know me?’

  ‘Suffice it to say that his name is Pablo Noguer.’

  She hoped that the sheltering bouquet also concealed her disappointed face from Pla. A relative. The only attractive male Noguer.

  ‘Getting back to the beginning of our little conversation, Señorita Martí, I wanted to tell you that you are absolutely right.’

  ‘Ah, yes?’

  ‘Sánchez-Herranz is the voice of his master, but of his new master.’

  Ana listened closely as she kept her eyes glued to the little group that had been joined by a fourth person. Pla added, ‘Grau
met him during the war and considers him his pupil. It was he who insisted he be sent to Barcelona, and it was his influence that placed him in the Civil Government.’

  ‘Well, he is a very conscientious pupil. From what I understand, he is making a career for himself.’

  ‘That is quite true, señorita. Sánchez-Herranz is quite ambitious. I can’t stand people without ambition, and please take that as a compliment. He has it in spades, and now he revolves around a larger star, Acedo, the Civil Governor.’

  Ana turned to her right.

  ‘Why are you telling me all this, Señor Pla?’

  ‘I thought it might interest you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No need to thank me. Would you like a little more wine?’

  His insistence that she drink, worthy of a bad spy novel, put her on her guard. She held out her glass and he filled it, but Ana didn’t bring it to her lips.

  ‘Do you know what I’m thinking, Señorita Martí?’

  Ana gazed at him. Pla composed a melancholic expression before speaking. ‘About how much Mariona Sobrerroca would have enjoyed this party.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she would have. Did you know her?’

  ‘We all know each other here, as people do in small towns. I also know that you covered the sad case of poor Mariona Sobrerroca… What are they saying about it?’

  So that was what Señor Pla wanted. First he tells her a little bit about Sánchez-Herranz, one of the new stars in Barcelona’s society circle, and in exchange he expects she’ll give him what she knows about the case. She can’t help telling him, in a falsely innocent tone: ‘That she was an excellent hostess, and that her tennis backhand had improved tremendously…’

  ‘Don’t be snide. Don’t you think it’s terrible what happened?’

  ‘Of course. What do you want me to say?’

  Pla’s voice no longer sounded as slurred as it had at the beginning of the conversation. He interpreted her ambiguous question in the way that most suited him.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me a little more about the police investigation. Those things that aren’t published in the papers, you know?’

  ‘And why would I do that? It is a police investigation. You must already know that I can’t go around telling people such things.’

  ‘Come on! You aren’t going to tell me that it’s a professional secret.’

  ‘Well, it is, of course. In a way.’

  Pla didn’t raise his voice, but he sounded peeved. ‘What foolishness! Who do you think you are? All I’d have to do is call the examining magistrate to find out.’

  ‘Well then, go ahead.’

  Ana stood. Pla took her hand to keep her from leaving, but she pushed him away curtly, as if flicking off a piece of lint.

  She couldn’t walk across the room if she didn’t want to run straight into Grau. She knew that Pla was following her movements. She searched for an escape and found it to the left, in a small side room that mostly held clusters of men smoking. She saw a balcony at the back and headed over to it. She went out, leaned on the railing and exhaled in relief.

  ‘Are you running away from my boss? So would I.’

  It was Pablo Noguer.

  ‘If you’re here to ask questions too, I’m leaving.’

  ‘No, you can relax. I won’t give you away.’

  ‘But you gave him my name.’

  ‘Because he read your articles and asked me if we were related. Because of the Noguer name.’

  ‘And how did you know what I looked like?’

  ‘I saw you at the funeral. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘No,’ she lied.

  ‘Oh.’ Disappointed, Pablo made a face and took a drag on his cigarette.

  Ana regretted having denied it; it was an adolescent reaction.

  She really wanted a smoke.

  ‘May I have one?’

  ‘What will people say?’

  ‘We can move out of sight a bit.’

  They went over to one side of the balcony. No one could see them there. Pablo produced a cigarette and held it out to her.

  ‘Well, I remember you.’

  Ana looked at him. His dark eyes, his long lashes, his straight nose, the shape of his face… ‘Are you really a Noguer?’

  ‘What a strange question! Of course. My father is Salvador Noguer.’

  ‘My mother is Patricia Noguer. How are they related?’ She consciously avoided asking, ‘How are we related?’

  ‘Your mother is, if I’m not mistaken, my father’s cousin.’

  Ana’s mind leapt like a squirrel from one branch to the next on her family tree. Before she reached the conclusion that the son of her mother’s cousin was something like a distant relative, Pablo planted a kiss on her cheek, dangerously close to the corner of her mouth.

  ‘It’s a kiss between cousins, for the record. Anything more and we’d have to ask for dispensation from Rome.’

  ‘Oh, really? Well, we’re not cousins; you would be something like a third cousin, and dispensations aren’t needed for that degree of kinship.’

  ‘Is that so? Well then it’s a shame you have a boyfriend.’

  The journalist in her took note that, first of all, he was very well informed; then she allowed that the flirting on the part of her non-cousin was not disinterested.

  ‘You’re a bit of a libertine, I think,’ she replied, but her tone was more tongue-in-cheek than insulting. Pablo picked up on it and smiled with false shyness.

  ‘I have to leave before Pla comes looking and finds me here. See you soon. And I hope the next time we meet you’ll remember me.’

  42

  She awoke in surprise, because her last memory before falling asleep was of thinking ‘I can’t sleep’. On the way home, and as she undressed and climbed into bed, she hadn’t been able to stop going over what had happened that day and, especially, the encounters she’d had at the Italian consulate. Her mind leapt in no particular order from Sanvisens’s words to Dolores Antich’s furious looks; from Pla’s questions to Pablo’s kiss. The kiss was the leading candidate for keeping her awake, but wine and exhaustion were close on its heels.

  Eight o’clock. She had missed only two hours of rest but she was feeling them. She washed quickly and hung the dress she had worn to the reception in front of the open window to air. It smelled of tobacco, but she had made it home from the party without picking up any stains; ‘Immaculate,’ she mused, thinking of Pablo, first, and then, immediately, of Gabriel.

  She chased them both away by drafting her society piece: ‘The salon of Barcelona’s Italian consulate, with its opulent Murano glass chandeliers, was the setting for the presentation…’

  Then she went to the newspaper.

  On arriving, she shot a glance at Sanvisens’s office. The door was closed, but she could see him through the glass. He was talking to someone. She went over to the desk where she worked and glanced towards his office again. She saw that the person Sanvisens was talking to was Carlos Belda.

  Was he complaining about her covering the Sobrerroca case again? Did he know about the Civil Governor’s objections? If he did, it wouldn’t be because of her boss. But Belda knew everyone in those circles, just as she had come to know so many society people. She remembered Belda’s irate reaction, his ‘Castro is mine’. She had reached the conclusion that Carlos Belda’s rejection of her wasn’t due to the fact that she was a woman (although that was his usual argument), but because she was Andreu Martí’s daughter. Her father had been his mentor. Her father had had many disciples, but few that he had thought of so highly as Carlos Belda.

  ‘My outstanding student,’ Andreu Martí would say proudly.

  Maybe he was in terms of his writing, but not as far as his integrity was concerned. After the war, Belda had jumped on the winning bandwagon, and from there he watched his former mentor fall without lifting a finger to stop it, or even to cushion the blow. He had repudiated him.

  Belda could perfectly imagine the pain that this
had caused her father, and there she was, her mere presence reminding him of it day after day. That was why he hated her so much, thought Ana. That was why, knowing that she was a constant, albeit unintentional, instrument of paternal revenge, she tolerated Carlos’s aggression and mockery with relative stoicism.

  She made a clean copy of her text, her eyes darting from time to time towards Sanvisens’s office. What were they talking about for so long? She couldn’t see Belda’s face, but she could see his vehement hand gestures, which shot up and down and arched through the air. Sanvisens didn’t move his hands as he replied, but his face showed his tension. Their voices couldn’t be heard in the writers’ room; more than the closed door, it was the incessant clacking of typewriters that drowned them out. Suddenly, there was what one of the veterans called ‘the passing of a journalists’ angel’ and all the sounds stopped at once. Ten heads raised and looked around to celebrate that strange silence. Before a telephone, typewriter key or the rasp of a cigarette lighter had the chance to put an end to it, there was a thud from Sanvisens’s office, the dull blow of a fist on a desk. All ten looked in that direction while the editor’s voice said, ‘I already told you, no!’

  Carlos Belda burst furiously out through the office door and found all of his colleagues’ curious eyes upon him.

  ‘What? Don’t you have anything better to do?’

  He headed over to his desk, passing Ana’s on the way.

  ‘And what are you looking at?’

  He grabbed the typed page with a version of her text that Ana had left beside the typewriter.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing?’

  ‘Reading a bit about the topics that make the world go round. So, the wife of the consul wore a dress of raw silk? What would become of mankind if such a detail were overlooked?’

  The other nine journalists watched the scene, frozen in shock. A telephone rang on one of the desks, but no one moved to answer it.

  Ana felt her face burn. Although rage was squeezing her throat closed, she managed to answer Belda. ‘When you need it for your first society piece, I’ll give you some lessons on fashion and style.’