The Whispering City

by Sara Moliner

‘Be careful. That one sitting over there is Mercedes, his girlfriend. Well, his girlfriend around here.’

  He winked at her. Or was it the cigarette smoke in his eye?

  ‘I imagined you’d be older, from what he told me. And already widowed.’

  Another wink. She then understood that he had taken her for one of Mendoza’s ‘lonely ladies’. She decided to play along.

  ‘My husband was much older than me.’

  Ears moved the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other, then leaned even further over the bar so that he could speak without the regulars hearing.

  ‘I’m sure Abelín gives you more joy than the old man, may he rest in peace. Tell him, before he leaves, that he must stop by and give me a couple of classes. I want to know what he gives you ladies to get you like this. What he does to have even Mercedes letting him sleep in her room.’

  As if she had sensed that they were talking about her, the woman who must have been Mercedes interrupted her chatting and shouted at the barman, ‘What, Ears? Neglecting the customers?’

  ‘What the hell do you want, Mercedes?’ he yelled without turning around.

  ‘Give me another little glass of wine.’

  ‘Wait a minute, can’t you see I’m talking?’

  ‘Up yours, Dumbo!’

  She held her tongue then, but Mercedes and the other woman didn’t take their eyes off Ears or Ana. Their hostile looks were robbing Ana of her confidence.

  ‘If you’ll just give me what I came for, I’ll let you get back to work.’

  ‘Bah! They’re in no hurry. Whores don’t have many johns at this time of the day.’

  But he turned around and disappeared swiftly into a back room separated from the bar by a beaded curtain.

  Mercedes got up and came over to her then.

  ‘Are you looking for work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re ashamed, ain’t you?’ Her voice softened a bit. ‘You’ll lose that quick enough, you’ll see. But, even if ol’ Ears tells you to, don’t sign on with The Colonel’s Wife. Her pimp beats the girls, even when they haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘What are you telling the lady?’ Ears’ voice came through the beaded curtain.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  The barman re-emerged carrying a dark-coloured envelope. He tucked it into his armpit, grabbed a little glass and filled it with red wine from one of the casks.

  ‘Here. Now sit down and leave me alone.’

  ‘You’re a nasty one!’

  But Mercedes picked up the glass and returned to the table.

  ‘And I won’t say what you are because there’s a lady present.’

  ‘And what am I?’

  ‘Mercedes, don’t start with me!’

  During the entire exchange, ‘Ears’ Amancio and Mercedes had their backs to each other. The barman came over to Ana and held out the envelope. There was a damp stain where it had been under his arm.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She slipped it into her handbag.

  ‘Tell you-know-who to come by before he leaves town. Just a couple of tips…’

  ‘If you want, I’ll give you one myself.’

  The man looked first at Mercedes, who, as if she were waiting for it, gave him the two-fingered salute.

  ‘That whore needs a couple of good slaps,’ he grumbled. Then he addressed Ana, ‘Go on, I’m all ears.’

  ‘Simple. Be considerate to her.’

  ‘But she’s a —’

  ‘You don’t need to remind her of it all the time. I’m sure she likes it about as much as you like not having ears. Well, I’m off.’

  ‘Say hi to Abelín for me.’

  ‘I will,’ she said with a lump in her throat, already on her way out of the bar.

  Closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment, looking up and down the street. If someone had been spying on her movements inside the bar, they would’ve had to do so from outside. If they were to catch her, it would have to be now and she would rather see it coming; she didn’t want to feel a hand on her shoulder. There were plenty of people on the street, but no one approached her and the only pedestrian who looked at her twice was a woman whose expression indicated that she was in the way, standing there on the pavement.

  She could start walking.

  The envelope in her handbag weighed on her as if it were full of lead. Her visit to the La Cruz de Malta had drained her, and she was plagued by the question of whether Abel Mendoza’s friends would ever know that he was dead. From the way they spoke about Abelín, they clearly knew that the article about his death published in the newspaper was false. Would they believe it if it appeared in the news again? From what she had overheard when she passed by Sanvisens’s office as she was leaving La Vanguardia, that wasn’t going to happen.

  Along with the envelope, she had taken on a responsibility and an obligation; she had to get to the bottom of the matter. But she didn’t want to drag Beatriz into it again. By insisting that she help her with the letters, she had already got her so mixed up in the case that she had even revealed her identity to the police. Maybe at the very least she should try not to implicate her further.

  She decided to go home with the envelope and go on alone. She would call Beatriz at some point from a discreet telephone and explain. She couldn’t do it in her building, not with Señora Sauret spying from behind the door.

  She found her not behind the door but in front of it when she arrived home. She tried to slip past her with a hurried greeting, but when she was barely two steps up the stairs, the doorkeeper caught up with her and cried from the other side of the banister, ‘Señorita Martí, this has always been a decent house.’

  She stopped, disconcerted by that inexplicable statement.

  ‘OK,’ she answered.

  ‘Because of your grandfather, there has never been too much gossip about you living alone at your age.’

  Even though the ‘not too much’ was attractive bait, she chose to keep quiet and wait for the ‘but’ that was peeping out at the end of the statement. It soon showed itself.

  ‘But I find it very improper that you let people into your home. Men. I don’t think Señor and Señora Serrahima would approve.’

  ‘Men? In my home?’

  ‘Don’t try to deny it. An hour ago two men came into the building. As it is my duty to keep an eye out, I asked them where they were going and they said to your flat. I told them that you weren’t here because you had gone out a while ago and they said it didn’t matter, they had the key and would wait for you inside.’

  ‘What were the men like?’

  The doorkeeper eyed her suspiciously.

  ‘Where did you get the money to pay two months’ rent at once? This is a decent house, I won’t allow —’

  ‘What were these men like?’

  ‘I won’t allow —’

  ‘What were the men like, you horrid old witch?’

  Teresina Sauret was petrified, but she moved her lips as if they were under someone else’s control. ‘Tall. Well built. I couldn’t see their faces properly because they were wearing their hats down low, and —’

  She was cut short by a noise on the staircase. A door opened and footsteps were heard. They both looked up. Two shadows peered down the stairwell.

  ‘That’s them!’ said the doorkeeper.

  They were four flights up and the light kept her from seeing their faces, but when one of them shouted, ‘Señorita Martí, come up, we’re waiting for you,’ she understood that it wasn’t in her best interests to get to know them, so she turned tail and ran out of the building.

  ‘Señorita Martí, stop!’

  With Teresina Sauret’s voice screeching at her back demanding an explanation, she locked the front door behind her to gain a little time. Those guys didn’t have her house keys; those guys had broken into her apartment with a picklock.

  She tore down the street and round the first corner. She didn’t stop until she’d reached the
Ronda de San Antonio, where she leapt onto an overcrowded number twenty-nine tram that was already making its way to the Plaza Universidad and hid among the passengers. She pretended to drop her handbag so that she could crouch down for the first few metres, then she stood and paid her fare with her head bowed, as if she were having trouble finding the coins. She didn’t dare to look out of the tramcar for fear that she would find the two men running after it. She glanced out only when she reached the university. As the tram braked, approaching the stop, she scanned the faces of the passengers waiting to board. The only person who was panting from running was a woman. The passengers got on and soon the tram resumed its route.

  ‘Mind your bags!’ warned the conductor. He had recognised a pickpocket among the new arrivals.

  Ana pressed her handbag tightly to her side. Despite her intention to leave her cousin out of the whole business, she realised that the only place she could go was to Beatriz’s house.

  52

  Two different smells had been wafting into Beatriz’s study from the kitchen. One reminded her simply that she needed to eat; the other actually made her mouth water. The first was the rather acrid whiff of the mixed vegetables that Encarni boiled until there wasn’t a single fibre left to chew in them, until the chard or cabbage took on the consistency that Beatriz imagined seaweed had.

  ‘Vegetables that aren’t well cooked are hard to digest,’ Encarni had argued the first time she showed signs of protesting.

  You don’t argue with someone who worries about your health, so she kept quiet and ate, as if she were a little girl again. The second aroma was rice pudding, the white paradise that followed the green purgatory. A nice plate of rice pudding. That brought out her real appetite, once her more essential hunger was sated.

  The dishes Encarni prepared revealed her efforts to satisfy both of the houses she fed, since she always took two containers of food home for her family. So, now that Beatriz thought about it, the digestion Encarni was tending to with the overcooked vegetables was her mother’s, not Beatriz’s. At least it could never be said that she was a stingy boss, like so many who made their servants endure greater hunger than the teacher Cabra in Quevedo’s The Swindler did his pupils. She and Encarni ate the same things. When there was more, they ate more; when there was less, less. She laughed, remembering the passage in Quevedo’s novel, in which Don Pablos describes the broth the teacher served them as ‘so clear that it posed more danger to Narcissus than the pool’. Not in her house. Encarni took dinner home for her family, and she made a rice pudding unlike any Beatriz had ever eaten.

  ‘My grandmother’s recipe,’ Encarni would say proudly when she complimented her on it.

  There was still half an hour to go before lunch. She didn’t think well on a full stomach, and not on an empty one either, she confirmed when she realised that she had turned the page of the article without having really read it. Antonio Marichalar wrote well; being close to the Regime didn’t necessarily imply that one was a bad writer. It was one of the last issues of the magazine Escorial. It seemed that the Falangists were running out of steam in their service to ‘the new Spain’. She had already formed the impression from reading previous articles that some of the early Falangists, such as José Luis López de Aranguren and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, were starting to grow less fond of a totalitarian ideology and Franco’s Regime. Even the fanatical Laín Entralgo, with his inquisitorial gaze, had softened. Perhaps something was changing. Her stomach growled. She closed the magazine. ‘Food first, then morality,’ as Brecht would say.

  How had she got to Brecht from Quevedo? Via hunger; her desire and her need to eat.

  Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral. She remembered it perfectly in German. She got up from the desk and went to the bookshelf where she kept volumes in that language. She always thought that the notorious Spanish ignorance of other languages would protect her collection if they ever searched her home. Among the classics – Goethe, Schiller, Kleist and Herder – who, due to a general lack of knowledge were mistakenly assumed to be harmless, she had Brecht, one of the authors she had shared with Jakob. The Threepenny Opera: banned by the Nazis, banned by Franco. Why not translate it? It could be her next project. Perhaps then she could send it to Jakob. It would be a good way, if not the perfect excuse, to get back in touch with him.

  She and Jakob had corresponded a lot. He wrote in German, with some phrases in Spanish, which were the ones she best remembered. Sometimes he made mistakes, such as when he wrote ‘once on a while’ instead of ‘once in a while’, something she never corrected because, for some inexplicable reason, she found that construction, so peculiar to him, very sweet. She couldn’t bear the thought of someone reading the letters she wrote to or received from Jakob. She guarded her privacy so closely that Jakob used to say she was more German than he was. She hoped that, after their break-up, he had destroyed all her letters. She had fulfilled her part of their tacit pact and burned his.

  From Quevedo to Brecht, and from Brecht to Jakob. She was getting sentimental. If she didn’t eat soon, she would end up reciting one of Ramón de Campoamor’s trite poems, and that would be the last straw.

  She heard the sound of the doorbell. Whoever it was, the visit was welcome, because it banished from her head one of the moralising verses she so loathed.

  Encarni opened the door. Beatriz heard Ana’s voice. She waited for a moment. Why wasn’t she coming to her study? She stepped into the hall. Encarni had taken Ana to the kitchen; she followed. Seeing Ana’s expression, she realised that they were facing a more serious problem than having some bad poem stuck in her head, or her lunch being late.

  ‘Abel Mendoza is dead,’ Ana managed to say before her voice cracked.

  Encarni crossed herself. Then she picked up a glass, filled it with fresh water and offered it to Ana. She drank it eagerly and was able to continue speaking.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘How? When?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. But I saw a photo of him on the desk of one of my colleagues at the newspaper. It was a police photo, from the morgue.’

  ‘How do you know he was murdered? Couldn’t he have had an accident?’

  ‘No. The police don’t send photos of accident victims to the press. In yesterday’s newspaper, Carlos Belda, the one who had the photo, published a brief note about a man found dead, dressed as a woman, in the Somorrostro. It had to be him.’

  Beatriz remembered how Ana had described Abel Mendoza as one of the most handsome men she had ever seen, a leading man type, she had said. And a swindler.

  ‘Then maybe he was killed by the person he said he was going to meet up with.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. Whatever it was he was trying to do, it played out very badly.’

  ‘Have you gone to the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t dare. Castro threatened me if I even thought about getting involved in this case again.’

  ‘But now, with what’s happened, you would have evidence that you were telling the truth.’

  The sentence sounded wrong. ‘The truth’ was an increasingly slippery word to define. It was always up for manipulation. Every regime distorted the truth to suit them; this Regime used it as if it had been tailor made for their purposes.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ responded Ana, ‘that the police don’t want to hear anything more about all this. Least of all Castro. I heard that, thanks to his work on the case, they are going to promote him. Do you think he would risk an opportunity like that just to establish a truth that no one seems interested in? Besides, we’ve been forbidden to write about the dead body found in the Somorrostro.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because someone must know who he is, and they don’t want it made public, despite the police having the corpse of the man they say is Mariona’s murderer.’

  ‘And you are convinced that he isn’t the one?’


  ‘Completely.’

  ‘That would mean that Abel Mendoza was killed by the same person who killed Mariona.’

  ‘That’s what I think. But that’s not all. When I got home, there were two men waiting for me.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I have the feeling that I’d seen one of them before. I don’t know where.’

  She had calmed down a little, but she was still frightened. Her story was very disturbing. Beatriz took a deep breath.

  ‘Maybe they wanted to sell you something, some cold cream or the Espasa encyclopedia.’

  She tried to make a joke, recalling Ramón, the door-to-door salesman who turned up every year at her parents’ summer home in Castelldefels to sell them ‘the books that belong in every cultured home’. Her parents had never bought a single volume, but she and her brother Salvador would wait for him in front of the house to buy a few of the little booklets of adventure stories he also carried.

  ‘Travelling salesmen don’t come in twos, ma’am.’

  Encarni set another glass of water in front of Ana. The abruptness of her movements told Beatriz that her awkward attempt to reassure Ana had made Encarni angry. Because it had been Encarni who had let her in, who had brought her into the kitchen when she was completely beside herself. She had also been listening to her attentively, and she was the one who, even though she was unfamiliar with the story, was taking charge of the situation. Beatriz felt a bit of an idiot for her comment. It was no time for levity.

  Now it was Encarni who had something to say, but first she very deliberately placed two cups and a sugar bowl on the table. She had put the coffeepot on the stove when Ana arrived, and she served the coffee before adding, ‘Only the police come in twos.’

  Ana started spooning sugar into her cup. Her hand was trembling.

  ‘He had a lisp! I know where I know him from. He lisped when he spoke. I saw him once at the Vía Layetana headquarters – he’s a policeman, some guy named Burguillos.’

  Policemen. In desperation, Beatriz suggested an idea that offered a plausible, but above all harmless, explanation. ‘Perhaps they wanted to give you a message from Inspector Castro.’