The Whispering City

by Sara Moliner

  When he returned to the house with the letters from Sánchez-Herranz, Ana met him in the entryway. She had been waiting for him there.

  ‘Were you able to give my father the letter? What did he say?’

  ‘That a police officer came to the house asking for you, but refused to tell them why, and that they were very worried.’

  ‘Did he read the letter?’

  ‘Yes, in the back room. Afterwards he was somewhat relieved, but we couldn’t say much because his boss was there. And he gave me this for you.’

  Pablo produced a paperback from his jacket pocket. It was a small-format western novel, Merciless Duel in Carson City. He held it out to her. It had a note in it, in her father’s hand.

  ‘He pretended to dedicate it to me so he could write to you without anyone catching on. I didn’t know your father wrote westerns.’

  Neither did she. So that was why there was more money in her family lately. She opened up the little book and read:

  My dearest daughter,

  In your letter I read things that fill me both with fear for your well-being and pride in your courage. But everything that makes me proud of you as a journalist makes me frightened for my daughter, whom I fear I couldn’t stand, we couldn’t stand, to lose. Be very careful, Aneta. Come home soon.

  She made a tremendous effort to control her emotions.

  ‘Come on in, Beatriz is waiting for you too.’

  When she saw him come in, his aunt practically ripped the newspaper from his hands. She shook out the letters and ignored everything else as she studied Sánchez-Herranz’s style.

  ‘She is furious,’ said Ana to Pablo in a low voice. ‘Furious and very sad about Encarni. While we were waiting for you she hid in the bathroom to cry alone.’

  They looked at her. Beatriz was pencilling notes on a sheet of paper which she’d divided into columns in order to organise the characteristics of Sánchez-Herranz’s style that she wanted to imitate in the letter: connectors, turns of phrase, adjectives.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ asked Pablo.

  ‘No. We’ll eat later.’

  ‘Do you mind if I eat something?’

  Neither woman answered him. Pablo went into the kitchen and prepared for himself one of the few things he knew how to make: rice boiled with a clove of garlic. He made enough for the three of them. It was a good idea.

  Soon Ana came in, drawn by the aroma.

  ‘My mother makes it the same way! Can I have a little?’

  ‘As much as you like. Take Beatriz a plate too, so she eats something.’

  Ana went out with a steaming plate of rice. She returned and sat at the kitchen table with Pablo.

  ‘She says she’ll eat it when she’s finished. But between reading one letter and the next she ate a good spoonful.’

  They ate in silence.

  They had already finished and were listening distractedly to the radio when Beatriz came in.

  ‘I’ve got the letter. I think I’ve captured his style well, but the signature needs work.’

  She showed them the original and one of her attempts to imitate it. It was an obvious forgery.

  ‘Let me try,’ said Ana.

  Her signature was only a little better, but you could still see the effort; it didn’t look natural.

  Meanwhile, Pablo had picked up a pen and, after two goes, he produced an impeccable imitation.

  ‘Perfect!’ exclaimed Beatriz.

  ‘I’m good at drawing,’ he explained, neglecting to mention that during his school years he had learned to forge his father’s signature so that he could bunk off lessons.

  ‘Well, now you have to type up the letter and sign it,’ said Beatriz.

  ‘And then what?’ asked Pablo. ‘We send it in the post?’

  ‘No,’ said Ana. ‘It’s about making Grau nervous, making him feel Sánchez-Herranz’s threat. That threat has to reach him in the style that Sánchez-Herranz would use. It has to be something direct, brutal. Devastating.’

  ‘What are you thinking of?’

  ‘Grau must find the letter at his house, on a table. For him to see that they’ve entered his house without thinking twice about it, that Sánchez-Herranz’s thugs have invaded his privacy and profaned it.’

  ‘Grau, who is said to guard his privacy jealously,’ added Pablo, ‘for whom his house is, as the English would say, his castle, would be horrified by the idea of those brutes setting foot in his home.’

  Beatriz interrupted him: ‘Do you know what’s good about there being three of us? At least one of us can ask the bothersome questions when the other two are getting all excited. How are we going to get the letter into Grau’s house?’

  Pablo saw in Ana’s face that she had already thought of a way.

  ‘I know someone who will do it if I ask him to.’

  She was talking about Pepe the Spider, one of the people she read and wrote letters for.

  ‘If we give him the address, he can get the letter inside.’

  Ana started to type it up.

  She remembered what Carmiña had always told her: you don’t type love letters. The one she was typing up now was a letter filled with hatred.

  68

  ‘That’s it,’ she said.

  Beatriz had retired to the bedroom. They found her immersed in Don Quixote.

  ‘This is more helpful in life than the Bible. Pablo, I have to admonish you for the lack of Spanish classics in your library. Thank goodness I found this. A nice edition.’

  ‘It was a gift from Papa.’ Beneath Beatriz’s scathing gaze, Pablo hastened to add, ‘I promise I’ll read it next summer. And I’m not saying this to change the subject, Tieta Beatriz, but we have something much more urgent on right now.’

  Beatriz closed the book and left it on a side table next to the armchair where she had been reading.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Now we need to find Pepe the Spider,’ said Ana.

  ‘You know where he lives, don’t you?’ asked Pablo.

  ‘I’ve seen the address many, many times.’

  Pepe the Spider sublet a flat on Unión Street. He didn’t trust the owner of the flat because she had once steamed open a letter from his girlfriend.

  ‘The letter stank of cabbage… she had opened it with the steam from a cooking pot,’ he had told Ana.

  That was why he received his post at an ironmonger’s on Egipcíacas Street where a guy from his town worked. He had given that address not only because the guy was discreet: ‘Now the letters smell clean.’ It was true; the letters that she read to him from his girlfriend always carried the scent of soap. Getting a message to him wouldn’t be difficult. The guy at the shop always let him know as soon as he got any post.

  ‘There could be a problem,’ said Ana. ‘If he’s been arrested. The last time I saw him, he was up to something, something big. If it’s gone wrong and the police have got hold of him, our whole plan is sunk.’

  Beatriz shook her head.

  ‘Could be. Which is why we have to behave like you do when there’s been a death.’

  Ana shot a disconcerted look at Pablo, which Beatriz didn’t catch because she was looking upwards, as she always did when stringing together an argument. With her gaze again fixed on one of the ceiling mouldings, she continued, ‘When there is a death, the relatives and close friends are faced with an absolutely irreversible fact that is out of their control. They cannot do anything to change what has happened, so a whole series of rituals and activities have developed around the burial and the mourning. The idea is to do something, whether it’s writing funeral notices, offering condolences, eating, preparing food…’

  ‘You want us to make some cannelloni now?’ Pablo tried to joke.

  Ana put her hand over his mouth to keep him quiet; she wanted to know where Beatriz was going with this thought. Pablo took Ana’s hand to move it away, but he didn’t let it go, just brought it down to the space between them on the sofa, leaving it in his. Ana didn’t turn – she
had her eyes fixed on Beatriz – but she gently squeezed Pablo’s hand in return.

  ‘Go on, Beatriz.’

  ‘What I mean is that we don’t know if they’ve arrested this Pepe, but even if they have, we can’t sit around and do nothing. Which is why it’s important that we clear up the practical matters. The first of which is, where you are going to meet him.’

  ‘It has to be in a public place. Where there are a lot of people,’ said Ana.

  ‘Beside one of the flower stalls on the Ramblas?’ suggested Pablo.

  ‘Too exposed. It would have to be near here,’ she replied.

  ‘The San Antonio market could work: it’s open on Sundays and there are always a lot of people buying books and comics,’ said Beatriz.

  ‘What about the Apolo Amusement Park?’ suggested Pablo.

  It was a good idea. It was close by, so they wouldn’t have to walk far and so risk being seen.

  ‘Fine. Now that I’ve become your messenger, I guess I’ll have to go back out into the street, won’t I?’ said Pablo.

  ‘Leave him the message that we are going to meet on Sunday at noon in front of the entrance to the Autogruta ride at the Atracciones Apolo,’ summed up Ana.

  Once again, Pablo went running out of the house. They hoped that the ironmonger’s hadn’t closed for the day.

  When he came back an hour later, he found the two women in the kitchen listening to the radio and he was able to give them at least one piece of good news: Pepe hadn’t been arrested, and the guy in the shop was going to give him the message that very afternoon along with a letter from his girlfriend.

  ‘Well, now there’s nothing more we can do,’ said Beatriz, getting up from the table. ‘I’m going to go and read for a while.’

  Pablo took her place.

  They listened to the radio in silence. On the news was a piece on the preparations for the Eucharistic Congress. Ana thought about her mother. They weren’t officially looking for her, though that didn’t mean they wouldn’t do anything to her parents, considering who was after them and the impunity with which he’d acted up until that point. Most likely, she told herself, they were watching over her parents in case she tried to contact them. The radio brought her back to Pablo’s kitchen, the sound of the Montserrat Boys’ Choir and a voice announcing the broadcast of a Mass.

  ‘On Sundays,’ said Ana, ‘there are a lot of people at the Apolo. There is also more of a police presence.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go with you. The people who are looking for you are after two women.’

  Ana nodded without much conviction. She couldn’t shake off the thought that her entire plan was hanging by very fine threads, like a delicate cobweb. It was almost ironic that at that moment everything depended on a thief named Pepe the Spider.

  69

  On Saturday night they went to bed very early, to shorten the wait. But not one of the three could get to sleep. Ana noticed that Beatriz was awake by her side, and she struggled to keep still so she wouldn’t bother her. She heard Pablo’s footsteps in the sitting room, as he got up several times from the sofa he was sleeping on.

  She kept thinking about Castro’s brief visit that morning. She reran the scene in her head, searching for signs, guarantees that the policeman was going to do what they had asked him to. The mere fact that he had come in person to pick up the papers was a good sign. And he had thought of how and when he would deliver them to Sánchez-Herranz.

  ‘I’ll call him on Monday. I’ll go to the Civil Government offices to speak with him.’

  That was good too.

  The fact that he hadn’t looked her in the eyes as he spoke made her uneasy.

  Castro was perfectly capable of keeping the papers and using them for his own gain. The plan that might possibly save them also benefited him. If it went well, he would have Goyanes out of the way, but those papers would also allow him to call up other kinds of favours. They were depending on Castro fulfilling his promise, which is to say they were depending on the good will of a policeman. They were depending on The Spider being able to pull off what they would ask him to do. They were depending on Grau not uncovering the deception. They were depending on Goyanes not finding them before any of it could take place. They were depending on killing several birds, and she wasn’t even sure whose hand held the stone.

  At some point, her tiredness got the better of her and she slept deeply but uneasily for a while before waking with a start feeling as though she were suffocating, like when she dreamed of her dead brother. She slipped furtively out of the bed so as not to wake Beatriz and headed to the kitchen to drink a glass of water. It was five thirty in the morning. She could already hear footsteps and vehicles on the street, but dawn hadn’t yet broken. The floor was cold and she missed her old felt slippers. Remembering such a trivial object made her feel the first stab of pain for the life she felt she had lost for ever; she suddenly understood what it meant not to be able to return home: abandoned slippers, a pot that held a dying plant, a book she wouldn’t finish.

  She went into the kitchen and felt around for a glass.

  ‘You can turn on the light if you want.’ It was Pablo’s voice. He was sitting at the kitchen table.

  She jumped, but managed to repress the scream that was rising in her throat.

  ‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ said Pablo. ‘You can’t sleep either, eh?’

  She shook her head. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark by then, and she was able to make out Pablo’s silhouette perfectly.

  ‘You can’t scare me any more than I already am,’ she responded. ‘What if this goes wrong? First I got Beatriz mixed up in this mess, which cost poor Encarni her life. And now I’ve got you involved too.’

  For the first time since it had all begun, Ana felt an uncontrollable urge to cry. It wasn’t just the fear; it was the guilt and her self-recrimination for allowing herself to get drawn in by her ambitions.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she said between her tears.

  Pablo got up and hugged her. Ana rested her head on his shoulder.

  ‘You’re going to get cold,’ Pablo said into her ear. ‘You should lie down again.’

  ‘I don’t want to go back to bed. I’m afraid to fall asleep, afraid of the nightmares.’

  ‘Then come.’

  He led her, with his arm around her shoulder, to the sofa where he slept, lifted up the sheets and gestured for her to lie down.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll stay in the armchair. Maybe tonight I’ll start reading Don Quixote, and then I can impress my aunt tomorrow,’ joked Pablo.

  ‘You’d need to read a lot to impress her, she’s a walking encyclopedia of literature,’ she replied, unable to contain a yawn.

  ‘Go on, lie down.’

  Ana lay down. Pablo covered her with the sheet. Ana looked at him.

  ‘If you want…’

  ‘No, I’d better not. You have a boyfriend, and…’

  ‘And he’ll be sleeping, like we should be.’

  ‘Fine, but I can assure you that you needn’t worry.’

  ‘About my honour? Spare me that nonsense, this isn’t a comic operetta.’

  Pablo lay down beside her, being so careful as not even to brush against her that he almost sent her onto the floor. They laughed under their breath.

  At some point Ana came closer to him, appreciative of his warmth, curling up into a ball when he ran an arm over her and nestled against her back.

  In those scant two hours of sleep she didn’t have a single nightmare.

  She woke up disoriented and confused. Pablo was sleeping, Beatriz wasn’t any longer; she heard noises from the kitchen. Had she seen them? How could she not have? She had even been past the side table because the copy of Don Quixote was no longer there. She gently extracted herself from Pablo’s embrace.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ he said sleepily.

  She got up anyway and headed towards the kitchen. She was expecting to see a severe expression
on Beatriz’s face, but she found a melancholy smile.

  ‘I’ll make coffee while you get dressed,’ said Beatriz. ‘I grabbed several changes of clothes when I left my house, I can lend you one.’

  Ana appreciated having something clean to wear. After washing and dressing, she went back to the kitchen. Pablo was already there. Going over the plan helped them overcome their initial embarrassment.

  They worked out the right moment to head out to their appointment with Pepe the Spider. They didn’t want to arrive too early and risk being seen.

  At five minutes to twelve they were at the entrance to the Atracciones Apolo, mingling with families and excited, rowdy groups of young people. They went in and stayed close to the door to the Autogruta, a roller coaster that sent you into a huge, pointy-toothed mouth and through scenes of heaven and hell. From where they stood they could hear the screams of the people who thought they were about to slam into a giant rock, or had just seen a mummy.

  They didn’t see him arrive. All of a sudden, Pepe the Spider was simply there.

  ‘You left word that you needed me, Señorita Ana.’

  ‘I do, Pepe. I’m in a fix and I need your services.’

  ‘Let’s go somewhere we can talk.’

  Ana and Pablo followed him to a small bench beside a stand that sold nuts and dried fruits. She and The Spider sat down. Pablo remained standing, keeping his eyes peeled.

  ‘Pepe, I’m going to tell you what I want you to do, but I won’t tell you why. If you don’t think it’s possible, let me know. I don’t want you to take too big a risk.’

  ‘Well, let me decide that. First tell me what you need.’

  Ana showed him the bundle of papers and said, ‘It would mean leaving these papers in someone’s house, so that they can be easily found, for example, on his desk.’

  ‘And can you tell me who the person is, or is it better I don’t know?’

  ‘I have to tell you so that you can decide if you want to do it or not. I’d be asking you to plant these papers in the house of Joaquín Grau.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘He’s a public prosecutor.’

  ‘He’s never nicked me.’