It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d be very late for lunch. Worse yet, it would be necessary to make up some excuse for playing hooky at the factory. As he searched for one in the recesses of his mind, the alley came to an end under an arch that supported a passageway with windows in it. To his surprise, it opened onto no other than Plaça Reial: the bright, porticoed square lined with fashionable restaurants and elegant buildings. At that time of day, it was full of people and pigeons soaking up the sun. Before he crossed under the arch, he read a sign with the absurd name of “Street of the Three Beds.”
Chapter 4
Maurici never showed up at the factory before ten and seldom left after six. Because of his theoretical mastery of French and even more theoretical mastery of import laws, Roderic Aldabò had put him in charge of foreign clientele. The truth is that the factory was a matter of total indifference to him. He lacked his father’s entrepreneurial drive and was bored to distraction by maintenance routines and accounting details. Endless hours went into writing, revising, and signing documents—except when he stopped to read the newspapers—or pacing between rows of looms to pretend he was supervising their operation. In reality, he was incapable of disciplining the workers, let alone of firing them. These unsavory tasks were left to the foreman: a man in his forties, surly, ill-tempered, and totally reliable, or, if bad came to worse, to his father, who knew how to be firm without raising his voice. He didn’t have to dirty his hands with such mundane matters. For all his limitations, however, he was effective with the clients assigned to him, to the point that they refused to deal with anyone else. Not only did he minimize difficulties, he also listened to each of them as if each alone was entitled to his full attention. The key to his success wasn’t so much his polished French, or even less his dubious law credentials, but that unselfconscious magnetism his entire person exuded.
In any case, after his absence that Monday he strove to give the impression of diligence. For a long time now—since the unfortunate fiasco with the indiscreet maid—his father hadn’t interfered with his private life. He never asked him where he went or where he came from; he didn’t reprimand him if he spent nights out and sneaked back into the apartment at the wee hours of the morning bumping into the furniture. As far as work was concerned, that was another kettle of fish. His father would tolerate an excuse now and then, but not often. Besides, Maurici didn’t want to call attention to himself by behaving erratically. Better be cautious. He had embarked on an enterprise from which no one would be able to rescue him.
That morning his father had gone to a meeting out of town with another manufacturer. Maurici couldn’t concentrate on the pile of orders pending on his desk. Even though his incursion into the Street of the Three Beds had revealed nothing of interest, he couldn’t wait to go back. Rita might have vanished, but she had an invisible string attached to her; once he picked it up, it pulled him with such irresistible strength he couldn’t let go. Who knew where it would take him.
A stroll through the looms might calm his nerves. He walked past each row distractedly, oblivious to the frantic beat that in the long run would leave every single worker deaf. “Never lose track of your employees,” his father often admonished. “If you do, it’ll be the end of you.” Suddenly, a scream tore through the hammering clanks. Right behind him, at loom number thirteen, the apprentice Remei Sallent—eight years old and fatherless—held up her left hand as blood dripped from the index finger. The needle had split the flesh of the tip. He recoiled in disgust but the child’s unblinking eyes nailed him to the spot. As a female worker came to comfort her, the girl remained mesmerized on the verge of tears—her eyes riveted on Maurici’s. The foreman rushed to tend to the victim, but stopped short when he came face to face with his boss. He waited expectantly, with an attitude both of deference and challenge. Maurici’s eyes turned to the injured finger, the finger that pointed at nobody but him. The child, with a demanding rather than imploring expression on her face, rose from the bench, took a step forward, and began to fall as if her legs had been cut off at the knees.
His arms caught her halfway down and laid her on his lap, shaking her up and slapping her cheeks.
“Don’t fall asleep . . . Hey! Girl!” At last he could think of her name. “Remei! Listen! Listen to me! Don’t fall asleep!”
He felt helpless but it was too late to send for help. He searched his memory for childhood accidents in the countryside.
“Bring me peroxide and a bandage, . . . water, smelling salts . . .”
The child, white as a sheet, didn’t take her large round eyes off him. It was hard to know what she was thinking, but her gaze remained so powerful and intense that it was unnerving. Blood dripped on his white shirt and vest.
“A piece of string!”
As he tied the string tightly under the wound, a woman yelled, “We should take her to the hospital. It needs stitches.”
Remei panicked and, for the first time, started to cry. Maurici, securing the tourniquet, mumbled, “Hush! Nobody’s going to the hospital. Drink this,” and he lifted a glass up to her lips.
Like a magic formula, the words dried up the tears.
For all the confidence he’d tried to instill in the child, he feared the blood might flow forever. Surrounded by the rest of the workers, he sweated profusely as he held the finger up and applied one piece after another of peroxide-soaked cotton. The looms remained silent.
“There we go! It’s bleeding less!” someone shouted.
When the red spots on the cotton began to shrink, he bandaged the finger with improvised skill. Now the girl studied his face with curious gravity. Maurici sketched a smile and, lifting her up once again, laid her down on an armchair in the waiting room of his office.
“Give her something to eat.”
He wiped the sweat off his brow. He’d gladly drink the rest of the water with a shot of gin himself. The women offered to remove the bloody spots off his clothes, but he waved them away with a vague gesture of gratitude. Then they showed Remei marks of needles on their own fingers. “It’s not so bad, see? We’ve cut ourselves too.” Everyone, even the foreman, looked at Maurici in a different way, as if stamping him with the seal of approval required on every box of merchandise that left the factory. “No mama’s boy, the boss’s son,” they mumbled around the corners, “doesn’t hold his nose up in the air.”
Only he knew he’d done it out of cowardice.
* * *
The day that followed the exploit, Maurici took a cab after work to Plaça Reial. Old men and women sat on the benches of the square shooting the breeze under the palm trees. Children chased each other or jumped rope under the watchful eye of mothers or maids. Under the porticos, smokers and couples took an afternoon break at the tables of the Café Suizo.
He crossed under the arch and retraced his steps to the bend on the Street of the Three Beds. Fortunately the days were getting longer, and he had at least an hour of light ahead. First, he had to find himself a good place to hide. It would be too uncomfortable to stay curled up under the stairs—where anybody coming in from the street could see him—for any length of time. There were no stores in the alley, except for a small one on the corner that sold only scales, or any public establishments where he could blend in with a crowd. It was a quiet dead end: a forgotten appendix at the core of the city’s entrails. Opposite the building with the three balconies, he saw a low, open doorway. It was a wretched, windowless tavern that could never be accused of prosperity, lined with barrels of cheap wine that stank to high heaven.
It seemed fitting that he had to take two steps down to enter. He chose a tiny table from among all five of them and sat facing the street. Even though the tavern wasn’t located exactly across from the building, the fact that it was below street level gave it fairly good visibility. The only other customer, youngish and well dressed, was engaged in an undecipherable conversation with an empty glass.
Maurici ordered cognac, and the owner, who did double duty as wai
ter, stood gaping at him as if he’d asked for the moon. After he read the signs written in chalk on each barrel, he opted for a glass of claret. He didn’t know exactly who or what he was waiting for, but something told him that, if he followed the comings and goings of the woman from La Perla d’Orient, sooner or later he’d catch some sign coming from her that would cast light on the whole affair. At eight o’clock she’d close the store. With a little luck, he’d be back home by nine. His plan was to sneak into the building after her and, should he hear voices like the first time, to risk going up to the second floor.
As he sipped the claret a middle-aged man—so distinguished-looking that he stood out from his surroundings—came out of the building, glanced up and down the alley, and headed for the square. Maurici noticed light behind the balcony of the second floor. On the third, however, the blinds were rolled down.
The evening edition of La Vanguardia lay on the counter. He picked it up to browse the headlines; he couldn’t afford too many distractions.
Suddenly a voice lamented, “That’s just my luck! Born and bred in Barcelona, family goes back twenty generations to the days of Geoffrey the Hairy, and my name’s Sánchez! Now, I ask you, what kind of stupid name is that? It sure don’t sound like an old Barcelona name to me! Can anyone tell me where it came from? Me, a native son . . .”
It was the lonely drinker, bemoaning the indignity of his imported name. The owner cut his soliloquy short.
“Come on, Mr. Sánchez, cheer up. If all the problems of the world came down to this . . .”
“Don’t even say my name, just don’t say it! It’s too embarrassing.”
Over the next ten minutes, punctuated by the drunkard’s babbling, Maurici observed two more men of the same type as the one he’d seen before go into the building. Night was falling and the light inside the tavern was so poor it was hard to read. Every other minute he looked at his watch.
“Born and bred in Barcelona . . . and my name’s Sánchez!”
The owner replenished Mr. Sánchez’s glass and offered Maurici sets of dice and cards. He declined and then, instead, ordered sherry. Now and then he pretended to take a sip, but he’d actually decided not to drink any more in order to keep his head clear. As the evening shadows crept into the joint, a young boy came out of the dark mouth of the building, crossed the street, and walked into the tavern, asking the owner to fill up a bottle with ten-cent red wine.
“Disgraceful, that’s what it is! Born in Barcelona . . .”
The boy stood with his mouth agape in front of the alcoholic who so bitterly cursed his ancestry, till the owner told him, “All right, Manelet, that’s enough gawking for today. Here’s your wine. Go home now.”
Realizing that the owner must know the neighbors, Maurici was tempted to ask him about apartment number five. But on second thought he decided against it, since he didn’t know how reliable the man was and his questions might raise suspicions. Most likely he’d alert the residents to the presence of a nosy stranger.
His pupils, like those of a cat, adjusted to the encroaching darkness. After the boy’s appearance, he counted three more people coming out of number five: first a plainly dressed woman who returned shortly after with a package in her hands, and then two men. One of them, white-haired and carrying a walking stick, was the same one he’d seen go in before; the other, who went past the tavern toward the square, seemed to be middle-aged, short rather than tall, with a waxy complexion and a thick black moustache. Maurici took a pen and a notebook out of his pocket and jotted down physical descriptions and the times of their movements. He didn’t know whether those details would be useful but his intuition told him to gather as many as possible.
A clock in the distance struck half past eight and a light came on behind one of the balconies.
“Can anyone explain to me how come, bein’ born and bred in Barcelona, my name happens to be Sánchez? Ain’t that the sorriest name you ever heard? Sánchez, a dime a dozen . . .”
For a while, the street was deserted. Maurici killed time writing and drawing pictures on his notebook, never losing sight of the doorway. A few minutes before nine another man appeared, a shadow among the shadows that engulfed the building. Impossible to determine if he was one of the characters he’d seen go in earlier. No trace of the woman from La Perla d’Orient. At twenty past ten, he gave up and paid for his drinks. The drunken, circular rhetoric still pursued him on the way out:
“Sánchez, born and bred . . .”
Next evening at eight o’clock, he was back at Bartomeu’s tavern keeping watch. Instead of Mr. Sánchez, there were two cart drivers with hoarse voices and three-day beards drinking red wine and shooting dice. During the hour he stayed at his table, scanning the paper and smoking cigars, the tavern was visited by a gypsy beggar and a blind man trying to sell the day’s last lottery tickets. Bartomeu scolded the gipsy woman, “Araceli, how many times do I have to tell you I don’t want you in here?” Far from being intimidated, she charged back. Maurici bought the tickets from the blind man, who blocked his view as he shuffled around the tables, so that he’d leave once and for all. The owner and the cart drivers cast inquisitive glances at the stranger in fine clothes that didn’t touch his wine and bought lottery tickets by the dozen.
In his notebook he recorded two men—neither recognizable from the day before—entering the building one after the other, plus a third who left forty-five minutes later. At nightfall, the man with the waxy complexion and black moustache once again walked past the tavern. The lady of La Perla d’Orient and Jaumet, on the other hand, failed to appear. By then he thought it unlikely that they lived at number five; they might have just paid a visit, and so the risk of spying in the lobby wasn’t worth taking. Perhaps the thread that led to Rita didn’t run along the Street of the Three Beds.
That week Maurici was not himself. He appeared to take the factory routines more seriously than he used to. Roderic Aldabò had heard of the incident concerning Remei Sallent and noticed that when his son toured the looms the girl beamed at him as if he wore a halo. On many evenings he came home late but, in contrast to his usual effervescence, he seemed preoccupied and moody. The lock of black hair, the trademark of his unruliness, hung over his forehead like a cloud. At dinner he daydreamed more than he ate. He hadn’t returned to the Equestrian Club or gone gallivanting with his friends, who were puzzled by his absence: “What’s become of Maurici?” His father was quite pleased with his new demeanor and felt confident it would be a permanent sign of maturity. Lídia, on the other hand, had misgivings. Although she never questioned him openly, she studied him in the short periods of time he spent at home, wondering what private problem dimmed the aura that had always enveloped him; the aura she considered her son’s exclusive attribute.
It was imperative to go back to La Perla d’Orient: the only place that, however tenuously, linked him to Rita. That Thursday, a few minutes before eight, he stood by the store entrance holding his umbrella. It had been raining all day. Horses’ hooves and carriage wheels sank in the puddles, splashing his trousers and shoes. His unruffled nature, plus the patience he’d learnt to cultivate, made the wait bearable as he watched passersby scuttle in every direction as if they knew exactly where they were going. Funny, he thought, they gave that impression of purposefulness only on rainy days, never when the sun was shining. After a good fifteen minutes, the woman emerged from the store with Jaumet in tow and they started down toward The Ramblas. Maurici’s vision was impaired by the flora of umbrellas brought forth by the rain; to make matters worse, theirs was dark purple, a color that didn’t stand out under the overcast sky. Jaumet’s short, bobbing steps were easy to identify as long as no one tall blocked his dancing figure altogether. Maurici’s eyes also focused on the woman’s greenish skirt. On the corner at the top of The Ramblas, they stopped at a stand. She bought a bag of nuts and put it in the hands of her escort, who immediately began to gobble them up. No one else stopped in the rain to buy snacks.
It was
rush hour and now the water poured down in bucketfuls. Despite the privileged view his height afforded him, Maurici could barely catch glimpses of the green skirt and Jaumet’s uneven gait. Sometimes he had to duck his head under the umbrellas of passersby, or crane his neck in search of the purple one. He pushed and was pushed and his umbrella often invaded the circles of neighboring ones, their metallic ribs clashing like swords. Those who came under assault cast furious glances that he ignored; if they protested, “Watch where you’re going!” he apologized absent-mindedly. At last, when he reached the square in front of the university, the struggle subsided and visibility improved. The couple crossed the square, took Aribau Street, and, after a couple of blocks, went into an apartment building on the right-hand side. Maurici stood a few seconds on the broad sidewalk, weighing his options. He was soaked to the skin and uncertain of what he’d accomplished so far. Nevertheless, he knew the next evening at eight o’clock, he would be back at La Perla d’Orient.
Friday saw a repetition of the same route, only this time under clear skies. They stopped again at the same stand and the woman, after exchanging a few words with the attendant, placed the bag of nuts in her companion’s hand just like the day before. When they arrived at the apartment building, Maurici lingered outside; once the couple disappeared into the lobby, he decided to approach the entrance. On the right side stood the doorkeeper’s booth, where a thin, white-haired woman was patching a garment. Maurici walked past her jauntily while she eyed him above a pair of glasses that straddled the tip of her nose. He didn’t have a ready-made answer in case she asked who he was looking for, so he’d have to make up some excuse. Luckily, his gift of improvisation remained untested.
The Street of the Three Beds Page 6