A Barcelona Heiress

by Sergio Vila-Sanjuán

  “Pablo,” he said, “you must accompany me tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “The Alcázar Español.”

  “Well, it just so happens that I am representing one of its performers.”

  “I know, and she’s going to be debuting my latest song. That’s why I would like you to come with me.”

  We had dinner at a nearby tavern before heading down the streets of Barcelona’s District V which, as always, were positively hopping: sailors; bourgeois men in the company of lady friends; scoundrels adopting an aristocratic air; pickpockets; street urchins, both children and adolescents, deprived of their childhoods; prostitutes, young, old, and very old; repulsive pimps; and a large horde of more nondescript types all made their way cheerfully down the street, between organ grinders and neon signs. They say that in the middle of the French Revolution, at the peak of the Terror, when dozens of heads rolled each day into the baskets below the guillotines and the city of Paris had been torn asunder, divided between the denouncers and the denounced, over twenty-five theaters opened each night, to full houses. In Barcelona during the years I am describing, when gunmen bathed the city streets in blood in broad daylight, the nights were long and frenzied. As we walked toward the venue I reflected on how easily the different circles of Barcelona society could interlace: through María I had come into contact with a world of anarchism of which I had hitherto been utterly ignorant, and my journalistic associations were now taking me back to the singer.

  The auditorium at the Alcázar Español was oblong, with a capacity for some two hundred people. The tables were set up in a crescent pattern around a central stage for performances, and to the right was an area for the band, leaving an ample space as a dance floor. We sat down at a table near the stage. A waitress brought us a bottle of cognac and couple of glasses. The place was quite full and seemed as if it had never been ventilated. I could almost feel the thick smoke hanging in the air permeating my jacket.

  “It’ll be a little while,” Amichatis informed me. “Let’s watch the shows. First up is the skit called The Models.”

  As the band struck up quite a dissonant tune, the curtain slowly rose. The scene was set in a painter’s studio. A painter was working away in the company of a friend. On a platform a young lady dressed in translucent tights stood there for a good while, exhibiting her charms. The two men chatted and, after a while, the artist told the girl to leave. She strutted around the stage a few times, showing off her body before heading for the back, through the audience, wrapped up in a sheet. Next was a musical act by a group of chorus girls, who ultimately informed the painter that he had a visitor. An Englishwoman entered, offering herself as a model. The painter told her to disrobe, and she removed her velvet cloak, revealing herself in all her splendor. Amichatis sat at my side, drooling as the public roared. A closing musical number ensued to wrap things up.

  We were later treated to a virtually toothless comedian who was not at all funny, and a small flamenco group composed of two guitarists and a dancer.

  It was past midnight when María Nilo appeared onstage, her hair pulled back by a spectacular tiara, her eyes strongly lined with makeup, and wearing a flimsy, almost transparent tunic. As the band played the first few measures, María initiated a series of provocative contortions before approaching the director and reaching a hand out toward him. The musician handed her a small silver box. María opened it and took out what seemed to be a white powder. Placing it on the back of her hand she lifted it up to her nose and snorted it down. She then smiled and launched into an irreverent song:

  “Cocaine …

  I’m a flower fallen

  from deadly vice,

  a slave vanquished by destiny …

  Alone in the world

  —born of sin—

  a villain

  made me a woman!

  That desire was the yoke

  a child of evil

  a fatal descent

  of my deadly soul!

  And in the end fallen

  —sullied by the mire—

  I’m a plaything of pleasure for everyone …

  And in cocaine

  which reveals another world to me

  I seek tranquility

  for my feminine soul!

  It sweetened the bile

  —of this pain—

  that made me cruel!

  Cocaine!

  I know that in the end

  it will kill me!

  It’s killing me!

  But it soothes my

  pain …

  If I can’t have it

  my life is all darkness.

  I know that in the end it will kill me

  but it doesn’t make me suffer.

  The singer paused, asked the musician for the little box again, and snorted some more.

  Having lost all hope

  I expect nothing of the world

  and care about nothing at all

  life …

  Vanished

  the shadow of the past

  and destroyed

  my heart … I anxiously seek my destruction,

  the drug which

  in the end

  shall grant me

  a merciful death …

  Queen of the orgy

  —its blessed tyranny—

  little by little

  consuming my soul …

  It controls me

  and reveals another world

  when it soothes

  my feminine

  soul!

  It sweetened the bile

  —of this pain—

  that made me cruel!

  The crowd applauded amid laughter and a series of bawdy exclamations. I was incensed.

  “Amichatis, this time you’ve gone too far! This song is a veritable celebration of vice.”

  The old writer downed his cognac and flashed me a friendly smile.

  “Oh, come on, old friend. Don’t be such a prude. Man is weak and needs some diversions to endure the Darwinian fight for survival. You’re a man from a good family, educated, with a university education, healthy, and intelligent … You’ve always had everything going for you. Many others have not been so fortunate. Shall you criticize these struggling souls who are not welcome at the Polo Club or the Marquess of Fontanellas’s parties, for seeking out their own artificial escapes? Besides, my song has a tragic ending, and a moral.”

  “Oh, spare me your sophistic justifications. You know perfectly well that cocaine and morphine, which abound in these quarters, are addictive and turn their users into the traffickers’ slaves. As for women, it makes them fodder for the rings dealing in white slaves. Amichatis, do not romanticize degradation!”

  Displaying his yellowish fingers as he lifted his glass, the writer knocked back the last drop of his drink.

  “Oh, let’s not argue, Vilar. Let’s go say hello to María Nilo instead.”

  I followed Amichatis across the floor where the waiters were collecting trays loaded with glasses and bottles handed to them from behind the ornately carved wooden bar, inlaid with shiny brass. In a corner there was a sign reading “Private Rooms” where a few stumbling and apparently impromptu couples headed, arm in arm. Off to the right was a hallway over which hung another sign: “Dressing Rooms.” We made our way down a narrow and dimly lit corridor with chipped walls.

  María Nilo was already dressed and sitting in a tiny back room that Amichatis barged into without bothering to knock. The artiste had just finished removing her makeup in front of a mirror. On the table sat the little silver box used in the show. It was open and a white dust was scattered around it.

  “You were stellar, dear. My lyrics could not have been better delivered,” raved Amichatis. I was hardly so supportive.

  “María, I find this whole cocaine business most disquieting. You have asked me to assist you with various problems affecting you, but until now you had concealed from me that you are a consumer of illegal substances, a penchant w
hich today may land you in even more serious trouble. I cannot work like this.”

  “Come on, Pablo. It’s just a song. Entertainment is no crime.”

  “I’m the lawyer here, if I’m not mistaken. And what about this?” I asked, pointing to the powder sprinkled about the box. “Don’t tell me you just found it there.”

  “I’m ravenous. Would you two join me for something to eat?” she responded as she stood up.

  * * *

  A few minutes later we were sitting at a table in Granja Felisa, one of those unlikely places easy to find in District V during that era, which specialized in providing refuge to those weary and worn out from their carousing at the cabarets, offering them a place to slowly emerge back into the light over churros with hot dipping chocolate or melindros, traditional Catalonian ladyfingers, amid marble tables in a clean atmosphere staffed by friendly waiters clad in white dinner jackets. Granja Felisa was the kind of place perfect for families to frequent for afternoon snacks, but, as if in a total blunder, it was located right in the heart of Barcelona’s most sordid neighborhood, and was open all night long. Therein lay its appeal.

  The waiter came over with our large cups brimming with thick dipping chocolate and the freshly baked treats we had ordered. Amichatis was glowing.

  “This song will be an unprecedented success, a trademark tune of Barcelona’s so-called Chinatown. The international visitors who come to revel in our city’s seedier side will have no choice but to cite it in their books about Barcelona.”

  Exhausted but euphoric, María basked in the seasoned smooth talker’s rhapsodizing.

  “Still the long face? Why don’t you cheer up?” she chided me.

  “Today you showed me a side of yourself that I didn’t like.”

  “You’re right. I don’t like it either. Actually, I think I shall have to explain the whole truth to you. It all began a long time ago …”

  The actress had been using cocaine for four or five years. She had been introduced to the drug by a fellow performer during a particularly grueling run at a Madrid venue where the shows began at three in the afternoon and dragged on until three in the morning. María was exhausted and wasting away, unable to get up in the morning. During this first phase she discovered that a line of cocaine in the late afternoon, when she was already drained, could keep her going strong until the early hours.

  At first her consumption of the substance was sporadic, but the doses began to increase. Soon she realized that on days when she didn’t take the drug she grew very shaky.

  “The truth is that I came into contact with the three men who attacked me because they supplied me with cocaine. That was why I used to go out with them in Barcelona, a behavior which had baffled you.”

  “But, María, why didn’t you share this information with me from the start?!” I exclaimed.

  “I thought you wouldn’t take it well, and would turn me down.”

  Inside me a battle raged between the irrational sympathy I felt for that woman and the wariness warranted by her disturbingly erratic revelations. The latter prevailed.

  “And, indeed, that is precisely what is going to happen. I refuse to represent you. You have withheld important information from me on two occasions, and I find your lack of candor insulting. Good night, María. Good night, Amichatis.”

  “Wait,” pleaded María, opening her hand and placing a little of the white substance in her palm. “Have you ever tried it? Aren’t you ever melancholic? Don’t you ever feel weak? Aren’t you ever exhausted? Do things always go your way? Don’t you ever need a shot in the arm?”

  I thought about Isabel Enrich and hesitated for a moment. Then I thought about my practice’s ailing finances, and hesitated once more. Finally I got up, determined to leave.

  “Before you go, look at this,” María said, handing me a letter which read: “Don’t think I have forgotten what you owe me. You are going to pay. Albert Blum.”

  He was the only Spaniard of the three men who had attacked María Nilo, the man I had seen beaten to a pulp at the police station.

  “But this man … this man must be rotting deep in a Burgos jail.”

  “Are you so sure about that?” María Nilo asked.

  10

  The second session of the trial against Enriqueta Bigorria attracted much larger crowds than on the first day. A long line snaked through the hallways, down the staircase, and into the foyer of the courthouse, even occupying part of the sidewalk outside the Salón de San Juan courtroom. The monumental neoclassical building’s main façade is adorned by twenty-three sculptures, each more than six feet tall, their common theme being the law and its practice. My favorite is that of Cicero, a work by Agapito Vallmitjana, which always makes me think about two of his quotes: “cedant arma togae” (“let arms yield to the toga”), so vital yet so seldom heeded at that time; and “truth is corrupted by lying, but also by silence,” a maxim to which I wish had paid greater heed than I sometimes have.

  When the doors were opened, the courtroom filled in just a few minutes, and the tables for the press were so crowded that several journalists had to sit with the general public. These colleagues of mine assigned to court coverage had always treated me in the finest fashion: Serra, from Las Noticias; Madrid, from El Sol; Martín, from El Correo Catalán; Bardí, from Diario de Barcelona; Ricard, from El Día Gráfico; Salanova, from La Publicidad; Furró, from El Universo; Maluenda, from El Liberal de Madrid; Varó, from La Tribuna . . . Some of them were great associates of mine in the profession, and some were close friends. Their coverage of me and my legal endeavors during those years when I was making a name for myself as an attorney afforded me a prominence that I never could have imagined.

  Escorted by the bailiffs, my client came into the courtroom, once again crying hysterically. The chief magistrate asked the prosecutor to proceed. After citing the facts appearing in the conclusions which had been presented as definitive the day before, Juan Hidalgo concluded his report with a thoroughly condescending argument calculated to win the public over.

  “I am the first one to lament,” he said, “the ill fortune which seems to have always plagued the defendant, who never knew her parents, and who was one day taken by a man for whom she felt an intense love, but who was only to abandon her, leaving her deprived of her honor. If it were up to me I would throw the doors of the prison holding her today wide open. I regret serving in this position as the prosecutor, for I would much prefer to be sitting on the other side, at the defense’s table. The law dictates, however, that I am to prosecute Enriqueta, and I mean to do my duty.

  “I must note that I have the highest praise for the defendant’s counsel,” added the prosecutor as I nodded to express my gratitude, “who was exceptionally adept during the questioning, although I cannot subscribe to his description of the victim, Luis Pérez, who he depicted as a heartless man. Ladies and gentleman, it is almost impossible to believe that when they began their relationship the defendant was duped by the deceased, who supposedly tricked her into getting drunk, for she was a lady of twenty-seven at the time, and Luis was ten years her junior. Her age was one at which women begin to shed those bright hopes of entering into a proper marriage, an aspiration which all women harbor in the springtime of their lives. It is hard to believe that a woman of twenty-seven, who was no longer a girl, or even an adolescent, or even a young lady for that matter, would let herself be taken in by a seventeen-year-old boy and be forced to drink, or that she would be willing to do his bidding, unless she willingly consented. Thus, it is not fair to portray her as the absolute victim which the defense would like for you to see in her. I shall go even further: when an honorable woman is mistreated by a man in the manner in which Enriqueta was, she flees from him and hides to bemoan her misfortune. But the defendant did nothing of the sort, instead choosing to live with Luis in her lover’s residence, and carrying on the life of a married woman with him.”

  A wave of murmurs rolled through the audience. Composed, the prosecutor cont
inued with his argument.

  “As for their daughter’s death, it is a tragic tale if there ever were one, which cannot but rend the heart of anyone with the slightest compassion. However, if it were true that she died because her father ceased to supply the wet nurse with the funds in question, it would only have been logical for the defendant to have abandoned him completely, for she would have loathed him as the man responsible for her daughter’s death.”

  Expressions of agreement could be seen amid the rows of citizens in the gallery.

  “When the defendant went to meet Carmen, Luis’s new fiancée, she saw a youth and beauty which were, perhaps, what precipitated her premeditation, which has been clearly demonstrated in this case. Let’s consider the issue of the knife. We cannot accept the assertion that she bought it at noon on the day in question to use it in the kitchen of a house in which she was no longer a maidservant. What defines murder is premeditation and treachery. In this case the former is quite clear. Enriqueta Bigorria was solely and directly responsible for the death of Luis Pérez, who she killed after planning his murder. Thus, I have no choice but to seek a sentence of life in prison. If there is any room for mercy for the defendant, within the confines of the law, I myself beseech your honor to extend it to her. It is my sincere hope that your verdict might reconcile both fairness and equity.”

  * * *

  When the judge gave me the floor, the public responded with the bated breath typical of such moments in trials. I straightened my gown and adjusted my cap.

  I began by stating that the legal profession is the only one in which the soul comes into play as the decisive factor. “Yes,” I said, “a soul tortured by tragedy and, thus, I must employ all the powers of persuasion I possess to defend the woman before you.”

  I then proceeded to paint a picture of the defendant’s trials and tribulations …

  “ … up until the moment when she believed herself on the verge of enjoying an honorable and happy home, misled by the promises of a man who, in fits of recklessness, whether sparked by alcohol or whatever else, deprived her of her honor, her savings, and her future. The flesh is weak, and mortal sin sinks its claws and teeth into us, while we feel powerless to defend ourselves. Abused and despicably deceived, the accused defended her honor, without considering that the instrument which she employed would prove deadly.”