“I’ll call you tomorrow, or the next,” she said.
“Do you promise?”
She nodded.
“You can call me at home or at the bookshop. It’s the same number. You have it, don’t you?”
She nodded again. I asked the driver to stop for a moment on the corner of Muntaner and Diputación. I offered to see Bea to her front door, but she refused and walked away without letting me kiss her again, or even brush her hand. She started to run as I looked on from the taxi. The lights were on in the Aguilars’ apartment, and I could clearly see my friend Tomás watching me from his bedroom window, where we had spent so many afternoons together chatting or playing chess. I waved at him, forcing a smile that he probably could not see. He didn’t return the greeting. He remained static, glued to the windowpane, gazing at me coldly. A few seconds later, he moved away and the window went dark. He was waiting for us, I thought.
·35·
WHEN I GOT HOME, I FOUND THE REMAINS OF A DINNER FOR two on the table. My father had already gone to bed, and I wondered whether, by chance, he had plucked up the courage to invite Merceditas around for dinner. I tiptoed off toward my room and went in without turning on the light. The moment I sat on the edge of the mattress, I realized there was someone else in the room, lying on the bed in the dark like a dead body with his hands crossed over his chest. I felt an icy spasm in my stomach, but soon I recognized the snoring, and the profile of that incomparable nose. I turned on the light on the bedside table and found Fermín Romero de Torres lying on the bedspread, lost in a blissful dream and moaning gently with pleasure. I sighed, and the sleeper opened his eyes. When he saw me, he looked surprised. He was obviously expecting some other company. He rubbed his eyes and looked about him, taking in his surroundings more closely.
“I hope I didn’t scare you. Bernarda says that when I’m asleep, I look like a Spanish Boris Karloff.”
“What are you doing on my bed, Fermín?”
He half closed his eyes with longing.
“Dreaming of Carole Lombard. We were in Tangier, in some Turkish baths, and I was covering her in oil, the sort they sell for babies’ bottoms. Have you ever covered a woman with oil, from head to toe, completely and meticulously?”
“Fermín, it’s half past midnight, and I’m dead on my feet.”
“Please forgive me, Daniel. It’s just that your father insisted that I come up and have dinner with him, and afterward I felt terribly drowsy. Beef has a narcotic effect on me, you see. Your father suggested that I lie down here for a while, insisting that you wouldn’t mind….”
“And I don’t mind, Fermín. It’s just that you’ve caught me by surprise. Keep the bed and go back to Carole Lombard; she must be waiting for you. And get under the sheets. It’s a foul night, and if you stay on top you’ll catch something. I’ll go to the dining room.”
Fermín nodded meekly. The bruises on his face were beginning to swell up, and his head, covered with two days of stubble and that sparse hair, looked like some ripe fruit fallen from a tree. I took a blanket from the chest of drawers and handed another one to Fermín. Then I turned off the light and went back to the dining room, where my father’s favorite armchair awaited me. I wrapped myself in the blanket and curled up, as best I could, convinced that I wouldn’t sleep a wink. The image of the two white coffins in the dark was branded on my mind. I closed my eyes and did my best to delete the sight. In its place I conjured up the image of Bea in the bathroom, lying naked on the blankets, in candlelight. As I abandoned myself to these thoughts, it seemed to me that I could hear the distant murmur of the sea, and I wondered whether, without my knowing it, I had already succumbed to sleep. Perhaps I was sailing toward Tangier. Soon I realized that the sound was only Fermín’s snoring. A moment later the world was turned off. In all my life, I’ve never slept so well or so deeply as that night.
MORNING CAME, AND IT WAS POURING. STREETS WERE FLOODED, AND the rain beat angrily against the windows. The telephone rang at seven-thirty. I jumped out of the armchair to answer, with my heart in my mouth. Fermín, in a bathrobe and slippers, and my father, holding the coffeepot, exchanged that look I was already growing used to.
“Bea?” I whispered into the receiver, with my back to them.
I thought I heard a sigh on the line.
“Bea, is that you?”
There was no answer, and a few seconds later the line went dead. I stayed there for a minute, staring at the telephone, hoping it would ring again.
“They’ll call back, Daniel. Come and have some breakfast now,” said my father.
She’ll call again later, I told myself. Someone must have caught her phoning. It couldn’t be easy to break Mr. Aguilar’s curfew. There was no reason to be alarmed. With this and other excuses, I dragged myself to the table to pretend I was going to have breakfast with Fermín and my father. It might have been the rain, but the food had lost all its flavor.
It rained all morning. Shortly after we opened the bookshop, there was a general power cut in the whole neighborhood that lasted until noon.
“That’s all we needed,” sighed my father.
At three the first leaks began. Fermín offered to go up to Merceditas’s apartment to borrow some buckets, dishes, or any other hollow receptacle. My father strictly forbade him to go. The deluge persisted. To alleviate my nervousness, I told Fermín what had happened the day before, though I kept to myself what I’d seen in the crypt. Fermín listened with fascination, but despite his insistence, I refused to describe to him the consistency, texture, and shape of Bea’s breasts. The day wore slowly on.
After dinner, on the pretext of going out to stretch my legs, I left my father reading and walked up to Bea’s house. When I got there, I stopped on the corner to look up at the large windows of the apartment. I asked myself what I was doing. Spying, meddling, or making a fool of myself were some of the answers that went through my mind. Even so, as lacking in dignity as in appropriate clothes for such icy weather, I took shelter from the wind in a doorway on the other side of the street for about half an hour, watching the windows and seeing the silhouettes of Mr. Aguilar and his wife as they passed by. But not a trace of Bea.
It was almost midnight when I got back home, shivering with cold and carrying the world on my shoulders. She’ll call tomorrow, I told myself a thousand times while I tried to fall asleep. Bea didn’t call the next day. Or the next. She didn’t call that whole week, the longest and the last of my life.
IN SEVEN DAYS’ TIME, I WOULD BE DEAD.
·36·
ONLY SOMEONE WHO HAS BARELY A WEEK LEFT TO LIVE COULD waste his time the way I wasted mine during those days. All I did was watch over the telephone and gnaw at my soul, so much a prisoner of my own blindness that I wasn’t even capable of guessing what destiny was already taking for granted. On Monday at noon, I went over to the Literature Faculty in Plaza Universidad, hoping to see Bea. I knew she wouldn’t be amused if I turned up there and we were seen together, but facing her anger was preferable to continuing with my uncertainty.
I asked in the office for Professor Velázquez’s lecture room and decided to wait for the students to come out. I waited for about twenty minutes, until the doors opened and I saw the arrogant, well-groomed countenance of Professor Velázquez, as usual surrounded by his small group of female admirers. Five minutes later there was still no sign of Bea. I decided to walk up to the door of the lecture room and take a look. A trio of girls were huddled together like a Sunday-school group, chatting and exchanging either lecture notes or secrets. The one who seemed like the leader of the congregation noticed my presence and interrupted her monologue to fire me an inquisitive look.
“I’m sorry. I’m looking for Beatriz Aguilar. Do you know whether she comes to this class?”
The girls traded venomous glances.
“Are you her fiancé?” one of them asked. “The officer?”
I smiled blankly, and they took this to mean agreement. Only the third girl smiled back at me, shyly, averting
her eyes. The other two were more forward, almost defiant.
“I imagined you different,” said the one who seemed to be the head commando.
“Where’s the uniform?” asked the second in command, observing me with suspicion.
“I’m on leave. Do you know whether she’s already left?”
“Beatriz didn’t come to class today,” the chief informed me.
“Oh, didn’t she?”
“No,” confirmed the suspicious lieutenant. “If you’re her fiancé, you should know.”
“I’m her fiancé, not a Civil Guard.”
“Come on, let’s go, this guy’s a twit,” the chief said.
They both walked past me, eyeing me sideways with disdain. The third one lagged behind. She stopped for a moment before leaving and, making quite sure the others didn’t see her, whispered in my ear, “Beatriz didn’t come on Friday either.”
“Do you know why?”
“You’re not her fiancé, are you?”
“No. Only a friend.”
“I think she’s ill.”
“Ill?”
“That’s what one of the girls who phoned her said. Now I must go.”
Before I was able to thank her for her help, the girl went off to join the other two, who were waiting for her with withering looks at the far end of the cloister.
“DANIEL, SOMETHING MUST HAVE HAPPENED. A GREAT-AUNT HAS DIED, or a parrot has got the mumps, or she’s caught a cold from so much going around without enough clothes to cover her bum—goodness knows what. Contrary to what you firmly believe, the earth does not revolve around the desires of your crotch. Other factors influence the evolution of mankind.”
“You think I’m not aware of that? You don’t seem to know me, Fermín.”
“My dear, if God had wished to give me wider hips, I might even have given birth to you: that’s how well I know you. Pay attention to me. Throw off those thoughts and get some fresh air. Waiting is the rust of the soul.”
“So I seem absurd to you.”
“No. You seem fretful. I know that at your age these things look like the end of the world, but everything has a limit. Tonight you and I are going on a binge in a club on Calle Platería, which is apparently all the rage. I hear there are some new Scandinavian girls straight from Ciudad Real that are real knockouts. It’s on me.”
“And what will Bernarda say?”
“The girls are for you. I’ll be waiting in the hall, reading a magazine and looking at the nice bundles of stuff from afar, because I’m a convert to monogamy, if not in mentis, at least de facto.”
“I’m very grateful, Fermín, but—”
“A young boy of eighteen who refuses such an offer is not in his right mind. Something must be done immediately. Here.”
He searched in his pockets and handed me some coins. I wondered whether that was the enormous sum with which he was going to finance the visit to the sumptuous seraglio of Iberian nymphs.
“With this we won’t even get a ‘Good evening,’ Fermín.”
“You’re one of those people who fall off a tree and never quite reach the ground. Do you really think that I’m going to take you to a whorehouse and bring you back, covered with gonorrhea, to your dear father, who is the saintliest man I have ever met? I told you about the chicks to see whether you’d react, appealing to the only part of your person that seems to be in working order. This is for you to go to the telephone on the corner and call your beloved with a bit of privacy.”
“Bea told me quite clearly not to phone her.”
“She also told you she’d call you on Friday. It’s already Monday. It’s up to you. It is one thing to believe in women, and another to believe what they say.”
Convinced by his arguments, I slipped out of the bookshop, walked over to the public telephone on the street corner, and dialed the Aguilars’ number. At the fifth ring, someone lifted the telephone on the other end and listened in silence, without answering. Five eternal seconds went by.
“Bea?” I murmured. “Is that you?”
The voice that answered struck my stomach like a hammer.
“You son of a bitch, I swear I’m going to beat your brains out.”
It was the steely tone of pure, contained anger. Icy and serene. That is what scared me most. I could picture Mr. Aguilar holding the telephone in the entrance hall of his apartment, the same one I had often used to call my father and tell him I would be late because I’d spent the afternoon with Tomás. I stayed where I was, listening to the breathing of Bea’s father, dumb, wondering whether he’d recognized my voice.
“I see you don’t even have the balls to talk, you swine. Any little shit is capable of doing what you’ve done, but a man would at least have the guts to show his face. I would die of shame if I thought that a seventeen-year-old girl was ballsier than me—because she hasn’t revealed your name and she’s not going to. I know her. And since you don’t have the courage to show your face for Beatriz’s sake, she’s going to have to pay for what you’ve done.”
When I hung up, my hands were shaking. I wasn’t conscious of what I’d done until I left the booth and dragged my feet back toward the bookshop. I hadn’t stopped to consider that my call would only make things worse for Bea. My only concern had been to remain anonymous and hide my face, disowning those whom I professed to love and whom I only used. I had done this already when Inspector Fumero had beaten up Fermín. I had done it again when I’d abandoned Bea to her fate. I would do it again as soon as circumstances provided me with another opportunity. I stayed out on the street for ten minutes, trying to calm down before returning to the bookshop. Perhaps I should call again and tell Mr. Aguilar that yes, it was me. That I was crazy about his daughter, end of story. If he then felt like coming by in his general’s uniform and beating me up, he had every right to do so.
I was on my way back when I noticed that somebody was watching me from a doorway on the other side of the street. At first I thought it was Don Federico, the watchmaker, but a quick glance was enough to make me realize this was a taller, more solid-looking individual. I stopped to return his gaze, and, to my surprise, he nodded, as if he wished to greet me and prove that he didn’t mind at all that I’d noticed his presence. The light from one of the streetlamps fell on his face. His features seemed familiar. He took a step forward, buttoning his raincoat to his neck; he smiled at me and walked away toward the Ramblas, mingling with other passersby. Then I recognized him: the police officer who had held me down while Inspector Fumero attacked Fermín.
When I entered the bookshop, Fermín looked at me inquisitively.
“What’s that face for?”
“Fermín, I think we have a problem.”
That same evening we put into action the plan we had conceived with Don Gustavo Barceló.
“The first thing is to make sure that you are right and we’re under police surveillance. We’ll walk over to Els Quatre Gats, casually, to see whether that guy is still out there, lying in wait. But not a word of all this to your father, or he’ll end up with a kidney stone.”
“And what do I tell him? He’s suspicious enough as it is.”
“Tell him you’re going out to buy sunflower seeds or something.”
“And why do we need to go to Els Quatre Gats, precisely?”
“Because there they serve the best ham sandwiches in a three-mile radius, and we have to talk somewhere. Don’t be a wet blanket—do as I say, Daniel.”
Welcoming any activity that would distract me from my thoughts, I obeyed meekly, and a couple of minutes later was on my way out into the street, having assured my father that I’d be back in time for dinner. Fermín was waiting for me on the corner. As soon as I joined him, he raised his eyebrows to indicate that I should start walking.
“We’ve got the rattlesnake about twenty yards behind us. Don’t turn your head.”
“Is it the same one?”
“I don’t think so, unless he’s shrunk with this wet weather. This one looks l
ike a novice. He’s carrying a sports page that’s six days old. Fumero must be recruiting apprentices from the charity hospice.”
When we got to Els Quatre Gats, our plainclothes policeman sat at a table a few yards from ours and pretended to reread last week’s football-league report. Every twenty seconds he would throw us a furtive glance.
“Poor thing, look how he’s sweating,” said Fermín, shaking his head. “You seem rather distant, Daniel. Did you speak to the girl or didn’t you?”
“Her father answered the phone.”
“And you had a friendly and civil conversation?”
“It was more like a monologue.”
“I see. Must I therefore infer that you don’t address him as papá yet?”
“He told me verbatim that he was going to beat my brains out.”
“Surely that was a rhetorical flourish.”
At that moment the waiter’s frame hovered over us. Fermín asked for enough food to feed a regiment, rubbing his hands with anticipation.
“And you don’t want anything, Daniel?”
I shook my head. When the waiter returned with two trays full of tapas, sandwiches, and various glasses of beer, Fermín handed him a handsome sum and told him to keep the change.
“Listen, boss,” he added. “Do you see that guy sitting at the table by the window—the one dressed like Jiminy Cricket with his head buried in his newspaper, as if it were a cone?”
The waiter nodded with an air of complicity.
“Could you please go and tell him that there’s an urgent message from Inspector Fumero? He must go immediately to the Boquería Market to buy twenty duros’ worth of boiled chickpeas and take them without delay to Police Headquarters (in a taxi if necessary)—or he must prepare to present his balls to him on a plate. Would you like me to repeat it?”
“That won’t be necessary, sir. Twenty duros’ worth of chickpeas or his balls on a plate.”
Fermín handed him another coin. “God bless you.”
The Shadow of the Wind Page 33