by Jordi Puntí
“If only I were,” she answered with tears in her eyes. And anyone would have thought she really meant it.
That was the start of Rita’s long journey to Bundó’s funeral. A workers’ bus took her to Barcelona where she got out at the Passeig de Gràcia stop, went into the station, and bought a round-trip ticket to El Vendrell. She jumped on the train as the doors were closing.
While she was looking for a seat, an old man grumpily asked her if they had women ticket inspectors nowadays. She’d left the airport without changing out of her Cage uniform. She sat down in an empty compartment and removed her jacket in order to avoid further misunderstandings and so as not to feel so out of place. As always in winter, the heating on the train was turned up full blast and she was grateful for the hospitable warmth. As she calmed down, the tears and confusion returned. She was trying not to think about bad luck because that wouldn’t be fair to Serafí. Then again, if she concentrated on him, her head began to fill up with questions. How had he died, for example? Who had found him? She’d seen he was a wreck the day before, but he wasn’t that bad. What if she was the last person he’d spoken to? What a useless honor. In short, she told herself, she was in mourning again, just like when her parents died. It was a strange kind of mourning, a sort of indirect mourning, and it brought to mind the words “We began the house with the roof . . .”
What with the warmth and the rocking of the train, Rita nodded off, still assailed by her thoughts. She didn’t wake up for a long time. She opened her eyes because the train had stopped at a station and her sleep was invaded by high-pitched cheeping. In Vilafranca del Penedès two countrywomen had come in and sat beside her. They were carrying a basket full of chicks.
“Is it far to El Vendrell?” she asked.
“It’s this stop, young lady! You’d better hurry . . .”
She leaped off the train with the last whistle. She heard the curses of the station master while the two women applauded her from the window. The platform clock said three minutes past four. Following the directions of a passerby, she took another five minutes to walk down an attractive rambla, cross through a market, and go up a narrow street before reaching the church square. The funeral service had already begun by the time she entered the church. The sickly smell of burning wax made her feel dizzy. The casket had been placed before the altar. The priest was praising Serafí, a native son of El Vendrell who, in accordance with the designs of Our Lord, had led a life marked not only by hardship and the vicissitudes of fortune but also by his iron will and determined efforts to stay on the path of righteousness. His mellifluous voice, redolent of Montserrat choirboys, echoed inside the baroque church. Rita counted only thirty people, all huddled over against the cold. She sat in the second-to-last row and looked at the backs of the necks in front of her. The men were on the right of the altar and women on the left. A pious tableau of three nuns was conspicuous in the first row on her side. Sitting next to them were the lady she’d seen coming out of the pension in Ronda de Sant Antoni the previous afternoon, and a blond girl who couldn’t stop crying. She was inconsolable and kept shaking her head. Rita preferred to believe she was Serafi’s sister and not his widow. There were more men than women and it was difficult for her to work out who was who on their side of the church. She imagined they were his workmates (and we now know that all La Ibérica staff members were present under the captainship of Senyor Casellas). Who would go to her funeral, if she died, she wondered. Her workmates at the airport, her neighbors, her few friends, and that was all. A lot of people wouldn’t even know for weeks or even months, which is what had happened with her parents.
Distracted by these thoughts, she just about survived the ceremony. From time to time she looked over at the coffin. Her Serafí was lying in there, she reminded herself. She’d get into the habit of coming to visit him at All Saints, every year without fail, bringing him a bunch of flowers. She’d come by train to El Vendrell. It would be her secret. She saw herself as an old maid, decrepit, not easy to pigeonhole. She’d play bingo with her friends using chickpeas instead of coins and, over afternoon tea, if some widow asked her if she was lonely, she’d summon up an old love of her youth. “A tragic story,” she’d say, “too tragic to talk about,” and then she’d go quiet.
When the priest dismissed them with the last amen, Rita followed the other mourners out of the church. An altar boy handed her an In Memoriam card, and she read the name again. Once outside, everyone took up positions on either side of the entrance and steps, leaving a corridor for the pallbearers. The hearse was waiting with its back door open. It was a cloudy day, but a peekaboo sun was warming the square when they came out. Rita glimpsed a few men inside the church raising the casket and resting it on their shoulders. They had to be friends and workmates. Soon the priest came out, murmuring a prayer and followed by the altar boy. The pallbearers followed. They walked slowly and carefully. Rita watched the scene transfixed. Everything had happened so fast that nothing seemed real. As the coffin passed in front of her she was dazzled by a ray of sun and shielded her eyes with her hand so as not to miss a single detail. Then, right there, in front of her, she saw Gabriel, her Serafí, alive, grieving as he’d been the previous day, but alive, having some difficulty bearing the coffin using only his right arm and shoulder (as his left arm was in a cast). What a shock! The supernatural vision made her shudder violently, and she cried out in fright. Like all the other mourners, Gabriel turned to look at her but didn’t recognize her. Of course he didn’t. Rita was so overwhelmed that she started to shake. Then she buckled at the knees and fainted for the second time that day. It was one swoon responding to the other, a swooning competition.
Two women who worked in a knitting-wool shop in the square and who’d been watching the funeral proceedings brought her around by getting her to drink the standard remedy for attacks of hysteria, aigua del Carme, made by Carmelite nuns. Meanwhile, the funeral procession moved on to the cemetery. Of all the mourners, only Natàlia Rifà, who had a thing about graveyards, remained behind with the young lady in the strange uniform. She’d spotted Rita watching her building the previous evening for heaven knows what reason, and now she recognized her. Her curiosity was killing her.
Rita felt drugged by the holy remedy. Her head was spinning. Her first words were to ask whether the dead man, Serafí, had a twin brother. She’d seen the arm in its cast, of course, but at this stage she didn’t believe her own eyes. Natàlia Rifà gave her a maternal smile and cleared up the matter by telling her that her Serafí’s real name was Gabriel Delacruz. They went into a café, and she told Rita about the accident, Bundó’s death, and all the ups and downs in the lives of the La Ibérica truckers. The airport misunderstandings gradually began to untangle. If she’d paid proper attention, she would have seen that the death notice in El Correo Catalán said that Bundó had died three days earlier.
The next train departing from El Vendrell took them to Barcelona. Despite her uniform, Rita was in such a state that no one took her for a ticket inspector this time. On the way back she confessed to Gabriel’s landlady about her obsession with the horoscope, the predictions of Jorgito the Magician, and the coincidences at the airport. Talking about her troubles brought some relief, and Senyora Rifà lapped it up. She saw in Rita a version of herself some twenty-four years earlier when she’d come to the city to take over the pension, a young woman fizzing with vitality, somewhere between naive and reckless. She therefore enjoyed telling Rita everything she knew about Bundó, his relationship with Carolina, and all sorts of stories about his years in the boarding house. He and Gabriel had arrived when they were seventeen. They were still children. She’d been looking after them for almost half their lives, so to speak. It wasn’t that she’d been a mother to them, but she nearly had, especially with Bundó, who was needier.
She suddenly remembered that she had a photograph of him in her bag. She’d picked it up before going out in case they wanted to put it on the headstone, but Carolina told her they alr
eady had one. She showed it to Rita. It had been taken three months earlier, and Bundó had given it to her as a memento when he went off to live in Via Favència. Although it made her feel decidedly strange, Rita gazed at the stranger she’d never seen before but with whom she’d fallen in love because of his name. His chubby cheeks made him look like a cute, mischievous little boy, but, at first glance, she felt she could never have fallen in love with someone like him. What’s more, he was wearing a horrible shirt. It was made of some black-and-white material in a flashy weave that hurt her eyes just looking at it and, even worse, he seemed proud of it. An hour earlier she would have paid a fortune to discover the slightest detail about Bundó, but now she was doing her best to forget him.
Walking home, she realized that her next task was to tidy up the chaos left in the wake of the earthquake and settle a new guest in among the ruins . . . Gabriel Delacruz, was that his name? The stars and the horoscope were a rip-off. She’d just have to listen to her own feelings. Besides, there was the matter of the lost bag. The next day, Friday, or whenever Lufthansa handed it over, she’d take it to the boarding house and try to get to know this Gabriel. She’d express her condolences over the loss of his friend and the whole story would start all over again.
That afternoon, after the funeral, Carolina and Gabriel went back to Barcelona in Senyor Casellas’s car. Our father’s wish, Christophers, was to stay in the pension and not come out for a good long time. It was five days since the accident, and his head was all over the place. It was like arriving in an unfamiliar city without a map. This was something he’d experienced on other occasions, but, if the solution once lay in keeping moving and trying an exit at random, now he only wanted to stay still. Luckily, or unluckily, with his arm in a cast, he’d be on sick leave for several weeks and he could put off any decisions.
Senyor Casellas left them in Plaça Calvo Sotelo and headed for his affluent neighborhood. Gabriel offered to go with Carolina to Via Favència, and they hailed a taxi. Now that Bundó had died, the apartment was hers. Gabriel imagined that Carolina would break for ever with Muriel and her French past. At the entrance, however, Carolina asked the taxi driver to keep the engine running. She took the keys out of her bag and handed them to Gabriel.
“I’m not going up,” she said. “Everything I need from Bundó I have with me. I couldn’t even spend five minutes in that house. The memories we didn’t get to create . . . the constant trap of what couldn’t be would make my life unbearable. I’m taking the train back to France tonight, Gabriel, to see if I can start all over again. I’ll write to you or phone you. Here, take the keys and do whatever you want with the apartment. Live there, if you like. We’ll sort out the legal stuff later. It’ll take no time at all because there’s nothing more I can take from there.”
That night, Gabriel slept in the Falcon Room. Well, rather than sleeping, he waited till morning. Then, at breakfast, he informed Senyora Rifà that he was leaving the boarding house.
“I’ll be away for a long time,” he said.
Even in his most desperate moments he only thought about a provisional change of address (but, in fact, he never went back there). Then he phoned El Tembleque and asked him to help him move his few belongings. That’s how he ended up living in Bundó’s apartment. He didn’t know why, maybe it was like repaying a debt, but he had one clear goal. He would never go out unless it was absolutely essential. Once again, Christophers, irony did a dazzling double somersault. The very day that Rita decided to spare no effort to find the man of her life, he finally stopped moving.
Barcelona was too big a city for playing hide-and-seek.
4
* * *
Reclusion
CRISTÓFOL’S TURN CONTINUES, STILL
Gabriel’s retreat lasted eighty days. The day it ended . . . well, the day it ended, Christophers, my mother appeared in his life for the third time, ready to stay for ever. But there’s no need to get excited about that just yet. It’ll all happen soon enough. As for what happened during his lengthy (two Lents!) reclusion, we now have a paradox: While our father was running around in the Pegaso, we could easily stay on his trail but when he finally stops in one spot, we lose track of him.
All we know of that period is what he revealed to my mother during pillow talk. His withdrawal into the apartment in Via Favència couldn’t have been more prosaic. It’s not as if he rolled down the blinds, for example, believing that his solitude should be steeped in darkness or, worse, exposed beneath the interrogative glare of a bare light bulb. He wasn’t moved by mystical or esoteric impulses; he didn’t want to purge his pain like an anchorite; he wasn’t trying to communicate with Bundó’s spirit (though he would have liked to). Neither did he want to take his friend’s place even though Bundó had once suggested that they could live there together. No, Gabriel locked himself away in his new home out of instinct, a simple reaction to his own state of mind. Yet me might say that, in his isolation, Gabriel respected Bundó’s wishes.
The apartments in that building—and, in fact, the whole neighborhood—seem to have been designed to blight the private lives of workers, to make them yearn for the factories. In sixty square meters, counting dead space and off-kilter walls, there were two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living-cum-dining room and a bathroom. I know that because, when we first started to look for signs of our father, I went up to Via Favència one Saturday morning to see Bundó’s apartment. I rang at the street door. After taking me for a Jehovah’s Witness and then an encyclopedia salesman, the lady who’s now living there decided I was a journalist and let me in. My heart sank when she opened the door. It was a desolate sight. Thirty years after the building went up architects had discovered structural deterioration typically associated with high-alumina cement. A forest of metal props temporarily underpinned her ceiling. The lady ushered me into the apartment through a sort of tunnel.
“It might smell of mildew because of the damp,” she warned. “I don’t notice it any more.”
Hiding my excitement, which would have been unseemly, I walked around that bunker, room by room. For a few frivolous seconds I was tempted by the idea that all this ruin emanated from our father’s unhappy days, a kind of affliction brought on by delayed grief. With admirable poise, no doubt a by-product of two years of enduring life on this building site, the lady made coffee, which we had in the living room. It was like being in an abandoned coal mine. The only relief came from a yellow canary warbling in its cage and a radio-cassette player from which issued Antonio Machín’s boleros. “Right here, on these very tiles,” I thought, “Bundó was capering and dancing around like a man possessed on the last Christmas Eve of his life.”
The lady, a widow in her sixties, wanted me to have a look at the title deeds. She always kept them handy, tucked away in a plastic folder ready to show visiting journalists or building inspectors. I recognized Carolina’s signature on them. The date on the contract of purchase for that slum was June 1979. I would have paid a fortune to know the terms of the agreement between Gabriel and Carolina. What was clear was that the apartment remained in Carolina’s name for the seven years Gabriel lived there. I asked the lady if she recalled the person who countersigned the contract, but it had been a long time, and her memory was no longer what it used to be. What she did tell me is that when she and her husband moved in they found a collection of things left behind by the former occupant. Most of it was junk, but they’d taken a fancy to two or three items. I asked her if she could show me any of them, and she pointed at two pictures, still hanging on the wall. They were the autumnal landscapes, the bad Olot School imitations claimed by Bundó in the divvying up of the last move, Number 199. He hadn’t lived to see them on display, so I deduced that Gabriel must have retrieved them and hung them up. Ah, and before leaving, Christophers, I indulged in a bit of mischief that you’ll like. I told the lady that they were by a very good painter who hadn’t been properly recognised in his lifetime, informing her, too, that the initials S.B. with which they
were signed concealed a man called Serafí Bundó.
“That name rings a bell . . .” the candid soul said, not knowing how happy that made me.
In the few months he was living there, Bundó had fixed up the apartment to his liking but had left the smaller bedroom empty, the only room he hadn’t wallpapered. He always said it would be for the kids. When Carolina reminded him that she didn’t want to have children, that she’d told him so a thousand times, he corrected himself and referred to it as the guest room. That was our father’s refuge. It was about nine square meters with a window opening onto the light well. Since it was a seventh-floor apartment, halfway up the building, this window had to be kept closed all the time because of the smells drifting up from the downstairs kitchens. Before moving in, Gabriel bought a mattress, a bedstead, and a bedside table and set out his possessions just as he’d done when he was in the boarding house. You might say only the falcon was missing.
You mustn’t—please don’t—confuse this conduct with any kind of temporary insanity. What I want to say, and I’ll try to clarify this, is that when it suited him, Gabriel’s withdrawal was sometimes more psychological than physical. He spent whole days without going out, but this wasn’t because of dogma, and it didn’t make him a Carthusian monk either. When the larder was bare, he’d go out for an hour or so in the morning, call into the bank, get a bit of money out of his account, do some shopping at the corner shop, and stock up at the tobacconist’s. On one of these expeditions, two weeks after shutting himself away, he went looking for a pay phone and called La Ibérica. Although he was still on sick leave, he told Rebeca he’d decided to call it a day. Advising him not to rush into it, the secretary spared him the conversation with the boss. They’d talk about it again when they took the cast off and he was fit to work. He agreed but on condition that she never revealed to anybody where he was. Nobody. Rebeca went along with it.