by Jordi Puntí
Christopher got hold of the bottle of whisky and took a long swig.
“Where would Porras, Leiva, and Sayago be now?” he wondered. His question was so unexpected that it cracked open like a piñata filled with nostalgia.
“They must be here in Barcelona,” Cristòfol ventured. “Like Senyora Natàlia Rifà, if she’s still alive. Her boarding house isn’t there any more, but maybe we should try to find her and go and visit her one day.”
“Yes, whatever happens with our father, Christophers, we have to round off our research,” Christophe interrupted. “Footnotes. They’re necessary. There’s nothing sadder than those half-empty municipal museums . . .”
“Petroli, El Tembleque, Senyor Casellas (he must be dead by now), Carolina . . . our mothers, Christophers, our mothers! It’s so strange thinking about them all, here and now,” Christof muttered.
He was right. We were five minutes away from finding our father again, and the whole gallery of characters who’d led us to him, his escorts in memory, suddenly rose up one by one, like links in a chain, to join us with their mythical presence.
We toasted everyone who’d helped us get to this point and then, united in brotherhood by blood and full of unaccustomed courage, we got out of the car.
Since the game was being played at the back of the bar, you couldn’t hear so much as a fly buzzing on the other side of the blind. Our plan was to raise it slowly—as many centimeters as required—and sneak in, creeping along in the shadows. Once all four of us were inside, we were going to swoop on them, roaring at the tops of our voices (which we hadn’t rehearsed) and take them completely by surprise. Christophe was in charge of the blanket, and Chris had the ropes and hooks. Christof was going to drive the car. Cristòfol would be spokesman and translator.
The first attempt to raise the blind derailed our plan because, in those few centimeters, it let out a short, very shrill screech of the kind that makes your skin crawl and sets your teeth on edge.
“It’s worse than chalk squealing on the blackboard,” Christophe muttered.
We looked at each other, listening hard, trying not to get the giggles, and waited twenty seconds. Nothing. They hadn’t noticed. Taking them by stealth would be impossible. By means of gestures we agreed that the only alternative would be to burst in and take over the show. Christof and Christopher grabbed the blind. They counted to three—one . . . two . . . three—and heaved it up together. Up! The deafening noise worked in our favor. We flew into the bar and ran to the spotlit table.
“Sitzen bleiben!” Christof yelled with all his lungs.
The five players saw him fly out of the shadows like an exterminating angel. The Nazi associations were inevitable, horrifying and extremely useful. They threw our victims into a state of terror.
“Don’t move. Stay exactly as you are!” Cristòfol translated, trying to sound guttural. The situation was so fictitious, so unnatural that the words came out in Spanish, just as they had when he was a small boy playing cowboys and Indians.
The whole operation lasted five minutes, as we’d calculated—in and out—but now that we’re replaying it, it seems to have taken much longer. Throughout the mayhem the players remained rooted to the spot. Dazzled by their bright pool of light, they tried to make out who we were in the shadows. The green baize cloth on the table was covered in banknotes. The four of us were hoping to catch Gabriel’s eye, but he was sitting with his back to us, and we could only see the nape of his neck, his rigid back. In spite of the general alarm, he sat there immobile, still holding his cards. He must have had a good hand. Then we checked out the others. On Gabriel’s right was an absolutely petrified gentleman of about fifty. He dropped his cards face up on the table and raised his hands, timorously, as if he thought this was a holdup. His tanned face—hours in the solarium—was getting paler by the minute. The smoke from a Havana wafted up from his lips, stinging his eyes, but he didn’t dare take it out of his mouth. He looked exactly like someone called Manubens, the rich twit whose turn it was to be fleeced that night. The man next to him was pouring sweat, greasy sweat. His look of an itinerant fritter vendor marked him as one of Feijoo’s gang. He was blinking nonstop and didn’t dare look us in the eye. Glinting on the little finger of his right hand was a ruby ring. Without a word from us he took it off and put it on the table. Beside him was Feijoo, the host. He seemed calm, attentive, on the alert, but glanced sideways at Miguélez and kept gnawing on a toothpick. Last, on Gabriel’s left, was the famous Miguélez. We checked out his lardy, flaccid face (of great advantage when it came to bluffing), the ragged moustache, the toadlike body that had so often attacked the door of Gabriel’s mezzanine apartment. He’d adopted an insolent air. His mouth was twisted into the sinister smirk of a wolf on the scent of blood. He, needless to say, was the one who broke the silence.
“Let’s see-e-e, boys, now te-e-ell me where it hu-u-u-urts . . .” He drew out the vowels to convince himself and convince us that he had the situation under control.
Christof, as a man of the theatre, was really getting into his role. In two quick strides he went over and dealt him a resounding openhanded slap, a circus clown’s wallop.
“Sitzen bleiben, habe ich gesagt!” he screamed.
“Sit down, motherfucker!” This time, imitating Miguélez, Cristòfol adopted the tone of a member of the Guardia Civil in the midst of an attempted coup.
The authority achieved by something as simple as a good hard smack is an amazing thing. Gabriel was unperturbed, but the gentleman with the ring joined his hands in prayer, and Manubens whimpered (sprinkling the lapels of his jacket with ash from his cigar), while Feijoo tensed his body and spat the toothpick on to the floor. Miguélez had too much military pride to be cowed. In an instinctive gesture, he touched his burning cheek and made to get up again as if warding off a blow, at which point Christopher burst out of the shadows and—click!—got between him and Christof. Light flashed off the blade that he’d just released. The astounded Miguélez immediately reconsidered and sank into his chair again.
“She’s thirsty,” Chris informed him in English, glaring at him and raising his arm, making sure they all took note of the stiletto elegance of the switchblade our father kept in his apartment, timid and withdrawn like himself because it was always in hiding. “My lovely dagger is thirsty . . .”
“La navaja tiene sed . . .” Cristòfol offered something resembling a translation.
Then Chris snapped his fingers like a man used to giving orders and, in the midst of the general commotion, Christophe went over to Gabriel to carry out the next stage of our plan. With a grand gesture, mentally rehearsed a hundred times that evening, he shook out the blanket as if it were his cape and dropped it over our father. Christof immediately came to his aid, pinioning Gabriel. With a few deft movements they soon had him trussed up and secured with ropes and hooks. Then, in order to discourage any resistance from their captive, Cristòfol shouted in his ear, “Easy now, Delacruz. Our mission is to hand you over alive to Mister Bundó.”
Hearing that name, the magic word that sealed out brotherhood, the bundle relaxed and let out a laugh. He got it. Without wasting another moment, Christophe and Christof made their way to the car, opened up the trunk, and got Gabriel settled inside.
“Can you breathe okay?”
The bundle obediently indicated it could. Before closing the trunk, they told him they were putting him in there because it had to look like abduction, but that was the last spot of bother he was going to have from them. They got the engine started and tooted the horn as agreed. Chris, meanwhile, was still threatening the gamblers with the knife. He snapped his fingers again to get Manubens’ attention and ordered him to pile up the money on the table. Then he took it and stuffed it in his pocket.
“Keep playing now,” he ordered, pointing the knife at them. He was starting to enjoy himself. “And don’t move till you have finished the game. Understood?”
“A seguir jugando,” Cristòfol translated, “y que
nadie se mueva hasta que haya terminado la partida. ¿Queda entendido?”
“So who the hell is this Bundó?” Miguélez dared to ask when they were on their way out.
“You wouldn’t really want to know, Miguélez,” Cristòfol replied, still in Spanish. “Or you, Feijoo. Or you, Manubens. You wouldn’t want to know, would you, Manubens?” The businessman let out a lily-livered “no,” beside himself because these strangers knew his name. “Naturally we know who you are, the lot of you. However, we are gentlemen, and, since you asked, I shall answer. Bundó is a code name. It’s the cover for an international cartel that operates in the world’s best casinos. In case you yokels hadn’t noticed, this Delacruz is the crème de la crème. We’ve had our eye on him for a long time now, but you cretins had to go and muck things up. What a bunch of idiots! From now on, he’ll be facing more spectacular challenges. Monaco, Nice, Saint Petersburg, and maybe Las Vegas if he improves a bit . . .”
Feijoo and Miguélez’s faces were pure poetry. The horn of the Opel sounded again with our signal. Chris snapped his fingers once more.
“Come on, let’s go. Let’s go!”
“Venga, vamos, vamos,” Cristòfol was still translating, and, at the last moment, just as we were leaving the bar, he turned back and gave them one last blast, still in Spanish. “Ah, and for your own good, Feijoo and Miguélez, we don’t want to hear any more stories about you harassing and bothering Delacruz. Or the Italian lady next door. He’s ours now, and you’ve seen for yourselves that the German gentleman is itching for some action.”
We were over the moon on the short trip to Giuditta’s apartment. We were shouting and clapping our hands in the car, pumped up with adrenaline, and guffawing to recall the whack Miguélez had taken. Despite all the excitement, Christof drove smoothly, trying to avoid any bumps. Now that we’d finally recovered Gabriel, we had to get him home safe and sound. We left the car in Giuditta’s parking spot and opened up the trunk. Now we had him. Our father. Outlined in the blanket was a still but alert figure, a Houdini about to make his getaway.
“Don’t worry, we’re the good guys,” Cristòfol said, patting him. Since the bundle didn’t move, he touched it again and asked, “Hey, can you breathe?”
The bundle could. We picked him up and all four of us carried him upstairs to the mezzanine still wrapped in the blanket. We were tickling him, and he was laughing. It may seem that this extra delay was an act of cruelty that a father doesn’t deserve, but we Christophers believed it was essential. We’d agreed that we wanted to be reunited with Gabriel all together, at the same instant, and that he should experience it in the same way as we did.
Giuditta opened the door giving thanks to all the saints in heaven and all the Madonnas in the Italian calendar of saints’ days. We deposited our father in a sitting position on the couch, undid the ropes and sat in a semicircle before him.
The hulk shed the blanket and ropes with a few thrusts of its arms and then, from underneath, emerged Gabriel, our father. Sweaty and dishevelled, he reminded us of an actor who’s just walked offstage and flops on to the couch in his dressing room to listen to the applause still echoing from the stalls.
“Thank-you,” he said at last, gazing at us one by one. “Thank-you very much.”
We won’t be so crass now as to throw away in a few phrases what each of us experienced right then. Neither will we get carried away by our emotions. We Christophers deplore sentimentality—the legacy of an imperfect orphanhood, no doubt—and Gabriel . . . well, Gabriel had become immune many years earlier when he finally wept over Bundó’s death, and his tear ducts had dried up forever.
Moreover, as we saw it, this had to be a beginning, not an ending.
But.
But, one day, during one of our first get-togethers, we Christophers had amused ourselves with quite a dicey game. Each of us had to describe, using a metaphor, the mixture of feelings he had regarding Gabriel. Someone, and it doesn’t matter who, came up with an image that we all thought fitted the bill.
“Imagine that one day, because of something that life’s served up, you’re so desperate that you end up playing Russian roulette,” this Christopher said. “It’s your turn. You’re holding the revolver in your hands, you put one bullet in the cylinder (the one that might kill you), and you spin it. You place the muzzle against your temple and pull the trigger. You try to concentrate on that extremely brief shiver between yes and no. For me, Dad’s absence is like the empty chamber of that revolver.
Click!
Click!
Click!
Click!
7
* * *
We Have the Same Memory
Now here’s a nice thing: All four Christophers have the same memory of that moment, of the glorious day when the lines of past and present came together at last. Right now we are a memory for the future. The years will go by and we’ll see each other perhaps more often or perhaps less often. Who knows? Each of us will construct his own narrative around this memory and inform it with whatever meaning suits him best, but what makes us proud, what makes true brothers of us, is that the origin of it will be the same for all of us. Yes, that’s right: it’s the present—Sunday morning.
The sun’s just risen. The city’s awake, and we haven’t slept yet. We’re exhausted, but struggling to prolong the excitement that has kept us going all night with clear heads and open eyes. At six this morning we took the decision to go out and get a bit of air, so we wandered down to Pla de Palau. Gabriel knows a bar there that serves breakfast at this early hour. All this palaver’s made us hungry. Two young guys in tracksuits were running in Ciutadella Park, and a drunk was trying to arrange himself in the best position for sleeping off his hangover on a bench. In the distance we could hear the calls of the birds in the zoo as they were waking up with the first glimmers of light. As we passed El Born market we stopped for a moment and contemplated the silent structure. A dribble of light outlined the empty space giving it an air of transcendence. Cristòfol went over to the entrance and broke the silence with his imitation of the wails of a newborn baby, which echoed like those of our father sixty years earlier. A startled pigeon flew out.
“Yes, yes, you’re right,” Gabriel said by way of response. “You might say I was born here. It was my first cradle. But it’s changed a lot over the years. You couldn’t begin to imagine how.”
“And the salt cod seller?” we asked. “Did you ever see her again?”
“No, not that I know of. I lost track of her a long time ago but I’ve never stopped thinking about her. It’s curious. If anyone asks me what my mother was like, I always describe that lady.”
Gabriel speaks confidently, without any attempt at evasion, looking us straight in the eye. There are some moments when we could say that his words are just seeking to comfort us, or pass a test. It’s as if, shut away in the mezzanine apartment, he’s been studying the clues and notes we left behind and is now trying to play the part of the character we gave him. Maybe he does it because he doesn’t want to let us down any more, and we’re grateful for that. Or perhaps it’s just a product of our imagination, a residue of reluctance and disillusion that won’t disappear overnight. Whatever the reason, we’ve been together more than seven hours, and we can now say that his rough edges have vanished.
As soon as we got to the apartment last night, Giuditta opened a bottle of champagne and we toasted our successful rescue. Then our exhilaration subsided, and we all went quiet. Where should we start? Who should speak? The silence threatened to asphyxiate us. Giuditta realized that she was in the way and went back to her place under some pretext. Then our father broke the ice.
“Look, boys, I’m not going to apologize. Too much time has gone by. I’ve often regretted what I did or, rather, what I wasn’t able to do . . .” He stopped to see how we were reacting. He looked despondent, and the words came out faint and tired, as if they’d spent too many years aging in his craw. “Of course I’m happy to have you back again, but I
’m also quite embarrassed that it had to happen like this. Things can’t be changed now. If only they could . . . You can reproach me all you like, and you’d certainly be right to do so. But I won’t ask for your forgiveness. It’s been too long.”
“You’re talking as if you’ve committed some sort of crime,” we said.
“And isn’t it a crime? Abandoning your sons?”
“It depends how you look at it. Maybe, more than a crime, it’s a sentence you’ve imposed on yourself.”
“Yes, but . . .”
It’s impossible to reproduce the ensuing five-way conversation with all its ins and outs. Conventions failed us, and we felt awkward, unable to find the appropriate middle ground between intimacy and distance. Did we have to act like strangers or did the blood bond remove all barriers? We tested the waters. The most valuable and upsetting revelations alternated with conversation that was about as inane as any you’d come across in an elevator. We couldn’t find the proper balance and teetered from the aggression of police-style interrogation to the distancing of diplomatic froideur. We tried to cover up uncomfortable silences with over-familiar remarks. Fortunately, as we kept talking the roller-coaster highs and lows started to level out. Then again, our jitteriness set off a babble of different languages that we vainly tried to harmonize. Our father answered us with his do-it-yourself linguistic skills, and at last we could hear, still intact, that cadence of his that had bewitched our mothers. Gabriel took it all more coolly than we did, without any dramatics, and resorted to his memories of us when we were small. Then, if one of his anecdotes made us laugh or got us feeling nostalgic, we responded at once by ticking him off. He counterattacked by asking about Sigrun, Sarah, Mireille, and Rita—if we’d told them anything, if they’d taken it well, if they hated him, or if we had some recent photo of them—and we gave in once again. It also happened that we four brothers were not always in agreement, and one would sometimes act offended and the other three would make fun of him. Or the opposite happened: A solitary laugh mocked three gawking faces. As the night progressed we confirmed that all alliances were possible. At one stage, one of the Christophers joined forces with Gabriel to keep his brothers in check.