“Tomorrow you’ll be the talk of the entire neighborhood,” Daniel predicted.
“I hope I haven’t got you into trouble, Daniel.”
“Don’t worry. Generally speaking, I’m quite good at getting into trouble on my own. Pay no attention to the Medusa trio. Fermín says the meringue has gone to their heads.”
This time Daniel let Alicia walk ahead, waiting until she’d gone up a whole flight of stairs before following her. Clearly he didn’t want to be climbing up two stories with his eyes caught on her swaying hips.
The arrival of the cake was greeted with an ovation and shouts reminiscent of a great sporting victory. Daniel raised the box for all to see as if he were displaying an Olympic medal, and then took it to the kitchen. Alicia noticed that Bea had kept a place for her between Sofía and little Julián, who was sitting next to his grandfather. She took her seat, aware that the guests were casting her sidelong glances. When Daniel returned from the kitchen, he sat at the other end of the table, next to Bea.
“Shall I serve the soup, then, or shall we wait for Fermín?” Bernarda asked.
“I’d say he’s the one who’ll land in the soup if we don’t eat soon,” proclaimed Don Anacleto.
Bernarda had begun to fill the soup bowls when they heard a crash behind the door and the echo of various glass bottles tumbling down. A few seconds later, a triumphant Fermín materialized, carrying, two in each hand, the bottles of champagne, miraculously saved.
“Fermín, you had us drinking sour muscatel,” protested Don Anacleto.
“Throw out that foul drink that is tarnishing your goblets, ladies and gentlemen,” announced Fermín, “for the wine vendor hath just arrived from yonder vineyard to delight your palate with a beverage that will make you urinate flowers.”
“Fermín!” cried Bernarda. “Your language!”
“But, my little rosebud, don’t you know that on this riverbank micturating to leeward is as natural and pleasurable as—”
Fermín’s loquacity and rhetoric suddenly froze. Stock-still, he was staring at Alicia as if he’d just seen a ghost. Daniel grabbed his arm and forced him to sit down.
“Come on, let’s eat,” announced Señor Sempere, who had also noticed Fermín’s momentary lapse.
The choreography of glasses, laughter, and jokes began to take over, but Fermín, who held his empty spoon in his hand and couldn’t keep his eyes off Alicia, was as silent as a tomb. Alicia pretended to be unaware, but even Bea was beginning to look uncomfortable. Daniel nudged Fermín and whispered something quickly in his ear. Tensely, Fermín sipped a spoonful of soup. Fortunately, although the trademark eloquence of the bibliographic adviser to Sempere & Sons had been silenced by Alicia’s presence, Don Anacleto’s tongue was living a second youth thanks to the champagne, and soon they were all regaled with his customary analysis of the country’s ills.
The teacher, who saw himself as the sentimental heir and bearer of the eternal flame of Don Miguel de Unamuno (with whom he shared a more than remarkable physical resemblance), began, as usual, to present an apocalyptic panorama, announcing the imminent sinking of the Iberian Peninsula into the oceans of the blackest ignominy. Fermín, who normally enjoyed undercutting Don Anacleto’s improvised table talk with sly remarks like “The index of punditry in a society is inversely proportional to its intellectual solvency” and “When people choose overheated opinions over cold facts, the social order reverts to a moronocracy,” was so unforthcoming that the teacher, having no rivals or opposition, tried to wind him up.
“The fact is,” he said, “that our country’s leaders have run out of ideas on how to brainwash its people. Don’t you agree, Fermín?”
Fermín shrugged. “I don’t know why they bother. In most cases a quick rinse does the job.”
“There goes the anarchist,” Merceditas blurted out.
Don Anacleto smiled happily, seeing that at last he’d kick-started the debate, his favorite hobby.
Fermín puffed up. “Look, Merceditas, only because I know for a fact that your reading of the newspaper begins and ends on the horoscope page, and today we’re celebrating the birthday of the elder of this house—”
“Fermín, could you pass the bread, please?” interrupted Bea, trying to keep the party from falling into discord.
Fermín nodded and beat a retreat. Don Federico, the watchmaker, came to the rescue by breaking the tense silence.
“So tell us, Alicia, what is your profession?”
Merceditas, who didn’t look favorably upon the deference and attention everyone was paying to the surprise guest, threw herself into the ring. “And why should a woman have a profession? Isn’t it enough to take care of a home, a husband and children, just as our parents taught us to do?”
Fermín was about to say something, but Bernarda put her hand on his wrist and he bit his tongue.
“Yes, but Alicia is single. Isn’t that right?” Don Federico insisted.
Alicia smiled demurely.
“Not even a boyfriend?” asked Don Anacleto in disbelief.
She smiled modestly, shaking her head.
“This is a scandal! Indelible proof that there are no more worthwhile young men in the country. If I were twenty years younger . . . ,” said Don Anacleto.
“Better make that fifty years younger,” Fermín interjected.
“Manhood is ageless,” replied Don Anacleto.
“Let’s not mix heroics with urology.”
“Fermín, there are minors at the table,” Señor Sempere warned.
“If you mean Merceditas . . .”
“You should wash your mouth and your thoughts with bleach, or you’ll end up in hell,” Merceditas assured him.
“Well, I’ll save on heating.”
Don Federico raised his hands to silence the discussion. “Come on . . . with everyone talking at once, we’re not letting her speak.”
Calm was restored, and they all turned to Alicia.
“So,” Don Federico invited her again, “you were going to tell us what you do for a living . . .”
Alicia gazed at the audience, all hanging on her words. “The fact is that today was my last day at work. And I don’t know what I’m going to do from now on.”
“You must have thought of something,” remarked Señor Sempere.
She looked down. “I thought I would like to write. Or at least try to.”
“Bravo!” cried the bookseller. “You’ll be our new Laforet.”
“Rather our Pardo Bazán,” intervened Don Anacleto, who shared the widespread national opinion that living writers, unless they were in their death throes and had one leg already in the grave, deserved no esteem whatsoever. “Don’t you agree, Fermín?”
“I would agree, dear friend, were it not because I have a feeling that when Pardo Bazán looked herself in the mirror, she noticed a certain air of the gun dog about her, whereas our Señorita Gris here looks more like a heroine from the darkest night, and I don’t imagine she can quite see her image in a mirror.”
There was a deep silence.
“And what could you possibly mean by that, you know-all?” Merceditas chided him.
Daniel grabbed Fermín’s arm and dragged him into the kitchen.
“It means that if men moved their brains a tenth of the times they move their mouths, this world would work much better,” said Sofía, who until that moment seemed to have had her head in the clouds, observing proper adolescent etiquette.
Señor Sempere turned his eyes toward that niece life had sent him to bless or torment his golden years. As so often happened, for a moment he thought he was seeing and hearing his Isabella through the ocean of time.
“Is that what they teach these days in the arts faculty?” asked Don Anacleto.
Sofía shrugged and returned to her limbo.
“God almighty, what a world awaits us,” the teacher said.
“Don’t worry, Don Anacleto. The world is always the same,” Señor Sempere reassured him. “The truth is, it
doesn’t wait for anyone, and races past you at the first hurdle. How about a toast for the past, the future, and those of us who are between the two?”
Little Julián raised his glass of milk enthusiastically, seconding the proposal.
Meanwhile Daniel had cornered Fermín in the kitchen, far from the sight and hearing of the guests. “Can you tell me what the hell’s the matter with you, Fermín?”
“That woman isn’t what she says she is, Daniel. There’s something fishy going on here.”
“And what’s that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out what shady ruse she’s plotting. I can smell it from here, like that cheap perfume Merceditas has showered herself with, vainly hoping to confuse the watchmaker and get him to leave fairyland.”
“And how do you plan to find out?”
“With your help.”
“No way. Don’t you dare get me mixed up in this.”
“You already are. Don’t let yourself be dazzled by the insidious femme fatale routine. She’s a minx, as sure as my name is Fermín.”
“May I remind you that the minx is my dear father’s guest of honor?”
“Aaaah . . . And have you asked yourself how this all too convenient coincidence came about?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t care. Coincidences don’t get questioned. That’s why they are coincidences.”
“Is that your meager intellect speaking, or your post-teenage glands?”
“What is speaking is common sense, which you must have had removed the same day as your shame.”
Fermín laughed sarcastically.
“She doesn’t do things by halves,” he declared. “She’s buttered up your father and you at the same time, and all in the presence of your beautiful wife.”
“Stop talking nonsense. They’re going to hear us.”
“Let them hear me,” cried Fermín, raising his voice. “Loud and clear.”
“Fermín, I beg you. Let’s have my father’s birthday in peace.”
Fermín screwed up his eyebrows and tightened his lips. “On one condition.”
“All right. What?”
“That you help me unmask her.”
Daniel rolled his eyes and sighed.
“How do you propose to do that? By dint of more verses?”
Fermín lowered his voice.
“I have a plan . . .”
* * *
True to his promise, Fermín showed exemplary manners for the rest for the dinner. He laughed at Don Anacleto’s jokes, treated Merceditas as if she were Marie Curie, and every now and then cast Alicia altar-boy glances. When the moment came for the toast and the cutting of the cake, Fermín delivered a long, impassioned speech that he’d prepared, eulogizing the host. This brought about a round of applause and a heartfelt embrace from the man who was being honored.
“My grandson will help me blow out the candles, won’t you, Julián?” the bookseller announced.
Bea turned off the dining-room lamps, and for a few moments, they were all caught in the candles’ flickering light.
“Make a wish, my friend,” Don Anacleto reminded him. “If possible in the shape of a plump widow in the flower of maturity and vigor.”
Bernarda delicately removed the teacher’s champagne glass and replaced it with a glass of mineral water, exchanging glances with Bea, who nodded.
Alicia watched that spectacle almost in a trance. She feigned a friendly calm, but her heart was beating fast. She had never been in a gathering like this. All the birthdays she remembered had been spent with Leandro or alone, usually hidden in a cinema, the same one in which she hid almost every New Year’s Eve, only to curse that awful habit they had of interrupting the film at midnight and turning on the lights for ten minutes before going back to the film. As if it weren’t insulting enough having to spend the night in the empty stalls of a cinema, with six or seven other solitary souls with nobody and nowhere to go back to, they had to rub their noses in it. That feeling of camaraderie, of belonging and affection that went far beyond the jokes and discussions, was something Alicia didn’t know how to handle.
Julián had taken her hand under the table, and was pressing it hard, as if, of all those present, only a child could understand how she felt. Had it not been for him, she would have burst into tears.
When all the toasts were over, Bernarda was offering coffee or tea, and Don Anacleto was doling out cigars, Alicia stood up. Everyone looked at her in surprise.
“I wanted to thank you all for your hospitality and your kindness. And very particularly you, Señor Sempere. My father always held you in great esteem, and I know he would have been very happy that I was able to share this special evening with all of you. Thank you very much.”
They all looked at her with what seemed like pity, or perhaps she only saw in others what she herself felt inside. She gave little Julián a kiss and headed for the door. Bea got up and followed her, still holding her napkin.
“I’ll come with you, Alicia . . .”
“No, please. Stay here with your family.”
Before leaving, Alicia walked past the display cabinet and took one last look at Isabella’s photograph. She sighed with relief as she disappeared down the stairs. She needed to get out of that place before she started believing that it could be hers one day.
* * *
Alicia’s departure provoked a wave of murmurs among the guests. Grandfather Sempere had put Julián on his knees and was observing the boy. “Have you fallen in love so soon?” he asked.
“I think it’s time our little Casanova went off to bed,” said Bea.
“And I should follow his example,” Don Anacleto added, rising from the table. “You young wild things, stay on at the party. Life is too short . . .”
Daniel was about to heave a sigh of relief when Fermín gripped his arm and stood up. “Oh, Daniel, we’d forgotten to bring up those boxes from the basement.”
“What boxes?”
“Those boxes.”
The two slipped out toward the door before the sleepy and surprised eyes of the bookseller.
“Every day I understand this family less,” he said.
“I thought I was the only one,” murmured Sofía.
* * *
When they stepped out of the front door, Fermín took a quick look at the bluish passageway sketched out by the streetlamps on Calle Santa Ana and signaled to Daniel to follow him.
“What now?”
“Now we hunt the vamp,” replied Fermín.
“No way.”
“Burying your empty head in the sand will only make it worse. Let’s move it before she gives us the slip.”
Without waiting for an answer, Fermín set off toward the corner of Puerta del Ángel. There he took shelter under the canopy of the Casa Jorba department store and scanned the dark night, strewn with low clouds that crept over the rooftops. Daniel joined him.
“There she goes, the serpent of paradise.”
“For goodness sake, Fermín, don’t do this to me.”
“Hey, I held up my part of the deal. Are you a man of your word or a wimp?”
Daniel cursed his bad luck, and the two, going back to their golden days as second-rate detectives, set off on the trail of Alicia Gris.
10
They followed her, staying close to doorways and canopies, until they reached the end of the avenue. There the street opened out into a vast esplanade stretching toward the cathedral, where the ancient neighborhood used to be before it was flattened by air raids during the war. A liquid moon splattered the pavement, and Alicia’s silhouette left the wake of a shadow in the air.
“Have you noticed?” asked Fermín as they watched her starting up Calle de la Paja.
“Noticed what?”
“Someone’s following us.”
Daniel turned to scan the silvery darkness tinting the streets.
“There. In the entrance to the toy shop. See?”
“I can�
�t see a thing.”
“The ember of a cigarette.”
“So . . . ?”
“It’s been following us since we left.”
“Why would anyone want to follow us?”
“Maybe he’s not following us. Maybe he’s following her.”
“This is making less sense by the minute, Fermín.”
“On the contrary. It’s becoming increasingly clear that something ominous is going on here . . .”
They followed Alicia’s trail along Calle Baños Nuevos, a narrow chasm through ancient buildings that seemed to join in a shadowy embrace over the winding route.
“I wonder where she’s going?” murmured Daniel.
The answer came soon. Alicia stopped by a front door on Calle Aviñón, opposite the Gran Café. They saw her enter the building. They walked past and took shelter a couple of doors farther down.
“And now what?”
Fermín’s answer was to point toward the facade of La Manual Alpargatera, a shop a few doors up the street. Daniel realized that his friend was right. They were being followed, or Alicia was. Hiding under the arches of the espadrille-shop entrance, barely visible, was a small figure wearing a cheap bowler hat.
“At least he seems to be on the small side,” Fermín reckoned.
“And what’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’ll prove a tactical advantage for you, once you get into fisticuffs with him.”
“Great. And why does it have to be me?”
“Because you’re the younger of us two, and when it comes to dishing out a thrashing, what matters is brute force. I provide the strategic vision.”
“I have no intention of dishing out a thrashing to anyone.”
“Don’t get all squeamish on me now, Daniel. As the Lord is my witness, you already proved your warrior’s zeal when you smashed that jerk Cascos Buendía’s face in at the Ritz. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
“It was not my best hour,” Daniel admitted.
“No need to make excuses. May I remind you that the swine was sending lovey-dovey letters to your wife to soften her up, following orders from that worm Valls. Yes, yes, the same worm whose slimy path you’ve been tracking in the Ateneo newspaper library since spring last year. Don’t think for a second I hadn’t noticed.”
The Labyrinth of the Spirits Page 45