Barcelona Noir

by Adriana V.

  They say the money ended up with a guy named Ramón Arín, who chaired the CNT’s Committee for Prisoners.

  Tino’s cell door opened and he raised his swollen eyes to the light.

  “Get up,” they said. “We’re taking you to the Modelo.”

  It was a sad irony that Barcelona’s city jail, where there had been so many horrors, was called Modelo; it pretended to be a model prison and an example for the rest of the world.

  They took him out to the street.

  Two cops with Mausers.

  At that time, because there were very few cars and very few drivers, it was common to transfer prisoners on foot, even across the city, even to the jail on Entenza Street. But it wasn’t very common to step out with the prisoners to busy Via Laietana, because it wasn’t the breeziest image to offer to their illustrious visitors; ordinarily, they’d leave the station from the back, where the narrow streets of the old city awaited them, Ciutat Vella, a dark labyrinth, dirty and empty.

  The arrested man in front, the police behind.

  And back then, the detainee would sometimes realize he was walking alone. He couldn’t hear the sound of the police boots at his heels.

  And he’d stop and look back, all his vital signs on hold, and he’d see that the police were standing back at a certain distance, their Mausers at their hips.

  And they’d say, “Go on. You can just go now.”

  BRAWNER ’S SHADOWS

  BY ANTONIA CORTIJOS

  El Born

  It’s been three days since I turned into his shadow. I sleep in the car so I won’t lose track of him. I sleep in fits and starts, always aware of the door to the building.

  Around seven o’clock, he steps out on the street and I immediately get out of the car. I follow him from a few meters back so as not to arouse suspicion.

  All these sleepless nights are starting to wear on me and I notice that I’m moving slowly. He’s getting too far ahead of me and I need to run to make up the distance. It looks like he’s in a hurry. It’s still dark out, though—they’ve just cleaned the streets and the water is getting in my shoes. My whole body shivers. I raise the collar of my coat and rub my hands to try to scare up some warmth.

  He’s nearing the Passeig del Born and, like every day since I met him, he goes in a little tavern at the corner of Calders Street. It’s been open since six o’clock and a lot of the clientele are cab drivers finishing up the night shift and construction workers restoring houses in a neighborhood that’s being rehabilitated. They pick at the walls of the storefronts and homes until the stones show, and then the structure’s soul is exposed. You feel the vibration in your body and it tells the story of a neighborhood that was razed in 1714 by a vengeful king, who ordered the destruction of 1,200 homes so he could build his citadel, a military fort that dominated the city for more than a hundred years. Now, in its place, there’s Parc de la Ciutadella, beautiful, expansive, green.

  I wait a few seconds and, protected by the darkness outside, stealthily approach to see how he reads the paper and drinks his coffee. All three days, he’s sat in the same place, away from the rest of the locals. I can’t take my eyes off him, and I continue to contemplate him, the same as yesterday and the day before—the way he addresses the waiter, the small gestures with his elbows barely separated from his body, the wait until the coffee reaches the desired temperature, the pleasure with which he drinks it all at once. He’s borrowed a newspaper that he holds near the coffee and, like every morning, I ask myself if it’s yesterday’s edition.

  I breathe the salty fresh air with glee as light beckons dawn and profiles the silhouette of Mercat del Born, the old wholesale market, a modernist steel building that now stands empty and alone, with a sadness that comes from uselessness. It’s easy to get your bearings in this neighborhood, since every street and plaza still echoes with the noises and smells that distinguished each artisanal specialty. The streets are named after them.

  When thirty minutes are almost up, I hide in one of the nearby alleys. I know he’ll cross my path at Sombrerers, a narrow street by the Church of Santa María del Mar; where there are now art galleries, wine shops, and restaurants, there used to be, from the Middle Ages until not too long ago, men’s millinery shops. Later we’ll go up Argenteria, where the smiths used to be, working silver, gold, and other precious metals. We’ll move along Via Laietana, the neighborhood’s southern border, until we arrive at the cathedral’s plaza. Then we’ll come to an ancient street, where a car can barely maneuver, and where there’s a bunch of antique shops. I know which one he’ll go in.

  This is the time I use to get something to eat, and drink some coffee so the fog will lift from my brain.

  Everything started about a week ago.

  To me, it feels like an eternity.

  The police came to my house to tell me, in a very frosty tone, that my mother had died.

  They had found her body in the Botanical Garden at Parc de la Ciutadella, on a bed of white flowers, wearing a soft red silk robe which accented the pallor of her skin. The pose had been carefully constructed to make it seem as if she was enjoying a pleasant nap, and only her head, with abrasions on her neck and covered by a plastic bag, ruined the scene. The autopsy showed that Anna Brawner was already a corpse when she was deposited there, so an investigation was immediately initiated.

  Inspector Gómez Triadó interrogated me twice but I couldn’t tell him very much. She’d always been a very strange woman who never gave me access to her secrets: I never knew where she was born; she always claimed to be a citizen of the world. The only time I ever got anything out of her was in my adolescence, when I found out that her mother had died during her birth. But she never told me who my father was, or if he was even still alive.

  I had to take care of the body and had it transferred to a funeral home where I held a solitary wake. Seated in front of her, unable to take my eyes off her face, I felt a short circuit in my chest, leaving me in absolute darkness. The connection had corroded, and I know now with absolute certainty that I’d never be without that gloom.

  The funeral was the next day. Inspector Gómez Triadó was there, along with two men and a woman I didn’t know.

  One was an old man, surely more than ninety, who moved his very stately body with ease. That peculiarity, along with the high-collared, charcoal-colored, tailored suit that pretended to hide the ravages of age, and his immaculate and abundant white hair, gave him an aristocratic and seductive air.

  The other man was in his forties, and he dressed and acted in a banal fashion.

  The woman was the same age as my mother, but lacked her vitality, her love of life. Her gray eyes, covered in a haze, seemed to be asking for forgiveness.

  Inspector Gómez Triadó hurried to take them in for questioning down at the station; it hadn’t even occurred to me that those people could reveal hidden parts of my mother that would help me understand her and myself. I simply accepted their condolences and continued to stare at the luxurious coffin in which she rested.

  But something bothered me during the brief funeral. I felt a slight tingling on my neck just as the ceremony was about to end, as if someone’s gaze had been boring into me for a long time. An instinct made me turn my head, but I only glimpsed a shadow going out the door.

  Nobody accompanied me to the small cemetery next to the funeral home, so I waited for them to finish preparing the grave and then I put the final touches on the burial rites by myself. I hadn’t been able to cry, but the minute the workers walked away, I gazed at the huge bouquet of flowers on the headstone and tears came in a rush, unstoppable; I had to kneel because my legs couldn’t hold the weight of my body, nor my pain.

  When I opened my eyes, there was that shadow again. This time it vanished behind a white marble statue of a guardian angel. I don’t know which part of me reacted, because I was lost in a world of memories. I went to the cemetery exit and waited a few minutes before sneaking back to my mother’s grave. On the way, something m
ade me detour toward the place where I thought the person who’d been watching me was hiding, as if breathing in the same air or walking on the same ground would connect me to him, would reveal his secret. I poked my head out, ever so slowly, from an extended wing, and then I saw him.

  Completely overwhelmed, I had to turn away.

  My eyes were lying, there was no other explanation.

  Incredulous, I looked again and he was still there, erect, as if he were me, as if a mirror was reflecting my image back to me, with my arms crossed over my chest and my eyes fixed on the spot on the tombstone where the Brawner family name was written in gold letters on black marble.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off that tall man, his blond hair shining in the midday sun, his skin so white nothing reflected off it; everything had become light. But what caused a lingering, blurry, indefinable fear, what made cold sweat run down my back, was the expression on his face.

  I’ve been following him ever since.

  “I appreciate that you came right away.”

  “Inspector, I’ve always believed that a bitter drink is more difficult to swallow the longer you wait.”

  “I’m going to turn on the tape recorder but I need to tell you that you can say no.”

  “It’s fine, I’m all yours. My name is Jacob Zimmerman, and I was born in Hamburg, Germany, ninety-two years ago. I’ve been living in Barcelona for fifty-eight years.”

  “Why did you attend Anna Brawner’s funeral?”

  “Because she was my daughter-in-law.”

  “So … are you related in any way to Julián Brawner?”

  “Yes, he’s my grandson.”

  “I’m surprised. I would have thought you didn’t know each other.”

  “Yes, that’s partly true. I’d never spoken with him until today, and I’m pretty sure she never mentioned me to him. It’s an old family story. I decided to immigrate to Barcelona at the end of the 1920s, to escape from the economic crisis in my country. My wife, Edith Keller, had a boutique on the Rambla de Cataluña and I opened an antique store that I still operate. Anna Brawner’s father arrived in Barcelona in 1942 when she was barely three years old. Back then, this city was a nest of spies of many different nationalities, but especially Germans. He was posted to the German consulate, which was then in the Plaza de Cataluña, and you can imagine his mission.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Those were very hard years for everybody. In 1942, I was forty-six years old, I had a stable life and five kids. The youngest was born here and had double citizenship. At the beginning of 1943, the oldest three were kidnapped, all under the auspices of that damned treaty that General Martínez Anido and Himmler signed in ’39. Any German suspected of failing to support the Nazi cause could be detained and repatriated immediately without an extradition hearing or preliminary finding.”

  Jacob Zimmerman goes silent, as if he needs his memories to send him the strength to continue. The inspector is about to ask him if he feels all right when the elderly man picks up the conversation again. His voice is charged with a repressed anger.

  “They never got to Germany! They were executed somewhere on the French border.”

  Silence again. This time, Gómez Triadó just waits.

  “My youngest son and Anna Brawner met about twenty years later. They fell in love a few months before her father died, and since she was left all alone, my wife and I asked her to come live with us. They were happy times that made up for the tragedy of the war years. When my son finished his studies at the university, they got married, and before the year was out, she was pregnant. Excuse me … but could I have a glass of water?”

  “Forgive my lack of manners. I’ll be right back.”

  The old man is left alone. He puts his elbows on the table and rests his face in the palms of his hands. The darkness is soothing. He knows he needs to keep his head clear, his emotions in check. A few minutes later, the inspector is back.

  “I brought you some coffee, if you’re interested.”

  “No, thank you. At my age, a single cup means a lost night.”

  “If you need to rest, we can stop for a few minutes.”

  “No, no, I’m fine. The water will do.”

  As the old man drinks, Gómez Triadó observes his wrinkled face. As he’s been telling the story, sadness has been darkening his features.

  “Everything changed when Julián was nine months old.

  For very strong personal reasons, she felt that she couldn’t continue to live with us, and one night she vanished with my grandson. My son couldn’t bear it, and he fell into a state of depression that ended with his suicide. We never heard from her again and then we saw the news article about her murder.

  I went to the funeral this morning to tell her how much I’d grown to hate her.”

  I decide to sleep at home tonight; I’ve been following him for five days. I need to get some distance or I’ll fall into the looking glass and be unable to come back. Everything is very confusing, as if I am slowly melting into him. He can sense my presence, he sees that I’m following him; I know that he knows because I’m slowly taking over the thoughts his mind generates. They come to me on a breeze that whirls around my brain, full of voices, noise, and hate.

  I open the door but I don’t turn on the light; I remember a childhood game of keeping my eyes closed, trying to feel the same sensations as a blind man. The blind have always fascinated me, and blindness is what I fear most, even more than death. Now I want to move in darkness again. I move toward the sink, feeling the walls so I can count the doorways. It’s the third door. I go in. My eyes are getting used to the blackness and begin to make out blurry forms. The first thing I’ll do is shower; I’m still carrying the sweat and dirt of the last five days, plus a thin film of resentment and rage which he has passed on to me.

  I thought the water would wash everything away but the only things that are gone from my body are the dirt and sweat.

  I try to sleep but my mother haunts me, I feel her near me, caressing my body with a deathly touch which filters into my brain with memories of lost moments and an image that repeats with the regularity of an advertisement stuck in my head. Sleep just turns it on. Darkness is near total, and in the background there’s a thin light which attracts my gaze. I go toward it, passing leafy plants in the shadows at my sides, and I arrive at a small clearing completely covered by a bed of white flowers. It’s from here that the light is emanating. A man with a woman in his arms approaches and when he gets to me, he kneels without seeing me, his eyes red from tears. He puts her down with great care amidst the flowers and the woman looks up at me, her face a mask of agony. I wake up in anguish, the sheets wet from sweat, and dawn’s light is seeping.

  I stay quiet, listening for the messages in my dreams, contemplating the dawn through the open window.

  “I hope you’re not thinking something’s wrong because my husband and I attended the funeral.”

  “Don’t worry,” says Inspector Gómez Triadó, “that’s why you two are here, to clear up that very point. It’s just a formality. How did you find out about her death?”

  “It was in the news.”

  “If you didn’t actually have much contact with her, how is it that the company you run, Mr. Cánovas—which is owned by your wife—transferred 200,000 pesetas a month to the victim’s account?”

  “It was part of my inheritance from my father-in-law, it came with the company.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you to stop doing it?”

  “The terms of the will were clear: to keep paying until Anna Brawner’s death. And that’s what I came to do, to make sure she was dead.”

  “Quite a favor the murderer did you, don’t you think?”

  “Us and two other companies.”

  “We know, we’ve gone over the victim’s accounts in great detail, Mrs. Cánovas.”

  “My name is Teresa Puig-Grau.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Puig-Grau.”

  “It’s the same old s
tory. The two other companies are in the same situation. If we didn’t pay what was due on time, first as indicated by the father and then by Anna Brawner herself, she had the legal power to take over our properties. In her defense, I must say that she never exceeded her authority.”

  “Are you saying she was blackmailing you?”

  “No. What I’m saying is that Anna—actually, it was Otto Brawner—gave us three businesses before Franco could nationalize them during World War II.”

  “Could you explain that a bit …?”

  “I can tell you what my father told me.”

  “Please.”

  “We’ve been here since 1942, when Otto Brawner arrived to take over an important post at the German consulate on orders from Kart Resenberg, who was the consul in Barcelona then. Highly confidential official documents about businesses in the city working with Nazi capital passed through his hands. Unlike other German officials, who stayed at the Ritz or the Continental, Otto stayed at my grandfather’s house, I suppose, so that young Anna could be raised in a family environment. The postwar period was very hard and many families had to rent rooms to survive. We felt like we’d won the lottery when Brawner moved in. He brought us coffee, butter, and cans of meat—and he always paid his rent on time. My father was about his age and they got along well. He accompanied him to the get togethers in Colón and to private parties organized at the Ritz. One day, Otto Brawner asked my father if he knew trustworthy people who could act as fronts for three enterprises that Johannes Bernhardt wanted to establish in Barcelona. He consulted with his father, who’d been a lawyer at the Generalitat of Catalonia, and my grandfather told him who Bernhardt was, which made him really reluctant to go ahead with it.”

  “Who was it?”