“You shouldn’t be here. Your father wouldn’t like it. Have you packed your luggage already?”
Andrés turned toward the window again.
“I don’t understand why we have to leave. This is our house.”
Publio came over and stroked the nape of the boy’s neck.
“And it always will be. You can come here for vacations. But your father has to move. Besides, you’ll like Barcelona, you’ll see. There’s the sea, and I’ve heard that your father has bought a very pretty house, with a blue roof. It’s like a real castle.”
Andrés wasn’t convinced.
“But if we leave, Mother won’t know where we are when she comes back. She won’t be able to find us. Neither will Fernando.”
“We’ll do what Tom Thumb did, leave crumbs along the path so they can follow us. How does that sound?”
Andrés thought about it.
“What are the people like in Barcelona?”
Publio smiled.
“Just like here; or even better maybe: I’ve heard that the girls are very pretty, although a little thin.”
Once, Andrés had heard Master Marcelo say to his mother that she was a very attractive woman but too thin for his taste. Andrés didn’t have any opinion one way or the other. To him his mother was, simply, the most beautiful woman in the world … If at least Fernando were there, everything would be easier.
He heard more noises coming from the garden and the coppery sound of a bell. Then, along the gravel path that bordered the house, he spotted a boy approaching on a bicycle, humming a song. It was the town mailman. Andrés stretched his neck out very far. Maybe the mailman was bringing a letter from his mother or from his brother, Fernando. But he was disappointed when he saw him pass without stopping his monotonous, cheerful pedaling.
“Why don’t you go have your afternoon snack? Then go see your tutor and be good. Today is your last class with him; you are growing up.”
In the kitchen the cooks were preparing him a special snack for his eleventh birthday. Andrés liked the smells coming from there, a mix of dampness, chocolate, and churros, but he wasn’t happy. He ate without enjoying it. Then he crossed through the rooms of the now almost empty house, dragging his feet with his books under his arm. The house was no longer filled with people; there were no more parties with orchestras, gentlemen smoking big cigars, and ladies trying their luck at card games like Mus or Sevens.
He reached the classroom. As soon as he opened the door he heard his tutor Marcelo’s voice, demanding his attention.
“Look at this, Andrés.” On his desk sat an armillary sphere, an astronomical instrument consisting of a framework of rings that represented the positions of celestial longitude and latitude on the globe in the center, which represented Earth. The teacher spun it. Then he went around the desk and over to the wall, where a reproduction of the Medici world map hung, its farthest-known limits the Oceanus Occidentalis.
“It’s an original. It’s priceless,” said the tutor, trying to cover up his anxiety. He extended his arm over that large black swath that was the ocean, ran over the coast of Asia through the South China Sea, and stopped his index finger on the archipelago of Japan. “Do you remember the ancient name of the Japanese capital city? We studied it not long ago.”
Andrés nodded slowly. Then he went to the chalkboard and wrote the name of the capital: Edo.
Marcelo paused for a second.
“Very good. Now return to your seat. We are going to do a dictation exercise.”
Andrés went to his desk and dipped his pen into the inkwell, but he did not start writing.
“Is it true what they say? Am I crazy?” he asked, turning suddenly toward the desk where Marcelo was reciting a dictation he refused to follow.
Marcelo was silent for an instant with his gaze fixed on the open book. Then he took off his eyeglasses, placed them between its pages, and stood up slowly. The contrast between the gentleness of his motions and his muddled expression, dominated by some obsessive and secret thought, gave a strange effect.
“Who told you that?”
“The foreman, and the gardener’s son, too.”
Marcelo’s gaze hardened. But his expression rapidly turned sweet and understanding.
“What do they know about craziness?” he said, stroking Andrés’s head. “Whatever they say, pay them no mind.” His voice seemed absent, and his attention was now focused on something that wasn’t there, wasn’t visible, but rather off somewhere in the distance and unknown. His face had tragic overtones, nourished by a dry desperation.
Andrés scrutinized his expression.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing,” said Marcelo. Then he reconsidered. “You are special, Andrés. Not like the other children or adults that you know, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. What you do with that special gift, we will only know in time.”
“What is a madhouse? That’s where they told me I’m going, and that they’ll tie me up with straps and do horrible things to me.”
“Don’t say that word. That’s not true, I won’t allow it, and neither will your father; he loves you.”
“Will you come to Barcelona? We have a house there that’s like a castle with blue roof tiles.”
Marcelo went back to his desk.
“I don’t believe so. But for you, it will surely be the best thing.”
“But I don’t want to go anywhere. I like being here,” protested Andrés. He was convinced that his mother and his older brother would come back to find him, and he wanted to be at home when they did. His mother would bring him some wonderful gift from the place where she was—abroad. He was also anxious to see his brother enter through the large door in his handsome lieutenant’s uniform, heavy with medals. Surely he’d bring him one of those fur hats that the Russian soldiers wore.
“I understand. But it’s your father who makes the decisions.”
So he’d have to talk to his father.
When his father was in the office, Andrés had to be careful not to make much noise when he walked, and he couldn’t jump on the marble floor that was made up of black and white stones, like a chessboard. He was not allowed to break the silence that engulfed the house.
Sometimes he could make out Publio’s solid back as he stood guard like an alert dog. Publio would smile at him and raise a finger to his lips to indicate that he shouldn’t make any noise. He liked Publio, even though he realized that everybody was afraid of him. Maybe that was why he liked him. Because he wasn’t afraid of him and the others were.
When Andrés showed up in the office without knocking, ready to be assertive—because now he was a big boy of eleven—and demand an explanation, his father looked at him strangely, as if he weren’t his son, but rather an annoying stranger.
His father’s rounded glasses made his nose look sharp, and there were yellowish nicotine stains on his fingertips. He smelled of lotion; he had even put brilliantine in his hair and trimmed his nails. The woman who did the ironing had made an effort to get his pants creases tight, and both his jacket and his starched dress shirt were perfectly smooth. His shoes were also shiny. He looked like a wax doll.
“Who said you could come in without knocking?”
Andrés felt a bit intimidated, but he asked his question with all the confidence he could muster.
“Why do I have to go to that horrible place so far away?”
“Because I said so. And now get out of here until you learn some manners and stop acting like a spoiled child” was the curt reply.
There were tears in Andrés’s eyes. But they were cold tears that shone in the light of the oil lamp like a knife blade. His entire body trembled like a trifling leaf whipped by the wind.
“Are you still here?” said his father, frowning.
Andrés ran out of the house, toward the fields of vines that surrounded the estate. Those spots were perfect for his frequent sudden disappearances. The place he ran away to was off limits, the dang
erous boundary where the two irreconcilable worlds of the estate met. There, almost hidden, the laborers who worked his father’s lands lived. It was a dry area on the edges of the property, an ailing land that coughed up reddish dust, near the reservoir where the frogs competed in a deafening croaking contest. Not even a thin breeze moved the air, and the pig excrement remained in the atmosphere almost like something solid.
After thirty minutes, Publio appeared.
“I was looking for you. You should go back home. Your father doesn’t like you wandering around here.”
“I don’t like being there.”
There was the world on the other side of the fence he had just jumped over, an ugly place where they forced him to study, to dress in short pants, and where they made him sing himself hoarse in a language as unpleasant and clunky as German, until his vocal cords wept.
Publio smiled.
“I understand you, I really do. The grown-up world is difficult … And when you come here, what do you do?”
Andrés kept a grave silence. He picked up a dry branch and started breaking off the bark, pensively.
“I hunt cats,” he said, pointing to a black one that fled toward the thicket with big leaps.
Publio stared at the boy, as if diving into his pupils, as he smiled in that disconcerting and mysterious way that was never clearly sad or happy. Andrés’s eyes were lovely, like his mother’s. Large, deep, and engrossed in thought, but his pupils were errant travelers that went from one side to other, without his being able to rein them in. He was about to start crying.
None of this was the boy’s fault. He was different. That difference was something hard to define.
“I have something for you.” Over his shoulder, Publio carried something wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it and placed it on the boy’s knees. “I’m a man of my word: a real katana. Gabriel made it just for you.”
The angles of Andrés’s face jutted out, and his pupils shone. A real katana! His fingers touched modestly, almost fearfully, the wooden scabbard, lacquered in black. It had a strap to hang it from his waist with a lovely cord embroidered in gold.
Unexpectedly, Andrés put his short arms around Publio’s neck and hugged him.
Publio felt the dampness of the boy’s tears on his cheek and had a strange, confused feeling. Unaccustomed to tenderness, he got embarrassed, not knowing exactly what he should do. He remained very still, until Andrés stopped crying.
Then he took the boy in his arms and headed slowly toward the Mola house. Someday, when Andrés was older, he would have to explain to him why things had happened that way, and how complicated grown-up rules worked. He would try to make him understand the absurd reality in which feelings mean nothing in the face of another sort of reasons. That power, revenge, and hate are stronger than anything else, and that men are capable of killing someone they love and kissing someone they hate in order to fulfill their ambitions. Yes, when Andrés became an adult, he should tell him all that.
* * *
As the days passed, Marcelo’s mood became more and more taciturn.
“What are you thinking about?”
Marcelo shifted his gaze from the plate of soup and watched his sister, seated in front of him at the table. They were silent, each thinking different things.
“The Molas are moving to Barcelona.”
“Does that mean you are going to be out of work?”
“That’s not the point. I’m worried about Andrés. I don’t know what he will become under the influence of a man like Publio. You should see the latest. He gave him a real Japanese sword. And Andrés carries it around all day. That weapon is so sharp it could cut through a cloud, and they leave it in the hands of a boy like him.”
Marcelo’s sister wrung her hands violently.
“You should worry more about your own son and let those rich folks take care of themselves.”
Marcelo examined his sister closely. She was a few years older than him, and she might never marry again. She had decided to come to the town to take care of little César when she became a widow. No one had asked her for that sacrifice, but his sister took it on as a duty, when really she was using him and her nephew to cover up her own failure as a woman. As hard as she tried, she would never understand the feelings that brought that sudden bitterness to Marcelo’s heart.
“Andrés feels lonely at home. Without his brother, without his mother, he’s lost.”
His sister let out a sarcastic laugh.
“From what I’ve heard, that Isabel is pretty easy. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s off whoring around with somebody.”
Marcelo’s face had frozen, his cheeks and half-open eyelids depicting a horror and disillusionment that destroyed everything. It seemed that it had all gone up in smoke, wolfed down by a shifting mass that was invisible yet there in the room.
“You say such things because you’ve never felt anything between your legs or in that bitter heart that pumps bile instead of blood.”
“How dare you? She’s only a stranger, and I’m your sister,” she said, jumping to her feet in rage. She left the kitchen but then stopped and retraced her steps. “Do you think I’m an idiot, dear Brother? I know how you feel about that woman, and what you’ve felt since the first day you saw her. And I’m going to tell you something for your own good: stay away from those people, or you’ll be the ruin of us all.”
Marcelo tightened his fists.
“It’s already too late,” he mused, although his sister couldn’t hear him because she’d left again, slamming the door.
For more than an hour Marcelo Alcalá stayed there, sitting in front of his plate of cold soup, as his shadow grew longer against the walls and the night burst in through the windows. Seated, the candle on the table his only source of light, he remained absent and immersed in dark thoughts that tensed his features. Suddenly, he heard the door creak.
His son, César, appeared in the doorway. His enormous eyes were opened wide, eyelashes arched.
“Father, there is a man at the door who wants to talk to you.”
Behind César’s slight figure appeared Publio’s sinister form, tracing a threatening smile. Marcelo stiffened when he saw Guillermo Mola’s lackey.
“Hello, Master Marcelo. It’s a beautiful night, and I thought we could go for a ride in my car.”
Marcelo swallowed hard. There were many rumors about Publio. Everyone feared the rage of that man with an almost ascetic appearance. He had installed a reign of terror based on his unbreakable faith in the purifying power of violence.
“It’s very late, Don Publio…”
Publio put a threatening hand on the shoulder of the tutor’s son, César.
“You have nothing to fear, Master. I only want us to have a friendly chat about Isabel Mola.”
Marcelo shrunk in his chair. Nobody knew what crime they’d be accused of in those times; nobody could feel safe. Many were arrested at night, taken by surprise, leaving a hot plate of soup untouched on the table, wives jumping out of bed disconcerted and running to hold their babies that cried as Publio’s men destroyed the house, rummaging through drawers, closets, ripping mattresses, stealing the silverware, the jewelry, money, and making dirty comments about the underwear they found in the dresser.
“Let’s take a walk, Teacher.”
Marcelo knew how those walks ended. With a defeated air, he grabbed his jacket.
“Go upstairs, César. And tell your aunt that I might not be here for breakfast tomorrow.” Marcelo leaned toward his son and gave him a cold hug, sneaking fleeting glances through the door, as if he were afraid of something. When they separated, his eyes had a melancholy gaze, tinted with a sweet irony.
“As you wish,” he said, looking at Publio.
César noticed his father’s nervous hands and his body shrinking as he headed toward the car parked on the street.
Publio turned back in the doorway and addressed the boy with a compassionate look.
“Don’t cry for your fathe
r, boy. Heroes don’t exist. Least of all, childhood ones.”
12
Barcelona, Christmas Eve 1980
He was an old man. The years no longer hid themselves; they were boldly displayed in his wrinkles, age spots, and loose hips. Yet Congressman Publio accepted his age resolutely. He was completely self-possessed and had buried the French-cut suits with silk handkerchiefs, wide-brimmed hats, and buttoned ankle boots of his youth, opting now for the strictest mourning attire whenever he appeared in public, giving him an ascetic air.
Now his eyes shone as if they were painted with nickel, their light was wan, and his mussed hair further lightened his ghostly face with rings under the eyes. On his mouth hung a martyr’s stiff smile, very different from the arrogance of the younger Publio, who was a capricious and elitist man.
Seeing a man like that walk through the outskirts of the city made an impression.
The official car stopped at a corner. Publio lowered the window and observed with some disgust the gray mass of buildings and antennae that extended a bit beyond the avenue.
“Are you sure you want me to leave you here, sir? If you’d like, I can escort you. This neighborhood is dangerous.”
Publio slowly raised the tinted glass of his car window. He didn’t have to do it, but he wanted to personally take care of the matter that had brought him there.
“This neighborhood is no worse than the place I grew up in,” he said to the driver as he buttoned his coat and left the car.
The poor area was the large intestine through which the city’s excrement was expelled. But even inside that microworld there were worse places; places that one discovered when cutting through concentric circles to reach the very heart of misery. Places the literature and romanticism of poverty didn’t reach, places no one could enter without emerging contaminated by the miasma of the most absolute degradation.
That afternoon, as he uselessly searched for signs on what were euphemistically called streets, Publio crossed one of those invisible borders without hesitating.
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