Barcelona Shadows (18 page)

And suddenly something metal sticks into his ribs. He realizes that he wasn’t watching his back and now he has another man there. He can’t see him, but he can hear his breathing and smell his rotten breath.

“Don’t move,” he whispers, dragging his “s”s.

Corvo thinks he has a knife or a razor sinking its tip into his flesh. It’s not a firearm, so he still has some possibility. And he waits, waits for someone to make a move.

The man in the suit pulls out his weapon and quickly points it at Moisès, who takes advantage of the pressure from the man holding him to grab on his forearm and pull, and uses him as a shield from the shot that resounds throughout the entire street. The bullet hits the man with the rotten breath’s back, but doesn’t
go through it, and when Moisès Corvo manages to free himself of the wounded body and pull out his revolver, the elegant man shoots again. The policeman notices a burning in his left arm, but it’s not quite pain, because his heart is beating furiously and he has no time to feel anything. He opens fire on the elegant man once, twice, three times, perforating his abdomen and shoulder, and manages to bring him down.

There are screams and running around, and whistles alerting the police, who will show up soon. Moisès Corvo checks that the guy with the rotten breath is dead and crosses the street to the elegant one with the slanty eyes. He leaves a trickle of drops of blood, which slip down his arm to the ground, and mix with the dust and make curds. He kneels beside the man he has wounded and sees that he’s not breathing. He tries to take his pulse but he can’t move his left arm and his right is still paralysed, gripping the revolver. The man is dead.

Moisès Corvo sits down and takes a deep breath. Now the pain rolls in on unbearable waves, and tears come to his eyes. He only just has time to take the envelope filled with banknotes off him and stick it in his own pocket before he loses consciousness.

I collect the two souls left stretched out on the road.

T
HE PLATE OF CHOPS
with beans is piping hot, and Anastàsia thanks me for it with a growl of her stomach. We are at one of the common tables of the first dining room of the Maternitat, a house for fallen women on Peu de la Creu Street, beneath gothic arches, with three other women and their children dressed in rags. The children, who should be making a royal racket, behave like the elderly, as if they were aware that they can’t take away a freshly cooked meal every day. Anastàsia chews slowly, tasting the beans, leaving the meat for last, and sometimes she shoots me quick glances like a starving dog, beneath the mask of make-up she hides her face with.

“Enriqueta is a coward.”

Anastàsia had been perfecting the art of making an impression with words throughout her long career. She was a fortune-teller on Baesa Street, which disappeared with the Urban Reform. Later she went to live in Hostafrancs, renting a room from Enriqueta, and she had to quit the tarot when a rabid mastiff bit off her right hand. She survives by doing chiromancy, in one of those delicious ironies: a one-handed woman reading palms.

“She always was, and that’s why she’s dangerous.”

I want her to continue, I arch my eyebrows, she doesn’t make me beg.

“This is good,” she says, her mouth full, meat between her teeth. “You learn a lot about someone when you live with them, and I spent some stretches with her. When she was running away, particularly. Because she was always running away.”

“From whom?”

“In a way, from herself, because she is the main cause of her misfortunes. When the police were looking for her, she would hide in the little flat in Hostafrancs. When someone she had swindled was looking for her, there she was again. When somebody threatened her… well, as you can see, she was always hiding out.”

That Christmas of 1911 Enriqueta Martí had heeded Shadow’s advice and disappeared. She no longer had the flat she had once rented to Anastàsia, so she sought refuge in Sant Feliu, with her father, Pablo. She hides at the country house that the town knows as El Lindo, in obvious sarcasm, and she stays out of sight. She left without saying a word, not even to Salvador, Joan or Blackmouth.

“She’s a loner, and she doesn’t like to carry baggage,” continues the fortune-teller. “She won’t hesitate to leave you to your fate if she can run off in the opposite direction. She will use you for whatever she likes or whatever she needs, and then she’ll dump you.”

“She married Joan Pujaló. And then she got mixed up with Salvador Vaquer…”

“Selfishness, selfishness, selfishness,” she rambles on. “Pujaló was handsome, as a young man, with eyes so blue he looked like a baron. I would have kept him for myself, but that woman has a hypnotic effect on men that leaves them stupefied, and once they fall into her web they are no longer men, they are puppets at her command. She uses them like a shield, to keep her skirt clean, you get my drift?”

“Perfectly.”

“Pujaló was alone, his entire family killed in Cervera by some poisonous mushrooms, Enriqueta told me. They had married seventeen years ago and they were never a happy couple. She even, when Joan wasn’t around, used a kitchen knife to dig around in his piggy bank, where he kept some money he’d picked up here and there.”

“His sister was alive.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Maria Pujaló, she lived with them.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. His sister was alive, but not the rest of the family.” Anastàsia rolls her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Oof Maria, the things I could tell you.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you want to know about their marriage? What do you prefer?”

“Continue about Joan and then tell me about Maria.”

“But I didn’t say a word, eh?”

“No.”

“They weren’t a happy couple. Enriqueta separated from Joan about six times, until the final one, about five years back.”

“When they had Angelina.”

“Yes, but don’t interrupt.”

“Pardon me.”

“He held on to her with all the tools he had—as I said, he was well smitten. She has that power over men, from when she was a whore. Once she even faked a panic attack to make him feel guilty. Ay, ay, ay, I’m dying, she yelled, and so on and so forth. I’m dying because you don’t understand me. He thought he had taken her off the street, but somehow she always found her way
back there. If not as a whore, which she never actually enjoyed, as a madam. She knew all the tricks of the trade and she charged a very high percentage to the young women who worked for her. But they rose up against her and she disappeared again. Joan saw the opportunity and took her to Majorca. And, as always, it didn’t work. During the months they were on the island, she not only had more lovers than in Barcelona, but she also discovered it was easier to manipulate a girl than a young lady, and she could always charge more for the former. A profitable business. When she returned to the city, she didn’t hesitate for even a second.”

“She was prostituting little girls.”

“And boys. She didn’t care.” She doesn’t mince words, there is nobody around who can hear us, but the woman speaks freely. “They arrested her two or three times for corruption of minors.”

“So it was pretty well known what she was doing.”

“No. Enriqueta always bragged about her clients. She never told me the names, but she would always come out with a few papers. This list is pure gold, Anastàsia, pure gold! I remember it as if it were just yesterday. And every time they arrested her, the next day she was free and there was no trial or anything, and she would say: me? I’m not guilty of anything. What she is is cynical, not guilty.”

“She didn’t suggest you get into the business.”

“Who do you take me for? I read the tarot, I was very good at it. Now I read palms. If you’d like, show me yours, and you’ll see how I can tell you a lot of things.”

“But she told you everything. How can such a selfish woman confide in you?”

“She wasn’t confiding. She was bragging. If there’s one sin that stands out among the many that Enriqueta commits, it’s vanity.
She can’t hold her tongue when she thinks she’s done something praiseworthy, no matter what it is. She wants to be flattered, and she wants to be feared. That’s how she is.”

“What happened with Maria Pujaló?”

“Yes.” She looks at the empty plate and asks for another. “Suddenly Enriqueta said she wanted to be a mother. But not out of the instinct we women have, no. Because that way nobody would suspect her. How can a mother use her children at her convenience? Since she couldn’t, as hard as she tried, and she tried hard, and not only with Joan—I would have given him a son, you can bet on that—she decided to keep her sister-in-law’s. Are you following me?”

“She took Maria’s daughter.”

“Angelina. She had Maria under her control during the pregnancy, and when she gave birth she told her the baby’d been born dead. Actually, she had left her with me, there in Hostafrancs, to take care of for a few days. What a sweet girl, Angelina. Her name is very fitting, she’s a little angel. I didn’t see Enriqueta until she came to snatch her out of my hands… of my hand, you know what I mean. I had been taking care of her, bathing her, feeding her. Do you know I even nursed her? Without being pregnant, I had milk for the girl. It was as if that baby had to be mine. But she wasn’t.”

“And Pujaló didn’t know that Angelina couldn’t be Enriqueta’s daughter?”

“What was there to know? All Joan knows how to do is talk and hoodwink people, but he has no idea how things work. Enriqueta told him they were going to be parents, well fantastic, great news. But Joan tired of the girl very quickly, and the arguing was so bad that he rented a flat on Ponent Street, a bit further up, number
forty-nine. He opened up a painting studio on the lower level. He’s a horrible painter.”

“And they haven’t lived together since?”

“Soon after, she met Salvador, and he was already ‘pulling his weight’ with her,” she smiles, through her teeth, amused by the pun because Vaquer is fat. “And Joan tried to get back with her, but it was already too late.”

“But they still kept seeing each other.”

“Yes, that’s what I understand, but she kicked me out of the flat in Hostafrancs. Now I live in a pension on Cid Street, and when I run into her on the street she doesn’t look me in the eye, because she knows I know all that and it’s as if she’s ashamed.”

“And you don’t know anything more.”

“I don’t want to. Would you like me to read your palms now?”

Since I’m curious, I offer her my hands. She turns white. There are no lines, no ridges, no scars, no signs of anything, my palms are as flat as two sheets of paper. I smile and wink, and before ten seconds have passed she’s forgotten whom she was talking to.

In mid January, it seems that souls around the city are a bit calmer. That year had ended with the news of Pere Torralba’s arrest, the supposed kidnapper of little Antoni Sadurní, and despite the fact that the cadaver wasn’t found, rumour has it that he threw it into the sea and when the rains come (if they ever do) the body will show up on the beach. So the beginnings of popular hysteria were snuffed out, and most everybody felt stupid for having thought that dozens of children were disappearing daily in the city when, really, there was no proof and the only known case had been solved in a heartbeat.

But Moisès Corvo had been temporarily removed from the force.

“Why?” asks Giselle, curled up under the sheets, her hair messy, her skin white as a glass of milk.

The inspector shows her his hand again. He still has it bandaged and it looks as if it belongs to one of the mannequins in El Siglo department store.

“Let’s just say they’ve given me some time off. To get well. To clear the path for investigating those anarchists who tried to kill me.”

“Did they know you’re police?”

Moisès Corvo is following the official version: some gunmen attacked him as he left a tavern on Christmas day—there’s no respect any more, not even for the most sacred—and they tried to murder him. The most ordinary thing in the world; it’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. After all, what motive does he have for explaining what really happened? There’s no need to alarm Giselle, or his wife, or his brother, no one really, it’s best if they think it’s an isolated event. Now that it seems the monster is resting, now that he hasn’t shown his face in over two weeks.

“If they didn’t know it, my friend told them.” His revolver is on the table, in its sheath.

But the policeman hasn’t been at a standstill. He went looking for Madame Lulú, but it was just as he was expecting: there was no trace of her. The bouncer at the door was still there, but he didn’t see Madame Lulú enter or leave at any point. When Corvo tried to get into the Xalet del Moro, the doorman wouldn’t allow it. And that was after he’d shown him the entire deck of cards, with thirty pesetas clearly visible between them. Corvo was seen in the Equestrian Circle Club, the Principal Palace Theatre, the Liceu Opera and the Artistic Circle. More than once he had to deal with the security guards. He couldn’t identify himself as
police without getting himself into serious problems, but he didn’t let them intimidate him.

“Now I’m calmer,” says Giselle. “Now that it’s all over, I’m not afraid for my Tonet any more.”

Corvo looks at her and winks. His head is elsewhere and he doesn’t want to listen to her.

“I have to go.” And he pays religiously.

He had held back his desire to tell her not to be too trusting, not to let the boy out on the street alone, that he knows how the whores are, forgetting all else while they work. But if he had done that, Giselle would have put two and two together and would spread the word again, and that wouldn’t be good at all. In a certain way, it’s better that everyone thinks that the worst is over, because then he can investigate more calmly.

I will qualify a comment I made earlier, when I said I have no friends. It’s not that it’s not true, but I could be more precise. I often have quite a bit of company, what you know as cadaveric fauna. Decomposing bodies give off gases and smells that attract the attention of a certain type of fly, the
Sarcophagidae
(a fairly explicit name, for that matter), which come from kilometres away to lay their eggs beneath the skin of a corpse. It’s incredible the speed with which they move; sometimes they are even faster than yours truly. These flies aren’t the typical summer pests. They are quite large, like a fat kernel of corn, but of darkest black, with round heads and monstrously hairy abdomens. Their larvae feed on the cadaver’s rotting flesh until they are enormous and turn into flies. They stuff themselves so much that they get lazy, and they don’t fly much because they get exhausted so quickly. As it
turns out on Saturday morning they found the quite rotten body of a man in a flat on Riera Baixa Street. And someone thought to bring its clothes to the police station to take their time searching for any kind of identification the man might have been carrying on him, because the neighbours in the building didn’t know who he was. Along with the clothes, without realizing, they also picked up cadaveric remains, particularly adipose substances filled with larvae. When the flesh flies appeared and the police on duty realized where they had come from, it was already too late. Not even throwing the clothes into the rubbish bins on the street worked to keep the offices from filling up with my little friends, who stick to the walls, desks and windows waiting for someone to kill them.

So, the scene Moisès Corvo finds himself in at the station on Conde del Asalto Street is pathetically comic. Malsano is smashing flies with rolled-up reports, while Golem and Babyface are telling him where there are more.

“Have you taken up tennis?” he asks.

“Goddamnitohell, Corvo. We’ve got the fucking station filled with these bugs.” Sweaty and with his hair dishevelled, a rare sight in Juan Malsano.

Moisès greets Golem and Babyface, who are laughing hysterically. Hello, poof, responds the former.

Do you recall Corvo’s run-in with the Apaches? Golem and Babyface are the two policemen who took him to the hospital. So in a way, they are responsible for his continued existence. And Moisès Corvo doesn’t forget a thing like that.