The Last Resort (17 page)

“I’m on my way, thir!” The word, that word Bertie cannot bring himself to say, remains stuck in his throat. In its place he unleashes a litany of curses, and then he calls out to Gomez:

“No, no, don’t come here, goddamnit.” And then, “Get that whore out of here!”

As Gomez escorts (or perhaps shoves) the lady from the seaport toward the front door, I can hear footsteps approaching. Meanwhile, I stupidly and idly wonder if the sound receding down the stairs is not the sound of coins clinking away in her cleavage but rather that of a bracelet. Yes, it must be a charm bracelet, I remember thinking to myself. What a time to be pondering such things. Then I hear Gomez and the whore reach the bottom of the stairs and the vestibule, though by now the sounds are nothing more than a very faint tinkling, accompanied by a frustrated sigh, for Gomez seems to be having trouble opening the locks on the front door. At that moment the door to my mother’s room on the second floor flies open. Bertie is still upstairs with the garter belt in his hand and who knows how much cheap alcohol in his veins—the kind of alcohol that eats through a man’s brain and drives him mad. Slowly he makes his way downstairs toward my mother. The whore, who can wait no longer for Gomez to open the front door, climbs out of a ground-floor window, unaware of the object that drops from her wrist and makes that dry tinkling sound as it hits the vestibule floor next to the grandfather clock. Alone now in the vestibule, Gomez looks up at Bertie and mouths a silent “Shall I go upthtairs, thir?” My father does not deign to even look at me as I stand a few yards away from him, so naked and so close. Bertie pushes me away and, running toward my mother, descends the stairs two at a time with that word still stuck in his throat. Other words, however, like “slut” and “whore,” come out more easily, and my mother listens as she clings to the thick beams of the banister. Never before has she seen such a bizarre sight: a drunken man who clutches a garter belt as if it were a lethal weapon and then slaps it against her face, leaving the mark of four hooks on her cheek.

“Whore!” Bertie cries out, even though what he really wants to say is “faggot.” “Whore, whore,” he says, and my mother has to shove him away to keep him from striking her again. And where is Gomez? At first I think he must have gone away with the seaport whore, but the tick-tock of the grandfather clock forces me to look downstairs, and there he is, gasping for breath in the shadows, crouched down with his hands around his ears. Not his eyes but his ears, like a deaf ostrich, not doing a thing to stop his master from attacking Mama. I, however, know that I must do something, and I am still holding on to that heavy silver mirror. Brandishing it in my right hand, I begin to run downstairs.
Don’t hurt her,
I think.
Don’t touch her.
I’m almost there . . .

All of a sudden now, Bertie whirls around and runs toward me, as if the word caught in his throat has finally wrenched itself free, ready to jump out at me at any moment as he runs up the stairs to face me, naked and clutching the hand mirror, but he trips and now I see him fall backward down the stairs, and something that sounds like “faggot” finally comes out of his mouth. He said it! And then he tumbles down the staircase like an unstoppable giant ball, his head bouncing off the steps, one after the other, with sharp, dry thuds.

My mother starts to reach toward him, eyes wide open, to stop that massive body rolling past her. But then she hesitates.

“Step aside!” I want to scream out to her. “Let him tumble all the way down to hell!”

Another long second goes by, another moment of hesitation that lasts an eternity, and finally, as if she had heard my silent cry, I see Mama turn her head as the useless bulk rolls past her, thumping down the stairs until finally landing at the bottom. A dislocated wrist nestles amid the furniture shrouded in white bedsheets. And now I am the one who flies down the stairs in a single leap. Gomez is standing there by the clock, very close to me now, but his eyes are fixed on Mama as he covers his ears like someone fearing the onslaught of a bombing raid.

“Eeeeeoooooh! I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to thee this,” he cries as he turns his head toward the wall to avoid witnessing the spectacle. A minute can last such a long time, I think to myself. There’s time enough for everything, everything. And there I am, standing next to Bertie, while my mother, still upstairs, calls out to me: “Dear God, dear God. Rafael darling, what have I done? What have I done?”

“Nothing, Mama, nothing at all, dear. Wait there, wait there, don’t come down just yet.”

Not even the rats dare come near me now, for they know when they should remain in the safety of their nests, in the squalor of their lairs.

I see and hear all of this during one long moment that lasts an eternity, until the clock chimes the hour, 4:45, drowning out one last beastly death rattle. It’s over. It’s all over. Yet before coming to a close, the dream flips over and jumps back out at me, gliding over detailed images like the precise position of Gomez, his eyes fluttering up toward Mama once again as he calls out, “Oh, madam!” Then he curls up into a little ball, like an orphaned dog, in a dark corner of the room. The dream does not bother to stop and focus on my mother, nor does it stop to focus on the cheap charm bracelet from the seaport lying next to the grandfather clock downstairs, because it has moved on, leaping over so many little details—forty years of lies and false accusations. The dream does, however, very tastelessly and noisily linger over certain idle conversations. “How would you like to hear the story of a very bad girl? Oh no, ‘girl’ is just a manner of speaking—we all know that little Elisa was already past forty when everything happened . . . but to me she’ll always be a little girl. Now, how would you like to hear what they’re saying around town? A very curious story about the death of Bertie Molinet. That night, one of the family servants was in the house . . . oh, what was his name? Sánchez or Gomez or something like that. Well, he saw everything, and as you might guess, he let a few details slip out here and there, to anyone who would listen. He swears that he was looking right at the staircase, at Bertie’s body, at Elisa . . . yes, yes, I know they said it was an unfortunate accident, that he was very drunk and that there was nothing she could have done about it. That, at least, is what little Rafael said under oath, but nobody outside of the police believed a word of it, because that little queer simply adores his mother.”

The dream leaps forward without further ado, and quickly lands in my little rented room in Tooting Bec, South London. That is when I hear my own voice: “Marvelous. What a marvelous idea to ingest all my sleeping pills in a fabulously expensive hotel that looks just like a movie set. That way, I can die like a gentleman. Excellent idea, Rafael Molinet, for that is the whole point, isn’t it? To die exactly as you have lived, beyond your means. Oscar Wilde
dixit
. . .”

It is all so very confusing, as the worst nightmares always are, and for this reason I almost think that I am dead, not asleep—after all, don’t they always say that our lives flash before our eyes like a wild and crazy dream just before we die? That is what is happening to me, without a doubt: Suddenly, my entire life is being replayed here in this hotel, blow by blow—an accident that nobody believes was really an accident and a woman declared guilty by a bunch of idle gossipers, because it is so much fun to turn a simple accident into cold-blooded murder. So much gossip, so much conjecture, so much speculation . . . Why, both stories involve a bracelet. How can it be? All the same ingredients are present. For this reason I try my hardest to retain all that I have dreamed, all that I have held back for so many years. I want to hold on to each and every detail as vividly as they appeared in my mind’s eye just a few moments ago. And with the clarity of the inevitable, I suddenly sense that I will soon wake up and be overwhelmed by that precarious sensation that always follows the dream state, a feeling that will slowly dissipate as I try to cling to the things I have seen—images, sounds, comments, the tinkling sounds of laughter, a charm bracelet. But it will be useless, for everything will come apart and disappear without a trace into the drain of my conscious state.

When I awaken, all I know is that I have made some kind of strange connection between the deaths of my father, Bertie Molinet, and Jaime Valdés. But by the time I open my eyes, the memories have already retreated back to where they came from, and it is Mercedes Algorta who comes to mind. Nobody else.

The People One Meets at a Spa Hotel

1. Miss Guêpe

Miss Guêpe lives in a yellow room. The walls are yellow, as are the many fabrics used for curtains and sofa. The flower vases are reserved exclusively for narcissus. The stationery has a decidedly vanilla hue to it, and the framed pictures on the wall offer reproductions of camels, a few geese, desert dunes, and on occasion an image of a Mandarin Chinese in full traditional dress. All of these images, in any event, are very yellow.

Miss Guêpe feels very strongly about the importance of ambience, especially when it comes to the place where a person carries out his principal activities. A person who surrounds himself with various shades of blue, for example, is likely to become icy and distant. Green, on the other hand, tends to be calming—perhaps too calming, according to Miss Guêpe, who feels it may inspire excessive complacency. Yellow, however, combines joy with good taste, discretion with brio, character with conscientiousness. In short, yellow is the ideal color for the director and driving force behind the operations at L’Hirondelle d’Or.

For ten years now Miss Guêpe has been charting the destiny of LH’O, which is what she calls the hotel in the interest of verbal economy. They have not been easy years. When a respected chain of small luxury hotels called upon her to look after LH’O, nobody would have bet a dime on this type of vacation resort. The building was interesting—somewhat unusual and certainly not lacking in personality, but it was located in the middle of Nowhere, on the edge of a desert, which meant that its local clientele could only consist of jackals, vipers, or scavenger birds—and not in the metaphorical sense. Nevertheless, the executives of this hotel chain decided that the time had come to invest in a new kind of secret hideaway that, according to the very visionary, almost prophetic minds of the gurus of the hotel business, had the potential to become a very profitable venture indeed. All the trade publications seemed to suggest that the wealthy people of the world would soon become increasingly inclined to play down their fortunes and live as discreetly as possible—the opposite of what everyone did in the 1980s. Very soon, they predicted, chic vacationers would want to hide out like bunny rabbits in pleasant and exceedingly remote locations where the only people they saw were like-minded souls who had already caught on to this trend of reclusion and retreat from the world. “Where are you going for spring vacation?” They would ask one another. “Oh goodness, someplace in the middle of Nowhere where nobody can see us, where we can spend all day in flip-flops and ratty T-shirts. We just can’t take all the craziness anymore . . .”

And so, Miss Guêpe accepted the challenge back in 1987, even though there would be more than a few kinks to iron out along the way. Not just because ostentation and exhibitionism still reigned supreme when it came to vacations, but also because two additional phenomena had yet to take place. Both would have a decisive role in the fate of L’Hirondelle d’Or. The first was a series of international scandals, misfortunes, and fiascos that drove many “important” types to “go undercover” when traveling. The attitude was something along the lines of “I don’t want them to notice me or analyze me. I am sick and tired of the paparazzi trying to find out everything about me down to the price of my ties,” and it was rampant. The second phenomenon was a fortuitous accident that occurred when L’Hirondelle was little more than a peaceful little hotel in an exotic corner of Morocco, with no particular claim to fame to grab the interest of the wealthy vacationing public. But then one day, shortly after putting the finishing touches on the hotel’s luxurious yet understated décor, just after securing the services of an Algerian chef whose specialty was haute Middle Eastern cuisine, just when everything was in place for the first round of guests (perhaps not the most illustrious people, but certainly an acceptable lot), the water jets in the swimming pool began to cough up the foulest, ghastliest liquid, a stinking, red muck that recalled the very worst biblical curses. Miss Guêpe nearly had a nervous breakdown, for this horrific substance flowed out in thick, copious spurts, seeping into everything like a giant river of blood destined to tarnish the hotel’s outstanding reputation forevermore. It was at this pivotal moment that Miss Guêpe decided to risk everything by implementing an extremely risky plan that would decide the fate of the establishment—and very possibly turn it into a most coveted vacation spot.

For three days the employees watched anxiously as the directrice shut herself off in her office, where she proceeded to communicate with them and the rest of the outside world exclusively by telephone. The employees with the most attuned ears would press the above-mentioned extremities against her door and listen as she talked, sometimes in German and very often in very hesitant English. Once, they actually heard her utter a curse in Italian. Through the door they also noted very long periods of silence, which seemed to suggest that the directrice was using these hours to carry out complicated calculations or research.

By the time she finally emerged from her self-imposed isolation, everything had changed. Word spread that her first move had been to place a phone call to a water expert in the city of Fez, since Fez was a very popular tourist destination, and he assured her that since time immemorial the red clay of the region was renowned for its high mineral content. As such, it was a magical remedy for the most diverse array of maladies—according to the man from Fez, the red muck was one of the wonders of the world, and he added that if the substance had indeed emanated from the ground beneath L’Hirondelle d’Or in such a spontaneous fashion, praise be to Allah. Evidently, this phenomenon had occurred for some very powerful reason that Miss Guêpe would be wise not to ignore.