Black Sun Rising

by Mathew Carr

  Esperanza was in no mood to do any such thing, but Vargas had clearly not intended to initiate a discussion, and he walked away without waiting for an answer. Esperanza waited till he had gone and then walked out through the little courtyard toward the entrance. No sooner had she stepped outside than she saw Ruben and Flor Montero standing under the plane tree on the other side of the street. There was no trace of mockery on Ruben’s face now. Even from a distance, he looked wintry and somber as he stood holding his wife’s arm. Pau’s sister had the same stunned, devastated expression that Esperanza had once seen when her mother told her that her father would not be coming home.

  Neither of them moved or said a word, but even as Esperanza walked across the street toward them, she felt as if the sun had just gone out and a cold freezing wind was blowing through the city, and she knew that Pau Tosets would not be coming back.

  6

  As the train moved south from Perpignan, Lawton remembered the last time he had seen the Mediterranean on the troopship returning from South Africa in the spring of 1902. The mood on board had been very different from the outward voyage. There were no racy music hall ditties, no boxing and wrestling matches, no drills or parades, only a sense of collective relief that it was over and amazement that they had survived. For some of the wounded survivors there had been no relief at all. One soldier’s face had been completely covered in bandages except for his eyes and mouth.

  From time to time someone gave the soldier a drag on a cigarette and he sucked on it with a hoarse rattling sound that still made Lawton stiffen with revulsion. It was during that voyage that Maitland told him that he was going to become a police inspector in Limehouse and suggested that he might also join the force. Had he not done so, he might have taken up boxing once again. Or he might have become a drunkard like his father and ended up in the workhouse, or worse. Now, thanks to Maitland, he was abroad once again, but this time he felt more like a tourist than a soldier. He had enjoyed the sight of the Eiffel Tower, the pleasure boats coming and going along the Seine, and the fashionable women in their open carriages with their wide-brimmed hats and parasols. It had been equally pleasant to sit on the train from Paris to Marseille and then to Perpignan, and look out at the whitewashed buildings with their pink tile roofs, the yellow fields and vineyards and palm trees, and the ocean stretching out like a great lake of silver toward the horizon.

  Even before leaving Perpignan, he had spoken Spanish for the first time with Señor Camacho, the talkative merchant from Madrid who shared his carriage with him. Much of the time all he had to do was listen as Señor Camacho held forth about his native land, and told Lawton how to deal with beggars, the costs of meals, and hotels. Señor Camacho also had a great deal to say about Barcelona. Though he liked Catalonia, he had little regard for its inhabitants. Too many of them had been infected with the separatist virus, he said. Instead of speaking Spanish, they preferred Catalan—a language that sounded like barking dogs. Where even the poorest Spaniard was motivated by honor and patriotism, the Catalans thought only of making money and didn’t care how they made it. Even the wealthiest of them had no respect for the fatherland or His Majesty King Alfonso. Those who were unable or unwilling to work for their bread had allowed their minds to be perverted by wild dreams of anarchy, separatism, and revolution, and most of these revolutionists were concentrated in Barcelona—a city with ten thousand prostitutes and just as many revolutionists.

  Lawton had no idea how much of this was true, and he could not help thinking that Señor Camacho was laying it on thick. Immediately after crossing the border they stopped at the little coastal town of Portbou to change trains to the lighter gauge railway and he went in search of a moneychanger and some relief from the Spaniard’s overbearing company. As he stood looking over the little bay, he wondered whether his father was still alive. He had no desire to see him or hear from him, and he assumed that he must have died from drinking or the clap. But it was also possible that the old bastard had hung on, with the same bullish strength that had once enabled him to hoist women above his head with one hand when he worked for the fairground as the Strongest Man on Earth.

  An hour later the train pulled away once again, and the Mediterranean was constantly visible now as they made their way down the rocky coast past Tordera, Blanes, Arenys de Mar, and Mataró, and other towns that Lawton had never heard of. Most of these towns seemed modern and charming enough, but the countryside in between was like something from another century. They passed orange trees and wooden waterwheels, and stony fields where peasants in red caps and headscarves and sashes around their waists pulled plows by hand or toiled with mule- or ox-drawn plows, assisted by barefoot children and women in loose skirts, white scarves, and pinafores.

  It was early afternoon when the sea disappeared behind rows of factories billowing smoke and tall chimneys that reminded Lawton of Manchester or Sheffield. Shortly afterward they pulled into a large cavernous station, and Señor Camacho announced that they had arrived in Barcelona.

  * * *

  No sooner had the train come to a halt than porters came onto the train, shouting out the names of hotels and offering to take their baggage. Lawton pushed his way through them without accepting their services. On the platform he shook hands with Señor Camacho and walked out to the main exit, where he asked one of the horse-drawn cabs to take him to the British Consulate. Within a few minutes they were riding alongside a port crowded with ships. Beyond them he saw a warship looming out of the water like a spiked metal wall, but he could not make out the flag. Despite Señor Camacho’s warnings, Barcelona looked calm and reassuringly normal, as they turned right into a pedestrian thoroughfare lined by rows of plane trees, with streets running down either side.

  Lawton knew immediately that this was the Ramblas, or “their Ramblas” as Camacho referred to them. Lawton thought that it was one of the prettiest streets he had ever seen. The tall trees formed a shaded canopy over the crowded thoroughfare and Lawton saw children eating ice cream and walking with their parents, and men and women of distinction looking down from the balconies of elegant brownstone buildings.

  The driver stopped about halfway up the street, and Lawton read the words CONSULADO BRITANICO among the list of names outside the open doorway. He dropped a coin into the driver’s hand and walked into a high vestibule with polished marble tiles on the floor and continued upstairs to the consulate. No sooner had he pressed the bell than he heard footsteps squeaking on the floor and the door was opened by a handsome young man wearing a white suit and polished leather brogues. His hair was combed back on his head and flattened with oil and he looked at Lawton’s sweaty face, shabby coat, and suitcase with disdain and surprise.

  “I’m Harry Lawton,” Lawton said. “Mrs. Foulkes sent me.”

  “Ah, yes. Of course.” The young man’s face looked suitably somber and funereal, and he extended his hand. “Come in. I’m Gerald Smither. His Majesty’s vice-consul. Mr. Pickering said you were on your way.”

  Lawton followed him into a high-ceilinged corridor, past portraits of the king and the late queen, and a range of illustrious figures including Wellington, Kitchener, and Lord Nelson, into a paneled room with another picture of the king looking down from the wall and a Union Jack in the corner. Smither sat down at a mahogany desk with a green leather top and looked at Lawton over the writing pad and a copy of Wisden.

  “Cigarette?” He extended a leather cigarette case. “I would offer you a drink, but I’ve sent Catalina home.”

  “I’ll be fine thank you.” Lawton took a cigarette and Smither lit it for him.

  “I’m glad you’ve come,” Smither said. “The coroner has finished his report and the mortuary was asking me only yesterday what we’re going to do with the body—what’s left of it.”

  “I believe Mrs. Foulkes wants the remains cremated and the ashes returned to England,” Lawton said. “But first I have to confirm his identity.”

  Smither nodded. “I assume you’ve brought th
e letter of authorization? You’ll need it to carry out an examination.”

  “I have.”

  “You’re going to have your work cut out, chap. That bomb was one of the biggest in years. Two dead. Ten injured. It made my teacup shake even from here.”

  “As long as there’s something left, I’ll be able to identify it,” Lawton said.

  “Well there isn’t much doubt who it is. Dr. Foulkes was staying at the International Hotel. The bomb went off on the 14th. That morning Foulkes left his hotel and never came back. They even found a burned Baedeker at the café with his signature that matched the one at the hotel.”

  “Do they know who did it?”

  “They do now. An anarchist named Cortéz. Someone tipped off the Social Brigade—the political police. They searched his apartment and found bomb-making materials, including the same bag the bomb was carried in. Covered in traces of nitroglycerin. Pamphlets by Kropotkin and Bakunin. Most’s bomb-making manual. Copies of the Soli—exactly what you might expect.”

  “The Soli?”

  “Solidaridad Obrera. Workers’ Solidarity.” Smither gave him an ironic look. “One of the anarchist papers.”

  “Was there a motive?”

  Smither gave a snort. “These people don’t need a reason, old boy. Anyway Cortéz is dead. Murdered by a lunatic. The tip off came after his death. Very bad luck for Foulkes to have wandered into this.”

  “Mrs. Foulkes says her husband had a female companion.”

  “Well there was a woman with him at the café. But she left before the bomb went off.”

  “Are the police looking for her?”

  “Why would they? She’s not suspected of anything. Perhaps she doesn’t know what happened. And if there was anything… indiscreet about their relationship, I can’t imagine she would want to come forward. Not if she was a woman with a reputation.” Smither looked at his watch. “Look I don’t want to be rude, but I have to be somewhere. Do you know where you’ll be staying in Barcelona?”

  “I was hoping you might advise me.”

  “The Hotel de Catalonia isn’t bad. It’s in the Plaza Reial. Turn left when you go out the building and head back down toward the harbor. You can’t miss it. It’s not as quiet as some might like. But then nowhere is right now, with the Germans in town.”

  “Germans?”

  “Yes, the Helgoland is docked just outside the port for a few days. The Germans are showing it off to the Spanish. We’re all a little concerned it might be on its way to Morocco. By the way, we have Dr. Foulkes’s things. I’ll bring them to your hotel tomorrow.”

  Until that moment, Lawton had begun to feel confident and relaxed, and he had even begun to imagine that being in a different country might make him into a different person. Now he was suddenly conscious of the tingling sensation in his left hand and then his right, and he imagined himself twitching on the floor like a stranded fish in front of the vice-consul. He stubbed out his cigarette and hurriedly got to his feet.

  “I’ll be going then,” he said, reaching for his suitcase.

  “I’ll come by at ten tomorrow morning. I’ll take you to the medical school.”

  “Very good, thank you.” Lawton was sweating now and he was conscious that Smither was looking at him oddly. By the time he returned to the street, the sweat was running down his neck and spine, and he felt the nausea rising in his stomach. As he hurried past the strolling crowds, coiling and uncoiling his hand, he prayed to the God he did not even believe in not to humiliate him once again in this foreign city, when he had only just arrived.

  * * *

  By the time he found the Hotel de Catalonia the tingling had begun to subside, but he still felt an urgent need to get off the street and be alone in a room again. The receptionist was a balding little man with a toothbrush moustache named Señor Martínez, who checked his passport and wrote down his details in the hotel registry and then on another form. Martínez performed his tasks with the laborious pleasure that Lawton had often observed in a certain breed of lowly official. He seemed to sense Lawton’s impatience, but showed no willingness to respond to it as he ponderously announced that all hotels were obliged to pass on information about their guests to the Spanish police for security reasons.

  “Are you here for business or tourism?” he asked.

  “Business.” Lawton coiled and uncoiled his left hand and tried to ignore the lightness in his stomach.

  “What kind of business?”

  Lawton had not expected a follow-up question. “International commerce,” he said.

  Señor Martínez seemed satisfied by this. “You speak excellent Spanish. It should be very easy for you to do business here.”

  Lawton was not in the mood for pleasantries. He shifted his feet as the hotelier wrote out his passport details. Finally he reached his room and closed the door behind him. By dusk his symptoms had disappeared completely and he had begun to feel hungry, but he was too rattled to risk going outside again. Instead he took his medicine and lay on the bed in his vest and underpants. Even with the window open the room was humid and sweltering, and the tepid brown water in the bathroom sink did little to cool him down. In the late evening he heard the sound of German sailors drunkenly singing “The March on the Rhine,” which he had once heard some of their compatriots singing in Cape Town.

  Even after closing the window he could still hear the sailors shouting and laughing as he lay staring up at the ceiling, while the same images from the war passed through his mind that he never seemed able to forget. Once again he saw the face of the young Boer he had bayoneted on the battlefield near the Tugela River, with the handsome face and the long black hair that made him look like an Apache Indian. He saw charred bodies in the ruins of burned farms, the desiccated corpses of horses lying near blocked wells with their eyes eaten away by maggots. He saw soldiers wasted by typhus; men without arms, eyes, and even faces screaming or bleeding to death from their wounds as the stretcher-bearers carried them away. He heard women wailing over the bodies of their dead children and the hymn that one Boer wife had played on her piano until he and his men dragged her away from it and smashed the instrument to pieces simply to spite her, because she would not tell them where their sons and husbands were hiding.

  Wherever he went and however long he lived, he knew he would never be able to erase this procession of horrors from his mind. It was as if he was trapped alone inside a theater or one of the new moving picture houses, compelled to watch the same scenes over and over again. From time to time he was tempted to tell Dr. Morris about them and see if there was some medication for such things. But as far as he knew there was no medicine that could stop a person remembering what he did not want to remember, and there were some things that were better left unspoken. It was bad enough that the widow Friedman knew he was ill and that he woke in his sleep, but to admit to a doctor that he sometimes got the morbs would confirm in the eyes of the outside world what he already knew: that like his mother something inside him was broken and could not be fixed, and was very likely to get even worse.

  7

  He woke up in the early morning to the sound of a cockerel and the rattle of a streetcar, and lay there dozing for a long time while the cock continued to crow. Finally he got up and drew back the shutters. The sunlight made him blink as he surveyed the palm trees and sand-colored buildings and the shaded walkway lining the square. He took two drops of potassium bromide and performed his morning calisthenics before going out in search of breakfast. The square was only just coming to life, and he sat down at a terrace café outside the hotel and ordered scrambled eggs and toast.

  The waiter looked blank when he asked for tea, and he ordered coffee instead and smoked his first cigarette of the day. He continued to sit in the shade smoking and watching the sunlight slowly moving across the square toward the little fountain at its center, until the vice-consul appeared, carrying Foulkes’s bag and suitcase. Smither waited for him while Lawton took them up to his room and returned wit
h the satchel Pickering had given him. The mortuary was only a few minutes away from the Ramblas, Smither said, and they walked out of the square and up between the rows of plane trees.

  The central thoroughfare was already filling up with people from every social class, from gentlemen in straw boaters and top hats to workers in cloth caps and smocks, pushing wheelbarrows. Lawton was struck by the numbers of priests and nuns. There were more of them than he remembered even from Ireland. They seemed to be everywhere, in their soutanes and round black hats and habits of various orders. In Ireland men doffed their caps and women bowed their heads when a priest walked past. Here the clergy and the local population seemed to mingle without even recognizing each other’s presence, as if they had made some mutual agreement not to look at each other.

  In London there was only one police force and one uniform. Now he saw officers in gray uniforms and leather five-pointed hats, while others looked almost like cavalry officers in their braided uniforms of different colors. Unlike Britain, most of the police were armed, with pistols, sabers, and rifles. They had not gone far when Lawton was astonished to see two men in long coats and derby hats walking toward them with shotguns dangling from their shoulders, who did not look like police at all.

  “Who are they?” Lawton asked.

  “Somaten,” replied Smither. “Militiamen. They support the police.”

  “Do the police need support?”

  “They certainly do,” said Smither sadly. “This isn’t England, Harry. Here they have at least four different police forces and the only one that’s any use are the Guardia Civil—the ones with the leather hats. So the Ministry of the Interior and local businessmen pay for the Somaten—just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “In case of revolution, old boy. The government is nervous—and it has reason to be. This is a rebellious city in an unstable country.”