“Excuse me, I’d like to talk to Officer Segura.”
“It you got a crime to report, you need to talk to me.”
“It’s a personal matter.”
“He went downstairs for a minute. You can go in.” He pointed at the other office, a smaller replica of the main one.
A picture of the king hung on the wall. On the table, among papers and folders, stood a photograph of a plump girl. As he waited, the man who’d been at the desk came and went from one office to the other several times, until finally in traipsed a young officer whose appearance matched Violeta’s description.
“Good morning! How can I be of assistance? Please, sit down.”
Instead of the sour-faced introvert he expected, Officer Segura was swift as a lizard and verbal as a cockatoo. Thanks to his contact with customers from the town of Tortosa, Maurici identified the man’s accent as coming from that area.
“Actually, I came to see Sergeant . . .”
“Vila? Sergeant Vila, my supervising officer, whom do I have the pleasure to serve?”
Maurici wondered if he always spoke in that florid style or if he was putting him on. But there was no gleam of mockery in Officer Segura’s eyes.
“Exactly,” he smiled in the wake of the policeman’s obsequiousness, which favored his plans.
“At this very minute he’s not here. However, if there’s anything I, in my modest capacity, can do, I’ll be more than happy to oblige.”
Overwhelmed by the display of courtesy, he searched for an approach that might capture the fancy of such an untypical policeman.
“It’s a matter of . . . how can I put it? A matter of conscience. It concerns the death of a girl about two months ago.”
“Would you be so kind as to identify yourself? You understand, do you not? We must proceed according to regulations . . .”
“Yes, of course. My name is Lluís, Lluís . . . Vives.”
“Vives? Like the maestro? The celebrated musical composer, the incomparable Amadeu Vives?” he repeated for emphasis.
“A mere coincidence, I’m afraid.”
“Ah! But what an honor, nevertheless, to share your name with a virtuoso!”
“No doubt. Now, if you’ll allow me, I’ll explain what brings me here.”
“Certainly!”
“The name of this young girl was Rita Morera. Perhaps you remember the case. It was in the papers.”
“Yes, sir, a suicide in the Street of the Three Beds. A young girl: a rosebud in full bloom.” Botanical contradictions didn’t seem to bother him. “In sum, a soul who strayed too far from the herd to end up in a den of infinity . . . You get my meaning?”
Meaning was not Officer Segura’s forte. Had Maurici been in a brighter mood, he’d have found it hard to keep a straight face as he sat at the receiving end of his verbal incontinence. Officer Segura exhibited every symptom of an ill-digested feast of cheap literature.
“I couldn’t have said it better. Her death was a tragedy, particularly for a friend of mine who knew her.”
“Oh! So your friend is an . . . interesting party.”
“So interested, he wanted to come here in person, but he’s too upset for that. This is a delicate matter, it requires tact; I’m speaking to you man to man and I must rely on your discretion.”
“Not another word! Our mission in this vast field of manure,” he made a sweeping gesture meant to encompass the entire neighborhood, “is to quench the hunger of the thirsty.”
“Nicely put. So, if I may impose on your good will, I’d like to have some information about the case to convey to my friend.”
“Of course you would! The thing is, Mr. Vives, in the absence of my supervising officer—do you get my meaning?—I’m not certain if in these cases regulations allow. . .”
Maurici leaned across the desk, lowering his voice down to the confidential tone of conspirators.
“Consider it a consultation. No more than that. I beg you to look at it in the light of a personal favor. You’re the only person who’s in a privileged position to do it.”
Officer Segura was used to being treated as a dupe or, at best, as an errand boy. He wasn’t, however, used to being consulted or entreated by such an obviously upstanding young man as this Lluís Vives. So he told himself he must rise to the occasion.
“Not another word! Allow me to peruse the files. What did you say the fortunate young lady’s name was?”
“Rita Morera.”
He pulled out a folder from a drawer and reviewed the papers inside.
“Exactly! Miss Morera. Oh, Mr. Vives! In the blooming age, the spring of life, to do herself in like that . . . It was a matter of unrequired love, according to her landlady. A rose bud . . . plucked before her time by some cruel, unscrupulous gardener. Poor lost lamb who disregarded the heavenly message, poor helpless blossom in the claws of a shark . . . Do you get my meaning?”
Officer Segura’s minted metaphors sometimes happened to hit the mark. Identifying, despite himself, with the shark, Maurici couldn’t decide whether to stick to the tragic aspects of the situation or to surrender to its comic absurdity.
“Who found her?”
“Let’s see, who was it, who . . . ? Here it is.” The policeman shuffled through the papers. “Oh, yes. An aristocrat of the alcoholic dynasty, Agustí del Must, otherwise known as Proverbs. A color-filled character, if you get my meaning, a remarkable philosopher of the gutter.”
The nickname immediately rang a bell. There was no doubt. It was the tramp who’d stumbled into the tavern on the Street of the Three Beds, to the amusement of the checkers players, one of the evenings when Maurici kept watch.
“Would you happen to know where I can find him? Does he live in the neighborhood?”
“His residence is on Cirés Street, where he lives in a disgraceful state of coagulation with Ramona Villamediano, alias Gunpowder, a spiritually deceased and well-seasoned slut, if you get my meaning. But, alas! Proverbs is an errand drunkard, to wit, an itinerant one. He’s most likely to be found at the Brandy Fountain or at Bartomeu’s tavern on the Street of the Three Beds, right at the stage of the auspicious event.”
“I assume that he also gave a statement.”
“Yes, sir, but given his state of deep alcoholic infatuation, his statement is quite incoherent. See for yourself: ‘Barcelona’s a fine town . . . A bundle, there was a bundle. Ramona! Coming, coming, Ramona. Say what? An empty bottle, I had an empty bottle . . . In the middle of the street there was a bundle . . . A white bundle . . . Ramona! Barcelona’s a fine town if you got a fat purse . . . White and red. Barcelona’s got a hangover. Let me go back to . . . Ramona’s worried sick . . . Where do I live? How do I know? If you ain’t got a fat purse . . . Nobody would fill up my bottle . . . Closed, everything closed . . . Shame on the city . . . Fat purse or no fat purse . . . Barcelona’s got a hangover . . . Ramona!’ What do you think of that? This is how low a man of natural sensibility and intelligence can fall when he wallows in the slimy swamp of vice. It’s a doggy dog world out there. One of these days, in the course of a violent confrontation in some den of infinity, somebody will produce a saber out of his pocket and that’ll be the end and termination of it. Do you get my meaning?”
He’d recognized Proverbs’s monologue—incoherent, perhaps, but full of significance. When he heard it for the first time in the tavern the “bundle” had been just a nonsensical word lost in drunken babble. His and the tramp’s paths had crossed without either of them realizing how intimately connected they were. For Maurici, words and facts didn’t occur just once; they lay in ambush and codified, pending interpretation, ready to come forth and haunt him as they closed an invisible circle around him.
“Are there any pictures of the victim in your files?”
Officer Segura, whose perpetual motion around the room presented a stark contrast to his visitor’s languor, handed him a blown-up photograph of Rita’s upper body. Her eyes and mouth were half open. Under her hair a puddle o
f blood spread on the cobblestones. Maurici’s face registered the impact of the image, his voice failed him when he first attempted to speak.
“There aren’t any of the full body?”
“No, sir. Only copies of the one I showed you.”
He hesitated between asking further questions and keeping them for his upcoming interview with Proverbs, assuming he could find him. Thinking he could always return to the police station and speak again with Officer Segura, he considered the bizarre conversation closed.
“Your wife?” he asked as he got up, pointing at the framed picture on the desk.
“My fiancée.” And, lowering his voice to a whisper, “A strictly plutonic relationship, do you get my meaning?”
“Very pretty. You’re a lucky man.”
“Don’t I know it! Listen, would you be so kind . . . You’re an educated man, anyone can see that, a man of taste . . . Would you mind giving me your opinion on a personal matter?”
Out of a drawer he dragged the Poetic Works of Víctor Balaguer, bound in green leather.
“It’s the present I chose for her to commemorate the tenth anniversary of our engagement. What do you think of the dedication?”
Maurici held the book, open on the first page, and read: “For Maria Rosa, the rose of a thousand fetid charms.”
The loyalty to the floral metaphor abided.
“Splendid!” Maurici pontificated. “Worthy of Victor Hugo himself.”
In response to this verdict, thunder boomed in the sky and unleashed a summer storm. As he walked Maurici to the door, Officer Segura stopped by the window.
“Observe, Mr. Vives, how the rain lacquers the streets.”
Chapter 9
Sunday he embarked on the quest for Proverbs in the streets Officer Segura had pointed out. As the latter had predicted, he was absent from his sublet room: a cave that sheltered human debris. It was in a dark apartment where people of all ages and sizes shared the noxious air, a permanently clogged lavatory, and laundry lines hanging everywhere. The owner, a man of powerful build and nasty temper, confirmed that Proverbs and Gunpowder were never at home, which was just as well since, when they were, they raised a rumpus the whole neighborhood could hear.
For the next two hours he meandered through much of the old city, walking around the Raval and the Ribera neighborhoods, including the Street of the Three Beds. He walked into the tavern and asked Bartomeu if he’d seen Proverbs. There was no trace of him but sooner or later he was bound to stop by.
Breathless, he climbed the stairs two at a time to see Violeta, who kept him waiting because she had a man in her room. He was unprepared for such a foreseeable event. He’d had grown used to finding her ready for him every Friday; to close her door and leave both worlds—hers and his—outside; to achieve a state of perfect physical and mental isolation in this bordello room turned safe haven. Subconsciously, he’d persuaded himself that the other men—just like the factory and his father, the gambling afternoons at the Equestrian, and the night orgies—had never existed.
Trying to repress his impatience, he greeted Margarita and Hortènsia—who, as he walked by, ruffled the lock of hair on his forehead chirping “Hello, sweets!”—and the dreadful Miss Pràxedes. The ticking of the clock seemed to grow louder toward the evening. When, finally, Violeta emerged, she acted surprised to find him in the parlor on a “non-visiting” day. He replied with some irritation that the time had come for her to drop visiting days and give the boot to all the visiting bastards, that from now on she wouldn’t see anyone but him, . . . until she covered his mouth with her hand so that the madam wouldn’t hear.
His bout of schoolboy jealousy amused her. She couldn’t help but laugh, relishing her momentary superiority over him and reminding him that such exclusivity wasn’t allowed. Irked by her mischievous smile, he went on an uncharacteristic rampage that sparked their first fight. Since he wasn’t welcome—he announced at the top of his lungs—he’d remove himself from her presence; in the future, however, he’d show up when and as he pleased and speak as loud as he pleased. Violeta, still struggling to repress laughter, couldn’t stop him. He slammed the door on his way out and galloped downstairs like a man possessed by the devil.
Throughout the next week he fulfilled his promise and his threats. Almost every day he knocked on the door and killed hours in the parlor, to the comforting cooing of the parrot and the sibilant commentary, punctuated by coughing, of the madam. When at last he found himself alone with Violeta, he tormented her and, most of all, himself, with questions, pleas, demands, or recriminations, as the mood struck him. She doused those extemporaneous flares with a good dose of crafty patience, doubly effective on a temperament that was not inflammable by nature. One evening, when the virulence of the crisis had yielded to the ecstasy of the reconciliation, she reassured him.
“Some day we’ll talk about it.”
“And when will that be?” he demanded, still fuming, the lock of hair unrulier than ever, sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but his white briefs.
“When the time comes.”
She tied the belt of her robe around her waist.
“Oh! When the time comes. Next century, perhaps?”
She walked toward him with a deliberate air and took his face in her hands.
“When you know my name.”
It worked like a magic spell. Her name. At least she’d given him something definite. One day in the not too distant future he’d know her name. After all, wasn’t a name the most personal sign of identity, the most exclusive and nontransferable, and hence the most intimate? None of the bastards knew her real name. When he found out, he’d officially stop being one of them. He’d stop being a “visitor” to become her lover.
* * *
A note pinned on the door read: “We’s on the roof.” On sunny afternoons Maruja aired the children, taking them as far as possible from the noxious street atmosphere. He climbed to the top of the stairs, where he found a door so low he had to duck at the waist to cross it. The motley crew shouted and ran on the uneven, red tiled floor, hiding in between sheets that hung from the lines under a furiously blue sky while Maruja sat on a chair sewing. At her feet, a big turtle painted in bright colors like a quilt peeped out of its shell with the ambition to sniff the universe.
“Perentón! Come here, sunshine, the gentleman’s come see you.”
Obviously the boy remembered him, because after being asked his name a few times, he decided to answer, “Patón.” Maurici gave him the package he’d bought and in a matter of seconds a swarm of children fluttered around the toy horse.
Maruja smiled as he approached her, taking off his hat.
“Good afternoon. I’ve been meaning to ask you, do you know the doctor who takes care of Miss Pràxedes’s girls?”
“Doctor, you say? Doctor or no doctor, he drinks like a sponge.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“No, sir. Hey, boy, leave Susanna alone! I only know him from seeing him in bars and taverns in the neighborhood . . . He drinks alone, he don’t talk to no one. He’s a thug, I tell you, it’s a shame how he’s ruined them girls. They complain too, specially Margarita, she’s no milk toast, that one, but it don’t do them no good . . . That Pràxedes, she might as well be deaf.”
“Is it true that woman owns property in the country?”
“Ha, ha! That’s what she says, that she’s an heiress. She ain’t no more heiress than me a duchess. No, sir, Pràxedes did the streets, like all of us. Only she got lucky. Well, lucky, . . . that depends how you look at it. She married that puny Mr. Carlos, a hustler who lived like a king off smuggling goods, till they got hold of him and locked him up for a while. Soon as he got out, he was in a hurry to leave this world. Listen, Violeta’s a nice girl, you know? If you could give her a hand . . .”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. What about a wino called Proverbs? Do you know him?”
“Everybody knows that one. He talks a blue streak . . . S
ometimes sells lottery tickets. He’s shacked up with Gunpowder, meaner than the meanest dog. Do you know why she calls herself Gunpowder? She says she comes from the line of the woman who fired the gun against the French in Zaragoza . . . If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. He ain’t half that bad, though, just hits the bottle too much. Always walking ‘round here too, hopping from bar to bar. In the morning he’s still standing; by the afternoon, he’s smashed. He’s the one who found the dead girl, you know? There, in front of Violeta’s place. I’m sure he knows the wretched doctor.”
* * *
Instead of one drunkard, now he was looking for two. Maruja’s comment about Proverbs’s relative sobriety in the mornings had stuck in his mind. Proverbs was the only one who’d seen the body before the police arrived at the scene and, for that reason, he was theoretically the most reliable witness. Having studied the only picture in the police file, the one that concealed Rita’s lower body, he wondered if they might have covered it while she still lay in the street. It would take patience to wait until Saturday, his next free day.
The few nights he spent at home were those he didn’t spend with Violeta. He declined invitations to parties and social events, with the exception of two trips to the Liceu opera house with his parents. As for the Equestrian, he occasionally showed up to have his hair cut with Albert. No matter how hard his cousin tried to pry secrets out of him, he kept an unbroken silence regarding his private life. At that point, his mother felt certain that a woman had gotten under his skin and taken hold of him. When from time to time she tactfully broached the subject, he slipped between her fingers with an elusive mumble, or tried to charm her like the former Maurici would; her Maurici, the one that had not yet been ruined. On the other hand, these absences didn’t bother Roderic Aldabò as long as they weren’t absences from work. On that account, he had no complaints.
Friday was a hectic day at the factory. Not only did he have to return a shipment of faulty equipment but also referee a fight between two workers who’d come to blows, so he felt relief in the evening as he headed for the Street of the Three Beds with a small package under his arm. Recently he’d brought himself to ask Violeta if she’d like a pair of silk stockings. As usual, she’d begun by refusing the gift, but, at his insistence, she confessed that when it came to stockings nothing compared to silk.
The Street of the Three Beds Page 14
