A Shortcut to Paradise

by Teresa Solana

  If he’d caught a plane to New York, Moscow or Casablanca, it would have been a quicker journey. But now he was in Tarazona, a small city with historical buildings undermined by property speculation, that he’d only heard of because it was the seat of an offbeat institution created and led by translators. The House was full in June, mostly with foreigners, and English was the language most commonly heard. Outside in the street Spanish was the language used, a Spanish heavily impregnated with the local Aragonese accent, mañico, that lengthened the last syllable of every phrase as if in a jota lilt, and was characterized by the constant use of diminutives. Ernest was no longer plain Ernest but Ernestico, a café was now a cafetico and he was now a mozico rather than a home. On the other hand, Tarazonans were open, gutsy, fun-loving people, fond of Holy Week processions, red wine and honey cakes. They also loved sport, which they practised in two ways: running in front of small cows along the city’s steep, narrow streets, and throwing tons of tomatoes at each other in the Town Hall square the day of the local fiesta. Past local celebrities included such diverse figures as the variety singer Raquel Meyer, the comedy actor Paco Martínez Soria and the philosopher Gracián, who wasn’t born in Tarazona, but who, luckily for the city, had died there. At the time he was buried in a common grave since nobody anticipated he’d become famous centuries later, and local archaeologists had for years been trying to find his bones, though their macabre objective remained unclear. Worthy descendants of their forbears, the present-day inhabitants of ancient Celt – Iberian Turiasso were stubborn, proud and suspicious, particularly of weekend tourists from the metropolis who came to peer at old stones and, naturally, the eccentric characters continually parading through the Translators’ House.

  Ernest was welcomed by the centre’s director, a woman in her forties who was a crazy chain-smoker. She was also from Barcelona and spent days on the phone managing crises. She apologized for not meeting him with a car in Tudela, which was only twenty minutes away, but she didn’t drive and her secretary was off sick with depression. Ernest had come to that back of beyond in flight from incipient depression brought on by a bad conscience, so this news floored him somewhat. Did the inhabitants of Tarazona have depressive tendencies? He said nothing, but something stirred inside him and he began to regret the journey he’d just endured.

  As usual, the centre’s director had organized a kind of welcome supper with the rest of the translators staying in the House, but she’d assumed that Ernest would arrive after lunch and have time to rest and acclimatize to his new environment. Instead Ernest barely had time to drop his rucksack, ring his wife, tell her he’d arrived safely and take a shower (a cold one at that, because the gas-oil tank was empty and they’d been waiting for a refill for days). They had a table reservation for nine, the director explained as she showed him to his room, but not because nine was the normal supper time in Tarazona: it simply happened that most translators resident came from countries where supper after seven o’clock was considered a sign of Latin excess they found hard to stomach. In Tarazona, and even more so in the summer, local customs were very different to those of Calvinist Europe, where most of the translators were from, and none of the half a dozen or so restaurants scattered throughout the city opened their doors before nine. If they wanted to dine out on the House, the translators had to accept a degree of hunger. At a quarter to nine on the dot, an out-of-sorts Ernest, five famished translators and the director, who seemed slightly off-key, left the House in single file en route to a tasty meal.

  The House was currently home to a Finn who translated from Swedish, an Englishman who translated from German, a German woman who translated from Russian, a Norwegian woman who translated from French and a Catalan who was translating Marina Dolç into Spanish. As the centre had only five bedrooms and Ernest was the sixth resident, the German and Norwegian women, who’d met thanks to the European network of Translator Houses and were friends, were sharing a double room where they often played hosts to small parties. As for Adrià Ruiz, Marina Dolç’s translator, he was slightly younger than Ernest and also lived in Barcelona, on the left side of the Eixample. Naturally they knew each other, but only by name.

  Ernest spoke good English, so the translators agreed to use that language to converse with. The English translator, who looked the most eccentric of the bunch, half hippy, half lord, was the only one, apart from Adrià, who had a smattering of Spanish. He’d spent a number of summers on the Costa Brava, but his accent was so authentic that nobody understood him, especially when he spoke in his own language. On the other hand, the English the director babbled was as incomprehensible as her British colleague’s. However, as she was the one in charge and didn’t look as if she would suffer fools gladly, no one dared say a thing.

  In the course of supper Ernest discovered, much to his relief, that the secretary’s sick leave due to depression stemmed from the fact she wanted an increase in her salary, which implied she wasn’t so much depressed as impoverished in her thinking. He was also informed the Prince of Asturias was to visit the city the following day to see the restoration work on the cathedral, and that was why Tarazona was bristling with over a hundred tall, brawny security police one could easily detect by their camouflage as tourists dressed up for a safari. Moreover, a translation congress was scheduled for the weekend and the director had an unresolved problem: there were more attendees registered than there was hotel capacity. June was marriage month in Tarazona and the city’s hotels couldn’t cope with the demand.

  That first night they ate and drank, drank and ate, and, for the first time since his accident, Ernest found he could relax. He also got merry, though he wasn’t the only one or the worst for wear. The Finn and the director seemed to be racing neck and neck to the bottom of a bottle of home-made orujo, as the Finn fell into a stupor in step with the grim poems he was reciting while the director’s English improved spectacularly under the impact of the Galician liquor. The director won and left the restaurant in a dignified fashion, even though she was on her knees after vomiting in the lavatory.

  Ernest got up around noon the next morning, his body hung-over but his spirits refreshed. He didn’t remember much; the binge had seen off his nightmare and he felt cheerful. After eating a sandwich and drinking a Coke, he was about to start working when the director, who’d barely recovered from the night’s excesses, summoned all the translators to her office and asked them to make themselves presentable as they had to go and shake the prince’s hand in the town hall. Although she was a republican, that human chimney intended to make the most of the royal visit by securing a better base for the House. Like the rest of his colleagues, Ernest didn’t dare say no, even though the only clothes in his rucksack were a pair of old jeans and some unironed shirts he’d grabbed straight from the clean-linen basket. As soon as he saw how the director and the English translator were dressed up, he realized he’d no reason to worry.

  When the reception was over, after being put on display before the future monarch like monkeys at a fair, with their director acting as mistress of ceremonies and leaving the prince and local bigwigs quite speechless, the six translators decided to drink a few vinicos to swill out the bad taste from their mouths and, in the process, escape from the director, who was threatening to pressgang them into viewing a local painter’s exhibition, no doubt with some dark ulterior motive. As on the previous night, they returned in the early hours, and not necessarily to the same bed. This wasn’t the case with Ernest, who felt obliged to remain faithful to his wife now his remorse was beginning to fade and the serious economic problems that had forced him into petty crime seemed like ancient history.

  On the following days, Ernest closeted himself in his bedroom to get on with his translation, and that made him feel happier. As he was working on an English novel, from time to time he went and consulted his British colleague over any doubts he had, or went to look at his emails. By night, even though Tarazona didn’t get any cooler, Ernest went out on binges with the other transl
ators. They drank, ate and argued heatedly about literature, writers and translation problems. Then they zigzagged euphorically back to the House early in the morning. Unlike Ernest, they all led fairly unconventional, offbeat lives and were really passionate about the writers they translated. Perhaps from the point of view of the locals, Ernest and Adrià were the least eccentric of the bunch, and that, together with the fact they both shared Catalan as their mother tongue and worshipped Kafka, meant they quickly became close friends.

  Adrià had confessed to Ernest that he wasn’t crazy about Marina Dolç and only translated her novels for the money. Ernest also sometimes had to translate novels that weren’t very good, but, given the pittance they were paid, he was glad to do so because they were easier to translate. Unlike Ernest, Adrià wasn’t married and had no children. He lived alone and spent his free time seducing young women and writing short stories and poems he never published.

  Adrià had been at the Translators’ House for a month. He’d gone there to translate The Heart of the Labyrinth, the novel Marina Dolç had published before being awarded the Golden Apple award. Adrià had almost finished the translation, and as soon as he had, he’d start on A Shortcut to Paradise at full pelt. Adrià was sick of Marina Dolç’s novels, but they paid the rent on his tiny flat and didn’t burn up any brain cells.

  The death of his star author had happened when Adrià Ruiz was at the Translator’s House. The nature of the crime was so shocking that journalists had come from Saragossa to interview him, but Adrià had only met Marina on a couple of occasions and he’d never even heard of Amadeu Cabestany. From the moment he saw the news on television, he started to buy a newspaper every day and read with interest the articles about Marina, as if being up to date on the murder was part of his work. He sometimes mentioned them to Ernest, who preferred not to read the press, particularly the Barcelona papers, as a precautionary measure. That Thursday, when Ernest was on his ninth day of convalescence at the Translators’ House, it was Adrià who showed him the article reporting on the allegedly cannibalistic habits of the writer from Vic and the accompanying black-and-white photo. Ernest almost fainted.

  He immediately recognized the man he had mugged when he left the Up & Down club, and his heart began to race. His first thought was that, quite unawares, he’d had an encounter with a dangerously disturbed murderer, but when he’d read the article, he realized the enormity of the situation. At the very moment when, according to the police, that madman had killed Marina Dolç, he, Ernest Fabià, was at the other end of Barcelona holding him up at toy-gun-point. Unless Amadeu Cabestany possessed the divine gift of ubiquity that allowed him to be simultaneously the victim of a theft and killer of a renowned writer, the police had got it wrong. He hadn’t killed Marina Dolç. He couldn’t have. Ernest Fabià had just discovered he was the witness to his innocence. A vital witness.

  The fact the papers mentioned a possible serial killer involved in acts of cannibalism meant the pressure in his chest was slightly relieved. The crimes being hinted at were so horrific that, in reality, one extra was irrelevant. It was obvious that if he didn’t corroborate the suspect’s alibi, something he could only do by revealing his own guilt as a mugger, and they sentenced Amadeu for the murder of Marina Dolç, then the real killer would get off scot-free. Ernest didn’t know what to do, and didn’t dare ring his wife or ask his new friend for advice. He was stressed out the whole day, and excused himself that evening on the pretext that he had a bad headache. Ernest locked himself in his room and spent the evening alone, a prey to remorse, nicotine and alcohol.

  The following day when the papers published a retraction, stating it had all been a misunderstanding on the part of the prison’s inmates, Ernest’s life-line was gone. Amadeu Cabestany was no longer a depraved monster accused of one more act of butchery because of Ernest’s silence: he was a wretched writer unable to prove his alibi. Ernest now had to add to the remorse in his conscience a moral responsibility of an infinitely greater weight: the responsibility to save an innocent man from unjust punishment. That meant taking the bull by the horns and reaching an important decision, one way or the other.

  But it wasn’t easy, because there were other people at stake. Ernest had a responsibility to look after his family and a duty not to traumatize his children. It wasn’t simply the punishment he might receive; that wouldn’t be severe given his lack of a criminal record and that was what least worried him. No, what really was worrying him was what would happen when his seven-year-old son Jordi found out that his father was a common thief who didn’t take him to school because he was locked up. What would his parents, wife or friends think of the crime he had committed? Who would believe that the pistol he had used to threaten Amadeu was indeed a toy? Who would ever trust him again and give him work? If he confessed, he’d not only sink himself but would push his whole family over the precipice, in the best tradition of Classical tragedy. But if he kept quiet and didn’t go to the police, how would he ever look at himself in the mirror again? How would he stay sane knowing his hands were besmirched by that shameful silence?

  At his wits’ end, Ernest went up to his room and shut himself inside with a bottle of JB and two cigarette packets. He spent the whole day there but was unable to reach a decision. He was a physical wreck in a state of mental paralysis. At a quarter to eight someone knocked on his door and Ernest realized he’d dozed off. It was the director, who had organized an outing that evening to the monastery of Veruela to a concert of Baroque music. Initially, Ernest, who was tipsy, said he didn’t feel at all well and would prefer to stay at the House. The director shrugged her shoulders, looked at the bottle of whisky and the ashtray full of butts and asked him to take care he didn’t start a fire. Five minutes later, the Norwegian translator appeared in his room, all made-up and scented, to tell him she also would prefer to stay back and not go to the concert. She’d bought a good bottle of wine and offered to make dinner for two.

  Ernest knew that if he stayed in the House he’d have to fight off that woman, who was desirable and had been trying to get off with him for days. In his present disastrously low spirits, he wasn’t at all sure he wouldn’t end up succumbing to a wild night of sex, smoked salmon and alcohol. He spontaneously imagined her naked but for her knickers and took fright. This Nordic epiphany changed his mind and he prudently decided to go on the trip out. Although he wasn’t a believer, he thought he might find an answer to his anguishing within the walls of that venerable monastery and, if he didn’t, at least he wouldn’t make it worse. If God existed, Ernest was prepared to give him an opportunity to prove it.

  The monastery of Veruela is at the foot of Moncayo and fifteen kilometres from Tarazona, so they had to take taxis. The concert started at nine, and when they arrived the sun was beginning to set behind the mountain. It was cooler in Veruela than in Tarazona, but it was freezing cold inside the huge church where the concert was being held. Its impressive, twelfth-century walls kept rationality out, as well as the warming rays of the sun. It might be hot in hell, but the House of God, more than one must have reflected during that concert, was an icebox. Ernest started to sneeze after half an hour, and when he returned to Tarazona, at around eleven, he had a temperature and was shivering.

  He spent the whole of Saturday delirious in bed, refusing to eat or let a doctor near him. Was that the signal he’d been searching for? And, if it was, how should he interpret it? What was the message the one on high was trying to send him with that untimely chill? Around noon the next morning, Ernest found the strength to go to the kitchen to brew up some coffee. While he was waiting for the coffee to percolate, he saw a newspaper opened at a half-page advertisement asking for citizens to collaborate in the search for a witness to support the alibi of the alleged murderer of Marina Dolç. It included the photograph the police had taken of Amadeu Cabestany and a mobile telephone number that, they insisted, wasn’t a police number. Before he could have second thoughts, Ernest nervously copied the number onto a scrap of pape
r and, his stomach still empty, went up to his room to gather his things together. God, or whoever, had now certainly given him a sign that he could both decipher and contact on his mobile. Rucksack on back, he went off to the director’s office. As it was Sunday and she wasn’t there, he wrote her an apologetic note explaining he had had to curtail his stay at the Translators’ House. He’d have liked to say goodbye to his other colleagues, especially Adrià, but nobody was around. Before leaving, while he was waiting for his taxi to come and take him to the station, Ernest decided to make a call.

  “Mr Masdèu?” he piped. “You don’t know who I am but we must talk. I’m the person who mugged Amadeu Cabestany the night Marina Dolç was murdered.”

  PART FOUR

  17

  On Friday the St John’s Eve party on our roof terrace ended in a great splash, with the Rottweiler screaming and throwing eggs at our guests, furious because the mossos and Guàrdia Urbana were totally ignoring her calls and because the decibel-measuring gadget lay smashed in the middle of the street. The twins had the best time of it because after seeing off that gadget they went downstairs, cleared our fridge of eggs and tomatoes and repaid the Rottweiler in the same coin while the adults turned a blind eye. When the battle of the eggs began, Borja and Lola scarpered with the bottle of Cardhu, and the next morning, it was Montse and I who had to go up and clean the terrace. I spent the rest of Saturday playing with Arnau, and on Sunday we had lunch out. That evening, feeling totally lethargic, I accompanied Borja on a visit to Mariona Castany.