by Andrés Vidal
Pau Serra spoke quickly, so that Dimas wouldn’t leave without learning the truth. His face was shrunken from worry and anguish; he couldn’t lose his job, because at his age no one would hire him. But Dimas, already in the doorway, looked at him with the same callous expression from before. He had no intention of uttering another word. Once again, he began to leave.
“I beg you, Señor Navarro. Ask Señor Jufresa not to fire me. Come see my grandson; he can’t even open his eyes. We don’t have anyone else. In this house everyone works, and the neighbors are all afraid of getting infected too, now that word’s out about the fever; it’s struck many people in the neighborhood. Please, Señor Navarro …”
Pau Serra, despite his years, was on the verge of tears. He resorted to a last desperate attempt. He flung himself at Dimas’s feet and grabbed one of his hands, placing it on his forehead in a sign of reverence. He needed to keep working to hold on to his home.
Dimas opened his mouth and Pau hoped desperately that whatever words came out would be those he needed to hear.
“I’m sorry,” Dimas finally said, pulling away from the man’s hand. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, took out his wallet, and removed all the bills inside it without paying attention to their number. Pau looked at him mute, expectant. Dimas took the money, opened the old man’s hand, and put them inside it before leaving. “That’s all I can do.”
He disappeared behind the door, and Pau stayed there on his knees, defenseless. He sank his head between his hands and stayed there that way a long time. His tears fell down over the slats of worn wood covering the floor of the apartment.
That afternoon, Dimas returned home on foot. He crossed the Calle Princesa and then walked upward, passing by the monastery of San Pedro de las Puellas. Inside, he could still make out the traces of the fire that had gutted it in 1909, during the events of the Tragic Week. Afterward, he came to the Paseo de San Juan and then continued on toward his home. The day was over, and a bitter taste remained in his mouth. As he walked along, his hands sunken in the pockets of his overcoat, he couldn’t forget the expression of pain on the face of Pau Serra. He knew he could do nothing else for him, since his adopted role was that of Ferran’s shadow, but Serra’s situation was heartbreaking. Suddenly he saw his father, Juan, in the person of the craftsman: the same workingman who had devoted his entire life to an enterprise and who lost everything because of one tragic moment. It was completely unjust. And yet Dimas didn’t have time for compassion. He had marked out a path and he would have to cross through many stages, some of them painful, before he reached the end.
He looked up and saw he was approaching the foot of the Sagrada Familia. The walk had been a short one. He saw the half-built columns and buttresses. When he glimpsed the towers, cut off halfway, enveloped in scaffolding, he asked himself about the work, the effort these men were making to construct something that surpassed human understanding. Some of the workers were coming down; the rain had begun to pelt down with force, and it was bothering them. Dimas had convinced himself that no one would look out for him but himself, and that he should push ahead, independently of everyone else, just as he had been doing for some time.
Even so, leaving the apartment of Pau Serra had not been easy.
“Dimas?”
A woman’s voice made him look to the corner of Calle Provenza and Cerdeña. Laura greeted him with one hand in the air. Dimas began to walk slowly toward her, still a bit lost in his own thoughts.
“Are you all right? You look a little pale,” she asked when he was in front of her.
“I’m fine, Señorita Laura,” he responded right away in a neutral voice. Her manner had seemed formal, the way you act around an employee you don’t quite trust, to mark the distance, and calling her Señorita had the same effect. “I’m just tired. I’m heading home.”
“I’m going to stay a little longer here. You know, I wanted to give Pau the sketches for some engravings, but he didn’t show up this morning at the workshop. His hands are perfect for those little jobs; he’s the best out of any of them,” Laura said quickly. He could see she was in a rush to return to work, as if having him there made her nervous.
When Dimas heard Pau’s name, he took a deep breath.
“Yes, he’s very good at what he does.”
“They told me he’s sick,” Laura continued. “I thought of going by his house to take him something warm. Do you know where he lives?”
Suddenly he heard himself replying. The words came from his mouth as if he were controlled by someone else.
“I have no idea. But there’s something you should know: He’s quit the studio. It seems he was offered a better job with another jeweler, with more favorable conditions, and he told your brother Ferran today that he was done.”
Laura’s face, full of surprise, went suddenly dark: Had she lost her best craftsman without even being able to say good-bye? Dimas knew that by telling that lie, he had prevented a clash between her and Ferran. And it also kept him safe from her rebukes. He didn’t want to fight with Laura and have her accuse him of being a bootlick or something worse, or give her more reasons to look down on him and treat him with that coldness that she was adopting just then, which made that evening they had spent with Guillermo seem like a mirage. His nervousness led him to reinforce his story, adding a few more words, “Who would have thought it, right?”
Laura nodded with a half smile of agreement. After a pause, she said, “I need to finish something I left hanging before all the light is gone.” She spoke hesitantly, as if suddenly absent, then said good-bye and returned to her workshop.
At that moment, Dimas felt an enormous emptiness opening in his stomach. And he had to stop himself from telling her how bad he had felt for firing Pau Serra. It was his fault the man was left without a job at sixty years of age, with a sick grandson in a home the size of a matchbox. But he held back, as he had done so many times, and walked home slowly.
He would have to accept his actions as being part of the path he had chosen. Once again: light and shadow, victory and defeat, good and evil struck his conscience. He had a sour feeling, a pain in the back of his throat that refused to budge.
CHAPTER 19
“You say you just passed by there. Why? Were you out for a walk?”
“I already told you. I live in the Calle San Pablo. I was coming from Pueblo Seco where I saw a couple of friends from work who were going to give me some tools.”
“Yeah? And where are these tools?” the policeman asked.
“I lost them in the scuffle,” the man responded. He touched his face slightly. One of his eyes was nearly swollen shut and bruised and one cheek inflamed. “If you look for my leather pouch, I’m sure you’ll find them. And if not, they’ll be of use to someone. …”
One of the policemen present at the interrogation who had kept his silence until then approached the arrestee rapidly. He gave him a hard slap on his wounded cheek with an open hand.
“Are you accusing the police of stealing your goddamned tools?” he shouted.
The man raised his hands to his face again, and his eyes filled with tears. He didn’t dare to utter a word of complaint. There was not even hate in his glance. Only terror, terror that the blows would never stop, that the clubs would rain down on him again with the insults and the kicks in the stomach that left no trace beyond days of being unable to keep down solid food and mute fear of setting foot outdoors.
“That’s enough, Vicente, take it easy. I don’t want any violence in here, you know that.”
Esteban Bragado looked at his subordinate with the condescension of an indulgent father. He made a gesture for the other man to leave. Afterward, he returned with a weary step to the side of his colleague who was leaned against the wall, where the paint was flaking off from the humidity. It was grayish in color, and impossible to say whether that was the original color or if it had acquired th
at dull tone over the years. The withered paint had been picked off in some areas, especially close to the corners. It seemed a kind of atlas of continents with imaginary borders, each one melding into the other, as if showing the world could be another way.
“Look, García,” Esteban said, turning toward the captive. “You’re suspected of collaborating with the group of anarchists from the Calle Conde del Asalto. And you know what it means to be a suspect in this cruel world we live in. The pit at the castle of Montjuic is full of guilty men who said they weren’t. Let’s start again: Why did you go to Pueblo Seco? What groups of anarchists do you know there?”
“I don’t know anyone from any group,” the accused affirmed again. Then he bit his lower lip and hesitated for a moment before continuing. “There’s a guy with weird ideas who came to work from España Industrial, but nobody joined him.”
“What’s he called?”
“His name?” the man asked unsurely.
“Names, García. I only want names. Is that so hard to understand?”
Esteban Bragado rose up forcefully from the chair and it slid away from him with a loud sound. He bent over the accused, who leaned back as far as he could. The policeman placed both his arms on the table until his face was directly in front of the prisoner’s. If he listened closely, he could hear the pounding of his heart, racing, ready to leap from his chest. He spoke to him almost in a whisper.
“I can’t hold them back forever,” he said, making an almost invisible movement with his head toward the back of the room. Against the wall, two hunting dogs looked at him unmoved. Then he sat back, seeming to give up. “Don’t worry, García, there’s no rush. You know what I need, and I have other obligations. I’ll come back in the evening. I’ll try to make sure they’re not too hard on you. Remember: names. Four is enough. Maybe for my colleagues, too, but I can’t promise anything.”
Bragado took his jacket from the seat back and left without a second thought for the defenseless condition of the prisoner. His eyelids quivered noticeably and he rubbed his cuffed hands one against the other. A scarlet stripe crossed each of his wrists. His hands were filthy, large and strong, accustomed to hard work. The policeman turned to his two underlings, who were staring at the arrestee, waiting patiently for their turn. Bluntly, as if the man in question wasn’t listening, he said, “Make sure he holds out ’til the evening. Don’t go too crazy; I don’t want any hassle. Remember what happened last month with that whore of Carmelo’s: Calzada ended up having to spend the whole morning filling out paperwork afterward. Right, Calzada?”
“Don’t worry, Chief. He looks like a tough one.”
Bragado gave the prisoner one last look and smiled slightly. In a café, a smile like that could be taken for a gentlemanly good-bye, a concession after an agreeable chat, but in that context it took on a sarcastic, almost macabre aspect: He seemed to be saying good night to a man when the night was sure to be anything but good. He buttoned his jacket slowly and walked out with an unworried air.
He walked until he’d made it to the restaurant in the Calle Caspe. Esteban Bragado was forty-seven years old and had worked almost every position on the police force. He had started off hunting down undesirables in the old city in Leon, always in the shadow of his father, who also belonged to the force. For that reason, when he found out positions were open in Barcelona—a tough city where nobody wanted to work—he didn’t think twice. He sent in his application, it was accepted without problems, and once he was in the City of Counts he started again from zero. Soon enough he was climbing up the ladder. The first few rungs may have been luck, but no one could say he didn’t know how to play his cards. His little glimmering eyes gave him a look that vacillated between warmhearted and cheerful and cruel and ruthless. He’d been in the city sixteen years now and knew all the shortcuts, the alleys in the old city and the suburbs, the wealthy areas and the ghettoes. He had witnessed the creation of the Ensanche and the transition to electricity. For him, Barcelona seemed to be a modern metropolis, because he imagined all the other places he’d lived had stayed just as they were in his youth.
Bragado needed excitement, action. He managed to collect medals, and in the Tragic Week, he overcame the last hurdle between himself and his most important promotion. In those violent, conflictive days he knew how to act with a firm hand without attracting attention, always in the shadows of the big shots, adapting himself to whatever political changes came along. He came out of it stronger and well placed in the list of candidates for the chief of police of Barcelona. The nomination wasn’t long in coming and once he’d taken over the office, his name and his person soon began to inspire a respect that more often than not was mixed with fear. There was no doubt that he hadn’t let legalities get in his way when it came to controlling a city that had broken away from its reins some time ago. He put a stop to the anarchists, used snitches, created patrols composed of ex-policemen sympathetic to his thinking, and when his suspicions fell on someone, he didn’t hesitate when the time came to fabricate evidence against them.
No one had been able to bring him down, and with the prisoners, he always acted correctly. Since he’d taken over the office, he hadn’t once used violence personally. But under those apparent good manners was hidden an implacable inquisitor who had instructed his pupils well. That was why his superiors regarded him so highly: They knew he wouldn’t act on his own, that he wasn’t looking for personal glory to the detriment of prestige of the politician of the moment. Esteban Bragado was the kind of chief who was well aware of his virtues and knew how to put them in action but never forgot the hand that fed him.
That day Bragado had a date with Andreu Cambrils i Pou. He and the deputy mayor were meeting in a luxurious restaurant close to the Paseo de Gracia.
He finished his cigarette in front of the door, next to a porter dressed in a red coat with gold buttons that reached nearly to his ankles and a top hat with a gilded band around the bottom of the crown. Esteban looked up and saw himself reflected in the windows, and inside, he saw heavy velvet tapestries descending from the ceiling, giving the room a warmth that bordered on stuffiness. The guests were dressed elegantly and Bragado could feel the weight of his suit on his shoulders. Not that it was cheap or of low quality—for some time now, his salary had allowed him to live with a measure of comfort, without too many worries—but so many years walking the beat, living on peanuts, and dealing with thugs and hustlers had left him with a graceless appearance. His walk was awkward, as if he always bore a heavy burden on his back, and he wasn’t much for words, though he knew when to speak and when to hold his tongue. That was why Andreu Cambrils i Pou trusted him.
At last Bragado entered the restaurant. His little fleeting eyes, professionally wary, gave the tables a quick inspection. He knew many of the diners, as well as their weaknesses. He kept a large quantity of information stored in his head without even realizing it; he didn’t hesitate to use it when he felt like it, and he was skilled at taking maximum advantage of it. Esteban Bragado was a man who knew what to do with opportunity when it came along. His father, who had been the commissioner in Leon, had trained him well: When you dealt with men in power, don’t think too much, but remember everything. And every bit of information should be used at the right time, not before and not after.
In the back of the room, alone at a large table, Cambrils i Pou was having a casual conversation with a waiter who prided himself on his friendly relations with the most powerful politicians in Barcelona.
“Ah, Bragado. At last,” the deputy mayor exclaimed.
“Am I late?” Bragado said, taking his watch from his pocket. It was still several minutes before the appointed hour. “My apologies, sir. I had to take care of something before I left.”
“Don’t worry, relax.” Cambrils waved his hand in front of him, indicating the matter’s unimportance. “Anything I should know about?”
“No, the usual: an anarchist who refu
ses to admit he is one,” the policeman said. Taking his seat, he ordered a fish soup from the waiter, who vanished immediately. Cambrils i Pou had already ordered before his tablemate arrived.
“The anarchists, what a headache. But they give us an excuse to grab up everything in sight. Really, we should be grateful to them.”
Andreu Cambrils i Pou treated everyone he came into contact with according to his proverbial standard of urbanity. Bragado feared these encounters and fled from them as soon as he could: He was always walking a tightrope, halfway between the obligation of fulfilling some direct order and the risk of taking some personal initiative that could get him into hot water. For that reason, despite his long experience in dealing with lawbreakers, he was conscious of what he was up against, that despite his promotions and his long time on the force he was not safe from certain pressures, as he called them. To say no to the requests of a politician would be an example of a personal initiative, and it could indeed get him into hot water. The shadow of Cambrils i Pou stretched far, and a policeman needed to keep the people in high places satisfied: no one was safe from a bullet fired in a dark, empty alley or a car accident on the way back from a family visit to a retired father in Leon. … Stranger things had happened.
“The thing is this, Bragado,” Cambrils began. “Barcelona is spreading out to the Besós and the seaside is of inestimable importance to our city. We should take better care of its image. In the past few years, people have taken a great liking to swimming at the beach. And as you well know, Barceloneta is becoming the leisure center for the young bourgeoisie, with the Oriental Baths and the baths at the shipyards, all relying on the soothing effects of the sea.”
“I know, Señor Cambrils.”
“And you will remember as well how much it cost us to ensure that this particular bit of sand was free from undesirables. I believe you were the one in charge of combating them while the successor to the office you presently occupy was still under discussion.”
