by Andrés Vidal
The boy snatched the coin and squeezed it in his frail hand. Under his stained skin, the depths of his brown eyes seemed immense, even deeper than the sea that roared at his back. He said nothing, just pointed with the other hand to an area of shacks built on the sand. Fragile as they were, they looked in danger of being dragged away by the sea at any moment. Maybe they already had been, judging from the stones, boards, and rags that were scattered all around. Where the boy was pointing, a group of men, women, and children in black entered and exited one of the porches.
Their pain was obvious. The majority of those present stared at Dimas when he climbed the steps to the porch, asking themselves what he was doing there; others didn’t pay him any mind and carried on with their conversations. Several times, Dimas heard the name Quiles repeated, and he stood awhile behind an older person who spoke very sternly about a morning when he had caught this Quiles stealing a piece of fruit from the market. He’d given him a good smack to keep him from repeating it, and the boy had responded with a laugh and had run away. Those around listening to the man wore black ribbons on their shirts, like him. They whispered, with penitence and regret, “If he’d paid attention to you, Uncle, we wouldn’t be here now.”
Inside, the pine coffin was set in the center of the room, and the visitors left all sorts of objects on top of it: coins, cigarettes, flowers, food, and clothes. The space was small, and between the coal stove, the breathing of those present, and the sun pouring through the window, the air was thin and stuffy; Dimas opened the collar of his shirt with one finger. As he looked around, he saw a young woman sitting in a chair, her dark hair covered with a kerchief. She cried disconsolately, surrounded by the few people who could fit, who embraced her between words of condolence. The solemnity was palpable in that tiny room among the people paying their respects to the young deceased thief.
Dimas went over to the girl and took off his hat to offer his sympathies. She looked at him with a furrowed brow, as if searching through her memory.
“Were you a friend of my Quiles?” she finally asked, sniffling.
“Yes, señora,” he lied without raising his voice.
“Well, I don’t recognize you. I’m sorry.” She continued to look at him with her glassy eyes, a wrinkled, damp cloth between her fingers.
“I knew him from the streets,” he said, as if it weren’t important. “I just wanted to pay my respects and ask where I can find the family of his friend, the one who died too.”
“Murillo? He’s the one who deserved to die, not my Quiles. He’s the one who got him into this, and it’s his fault Quiles is dead.” The young wife brought the cloth to her eyes.
“I’m sorry, señora, I don’t know what happened,” Dimas apologized. He hoped the young woman would unburden herself of all she was thinking.
She waved her hand back and forth to send away the people behind her, as if they were bothering her and she felt crowded.
“Well, don’t go show your respects to that bastard,” she insisted, infuriated, with a firm voice. “He doesn’t deserve it. If it wasn’t for him, my Quiles would never have done a thing like that; he had never even met the man who hired him. I told him from the beginning: This was too big for him, don’t trust that Murillo …” Raising her arms, she showed her pregnant belly. Until that moment, Dimas hadn’t realized her condition. “He wanted … He wanted our child to eat.”
The tears drowned out the women’s story, and Dimas thought he had heard enough. Bent over her, he took her hand warmly and promised her, “Don’t worry, I won’t cry for Murillo’s death.”
The young wife tried to smile and showed a row of irregular teeth. Dimas left with her information burned into his mind. While he cleaned the drops of sweat from his forehead with a cloth, he thought that he hadn’t been mistaken and that the suspicions that had arisen when he’d seen those three bodies were pointing him in the right direction: Quiles and Murillo worked for someone, and he wanted to know who.
Dimas left the shack disconcerted. Once on the beach again, he stopped to observe the children, some of them gesturing violently. He ran over to them, filling his shoes with sand.
“Hey! What’s going on?”
The scuffle stopped immediately, but no one looked afraid. Dimas helped the boy who had pointed out the shack to pick himself up and handed him his handkerchief to clean the blood off his lips.
“I gave him that coin, why don’t you leave him in peace?”
The boys looked at him with indifference. They were slightly older than their victim and they stood there without speaking. Dimas thought they were simply waiting for him to leave to pick back up where they left off. They had nothing better to do. In reality, they had nothing to do at all.
He reached into his pants and pulled out several coins. He counted a few out and put the rest in his pocket.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. There are seven of you. Here you have five coins. With your friends’ coin, that makes six. If you don’t share them, one of you won’t have anything. But if you all go together to the candy shop you can buy seven big pieces of licorice; the seller will know how to cut them. What do you think?”
He didn’t have to say anything more. As if propelled by the same spring, the boys took the money and ran toward Barceloneta. The smallest stayed behind a moment and looked at him with a furrowed brow. Then he went after the others, to the same store, undoubtedly. They had been condemned to get along.
Dimas stayed a moment observing the footsteps the bare feet of the boys left in the sand. He asked himself why it was so hard to accustom the mind to being the same person before and after getting money in your pocket. How could two moments so close together in time change the course of circumstances, all over a piece of metal? He had no answer to that question and could only clear it from his mind, aware of having lived through similar situations himself; only now, he was able to look at them more calmly.
Turning his back to the sea, Dimas headed back into the city. He walked in the direction of the Paseo de Colón, barely raising his eyes from the ground. He had a lot to think about. He knew that he was getting close to something important, and he was also anxious to dive in deeper.
The sun had begun to set, painting the few clouds covering the sky in shades of orange and pink. He knew there was no point in going home with those suspicions brewing in his mind and without having eaten the entire day. Despite everything, his mind was calm, weightless, as if floating on a sea of oil. The widow’s words ringing out in condemnation of some invisible figure had somehow relieved him. It wasn’t just his imagination: behind the robbery, someone had organized all of it.
When he arrived at the Rambla de Santa Mónica, Dimas walked up in the direction of the London Bar; there, in the company of Manel, he could collect himself a bit and forget for a while all this frantic activity that was shaking him up inside. He thought of how little time had passed since they’d last been together, drinking and laughing in the company of the deceased Àngel Vila.
He turned on the Calle Arco del Teatro, hoping to get off the crowded street. The light of the Rambla suddenly vanished, the night now only broken by the blinking of a streetlight that had just been turned on. There was a shack to the left selling manzanilla and cazalla until the late hours of the night, but at present, barely anyone was there. Dimas carried on, his step unhurried. Already on the Calle Lancaster, about to turn onto Conde del Asalto, he felt a blow on the nape of his neck that made him stumble to the ground. Stunned, he brought his hand to the back of his head and felt a damp gash. Against the flickering light of the streetlamp he managed to make out three black figures surrounding him. He quickly recognized one of them: Daniel Montero, his old foreman. The three of them pounced on him with metal pipes and chains. Dizzied by the blow, he tried to leap up, but a kick from one of him knocked out his breath and threw him back on the cobblestone street. He heard them say, “Stay there, wise guy.”
“This is what you get for being curious,” another added in a higher-pitched voice.
“And a son of a bitch to boot,” his old colleague said.
Without waiting for a response, they began kicking him in the stomach and back. If there was a leader, it had to be Montero, but at that moment, they were acting wantonly. The tallest one grabbed his chain and smashed it down on Dimas’s arm. He twisted in pain with his face pressed between the stones and the heel of Montero. He tried to suck back in the air that had been kicked from his lungs. The rain of blows seemed endless until, all of a sudden, the sound of steps in the distance distracted the men and they stopped their attack.
“Hey! What’s going on here?” shouted Manel, running toward them with a pipe in his hand. Behind him were various people from the bar still wedged into their trapeze clothes.
“I hope you learned your lesson and you’ll lay off asking questions. Otherwise we’ll be seeing you again,” Daniel Montero hissed in Dimas’s ear before running off after the others and losing himself in the darkness of night.
When Manel was close, he recognized the wounded man.
“Dimas!”
He heard Manel’s voice as if from afar. Manel carefully helped him to stand up.
“Can you walk?” he asked him. “Fuck, they really got you, kid! Is anything broken? Come with me, we’ll see if we can clean those wounds up a little bit …”
Dimas gasped desperately. He could hardly see; blood welled over his eyelids and cheeks, painting his face scarlet. Wherever he looked, the city seemed bathed in blood. The pain from his contusions made him hunch over and press his hands into his stomach. Every wound hurt unspeakably, but the beating had had the opposite of its intended effect on the young man, awakening in him even more of a thirst to know, to find out the truth hidden behind all that spilled blood. Dimas had never gone in for half measures and he wasn’t about to start now. Before he passed out, he thought the answers had to be very close now.
CHAPTER 48
That night, Laura’s dreams were intense. Though the image was sometimes very faint, she could see Dimas while she slept. She woke up in a bad mood, just as she had gone to bed the night before. She blamed it on the strange way he had shown up to get her attention at a time that was so difficult for her and her family.
On Thursday morning she got up later than usual, and Núria, who had agreed with the rest of the family to keep the shop closed as a sign of mourning, told Laura she needed to attend a social engagement that evening related to all that had happened.
“I’m nor happy about it either,” her sister told her, “but a group of friends are coming, especially people close to Mama, to be with us through this time. To say no would be very rude. And without a doubt, all of them, or at least the majority, have been terribly affected by the news. Our father was a man who was very much loved and respected.”
Tired, sad, Laura ceded without resistance.
The tragic circumstances of her father’s death made the mourning even more painful and deepened her feeling of the injustice of fate. Laura couldn’t find the strength to refuse to attend or collaborate with what she would have considered an irritation days before. She needed to be there for her mother and help her in any way she could. She had been left alone, and she deserved whatever efforts Laura could make.
At midday, the three women ate a frugal meal. They still lacked appetite, as if their bodies had pledged to live only from what was necessary and to reject all else. Laura noticed that she hardly perceived tastes or odors. And more, it even seemed strange to her if she enjoyed anything; she felt something diffuse inside, like a mute voice telling her she was guilty. The only thing she could lose herself in was her work at the Sagrada Familia, where every gesture made in the name of beauty had a meaning. She would think of her father and say, This is for you, and she would imagine that, from wherever he was, he was watching her and smiling proudly at her labors. Remembering that as she ate made her leave her bread on the table; she had scarcely nibbled at it, just like the rest of the food.
Pilar, dressed in all black, remained dignified, serene, though her expression and her downturned mouth showed the torture she was suffering inside. During lunch she gave precise instructions to the service staff as to what the invitees should be given—a light snack, without fanfare, though the trays should never be empty. She also asked her daughters softly to be there with her and to dress as discreetly as possible. Laura took that to mean black or another very dark color.
When lunch was over, the daughters went to their respective rooms. Pilar, walking wearily, went into the library, the room where Francesc always went after lunchtime to enjoy his Cuban and his brandy. The fire was out. She turned on the lights and surveyed the room slowly. She could still smell the intense scent of his cigars. It was still a welcoming, comfortable room … but the silence and the solitude froze her soul. To think that she would never be there with Francesc again devastated her. With her eyes filled with tears, she ran her hand across the lid of the piano. Not wanting to, she still turned her face to look for Francesc. The armchair was empty. At that instant, solitude descended upon her definitively, and there was nothing she could do but curse. Curse and complain impotently of the cruelty of the world, the injustice, the never-ending pain, and Francesc’s accursed idea of staying late that evening to work.
The invitees to the mansion showed up with a punctuality appropriate to the tragedy that had taken place. Núria and Laura received them, thanking them again for their condolences and their demonstrations of affection. Berta Bragado was among them. Particularly effusive, she was wrapped in a coat so thick that, besides accentuating her round figure, it was making her sweat.
“Oh, girls! I can’t stop crying. What days you must be passing through. This is all so sad. And Pilar …?”
Laura pointed to the back, where her mother was waiting as she took care of the last details. Matilde was taking the ladies’ coats, and a waitress accompanied them to the sitting room where Señora Jufresa was expecting them. Remei Antich was also among the invitees and was clearly affected by all that had happened.
The women sat around several tables in front of the long windows that opened onto the garden, covered in soft white curtains. Light was still coming in from outside, but the candles and lamps were already prepared. Pilar was a busy hostess and sat near the center of the room. Núria and Laura went out of their way to wait on everyone.
“Ay! Laurita! I wanted to speak to you; what …” Berta Bragado huffed, sitting down to her left.
Laura was talking with another of the guests to her right, Señora Riera, an older woman, very pious and with an extremely sweet character. The girl had to lean down a bit because Señora Riera spoke very low, and when Berta greeted her, she couldn’t restrain a shudder.
“Jesus, Laurita! You’ve terrified me!” Señora Bragado said with one hand on her breast, covering for a moment the shimmer of the only jewel decorating her somber dress.
Laura knitted her brows. She was going to reprimand her, but she thought it better to stay quiet. The character and manners of the chief of police’s wife were already well known. Thus the youngest Jufresa contented herself with a gentle smile.
“I’m sorry, Berta. I was concentrated on what Señora Riera was telling me. We were talking about the war, and …”
Berta looked up gluttonously as one of the waitresses entered bearing a tray of cookies and a steaming teapot.
“Oh, pardon me, darling. I’m going to have a bit of tea; it will do me some good, with the little I’ve slept these past few days. Would you like something?” she asked, already getting up from her seat. Laura shook her head, looking back to Señora Riera again.
While she listened to the old woman, she saw from the corner of her eye how Señora Bragado, with the excuse of her cup of tea, grabbed hold of a large handful of cookies. But there was another thing that capt
ured Laura’s attention as well, making her lose the thread of the conversation with her guest. Her eyes squinted to try to see better the brooch that Señora Bragado was wearing. From the distance she couldn’t make it out well, but there was something … something familiar about it.
“… the mobilization of women, especially the French. As I was saying, I’m worried by this grotesque confusion of roles; in my day, it was unthinkable that delicate hands made for handling babies would be taking care of sick people all day long. I also worry all that gunpowder could have a terrible effect on the poor creatures’ skin. … Are you listening to me, honey?” Señora Riera accused her gingerly.
Laura, a bit embarrassed, improvised a quick excuse and looked back at the old woman once more. She couldn’t stop thinking of what she’d seen, though, and she gave one last glance at Berta, who had moved away to the other corner and was sitting close to Núria. All Laura could see of her was her back and thick neck. I’ll take a good look later, she said to herself. She didn’t want to be rude to the respectable Señora Riera.
The evening passed as languidly as the light of the sun gave way to the ochre and yellow tones of the candles and lamps. When the conversations kept returning to the same repeated lamentations, Núria and Laura gave each other a look that suggested it was time to bring the gathering to an end. They were worried about their mother’s health. She looked exhausted, though she would never say a single word to rush her guests out the door. Luckily, the Jufresa sisters didn’t need to intervene; Señora Antich said out loud they should all leave Pilar to rest. She stood up and said she would be leaving, and the other women agreed and followed her. Núria instructed the service staff to begin passing out the coats.
