The Dream of the City

by Andrés Vidal

  Laura accompanied her sister to the entrance of the mansion to say good-bye to the guests one by one. From the hall, she had seen Berta about to put on her coat. She waved to the maid and ran over to help Berta herself: she hadn’t forgotten the brooch and she wanted to see it up close. With the coat in her hands, Laura looked at the woman’s torso. Her mouth opened in utter surprise. Berta touched it with one hand.

  “It’s pretty, no?” she said, proud to see the Jufresa daughter staring at her brooch. “I have to confess, my dear, there’s a sad story behind it.”

  Laura looked her in the eyes and swallowed. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Berta confused her incredulity with admiration. She went on explaining, a bit caustically.

  “It’s a present my husband got for one of his lovers. I found it hidden away in the desk. But he can’t fool me that easily. Ha! I’m going to wear it around ’til he realizes. I know he won’t say anything, but at least he’ll see I’m not stupid. No sir, not a stupid bone in my body!”

  While Berta’s grating voice babbled on, Laura focused on the jewel, incapable of speaking. It was the design she had created based on Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia, a design almost no one had seen.

  “Laurita, are you all right?” the police chief’s wife asked.

  Laura had gone pale. Bringing a hand to her forehead, she claimed she was tired. Luckily, that was enough for Berta to put on her coat and march out of the house. The girl’s head was spinning, her stomach in cramps. As soon as she could, she left the foyer and caught her breath in the garden. What she had just seen had left her in a state of shock: her brooch had ended up in Bragado’s hands.

  How could Bragado have gotten it? She didn’t know what to think, but she couldn’t keep that to herself.

  Ferran had said he would be in the workshop. She should go see him. And she decided to do it right away.

  Laura didn’t hesitate to take the Peugeot. She pressed the accelerator to the floor until she made it partway through the Calle Muntaner, where she slammed on the brakes; she had almost run over an old man slowly crossing the street. When she stopped, she broke out in a cold sweat that startled her. She took a deep breath and repeated to herself what she should do: tell Ferran what she had seen, nothing more, nothing less. And then he would decide, or they would figure it out together. She calmed down a bit and drove the vehicle with exaggerated care. Little by little her initial surprise at seeing the brooch turned into indignation. She couldn’t believe that this Chief Bragado could have stolen a piece to give to one of his lovers. Nor was it possible that Ferran had given it to him in exchange for anything; it was a design that hadn’t been debuted. He could have seen it while he was inspecting the workshop after the robbery, or maybe he had taken it off one of the criminals. But regardless, what could he have been thinking? That he could just take something without any consequences? It was simply intolerable. She only calmed down a bit thinking that her brother would help resolve her doubts.

  She parked the car close to the workshop. She was already imagining Bragado’s humiliation. She pictured Ferran asking him for explanations, raking him over the coals. He clearly couldn’t have known the importance that jewel would have for her, but that was exactly why he would pay this time. Who knew how many times he had done such a thing. She remembered what Dimas had said, those words that now flew back into her memory: he warned her there was something strange about the robbery. Could the brooch be proof of it?

  Before she entered the workshop, Laura felt a shiver that made her pull her coat tight around herself. With trembling hands, she felt for the key in her pocket. As she went in, she heard the comforting voice of her brother in his office: it was a good sign, at least that meant he was there. But … who was he talking with?

  She knocked at the door and entered resolutely. Ferran interrupted what he was saying to someone seated with his back to the door.

  “Laura? What are you doing here? Did something happen?”

  Laura was about to speak when she saw the man turn around in his seat with exasperating slowness to look at her. It was Bragado. He looked at her sternly, with no expression.

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea you had a visitor. N-n-no … it’s nothing,” she stuttered. “We’ll talk later.”

  Before her brother could answer her, Laura went out and closed the door softly behind her. She took a deep breath and left the workshop. Even in the street she thought she could feel the frozen eyes of Chief Bragado on the back of her neck. She went back to the car quickly. When she put it in gear, she looked behind her once more. She was frantic. She closed her eyes and took several breaths. She turned the key and the motor revved. Once she’d grabbed the wheel, she looked at the door to the workshop. It was still closed. That Bragado had a talent for making her nervous. She needed to keep calm. She wanted to get out of there and think about an alternative. The noise of the motor soon stilled Laura’s nerves as she drove.

  Perhaps for that reason, she didn’t notice another car set off not far behind her with two of Bragado’s officers inside.

  CHAPTER 49

  Bragado’s men followed the Peugeot 153 that had belonged to the deceased Francesc Jufresa as it pulled off the Calle Fernando VII and made its way up the Ramblas. They maintained a prudent distance: far enough away not to be seen, but close enough to keep from losing their target.

  On the boulevard, full of people taking advantage of the last hours of daylight, all sorts of people and vehicles blocked the way. Laura had to stop every few meters to avoid repeating her experience with the old man. The streetcar and the bicycles circled from one end to the other, often cutting off access to the cars like hers that were trying to circle around. Laura became irritable, feeling that all those people were moving much more slowly than usual.

  But when she left behind the Plaza Cataluña, Laura became even more impatient. She reached the Avenida Argüelles, turned right, and stomped as hard as she could on the accelerator of the black Peugeot: the feeling of speed spurred on the river of her thoughts, making them flow, helping her to see clearly through all the darkness that surrounded them. She thought she could find some relief in that still cool air that swept through the wide street. With the window down, she let the wind caress her face and hair like a damp cloth. While the buildings blurred past on each side of her, Laura felt she could finally leave aside everything external.

  Bragado had never been a man who inspired much confidence in her, but the mere possibility that he could be a suspect in her family’s robbery was devastating. Beyond the relationship he had with her family, Bragado was the champion of justice in the city. If he couldn’t be trusted, who was left? Recently the betrayals in her life had come one after the other, and she had no idea whom she could turn to in order to share her feelings, be consoled, be heard: if only there were a single reason that could justify Señora Bragado’s being in possession of a unique brooch, one that she herself had designed and that had to have formed part of the possessions taken from the workshop a week back.

  Laura recalled that the brooch had never been modeled. She was sure none of the employees there had been working on it without her knowing. As if seeing a ghost, she suddenly imagined the ancient hands of her father, the hands of a true artisan, late at night, under the lights of the workshop, away from curious eyes, giving physical form to that design that she had shown him so excitedly weeks before. And she had a terrible urge to cry.

  The claws of hatred dug into her interior when she thought of her father’s unjust death: he’d been a good man, he’d never done ill to anybody, and he had probably surprised the thieves while he was sitting there making her that gift. Should she feel guilty? The possibility that the city’s chief of police was also responsible for his death was just as unbearable. With her father now gone forever, Laura was lost.

  She turned the wheel with both hands and left the Plaza de las Glorias Catalanas behind her. She pulled in
to the first street to her left and headed up in the direction of the mountain. When she noticed that the street was none other than the Calle de la Igualdad, the street where Dimas lived, she wanted to scream and cry again, all at once. But she did neither thing. When she arrived at the crossing with Calle de Mallorca, she stopped the Peugeot for a moment, sitting in silence, trying to listen to the voice of her tangled thoughts amid the rumble of the idling motor. Laura thought of how she had been the one to push Dimas out of her life after a single disappointment, and that now, destiny or circumstances had brought her back to him again.

  Dimas had confessed his suspicions about the robbery and she had chosen not to listen to him; he had tried to protect her while asking for nothing in return, and she had taken it as a false attempt at redemption covered in new lies. Full of resentment, she had been incapable of forgiving him; but no, Dimas wasn’t Carlo, who hadn’t even followed her from the library the day she unmasked his farce. At the first difficulty in her and Dimas’s relationship, Laura had given up, making Dimas into a substitute for her failed love in Italy and blaming him for all her wounds. She hadn’t been sincere either. Was she any better than he?

  She felt terribly alone. Her mind turned as well to Jordi Antich, who had grown closer to her again after the robbery. But he had never been an option. She felt as if her father was there at her side; he was the one who had taught her to let herself feel. … She closed her eyes for a few seconds and concentrated on the image of what would await her if she opted for Jordi: a picture of custom, of tradition, a fresco of pale colors that would wither with age, and nothing more. And suddenly, in that instant, she decided to break it off. Definitively. Without looking back.

  She realized then how much she needed to talk to Dimas and share with him what she knew. He was the only person she wanted to have by her side at that moment. She only hoped that there was still time to repair her error and that he would want to listen to her even though, when they saw each other the day before, she had acted like an imbecile.

  Driving to the building where Dimas lived, Laura cut the motor, stepped out of the automobile, and smoothed the black dress that clung to her body. She inhaled all the air that would fit in her lungs and began walking unwaveringly to the door of the building. The watchman complimented her car, amazed that a woman drove it. He asked her about technical specifications she was unaware of while taking his time to find the right key. At last, he fit it into the lock and opened the door. Laura asked herself why it was that in critical moments, the rest of the world always moved so slow; she could feel her heart pounding frantically in her ears, and when the watchman disappeared, she ran upstairs. She grasped the iron railing to pull herself up faster and her steps resounded over the cracked floor.

  She reached Dimas’s apartment out of breath. She tried to recover before knocking on the door. She pounded with her knuckles and prayed for him to be home. She waited a moment that seemed like an eternity. When she heard no answer, she asked herself how long would be long enough to wait before trying again without looking anxious or desperate. Her slender shoulders dropped along with her head under the weight of the disappointment. She raised her hand again: this would be the last try before giving up; but when she brought it close to the door, she heard a rustling on the other side of the door, and then it slowly opened a crack. Dimas looked out, his face bruised. He looked terrible. Even so, when he saw her, his eyes lit up like two lighthouses. When he opened the door all the way, she asked, worried, “What happened to you?”

  “I’m fine. A … a little scare, that’s all. And you, are you all right?” he asked nervously.

  Laura shook her head, looking down so Dimas wouldn’t see the tears that had already begun to stream down her face, all the tears that she had been trying to hold back the whole time and that now burst forth in a torrent.

  “Come in,” he told her. He wrapped her in his arms. She was so cold: until that moment, Laura hadn’t realized that her body was racked with shivers.

  Dimas stepped away to grab a blanket from inside a trunk and put it over her quivering shoulders. She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. He was dressed in his pajamas; he apparently hadn’t left the bedroom all day.

  “You’re not going to tell me what happened to you?” she repeated.

  “Yes, but first tell me why you’ve come.”

  Laura looked in his eyes in silence, wrapped in the wool blanket, thankful for its warmth. She didn’t know what to say to show Dimas that she trusted him more than anyone, that she’d been wrong to act as she had, that she hadn’t stopped loving him for a single moment. Dimas took her hand and kissed it.

  She took him to the bedroom without the need for either of them to say a word. She pulled aside the curtains to let in a bit of light and sat down by his side on the unmade bed. They stayed there that way in silence, together with each other, feeling the solidity of the other’s sympathetic body. They needed each other, there was no doubt about it, and they could see how painfully true that was.

  Laura began to tell him about the brooch on Señora Bragado’s chest and how she had tried to go to Ferran to share her suspicions with him, but she couldn’t: she had found him talking to the chief of police at that very moment. The more she spoke, the more nervous she became. She needed to know if she was crazy for suspecting the police, to know if all that could be true, to know who was responsible for that terrible tragedy that had engulfed her family.

  Dimas held her in his arms once more and tried to calm her down; she felt a mixture of sorrow and rage. He patiently caressed her hair, hoping that would comfort her. Laura cried, shaking with spasms, and Dimas hugged her, moved by her pain, feeling her heat against his breast. He couldn’t believe he had her so close again, enveloping him in her sweet aroma. Dimas felt selfish; he was somehow thankful that the recent events had brought her back into his arms.

  He consoled her while he whispered in her ear and assured her she wasn’t crazy: her suspicions weren’t at all unfounded and what she had just told him explained a lot. With reddened eyes, Laura pulled away from him slightly to listen with attention, to be sure those words had really come from his mouth. And while he sheltered her hands in his, trying to warm them up a bit, he spoke to her of the beating he’d received the night before as a warning to stop asking inconvenient questions. He told her about seeing his old foreman, now apparently a thug for hire, and he told her about his feeling that the robbery must have involved more people than the police had said, important people, and that was the reason they were trying to stop him looking into it. What Laura had just told him about Bragado added a new piece to the puzzle and cleared up a doubt: the chief obviously had a very high, very comfortable position to be able to carry out an operation like this. One way or another, he had to be mixed up in the whole issue. If not, how could one of the stolen jewels have ended up in the hands of his wife? He also told her Àngel Vila had been innocent, and all that he had found out about the two small-time thieves who had shown up dead beside him in Barceloneta.

  Laura listened with glassy eyes and without interruptions, and when Dimas had finished his story, she breathed deep, looking for patience, for balance, the last strength she could find, to keep from running out in the street and wailing that everything was rotten. When she had centered herself, she reached up and tucked a curl of Dimas’s hair behind his ear.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have listened to you.”

  “You were right. I lied to you once and you had reason not to trust me. What happened with Pau was a terrible experience, Laura. I felt so bad at that moment, I couldn’t think of anything to do but give him all the money in my pocket, so he could at least buy the medicines the child needed. I knew it was something, but it didn’t quell the remorse I felt for firing him so unfairly.”

  Laura shook her head.

  “You didn’t fire him, Ferran did; you can’t blame yourself for that. Giving Pa
u money was honorable, and it makes me feel better to know that.”

  They sat in silence, looking earnestly into each other’s eyes.

  “Maybe we could … try again. …” Laura mused.

  Dimas tried to smile, but the wound on his cheek stopped him. She gave him a kiss on that very spot.

  “To ease the pain.”

  Then she kissed him softly on each bruise and cut on his face. She pressed her delicate, velvet lips on his eyelid, delicately, as if it were as fragile as crystal, and then on his upper lip, which was reddened and inflamed. She caressed it with the tip of her tongue and Dimas opened his mouth to look for it with his own. When they met, he forgot the pain that infused his whole body. She threw off the blanket and unbuttoned the top of his pajamas. She pulled down the sleeves and pushed softly on his chest to lay him down on his back. She ran her hand over the bruises on his left side as if rubbing in a healing salve, as if wrapping him in an invisible gauze, and then she kissed him there as well. She pushed her fingertips into the flesh of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine, and then trailed them down his body until she’d reached his hips, where she pulled off his pants, leaving him completely nude. She began to stroke and kiss his member as well, circling it with her tongue and her now-warm hands.

  Dimas wanted that moment to last forever, to delight without hurry in the ecstasy she was provoking. He pulled her up to him, unbuttoned her dress to kiss her pink breasts, which fit perfectly in his hands. He followed their outline with his tongue, making her moan. He lifted up the skirt of the dress to her hips, and with the fingers of his right hand, he rubbed the space between her hair and her lips, which became damper and damper with the essence of her sex, welling out with each moan. Laura was now naked as well, and she sat down on top of him. She guided Dimas inside her. Her breathing was agitated, and on her knees, she began to rise and fall over him, slowly, at first, but then with more speed. He held her back and wondered at the beauty of her face, its sensual, arousing splendor, with her hair falling wildly over her inflamed cheeks and her eyes closed while she groaned louder and louder. When Dimas felt her hips contract and her face looked up at the roof while she tried to restrain a howl, he let himself go as well, giving himself up to her as the two of them exploded into soundless screams, bathed in sweat, quivering.