by Jordi Puntí
We Christophers listened to Giuditta in utter amazement. What she was recalling for us was well beyond what we’d ever imagined. We’re used to our father’s existential tangles. We’ve grown up with them, but this last episode was too much. The physical proximity of the events only exacerbated matters. We were sitting on Giuditta’s couch after crossing through the hole made by Gabriel. Even the mezzanine apartment, which we’d turned into a sort of pretentious Christophers Club, took on a mythical aura as if we’d been living in two parallel dimensions, his and ours. Now, having passed through the wardrobe, the Christophers had gained access to the other dimension.
The afternoon was waning and it would soon be dark outside, but we still had more than three hours to kill before the card game began. Giuditta continued with her story and we started to feel slightly self-conscious: The Christophers were about to take center stage. The plot was thickening.
“At first I had the idea that we were making one home out of two and that would bring us closer but I must confess that I ended up hating the secret passage. Gabriel slowly went back to his old ways. Instead of going out on to the landing and entering his apartment through the door, he used the tunnel. We were sleeping together at my place but, when I went to work or out to have dinner with a girlfriend (luckily I hadn’t totally neglected my social life), he went to his place. When he heard me arriving he came back. For me, this waiting, hanging around hour after hour, would have been unbearable, but I fear he didn’t see it as a transition, rather as a permanent state. I brought him the newspaper, and he did read that, but I can’t give you any real idea of how he amused himself. He never watched TV because he said he’d got a gutful of it years before. I also know that he did some exercise in the morning to keep fit . . . In any case, his strategy started to bear fruit after a couple of weeks and Miguélez and Feijoo stopped harassing us. They ignored us. It was hard to believe. In the beginning I tended to be very watchful when I went out in case someone was following me or spying on me. The road was always clear. We relaxed. Meanwhile the gas and water had been cut off too, so Gabriel’s apartment became the bunker that you inherited. Everything was topsy-turvy because, at the end of the day, the hole he’d excavated inside the wardrobe led into a prison. Yet the state of his place didn’t worry Gabriel at all. To my surprise, he assured me he’d lived in worse places. One bright sunny Sunday in spring, I suggested that he should start going out again. It was almost a year, I calculated, since that god-awful game of cards, and he hadn’t set foot on the street. Now we didn’t have to worry any more, and it would be good for him to have a stroll in Ciutadella Park. He could fill his lungs with fresh air. He refused, saying it was too soon and we should wait a couple of weeks more. Then I realized what was happening: Your father had turned into an invalid who didn’t want to get better. For him, coming to my place, passing through the secret hole, was the same thing as going into the outside world. He was going to Italy and I was cooking him pasta, and there you have it. The situation, as you can imagine, was trying, boring, uncomfortable, and it was killing our relationship. We’d never argued before and now we were at each other’s throats over the stupidest things. If we got annoyed with one another, he went back to his place in a huff. One night when we’d been fighting I was lying in my bed unable to sleep and he was in his. The wardrobe door was half open and that tunnel thing was connecting us. If I listened carefully, I could hear him tossing and turning, a martyr to insomnia, and I wanted to help him, wished we could comfort each other. It was then that I decided to act . . .”
Giuditta’s boldness ended the stalemate, but then they had to face new unknowns. When Feijoo and Miguélez’s siege was at its peak, she’d suggested to Gabriel that he should try to get into contact with us. We were his sons, weren’t we? She was sure we’d help him. He categorically refused. He hadn’t seen us for years, many years, he said, and he didn’t know where to find us (false). Furthermore, he explained, we Christophers didn’t know each other. It would be a shock (it was) and a trauma (it wasn’t). In a moment of weakness, he’d confessed to her that we were the great frustration of his life, proof of his inability to lead an orderly existence. He’d abandoned us, and now he had no right to expect anything of us. “Maybe they’re not like you,” Giuditta had retorted, which made all four of us blush and feel uncomfortable. In any case, the morning after that double sleepless night, Giuditta betrayed our father. For a good cause. What did her betrayal consist of? After talking with the other residents of the house and the owner of Gabriel’s apartment, she went to the police station to report him missing. Her neighbor, she explained, had given no sign of life in six months. Carried away with her story-telling, she even added that there was a smell of something dead in the stairway, a highly suggestive touch as far as the neighbors were concerned. As it turned out, her strategy was spot on. They would start the legal search, as is required in such cases.
From that point on, we Christophers had a pretty good idea of the facts leading up to our meeting. Even so, Giuditta presented them from another angle: hers. Shortly after she reported him missing, the police turned up at the apartment with the owner and certified yet again—but this time officially—that Gabriel had disappeared. It was necessary to go ahead with the appropriate procedures. This was first thing in the morning. That night, our father had slept in Italy, so to speak. In the wee hours, before he woke up, Giuditta had stealthily crossed the border to leave a piece of paper on the bedside table of the other bedroom. Our four names were written on it. In the hands of the police the list was further proof, so they began the search as she’d envisaged: the first thing they did was to locate Cristòfol. If that boy has the tiniest shred of curiosity, she reasoned, he’ll try to find out what the other names mean, or go looking for his father . . .
“I’ve thought so often about the first time you came, Cristòfol,” Giuditta resumed. “It was a miracle you didn’t bump into Gabriel! A few seconds before you opened the wardrobe door, he’d slipped away to my place, making sure that the entrance to the passage was well disguised. What would have happened if, besides the cards hidden in his sleeves, you’d found the tunnel? I’ve wondered that so many times . . . You probably would have been terrified and run away, and we wouldn’t be here now. Never mind. It’s better not to think about that. The important thing is that while you were walking around the apartment getting used to your father’s absence, he, on the other side of the wall, was more worked up than I’d ever seen him. He deserved it because of his stubbornness. How many hours were you there? Six? Seven? Gabriel had his ear glued to the wall listening to your footsteps. ‘Who could it be?’ he kept asking me every five minutes. ‘Do you think Feijoo and Miguélez have come back? Did the police give them a key?’ I spared him any more suffering. ‘It’s okay,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t want to tell you so as not to worry you, but the neighbors and the owner of the apartment have reported you missing. When someone disappears, the police usually go looking for the next of kin. It must be your Barcelona wife, Gabriel, or, more likely, your son.’ I spelt out the details of my hypothesis with all the care in the world because I was afraid he’d get really upset, but he reacted very well. Suddenly, the idea of seeing you again didn’t distress him. I saw this as the first victory. ‘How old would Cristòfol be now?’ he wondered, and then he got lost in his calculations . . .”
From here onward, the Christophers’ story runs in parallel with our father’s wishes. He was overwhelmed by the idea of meeting up with us again, but Giuditta told us he was also following our moves with enormous expectation. The first day the four of us visited the apartment together, Gabriel was on cloud nine. We like to put it like this: Now that the widely scattered elements of his lost past unexpectedly came together, they assumed new meaning. On weekdays, when there was no danger that we were going to turn up, Gabriel went to the apartment and reviewed our findings. Then he tidied up his belongings to make our task easier and went over the notes we jotted down about our investigations. He re
ad Carolina’s letters, listened to our interview with Petroli, and spent hours gazing with an archivist’s devotion at all the photographs we’d brought. Although meeting up with us again would have been mortifying for him, he somehow liked the feeling that we were nearby, so close, in fact, that one Saturday when he’d gone to sleep at siesta time we came into the apartment and were on the point of nabbing him. According to Giuditta, there were days when it seemed that he wanted just that. It was as if, with our decision to keep paying the rent and getting the light, water, and gas put on again, we were giving him oxygen. All his life he’d been uprooted and, now at last, at the age of sixty and for the very first time, he felt some kind of bond with this earth.
“I thought that he was very ripe, very ready,” Giuditta recalled. “I mean regarding you. I was convinced he wouldn’t be long in letting himself get caught. One important sign was that he’d given up his seclusion and started going out. He put on some sunglasses and a hat I bought him and went for walks in Ciutadella Park at times when there weren’t many people. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal, but, for me, this was a major change. His willingness to meet up with you again was growing by the day, thanks to all the things you were leaving in his place . . . Then, three weeks ago, your investigations hit the bull’s-eye and everything changed again . . .” At this point, Giuditta was getting emotional. We poured her the last dram of whisky left in the bottle. Then she pulled herself together and continued, “Unfortunately, Cristòfol, the beast was aroused again the day you went into the Carambola asking about Gabriel. It’s as if Feijoo had an attack of jealousy because another hunter was on the track of his prey. Besides, if some stranger was looking for him in these parts it meant that he wasn’t too far away. This time Miguélez and Feijoo were more patient, more subtle. Instead of immediately turning up, bellowing and beating at the door of his apartment, claiming their money and hassling us with their threats, we think they must have been studying our movements for several days. I can just imagine their stupefied expressions when Gabriel began walking around the streets like a man without a care in the world. We’d relaxed, as I told you. Then, last Monday, all hell broke loose. Gabriel went for a walk in the morning and didn’t come back for lunch. At first, I took this as a good sign and imagined all sorts of reasons. Maybe he felt more confident and had ventured further, or he’d had lunch in some restaurant, or he might have visited his old workmates at La Ibérica. By midafternoon, I was worried because something wasn’t right. Now that he’d got his freedom back, would he have left without a word, like the man who goes out to buy a packet of cigarettes and never comes home? I remembered what he’d done to your mothers and my stomach knotted. To calm down, I told myself that now we were fine, the two of us, and there was no call for alarm, but then my fears spiralled off into possibilities that were even more upsetting because they were beyond my control. What if Feijoo and Miguélez were back on the job? At midnight, thank God, I heard his door open and breathed more easily but I was still a nervous wreck when I hurried through the secret passage. On the other side, as if that wardrobe was a time machine, I found a Gabriel who’d aged ten years, haggard, trembling . . .”
They’d abducted him, our father told Giuditta. Feijoo and Miguélez had done it. The usual suspects, of course. That night they’d forced him to play a game of cards at the Carambola. It was a trial run, a warm-up exercise. They didn’t ask him for the money. They wanted him to play for them. More precisely, to win for them. From them on, he was their worker. Or, if he preferred, they said, pointing the pistol at him, their slave. They were going to make him play at least twenty games, and he’d have to win them all, of course. That was the only way he could repay his debts. They’d have a great time, he’d see. They’d reel in the victims, big fish primed to leave a nice pile behind them after a long night. Ah, and he’d better not think about escaping or going to the police. They’d take turns watching him if needed. Now he couldn’t escape. That went for the Italian neighbor too. Not a word to anyone. He had to take it calmly. It was very simple and profitable for everyone. Two months of raking in money for them, and then it would all be over . . .
“Lying on his bed in the semidarkness,” Giuditta went on, “Gabriel reeled off their conditions. I had a flashlight with me, and every time I shone it on him I saw a resigned, scared, crushed man. It was a farcical scene and it only emphasized the level of insanity we’d reached. ‘I haven’t played for a long time,’ he said, ‘and I don’t know if my fingers are up to it. When you cheat at poker it’s like what happens with pianists. It’s all about fingers, always fingers. And I’m not as fast as I used to be, my brain’s not as sharp . . .’ I tried to cheer him up by telling him that there were other ways around this. I let slip your names, but he wasn’t listening to me. He was too obsessed about the games he had to play. The next day, which was Tuesday, he spent the whole morning practising with his cards. He sat at this table here, with his jacket on and smoking one cigarette after another. He pulled the cards out of his sleeves and tucked them away again so fast that the human eye could barely see it. Sometimes the movement wasn’t precise enough, and the card jumped into the air. It was a comical effect but he wasn’t amused. At eight o’clock they came to get him. They were playing the first proper game that night. They knocked very politely at his door, and he followed like a lamb to the slaughterhouse. The same thing happened on Thursday and last night, Friday, at the same time. I could see that he was coming back more dejected, more broken each time, and it was clear that the tension had really got to him. He’s destroyed. ‘There’s a big difference between winning for yourself and having to win for other people,’ he says. During the day he hangs around at home, like a man on death row, waiting, waiting, waiting. If he goes on like this he won’t last long, and that’s why, when I saw him leave with all that dread weighing on him today, I decided to ask for your help. I only needed a telephone or an address to find you, but providence stepped in and eased the way. All of a sudden the four of you materialized. It’s a miracle wrought by the wardrobe.” She stopped and looked at her watch. “I think it’s getting late . . .”
Yes, it was getting late. We were so enthralled by the story that the hours had flown by.
“Isn’t the game at eleven?” Christophe asked. Giuditta nodded. The four of us racked our brains about how to save our father. “We’ve got an hour to get the whole thing ready.”
“How long ago did they take Gabriel away?” Chris asked.
“After lunch. It must have been about four . . . Lord knows where they hide him until it’s time to play.”
“Have you got a car, Giuditta?” Christof asked. “Can we use it?”
“An Opel Corsa. Why do you want it?”
“If we’re going to rescue Gabriel,” Cristòfol chipped in, emboldened by the turn of events, “we need a getaway car. A black luxury car with smoked windows would be perfect; I suppose a Corsa would do . . .”
It was time for action.
THE RESCUE
The Carambola was in Carrer Sicília, on the left-hand side going up, between Gran Via and Carrer Diputació, on rather a dark corner. The streetlights in that part of town leaked an orangey glow, and dense shadows cast by the leafy old plane trees swallowed up most of the light they gave. There was no other bar or business in the vicinity, and the Passatge de Pagès, the ghostly alley running off Carrer Sicília, only added to the impression that the whole area was under an evil spell. This setting worked in our favor. We’d come up with a plan that at first seemed like lunacy, but we had blind faith in it. Probably because we had no alternative. We Christophers had all tried to remedy our childhood loneliness by reading superhero comics. Adults had always told us that real life was rather different, but here we were out to contradict them. We were having fun, like a bunch of kids.
At eleven on the dot, when we double-parked the Opel Corsa not far from the bar, the street was dead quiet. We’d managed to persuade Giuditta to stay at home, and, while we other Christophers wa
ited in the car, Cristòfol went to check out the situation. The blind was halfway down. You could make out a thin light at the back of the bar. Five minutes later, our bartender accomplice said good-bye to someone and left the bar, crouching to pull the blind right down. As he did, Cristòfol walked past him, not stopping, not breaking his step, and murmured, ‘Don’t lock it, please.’ The young man was startled but soon recognized the figure and the voice and nodded, right, okay.
Cristòfol came back to the car, and we waited another half an hour. It was better for us to make our triumphal entry when the players were well into the game. Meanwhile, we calmed down by passing around another bottle of whisky that Giuditta had presented us with just before we left. As we drank, we laughed at the way we were dressed. We weren’t wearing masks, or multicolored capes, or balaclavas, but we’d foraged around in Gabriel’s and Giuditta’s old clothes and dressed up to get into the mood. We made a dramatic foursome and were counting on this theatrical show working in our favor. Christof, wearing a polo-neck sweater, in existential black from head to foot, might have passed as a Cold War spy. Chris, the tallest and thinnest brother, was decked out in a very distinguished striped diplomat’s suit (nicked by our dad thirty years earlier, on Trip 123 to London) and had combined this with an eccentric cravat that transformed him into a David Niven–look-alike gentleman thief. Christophe, the shortest brother, had gone for the harlequin-style flourish of one of Giuditta’s circus costumes and stood out like a madman, a seriously deranged psychopath, first cousin to Batman’s nemesis, the Joker. Cristòfol, wanting to pay homage, finally chose a simple shirt and trousers. They were elegant but old fashioned, representing a style in danger of extinction, part of the last lot of booty that Bundó didn’t get to enjoy, Number 200. This gave him a slightly shabby air, as though he were Jekyll caught midway in his transformation into Hyde, and he reeked so badly of mothballs that we had to open the car windows.
