Lost Luggage

by Jordi Puntí

  “I must confess,” our father said in a moment of weakness, “that I was more afraid of this meeting than happy about it. All my life I’ve imagined you cursing me to hell and back, wherever you were. I thought you wouldn’t want to know any more about me.”

  “You weren’t far off,” we said. “Every one of us, before we knew each other, would have paid you back in contempt for all those years of silence. Even if it was just to avenge our mothers’ suffering. But we were lucky enough to get together to look for you. Curiosity got the better of us and with each new discovery we were more and more susceptible to what we call the South Pacific syndrome.”

  “What’s that? I only know about the Stockholm syndrome.”

  “Well, it’s the opposite thing. We invented it ourselves. We call it the South Pacific syndrome because the Pacific Ocean is the antipodes of Stockholm. Stockholm syndrome is when the kidnapped person gets fond of the kidnapper, right? In our case you did the opposite of kidnapping us. You abandoned us. But while we were looking for you we grew fond of you, and now we want to know all about you.”

  “All! You’re not asking much . . .” Gabriel countered, playing for time. Suddenly he looked irresolute and scared. “But the thing is, I’m reserved by nature, and it’s hard for me to talk for talking’s sake. I’m not used to it. It would be better if you asked me what you want to know. That would be easier.”

  We didn’t need to think too long. We could have asked him “Why?”—short and to the point—and then let Gabriel head off wherever he wanted, but there was one question that preceded us. It was a question that defined our lives to the extent that we had the feeling it had been planned.

  “Why are all four of us called the same?” Then we rattled off our names as if ticking off a list: Christof, Christophe, Christopher, Cristòfol.

  “I thought you’d ask that,” he answered. He seemed relieved. “Let’s see. I don’t know if I can give you an exact response, but I’ll tell you about something that happened to me when I was a little boy. Yes, it’s high time I told the story. Apart from Bundó, who had first-hand experience of this, nobody else knows, not even your mothers. And if anyone deserves to know, it’s you four.” He paused, taking a deep breath or plucking up courage. “I guess your mothers . . .”

  “Just a moment, please,” Christof interrupted. “Let’s give it a title.”

  “A title?”

  “Yes, sorry, but the Christophers have got into the habit of giving everything a title.”

  “The Christophers, you say? Very well. Then it could be called ‘The First Christopher.’ ”

  “Go ahead.”

  THE FIRST CHRISTOPHER

  Your mothers, then, have told you that I grew up in an orphanage, the House of Charity. Well, the nuns who ran the place bent over backward to give us a strict Roman Catholic education. Although kids from poor families were sent there too, because their parents couldn’t afford to raise them, most of us were orphans or foundlings, and the nuns were convinced that if they didn’t make upright citizens of us we’d end up being a blight on society. So we went to class, learned the catechism by heart, and observed every holy day in the calendar. That was where I met Bundó, who was an orphan like me. We were about four or five years old and made friends immediately. We protected one another when the older kids hit us, or teased us, or tried to get us into trouble with the nuns. Well, you already know all that, and it’s not so important any more . . . I’m just telling you to set the scene.

  One Saturday afternoon—we were seven by then—Bundó and I were playing ball with some other kids from the house. I liked being goalie because then I didn’t have to run after the ball. All of a sudden, Sister Rosario came out into the playground and called my name. I had to go with her to see the Mother Superior, Sister Elvira. These summons that came out of the blue terrified us because they could only mean two things: Either she was going to haul you over the coals for something you hadn’t done, which is what happened ninety-nine per cent of the time, or they’d found a family to adopt you.

  In 1947, eight years after the end of the Civil War, only a few orphans were being adopted. A few years later it got to be fashionable, especially with the well-to-do couples that couldn’t have children, but in the period I’m talking about it was a risky decision and, to some extent, desperate. That Saturday, at about midday, the nun brushed the dirt off my pants, made me wash my hands, and combed my hair, after baptizing me with a good splash of cologne. Like that, she said, I smelt like a good boy. Outside the office she knelt down and kissed me on the forehead, which was unheard of, and told me to be on my best behavior. I’d have to be grown up now. Then she made me go into the office all by myself. When I opened the door, the Mother Superior was in there talking with a lady and gentleman, both very smartly dressed. The three of them turned around and gazed at me in a gush of admiration. I felt embarrassed.

  “Come here, Gabriel,” the nun said. “Say hello to the lady and gentleman. Shake hands.”

  “Hello . . .” I mumbled and held out my hand.

  The man squeezed it with his left hand, which surprised me a lot. Then I noticed that the right one hung limply at his side. The lady knelt down, exactly as the nun had done a minute earlier, and did something that was meant to be affectionate but it turned my stomach, precisely because she wasn’t a nun: She licked her finger and rubbed my cheek to remove a smudge of grimy sweat.

  That was more than fifty years ago, and I’ve never forgotten the impression the whole thing made on me. I’m sure that my child’s eyes made them look older but, in reality, they were a couple of twenty-seven (her) and thirty (him) years old. She was called María Isabel, but they called her Maribel, and I thought she was very beautiful. She was tall with a full, voluptuous figure, red hair, green eyes, a princess’s tip-tilted nose—I say princess because a few years later, when those Empress Sissi films came out, they reminded me of her—and what you’d call a small rosebud mouth. Despite her good looks, she seemed fragile. It didn’t take me long to find out that Maribel was lifeless. She had no will of her own. Even to a kid like me, it was obvious she was unhappy and, in the days that followed, I resorted more than once to all sorts of clownish antics trying to make her laugh. He, in contrast, seemed to be quite a character, with a friendliness bordering on the ridiculous because it was so fake and so extreme. He was called Fernando—yes, like the Catholic King Fernando, the one married to Queen Isabel—and was wearing a very elegant suit, with a tie and cufflinks. You could see he didn’t know how to handle the situation because he kept repeating the same silly words and noises, over and over again. Hey, eh, good, ooh, mmm, lovely, oho, you see, aha.

  “Hey, aha, come on, that’s good, that’s good!” he said when Maribel took a present out of her crocodile-skin handbag and handed it to me. I opened it, and it was a toy car, an olive-green Bugatti.

  “What do you say, Gabriel?”

  “Aha . . .”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s it, that’s it . . .”

  “Thank you very much. You’ll get to know him,” the nun went on. “Gabriel is a very well-mannered boy and a very nice boy, isn’t that right, Gabriel? He’s a little shy now, but that’s because all this is new to him.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Of course . . .”

  Fernando Soldevila and Maribel Rogent had spoken Catalan when they met, but their families were on the winning side of the war so the whole lot of them had switched to Spanish.

  “Well, Gabriel, what do you think of Maribel and Fernando?” the Mother Superior asked me. “You like them, don’t you? From now on they’re going to be your mommy and daddy. What a lucky boy you are! You’ll see what fun you’re going to have with them. And soon you’ll be going to a real school, not like the one here. A school where you can work toward a wonderful future.”

  The other nun came to get me. While Fernando was sorting out a few papers with the director of the House of Charity, the other nun a
nd my new mother took me to the dormitory where they put my clothes and a few books in a bag. Maribel kept saying they didn’t need the clothes because they had new ones at home. I must have looked scared stiff because the whole time the nun tried to convince me that I’d been very lucky, that I shouldn’t worry and that I could always come and visit my friends. Then she took me to the playground where the other kids were running around and called them over. When they were all clustered around us in a group, she told them that a family had adopted me and now they had to say good-bye. Most of them, the older ones, shouted “Bye-bye,” and went back to play as if nothing had happened. Bundó just stood there without saying a word. Then he came over and whispered in my ear, very softly so I was the only one who could hear him.

  He said, “Good luck, Gabriel. Come and rescue me as soon as you can.”

  Then we went home in a taxi. It was the first time I’d ever been in one, but even the novelty of that didn’t help, and I whimpered all the way up to the posh part of town where I was going to live. I was sitting between my new mother and father and he, Fernando, was trying to console me with his oohs and ahs. Meanwhile, Maribel was squeezing my hand, almost hurting me, and was staring out the window, anxious to arrive.

  They lived in the second-floor apartment of a mansion in Passeig de la Bonanova. You went up a marble staircase with wide steps and a red carpet. Surrounding the house there was a garden, with pond and toad included, and it was for the exclusive use of the three families living in the building. When we got to the apartment, Maribel took hold of my hand again and wanted to show me my room before anything else. I remember the endless tortuous journey through all those barely lit or unlit rooms. Growing up in the House of Charity, we kids were used to darkness so I thought when they weren’t looking I could disappear into one of those corners and they’d never find me again. As we walked along the passageway, a door opened slightly and two inquisitive girls in uniform peered out.

  Finally, we stopped before some double doors, which Maribel flung open, exaggerating the majestic gesture, I’d say. It was like discovering a new world. All my woes melted away. My room was literally bigger than the House of Charity dormitory into which they squeezed all the kids aged between six and ten. They’d planned this space for a child, and put a lot of thought into it. It was a room with two parts and the walls were decorated with scenes from fairytales. I didn’t know where to start. Hansel and Gretel were there, wandering lost in the forest. Little Red Riding Hood was there too, going to her grandmother’s house, and you could spot the wolf’s muzzle behind the curtains in the window. In one corner of the room, my bed was made out of wood, in the form of a pirate ship, with a mermaid for its figurehead. The dark blue sheets imitated the waves and, on one part of the wall, there were some drawings of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell—not the Walt Disney ones; these were more classical, probably the original illustrations—to make sure I’d sleep well and not have nightmares. A gigantic fireplace, the biggest I’ve ever seen, as deep as a cave, took pride of place in the playroom. It was sculpted in the form of the mouth of a mysterious dragon. On either side of it the fangs were made into small cushioned chairs so my friends and I—Maribel told me—could sit by the fire and listen to stories when winter came. It didn’t take much for me to imagine that Bundó would soon come to live there too. There was plenty of space to put in another bed. Or, if necessary, he could also hide in the Indian tepee that had been put up at one end of the room.

  At Maribel’s suggestion, I started opening up cupboards and checking out the shelves. They were full of puppets, puzzles, stories, toys, and drawing books. I went greedily from one thing to the other, unable to take it all in. It was as if all my Christmases had come at once or like opening everyone’s presents at the orphanage, the whole lot and then more, but all of them for me. Sometimes the nun’s words came back to me, and then I looked up and said thank-you, thank-you very much. Maribel and Fernando stared at me from the doorway, not daring to interrupt me. They seemed fascinated, and she was wiping away tears of happiness with her handkerchief. After a while, I remembered to say thank-you again, but they’d left me alone, and I was happy about that.

  At dinnertime Mother came to get me. She came with a maid called Otilia, and she and Tomasa, the other maid I’d seen, were going to make sure that I didn’t lack for anything (don’t ask me why, but all the maids in those days had names like that). I only had to behave myself and obey them. I ate everything they put before me like a good boy, and then they let me play a little bit longer. That first night, Mother got me into my pajamas and put me to bed. Then, just before she turned out the light, Fernando—I just can’t use the word “father”—came in too, to say goodnight. They tucked me up in the pirate ship, kissed me, and then Mother said, “Daddy and Mommy are very happy that this is going to be your new home. You’re happy too, aren’t you?”

  “Aren’t you?” Fernando echoed.

  My answer was a wholehearted “Yes!” No other answer could possibly have occurred to me.

  “We only want to ask you one thing, darling. From tomorrow onward, we’re going to call you Cristóbal, starting from when you get up in the morning. We like this name better. Do you agree? You’ll just have to think that Gabriel has been left behind in the orphanage and that you’ve come here as Cristóbal. You’ll see how quickly you get used to it.”

  “Cristóbal! Lovely, ooh that’s lovely!” Fernando said.

  I was dog tired and my eyes were closing while I was forcing myself to say yes. If that was the price I had to pay. . . I liked Cristóbal too. There was no other kid at the orphanage with that name. In addition, I told myself, if I did them this favor now then maybe they’d soon agree to Bundó’s coming to live with us.

  The next morning, Mother woke me up by drawing back the curtains. The sun dazzled me with its brightness and warmth like a blessing from heaven.

  “Good morning, Cristóbal darling!”

  I nearly told her that my name was Gabriel, Gabriel Delacruz, but the surprise of waking up in that bed, in that bedroom, made me remember the conversation of the previous night. One thing led to another. Now, in that marvellous place, I was called Cristóbal. Otilia gave me breakfast in the kitchen, and then Mother dressed me. She opened up drawers full of shirts, T-shirts, and trousers, all nicely ironed and very neat, and started choosing what she was going to put on me. (Needless to say, I never again wore the clothes that had come with me from the orphanage.) She gave me some long trousers. I’d never seen any kid in long trousers, and I must have pulled a face because she told me that it was Sunday, and on Sundays you had to get dressed up for eleven o’clock Mass.

  Fernando was waiting for us in the street, smoking a cigarette, and the three of us walked to the church in Bonanova. We strolled along slowly, and Maribel looked very proud, as if she was parading me before the whole neighborhood. She was holding my hand. I was between the two of them, with Fernando on my right so he could give me his good hand. It was a cold day, and the leaves were starting to fly from the trees, but the sun was gamely shining and he kept repeating, “What a lovely day. What a beautiful day.”

  When we came out of Mass, I realized that a lot of people were looking at us and greeting us from a distance with a nod of the head. Mother told me that next year, God willing, I’d be making my first communion in this parish. I’d have to go to catechism classes. An old couple came over and stood in silence in front of me. They didn’t know what to say.

  “Look, Cristóbal,” Mother said, “these are your grandparents from Barcelona. Give them a kiss.”

  They were Fernando’s parents. I’ve forgotten their names. I do remember that when the lady bent down to give me a kiss I was scared because she was wearing very big earrings, like two gold pumpkins, and her face was masked with powder to cover up her wrinkles. I started to whimper again. The grandfather, in contrast, held out his hand as if I were a gentleman, and kept his distance.

  “Next Sunday, God willing, Cristóbal, you’ll m
eet your other grandparents, the ones who live in Matadepera,” Mother added, trying to calm me.

  I could go on remembering similar scenes. Relatives and more relatives, friends and neighbors. All my life, as I’ve moved around the world, I’ve come across the same sideways looks, the sly smiles and the hypocritical ones, the blunders and the misunderstandings. Now I understand better what was going on around me at the time. I could also give you a blow-by-blow description of the dizzy feelings of a little boy who is installed without any warning in a foreign land that he has to conquer at any price. But it’s not worth it. What counts is how easy it is to get used to luxury when you’re a kid, but also how it all turns out to be superfluous if you haven’t felt loved, not even for five minutes.

  El Tembleque, one of the truck drivers I worked with, used to say, “It’s the working days that count. Weekends are a tip to squander.” After all the excitement of that Sunday, Monday showed me the other side of my new life. Now I think the three of us should have gone off for a week’s vacation, escaped to some place where we could get used to being together, but Maribel and Fernando were in a hurry to get back to normal. In a well-off Bonanova family that meant I was soon spending more time with the maids than with my parents. Fernando worked all day, till late, and often came home after I’d gone to sleep. She, Mother, disappeared for hours on end into some room or other of the house to do what she called her “needlework.” For some mysterious reason I wasn’t going to school yet so it was like a permanent holiday. Otilia looked after me, and I had so many toys I never got bored or fed up with being alone.