“My kingdom for a Sugus sweet.”
“Got one little bag left. Strawberry flavor.”
Fermín’s eyes opened wide. The very mention of the succulent treat made his mouth water. With some of the funds provided by Captain Arráez he was able to acquire the entire bag, which he proceeded to open with the eagerness of a condemned man.
The misty light of the Ramblas streetlamps—like the first taste of a Sugus sweet—had always seemed to Fermín one of those things for which it was worth living another day. That evening, however, as he walked up the boulevard, Fermín noticed a squad of night watchmen moving from lamp to lamp, ladder in hand, turning off the lights that still shone on the paving. He approached one of them and stood by, observing his hurried movements. When the watchman stepped off the ladder and noticed Fermín’s presence, he paused and looked at him out of the corner of his eye.
“Good evening, boss,” Fermín said cordially. “You won’t be offended if I ask you why you’re leaving the city in the dark?”
The watchman simply pointed his finger to the sky and, picking up his ladder, moved on to the next lamp. For a moment Fermín remained where he was, staring at the strange sight of the Ramblas as they sank into shadow. All around him, cafés and shops were beginning to close their doors, and the facades were lit up by the faint glow of moonlight. He set off again, rather apprehensively, and soon caught sight of what looked like a nocturnal procession: a large group of people carrying bundles and blankets were heading for the entrance to the metro station. Some carried lit candles and oil lamps, others walked in the dark. When he passed the steps leading down to the metro, Fermín glanced at a boy who couldn’t have been more than five years old. He was clutching his mother’s hand, or maybe it was his grandmother’s, because in that feeble light all those poor souls looked as if they’d aged prematurely. Fermín was about to give him a friendly wink, but the boy had his eyes riveted on the sky. He was staring at the web of dark clouds coming together on the horizon as if he could see something hidden inside it. Fermín followed the boy’s eyes and felt the brush of a cold wind that was beginning to sweep through the city, smelling of phosphorus and charred wood. Just before his mother dragged him down the stairs toward the tunnels of the metro, the boy gave Fermín a look that froze his blood. Those five-year-old eyes reflected the blind terror and despair of an old man. Fermín looked away and set off again, passing a local policeman who was guarding the entrance to the station.
The policeman pointed at him. “If you leave now, you won’t find any room later. And the shelters are full.”
Fermín nodded but hurried on, moving further into a Barcelona that seemed ghostly to him, a never-ending gloom where outlines could barely be made out in the dim, flickering light of candles and oil lamps placed on balconies and inside entrance halls. When at last he reached Rambla de Santa Mónica, he spied a narrow, somber front door in the distance. Sighing despondently, he set off toward his meeting with Lucía.
11
Slowly Fermín walked up the narrow staircase, and with each step he could feel his determination and courage evaporating. He had to confront Lucía and tell her that the man she loved, the father of her daughter and the face she had been hoping to see for over a year, had died in a prison cell in Seville. On the third-floor landing he waited by the door, not daring to knock. He sat on the steps and buried his head in his hands. He remembered Lucía’s precise words spoken thirteen months earlier. She had held his hands and, looking into his eyes, had said, “If you love me, don’t let anything happen to him. Bring him back to me.”
Fermín pulled the envelope out of his pocket and stared at the pieces in the dark. He crumpled them between his fingers and threw them into the shadows. He had got up and was about to flee down the stairs when he heard the door open behind him. Then he paused.
* * *
A girl of about seven or eight was watching him from the doorway. She was carrying a book in her hands and had one finger between the pages as a bookmark. Fermín smiled at her and raised a hand in greeting.
“Hello, Alicia,” he said. “Do you remember me?”
The girl looked at him a little distrustfully, doubting.
“What are you reading?”
“Alice in Wonderland.”
“You don’t say! Can I see?”
She showed him the book but didn’t let him touch it. “It’s one of my favorites,” she said, still a little suspicious.
“One of mine too,” replied Fermín. “Anything to do with falling down a hole and bumping into madmen and mathematical problems is something I consider highly autobiographical.”
The girl bit her lips to hold back the laughter provoked by the peculiar visitor’s words. “Yes, but this one was written for me,” she said mischievously.
“Of course it was. Tell me, Alicia, is your mother at home?”
She didn’t answer, but opened the door a bit farther, turned, and walked into the flat without saying a word.
Fermín paused in the doorway. The flat was dark inside, except for what looked like the glimmer of an oil lamp at the end of a narrow corridor.
“Lucía?” he called, his voice trailing off in the shadows. He rapped on the door with his knuckles and waited. “Lucía? It’s me.”
He waited another few seconds, and when no reply came, he stepped into the flat and advanced along the corridor. All the doors were closed. When he reached the end of the passage, he found himself in a living room that doubled as a dining room. The oil lamp rested on the table, projecting a soft, yellowish halo. He could see the outline of an old woman facing the window. She sat on a chair, her back turned to him.
Fermín stopped. Only then did he recognize her. “Doña Leonor . . .”
The woman who had seemed so old couldn’t have been more than forty-five. Her face was lined with bitterness and her eyes looked glazed, tired of hating and weeping in solitude. Leonor was looking at him without saying a word. Fermín took a chair and sat down next to her. He held her hand and smiled almost imperceptibly.
“She should have married you,” she murmured. “You’re ugly, but at least you’ve got a head on your shoulders.”
“Where’s Lucía, Doña Leonor?”
The woman looked away. “They took her. About two months ago.”
“Where to?”
Leonor didn’t reply.
“Who were they?”
“That man . . .”
“Fumero?”
“They didn’t ask for Juan Antonio. They were looking for her.”
Fermín hugged her, but Leonor didn’t move.
“I’ll find her, Doña Leonor. I’ll find her and bring her home.”
The woman shook her head. “He’s dead, isn’t he? My son?”
Fermín remained silent for a few moments.
“I don’t know, Doña Leonor.”
She looked at him angrily and slapped his face. “Liar.”
“Doña Leonor . . .”
“Go,” she moaned.
Fermín stood up and moved away a few steps. Little Alicia watched him from the corridor. He smiled at her, and the girl walked slowly over to him. Then she took his hand and held it tight. He knelt down in front of her. He was about to tell her that he’d been a friend of her mother’s, hoping to come up with some story with which to placate the look of abandonment that had taken hold of her, but at that very instant, while Leonor drowned her tears in her hands, Fermín heard a faraway rumble raining down from the sky. When he looked up toward the window, he noticed that the glass was beginning to tremble.
12
Fermín walked over to the window and drew back the net curtain. He gazed up at the narrow slice of sky trapped between the cornices that framed the narrow street. The rumble was more intense now and sounded much closer. His first thought was that a storm was approaching from the sea, and he imagined black clouds stealing over the docks and tearing down sails and masts as it advanced. But he’d never seen a storm that sounded like m
etal and fire. The mist broke up into shreds, and when the sky cleared, he saw them. They emerged from the dark like large steel insects, flying in formation. He gulped and turned to look first at Leonor, then at Alicia, who was shaking; the child still held her book in her hands.
“I think we should get out of here,” said Fermín.
Leonor shook her head. “They’ll fly past,” she said almost in a whisper. “Like last night.”
Fermín scanned the skies again and happened to see a group of six or seven planes leaving the formation. He opened the window, and when he put his head out he thought the roar of the engines was coming up the Ramblas. Then there was a high-pitched whistling sound, like a drill piercing its way down from the skies. Alicia stopped her ears with her hands and ran to hide under the table. Leonor stretched out her arms to hold her, but something stopped her. Seconds before the shell hit the building, the screech became so intense that it seemed to come out of the very walls. Fermín thought the noise was going to rupture his eardrums.
And then, silence.
A sudden impact shook the building, as if a train had just dropped from the clouds and was slicing through the roof and every flat as it would through cigarette paper. He saw words being formed by Leonor’s lips, but couldn’t hear them. In just a fraction of a second, dazed by a block of solid noise that froze time, Fermín saw the wall behind Leonor crumble into a white cloud, while a sheet of fire surrounded the chair she was sitting on and swallowed her. The suction from the explosion tore half the pieces of furniture right off the floor, leaving them suspended in the air before they went up in flames. He was hit by a wave of burning air, like flaming gasoline, that hurled him against the window with such force he went straight through the glass and crashed against the metal bars of the balcony. The coat given to him by Captain Arráez smoldered and burned his skin. When he tried to stand up and remove it, he felt the floor shudder under his feet. Seconds later, the central structure of the building collapsed before his eyes in a downpour of debris and embers.
Fermín stood up and tore off his smoldering jacket. He peered into the sitting room. A shroud of smoke, dark and acid, licked the walls that were still standing. The explosion had pulverized the heart of the building, leaving only the facade and a first line of rooms around a crater. What remained of the staircase now climbed over the crater’s edge. Beyond what had been the corridor through which he had come in, there was nothing,
“Motherfuckers,” he spat out. He couldn’t hear his own voice through the screeching sound that burned his eardrums, but his skin felt the wave of a new explosion not far from there. An acid wind, reeking of sulfur, electricity, and burned flesh, swept up the street, and Fermín saw the glow of the flames splattering the skies of Barcelona.
13
A searing pain mauled Fermín’s muscles as he staggered into the room. The explosion had flung Alicia against the wall, and the child’s body had become wedged between a collapsed armchair and one of the corners of the room. She was covered in dust and ashes. He knelt down and grabbed her under the shoulders. When she felt his touch, Alicia opened her eyes. They were bloodshot, and her pupils were dilated. Fermín saw his own battered figure reflected in them.
“Where’s Grandma?” murmured Alicia.
“Grandma has had to go. You should come with me. You and me. We’re going to get out of here.”
Alicia nodded. Fermín took her in his arms and felt her clothes, checking her for wounds or fractures. “Is anything hurting?”
The girl put a hand to her head.
“It will pass,” said Fermín. “Ready?”
“My book . . .”
Fermín looked for the book among the rubble. He found it, a bit singed but still in one piece, and handed it to her. Alicia grabbed it as if it were an amulet.
“Don’t lose it, eh? You must tell me how it ends.”
Fermín got to his feet with the girl in his arms. Either Alicia weighed more than he expected, or he had even less strength than he thought to get out of that place. “Hold tight.”
Fermín turned around and, skirting the vast hole left by the explosion, moved slowly along the bit of tiled corridor that remained standing—now reduced to a mere ledge—until he reached the staircase. From there he discovered that the shell had penetrated as far down as the basement of the building, and a pool of fire had flooded the first two floors. Peering through the stairwell, he noticed that the flames were rising slowly, step by step. He clutched Alicia firmly and rushed up the stairs. If they managed to reach the terraced roof, he told himself, he’d be able to jump from there to the adjoining building. Perhaps he’d live to tell the tale.
14
The door to the terraced roof was a solid oak panel, but the blast had blown it off its hinges and Fermín was able to kick it open. Once he was on the rooftop, he set Alicia down and collapsed against the edge of the facade to catch his breath. He inhaled deeply. The air smelled of burned phosphorus. For a few seconds Fermín and Alicia remained silent, unable to believe the sight unfolding before their eyes.
Barcelona was a mantle of darkness riddled with columns of fire and plumes of black smoke that swayed like tentacles in the sky. A couple of blocks from there, the Ramblas formed a river of huge flames and clouds of smoke, snaking toward the town center.
Fermín seized the girl’s hand and pulled her. “Come on, we can’t stop.”
They had only taken a few steps when a new roar filled the sky and shook the structure beneath them. Fermín looked behind him and noticed a powerful brightness rising near Plaza de Cataluña. A bolt of red lightning swept over the city’s rooftops in a matter of seconds. Then the firestorm died away, turning into a downpour of ashes through which the roar of engines could be heard again. The squadron flew very low through the thick, swirling smoke that spread over Barcelona: Fermín could see the reflection of the city’s flames shining on the bellies of the aircraft. He followed the planes’ flight with his eyes and saw clusters of bombs raining over the rooftops of the Raval quarter. Some fifty meters from their terraced roof, a row of buildings exploded one after the other, as if they’d been attached to a load of dynamite. The shock wave smashed hundreds of windows into a rain of glass and uprooted everything it found on the neighboring terraces. A dovecote on the adjacent building collapsed onto the cornice, then fell onto the opposite side of the street, knocking down a water tank that plunged into the void and burst with an enormous bang when it hit the pavement. Fermín could hear cries of panic in the street.
Fermín and Alicia were paralyzed. Unable to take another step, they remained immobile for a few seconds, their eyes glued to the swarm of airplanes that kept battering the city. Fermín sighted the docks of the harbor, sown with half-sunken ships. Huge panels of blazing diesel spread over the water’s surface, swallowing those who had jumped into the sea and were trying desperately to swim away. The sheds and hangars on the quayside raged with flames. A chain-reaction explosion of fuel tanks demolished a row of enormous cargo cranes. One by one, the huge metal structures crashed down on the freighters and fishing boats moored to the quayside, burying them underwater. In the distance, through the sulfur and diesel mist, Fermín could see the airplanes turning around over the sea, preparing for another pass.
He closed his eyes and let the dirty, hot wind drive the sweat off his body. “Here I am, you sons of bitches. Why don’t you damn well hit me, once and for all.”
15
When he thought all he could hear was the sound of the airplanes approaching again, Fermín registered the voice of the girl by his side. He opened his eyes and saw Alicia. The child was tugging at him as hard as she could, yelling in panic. Fermín turned around. What remained of the building was crumbling away like a sand castle in the tide. They dashed off to the edge of the terraced roof and managed to jump over the wall that separated it from the adjacent building. Fermín tumbled over as he fell, then felt a sudden sharp pain in his left leg. Alicia was pulling him again and helped him back on
his feet. He felt his thigh and noticed blood seeping through his fingers. The glow from the flames lit up the wall over which they’d just vaulted, revealing a crest made of bits of sharp, bloodstained glass. Nausea clouded Fermín’s eyes, but he took a deep breath and kept moving. Alicia was still pulling him. Dragging his leg, which left a dark, shiny trail on the tiles, Fermín followed the girl across the terraced roof until they reached the wall separating it from the building that looked down on Calle Arco del Teatro. He managed to clamber up a pile of wooden crates stacked against the partition wall and look over into the neighboring roof terrace. An ominous-looking structure rose before him, an old palace with sealed windows and a majestic facade that looked as if it had been submerged for decades in the depths of a swamp. The building was crowned by a large frosted-glass dome, its top shaped like a lantern tower, above which a lightning conductor held the quivering silhouette of a dragon.
The wound on Fermín’s leg was throbbing, and he had to hold on to the cornice of the partition wall to avoid collapsing. He could feel the warm blood inside his shoe and again felt nauseous. He knew he was about to lose consciousness. Alicia looked at him, terrified. Fermín did his best to smile.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a scratch.”
In the distance, the airplane squadron had already circled over the sea and flown over the breakwater in the port on its way back to the city.
Fermín held his hand out for Alicia. “Hold tight.”
The girl shook her head slowly.
“We’re not safe here,” he said. “We need to cross over to the next terrace and find the way down to the street, and from there to the metro,” he added with little conviction.
“No,” mumbled the child.
“Give me your hand, Alicia.”
The girl hesitated, but in the end she gave him her hand. Fermín pulled her up firmly, setting her on top of the wooden crates. Once she was there, he lifted her to the edge of the cornice. “Jump.”
The Labyrinth of the Spirits Page 5
