Barcelona Noir

by Adriana V.

  The girl on the flier also had almond-shaped eyes.

  I took the napkin, only to see Cavalcanti wink my way and shake his head with his index finger pointed at his own chest. “You call me first,” he said.

  That’s when I remembered the skinny vendor with beer, hashish, and coke at the three chimneys. And that’s why, the next morning, I went back to the plaza where half of Europe’s skaters could be found; the skinny guy didn’t take long to make his appearance.

  I repeated my question, doubled my bribe, and got the same answer and a gesture toward Montjuic. That’s when I understood he didn’t mean heaven when he said Delgado “went up,” and I gazed over at the rolling green that, indeed, went up behind the buildings.

  The Montjuic has a military fort at the top where tourists have their pictures taken; its paths are crowded with trees and bushes. Those paths have always been the refuge of drug addicts and immigrants who are poorer than dirt. Every now and again, the cops raid and disperse them, but they come back like mushrooms after a rainfall.

  I left civilization behind and climbed up to test my luck. I’d never been there before, and a part of me warned that I was headed toward anger’s nesting ground.

  I was breathing hard and my knees were buckling when I ran into a tent made of plastic bags, garments rescued from the trash, and clumsily crossed branches.

  I don’t know how many people were housed under that roof, but the smell of old dirt and bodies in need of washing was overwhelming.

  They barely spoke Spanish and, after their initial surprise, offered me, for very little money, the favors of a girl who was, at most, twelve years old. When I said no they pulled down the pants of an eight-year-old boy, but as soon as they saw my disgust they simply asked me for cigarettes.

  As lost as I was, I continued up. How would I ever find Delgado if I couldn’t even figure out how many of these settlements there might be? Trees and all sorts of surprises in the landscape hid them from me, and I ran into them without warning. I soon realized that if I didn’t stop, somebody would probably knife me.

  And I wouldn’t have made it at all if it hadn’t been for the calm man.

  I named him that because, from the moment he appeared in the midst of the weeds, he gave me the impression that he was beyond good and evil.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. “This place can be very inhospitable to unexpected guests.”

  I looked him over, which he allowed. He didn’t smile but his eyes permitted my inspection and sought trust. So I went along; I decided to trust him.

  “I’m looking for a man in a lot of trouble. If I find him in time, it might do him some good.”

  The calm man had thin lips, like a monk, and a slightly foreign accent, which I couldn’t quite place.

  “Do you know his name?”

  “They call him Delgado, or El Delgado.”

  The man nodded. “I know who he is. I know pretty much everybody here … and I make sure that nobody’s problems take us all down. But you still haven’t told me anything that would make me help you.”

  “There’s a little girl, an Algerian, who ran away from home and may have been seen with him. The family is Algerian, Muslim, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean … Our buddy has gotten into a lot of trouble.”

  “And you are …?”

  “Let’s say I’m from somewhere in the Balkans, one of those places that changes names from time to time. Follow me,” he said as he started up the path. He moved quickly, with the economy of a tiger, or a soldier.

  I tried asking him a few questions but both his silence and the panting of my lungs made me shut up right away.

  Delgado’s refuge was a green tent, a military leftover.

  The calm man approached as if it wasn’t necessary for him to knock, and we entered lowering our heads.

  The girl—the little Moor—was preparing tea on a burner and looked scared to death when she saw us enter.

  Delgado didn’t make a move; he was sitting on a camouflage sleeping bag. It was clear he trusted the calm man, and that he could only fit in the tent if he was sitting or lying down.

  Then the calm man squatted and began to talk in a language that was unintelligible to me, in the sleep-inducing cadence of an animal trainer.

  He talked for a long time, and I could see Delgado’s face registering shame. As his tiny eyes filled with tears, he made an attempt to explain himself by wearily gesturing toward the girl. He uttered only two or three phrases but they were enough for the calm man to lower his head as if he needed a minute to think things through.

  Then the calm man spoke again, but this time it was with a different tone. It was an order. The kind of order that can’t be disobeyed. “Get your things and go. Your family is waiting for you,” he said to the girl.

  “They don’t want me,” she responded, on the verge of tears.

  She made a move toward Delgado for protection, but the big guy pushed her away and whispered something that must have been definitive, because she simply lowered her head and left, without taking anything, and without looking back.

  “We’re finished here,” said the calm man. “I’ll go back with you, so you don’t get lost.”

  When we were almost at the end of the path, I twisted my foot and he let me rest for a moment. I decided to take advantage of the stop to ask him a question: “Can you tell me what the fuck that little girl was doing with Delgado?”

  “She’s pregnant, and she’s afraid of her family.”

  “Right. Delgado likes skinny little Asian girls.”

  “You’re wrong. Delgado, as you call him, is medically incapable of having sex.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The truth,” he said. And as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he unveiled the story of the big scary guy who, out of the blue, liked to say, “Ah, the slender charm of Chinese women.”

  He’d been a soldier—though now I’m not sure if he was Serb, Croatian, or something else—when the people in that part of the world all turned on each other. He was a combatant in one of the many battles in that senseless war, in which the enemy had been a good neighbor until the day before.

  In one skirmish, they’d massacred some Muslim families and, as was the custom at the time, they’d raped a young woman—practically a girl, really—until she died. To fight and drink were the only rules in that killing game.

  And soon those who fought and drank died in an ambush of which the only survivor was El Delgado. And then a woman—perhaps the dead girl’s sister or mother, a woman thin as a reed, with slanted eyes—took her revenge on Delgado.

  Two days later they left him for dead. They had used needles and wooden splinters to make a porcupine of his body. Pincers and boots did away with his teeth. And with a pair of pliers, or a nutcracker, the woman tore off his genitals. Never again would the guy known as Delgado be a whole man.

  “You see … he survived so he could carry his cross in this world,” said the calm man. “You can go the rest of the way by yourself.” Then he turned his back on me and disappeared into the thicket.

  I only really believed half of what he told me. He didn’t quite convince me and I wasn’t going to let him screw up my little business deal. That’s why I made both calls, to Cavalcanti and to the Algerians. With my information, it wouldn’t be hard for them to find the tent.

  A few minutes later I got scared, and I began running down the hillside, out to the streets, to that other city, with a couple of tears in my clothes and some scratches on my hands.

  It was like arriving in a foreign country. I had a moment of disorientation when I saw three blondes—English or German—showing off their young flesh with short skirts. And I confirmed my border crossing when I saw a group of Chinese or Japanese stopped at a corner with their bird steps and avid tourist eyes.

  The Russians arrived first. It was in all the papers. A photo of the Russian gymnast was found in the battered giant’s pockets,
making it easy for the police to close the case. The guy was crazy, so they attributed the rape and murder of the Chinese girl to him; he carried this blame to his grave.

  Everyone was pleased, myself included, although I still had some doubts.

  Had El Delgado been connected to the Russian girl? Maybe. He was crazy, he’d had his balls cut off, and he’d given refuge to a pregnant little Moor—this all made him seem like a delirious savior of whores and injured women.

  Had he been the victim of a crossfire, a settling of scores which would have been best avoided at any cost? I don’t know, I don’t want to know. What probably happened was that he was killed because of his gift for ubiquity: he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe what killed him was his obsession and his disturbing mantra about the slender charm of Chinese women. In any case, he’d been dead a long time, he just didn’t know it.

  Everyone was pleased, myself included. Sometimes a lack of ambition can save your ass. It’s best to be content with the leftovers from the lions.

  THE POLICE INSPECTOR

  WHO LOVED BOOKS

  BY FRANCISCO GONZÁLEZ LEDESMA

  El Raval

  Everybody knows that Méndez is an old cop who lives (badly) on the streets of Barcelona. Just like everybody knows Méndez eats cheaply in the city’s worst restaurants; every now and then, the owners invite him for a free meal so he’ll recommend them to the Michelin Guide. One time, to support his friends, he took a TV crew to one of those places so they’d give it some publicity, but after they ate, the cameraman couldn’t make it to the door.

  As everybody suspects (although they don’t know for sure), Méndez will never get anywhere because he doesn’t believe in a single law except the law of the streets. Plus, he feels sorry for petty delinquents and rarely arrests them. Nonetheless, they say he once detained a fellow with a limp. As everybody suspects, Méndez was watching from the balcony at the station on Nou de la Rambla Street, which was the most sordid in all of Barcelona; it was so bad that sometimes not even the cops would go in at night for fear that they’d be assaulted in the doorway. From that balcony, Méndez could see all the neighborhood’s thefts, assaults, fights, and philandering.

  There are other things the whole world knows about Méndez, the old cop: for instance, that his apartment is full of books and that he always carries one in his pocket, which is why the lapels on his unform are always out of shape. There’s a great antiquarian book fair in Barcelona each year and Méndez is a loyal customer because he loves stories by dead novelists. In fact, he has more books than he can possibly read in what’s left of his life.

  That’s not so uncommon. There was a great writer from Barcelona, Néstor Luján, who kept books even in the bathroom, and there’s a true story about a bourgeois man who had so many books that his wife got fed up and told him, “Me or the books.” And the bourgeois man said, “The books.”

  Well, I’ve already mentioned that Méndez had more books than he could possibly read in what he has left of life, and that it’s not so unusual—in spite of the fact that Barcelona’s climate is usually better for taking a stroll than staying at home with a book. One time, Méndez met another man, a senior, who suffered the same problem.

  “I’m obsessed with books, I love them,” Méndez’s friend told him one day. “I’ve spent my life collecting them and taking care of them. But I’m desperate, because I now have more books than I can possibly read in a lifetime. To make matters worse, I’m going blind.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Méndez.

  “The day I realize I can no longer read, I’ll kill myself, because then my life will be useless.”

  Méndez understood all too well.

  And this is where we arrive on terrain that nobody’s too sure about, but that we suspect. We suspect two things: first, that Méndez owns more than one illegal gun—well, the man’s spent half his life in the company of thieves; second, that he’s bitter, but keeps it secret. Though others will say he’s never lost faith in humanity.

  So Méndez replied to the old man, but it’s unclear whether he did so with ill intentions, or because he thought nothing would come of it: “Here, I’m going to give you this antique pistol, which is worth quite a bit. I’m giving it to you so you can kill yourself whenever you want.”

  The bibliophile must have been pretty determined because he took it without hestitation. “Thank you,” he said.

  Six months went by and Méndez didn’t see the old man again, although he imagined he probably couldn’t even pick up a book anymore.

  So Méndez went looking for him in Las Ramblas, in the old bookstores, in the city libraries, in the few parks left in Barcelona, trapped between blocks of apartments.

  He came across many book lovers, but not his friend. Until one day he finally found him. He was wearing very thick glasses.

  “Did you make it through your whole collection?” Méndez gasped.

  “Absolutely not!” said the man. “You should see what I still have left!”

  “Then what did you do with the gun? You didn’t kill yourself …”

  “No way! I sold the gun to buy another book.”

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  ERIC TAYLOR-ARAGÓN is half-Peruvian and half-British, and graduated with a degree in literature from UC Berkeley. He’s currently at work on his second novel, Pocketman. He lived in Barcelona (Barri Gòtic and El Raval) for three happy, wine-drenched years, and currently lives a nomadic existence between the United States and Spain.

  RAÚL ARGEMÍ is the author of seven novels that have been translated into various languages: El Gordo, el Francés y el Ratón Pérez, Los muertos siempre pierden los zapatos, Penúltimo nombre de guerra, Patagonia Chú Chú, Siempre la misma música, Retrato de familia con muerta, and La última caravana. His work has been awarded several prizes, such as the Dashiell Hammett 2005 as well as the Luis Berenguer, Brigada 21, and Novelpol awards. He was born in Argentina and lives in Barcelona.

  DAVID BARBA, born in Barcelona in 1973, is a writer, cultural journalist, and professor of journalism and humanities at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, where he also teaches meditation. He published the official biography of Spanish porn star Nacho Vidal and is an expert in pornography. He lives in Barcelona.

  LOLITA BOSCH was born in Barcelona in 1970, but has lived in Albons, Spain, India, the United States, and, for ten years, Mexico City. She writes in both Spanish and Catalan, directs a literary collective, and lives in Barcelona with her dog. For more information, visit www.lolitabosch.com.

  ANTONIA CORTIJOS was born in Barcelona in 1948. She graduated from the Escuela Massana de Barcelona, where she studied design and painting, two passions she still dedicates time to when she isn’t writing. Cortijos is the author of the highly acclaimed thriller El diario de tapas rojas, as well as Ruido de agua and the story collection Isla Plana. Her fouth novel, Atlántidas, will be published in 2011 and she is at work on a fifth book.

  JORDI SIERRA I FABRA was born in Barcelona in 1947. He has published hundreds of books and received dozens of literary awards from both sides of the Atlantic, among them Spain’s National Literature Prize, and is that country’s most widely read children’s and young adult author—his books have sold more than ten million copies. He is the founder of the Fundaciò Jordi Sierra i Fabra in Barcelona and the Fundación Taller de Letras Jordi Sierra i Fabra for Latin America.

  CRISTINA FALLARÁS is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in El Mundo newspaper and several Spanish television and radio programs. She is the author of the novels La otra Enciclopedia Catalana, Rupturas, No acaba la noche, and Así murió el poeta Guadalupe, which was a finalist for the Dashiell Hammett prize in literary crime fiction in 2010. She was born in Zaragoza and has lived in Barcelona since 1986.

  ISABEL FRANC was born in Barcelona and is the author of the celebrated Lola Van Guardia trilogy featuring Emma García, the first lesbian female detective in Spanish literature. She is the editor f
or the new Spanish version of Ladies Almanack by Djuna Barnes and was awarded Spain’s Premio Shangay for No me llames cariño. In 2010 Franc published a graphic novel about breast cancer, Alicia en un mundo real, with the illustrator Susan Martín.

  FRANCISCO GONZÁLEZ LEDESMA was born in Barcelona in 1927. He won the Premio Internacional de Novela for Tiempo de venganza, a novel originally banned by Franco, when he was twenty-one. In 1984, he received the Premio Planeta for Crónica sentimental en rojo, which featured his most well-known protagonist, Detective Méndez. The Detective Méndez series soon became an international success. He was awarded the Premio Pepe Carvalho in 2005.

  ADRIANA V. LÓPEZ is the founding editor of Críticas magazine and edited the story collection Fifteen Candles. López’s journalism has appeared in The New York Times and the Washington Post, and her essays and fiction have been published in anthologies such as Border-Line Personalities, Colonize This! and Juicy Mangoes. Currently, she is translating Susana Fortes’s novel Waiting for Robert Capa, and she divides her time between New York and Madrid.

  ANDREU MARTÍN is the author of various novels, including Prótesis (made into a film directed by Vicente Aranda) and El hombre de la navaja, which have both won numerous prizes including the Premio Círculo del Crimen and the Premio Hammet. He also creates screenplays, television scripts, plays, and children’s literature. A regular contributor to El Periódico and La Vanguardia, his most recent novel, Bellísimas personas, won the Premio Ateneo de Sevilla in 2000. He lives in Barcelona.

  VALERIE MILES is an American writer, translator, and publisher who has been living in Spain for over twenty years. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, La Vanguardia, and Granta en español. After directing the imprint Emecé for some years and then the Madrid-based Alfaguara, she has recently launched a new publishing house, Duomo Ediciones, for the Italian group Mauri Spagnol. She lives in Barcelona.