Some of the men at the bar got up and came toward him, so that he finally gave up and backed out the door.
“Assholes,” he said in English. “Pack of bleeding assholes.”
They stared after him as he walked away.
There was a police station down near the Plaza de Cataluña, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to go in, especially looking like he did.
As he came out of the old city onto the
ramblas,
he was amazed by how normal everything was. The shops were open and people wandered leisurely or sat out eating ice cream or sipping coffee. It was no later than ten thirty. There was no sign of a recent riot. They must have contained it all in the old city. People kept staring at him, and he decided to go to his car and wait there for Kyra. If she’d been arrested, there was nothing he could do anyway.
But his feet would not carry him there. Kyra kept coming back to him. He walked back into the old city with its dark and narrow streets. He felt in his pockets, and found that he still had his wallet and money. Several people passed him, but he was less conspicuous, and no one paid him any special attention. Finally, a young man about his size passed and he stopped him, offering him two thousand pesetas for his shirt. They made the deal, and in five minutes, Sean had discarded his own blood-stained shirt, and was in another café’s bathroom, trying to make himself look presentable. His face in the mirror was scratched and somewhat swollen, but his eyes were clear, and with his hair combed, at least he didn’t look drunk. He patted the lumps behind his head with a wet paper towel. The bleeding had stopped.
Coming out of the bathroom, he ordered a coffee and cognac at the bar. He gulped it down, and then walked back out toward the police station, avoiding the
ramblas.
The building was a solid brick structure, guarded by two policemen with submachine guns. Sean nervously walked up the four steps to the wide door, and they parted to let him in. Inside, the atmosphere was more like an office building than anything else. Uniformed men sat or stood around, and next to the door, a guard sat at a desk in a semi-enclosed booth. Sean went over and questioned him, and was assured that no women had been arrested during the disturbance, although they had taken several men. Was there a chance, the guard asked, that Kyra might have been mistaken for a man in the dark?
“Not even in the dark,” Sean answered, smiling.
The guard smiled, too. He had kind eyes, and Sean found himself believing him, though it was against his better judgment. He asked the man if he would take care to watch out for her, and he gave him her name, and his address in Tossa.
“We were just taking a walk,” he explained. “We really had nothing to do with it all.”
The guard smiled again, and said, “In these times, sometimes it is better not to take walks at night. People think you must be on either side. Have you tried the hospital?”
Sean said no, and the guard gave him the address.
By now he was exhausted, but he made it to the hospital quickly. It was back in the direction of the car anyway.
At the hospital, a nun told him that she knew of no disturbance that night, but checked her rolls to see if Kyra had been admitted. She had not.
He was relieved to find the car where he’d left it, but Kyra was nowhere to be found. He couldn’t drive through the old city, but he circled it five or six times, thinking nothing, and feeling completely helpless. Finally he parked the car again near his original place, and waited until very late before he decided that he was accomplishing nothing and should go home.
No lights were on as he pulled into the courtyard. They had said they’d be home late, but he wished as he drove up that someone would be awake. The ride home had been harrowing. Overcome with fatigue, he had twice nearly driven off the road. Once he’d left the highway, it had been easier to stay awake, although the winding road up to the house had seemed endless.
He let himself in quietly and turned on the light, then crossed to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff, neat bourbon. His head ached. He reached back and touched the lumps on it.
He heard footsteps and Doug appeared, wearing his white slacks and buttoning up his shirt. Only his hair gave away that he’d been in bed. He walked to the liquor cabinet.
“I heard you drive up and wasn’t sleeping anyway. Want a refresher?”
Sean held out his glass. “Sure.”
“It sure turned out to be a late one.” He turned. “Where’s Kyra? It’s been—” For the first time he looked at Sean. “Christ! What happened to you?”
Sean watched Doug pour, and suddenly began to shake. It dawned on him anew that Kyra was in trouble. The drink had cleared his mind as his first drinks so often did. He took a sip.
“There was a riot in Barcelona,” he said, “and we got caught in it. I don’t know where Kyra is. I thought she might’ve gotten back here somehow, but . . .” He stopped and sat down again on the couch.
“Maybe she was arrested.”
“No. I checked.” He recounted his night and got more worried as he talked.
“So what are we going to do now?” asked Doug when he finished.
“I don’t know. Wait until morning, I guess. Maybe I should’ve stayed in the city.”
“That would have been crazy. You’ve got your head bashed open.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know what to do about finding her. I don’t know where she could be. No idea, and it’s . . .”
“Why don’t you just sit here and I’ll get Lea up. Somebody ought to look at your head.”
“No.” He finished his drink. “No sense in waking her up for that. I think I’ll just wash up and go to bed, and try to be up in a couple of hours.” He crossed toward the hall that led to his room. “If I were you, I’d try to get some sleep myself. It might be a long couple of days.” He left him and went to his room.
Undressing was particularly difficult for him tonight. The cold shower felt good, though. He let the water course down through his hair until there was no trace of the crusted blood. He was becoming more and more lucid, and in turn more worried. Getting out of the shower, he put on his robe and sat at the edge of his bed. For a moment he stared vacantly ahead, his mind empty. Then a noise from outside—Doug putting down his glass and going upstairs—brought him back.
Try as he might, he couldn’t be calm. Thoughts of what might now be happening to her kept him on the verge of panic. Where could she be? If she hadn’t been arrested or hospitalized, then why hadn’t she come back to where he’d been knocked out? Or if she’d run and met someone she knew, why hadn’t they eventually come to the car, or back here? She couldn’t have simply disappeared.
He was slowing down, but he wanted to stay awake, to decide what to do in the morning, so he got up and paced. Why hadn’t he stayed in the city? He should still be there now, looking for her. He had never felt more like a coward.
And what had been this facade he’d put up with her? Tonight she had said that she loved him, and his distrust had been so great that he couldn’t believe it, though everything in him had wanted to. Wasn’t that carrying the whole thing too far? As long as he never let himself believe her, she could never destroy him, but also they would be nothing more than two drifters pretending to be lovers. Even more, pretending to be living in the rarefied air of risk and danger, but really not living at all. Wasn’t his refusal to have faith in her an admission that he was afraid to live? Maybe real death would be preferable. At least it would be real.
He paced. He sat again on the bed, picked up a magazine, opened it, then threw it to the floor. Through the window the sky was lightening. He lay down, turned out the bed light, almost dozed.
Outside he heard a car engine. It must be close, he thought, for me to hear it with this damned ear. Then he jumped out of bed and ran through the living room out to the courtyard. A car was pulling up and in a moment Kyra was out of it and in his arms, crying.
A man got out of the car and stood by awkwardly as they embraced. Sean thought he looked familiar, then recognized him as the guard from the police station. He came over to them.
“We were told to say they hadn’t arrested women,” he said, “but I know sometimes they don’t always tell the truth. So when I got off, I went to the jail with her name and explained, and they let her go out with me. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier but I really didn’t know.” He hunched his shoulders and smiled. “The whole world is not political, huh?”
Sean put his arm around him. “Thank you. Please come in. Have some breakfast.”
“No, thank you,” he said. “My wife, she’ll be worried enough.” And without another word he got back in his car and started it up. By now, he didn’t need his headlights. They watched him drive out.
“I don’t believe it,” said Sean, and they walked inside, hugging each other.
“What happened?”
They were lying, covered and warm, in bed.
“After you were knocked down, I tried to pick you up and get us out of there, but then someone grabbed me and I pushed back and managed to move you off the street anyway. Then I was just sort of swept up into a truck and taken to jail. God, I feel so bad for the men they got. They really beat them badly, first in the truck and then at the jail. It was horrible, but I was so scared I couldn’t do anything. I yelled once for a guard to stop kicking the boy next to me, but then he slapped me hard, and I was so afraid. And then I wondered what had happened to you, and hoped I’d moved you far enough away, so maybe you weren’t picked up, but then . . .”
She was crying now, holding on to him.
He brushed her face with his hand. “It’s OK. We’re all right now. Did they hurt you?”
“Not aside from searching me four times.” She began crying again, quietly, and kept telling him she loved him over and over. And finally he couldn’t stop himself from believing her.
He wanted her to know, then, that he loved her, and that it would all work, but exhaustion was taking its toll, and sleep would wait no longer. And though he thought the words and tried to mumble them to her, somehow they never got out.
Eleven
It wasn’t so much that Lea’s absences were getting harder to bear, but her continued obsession with Mike put me in an awkward position. After that first meeting with him, she started talking about this mystery girl he had to find. His whole life, she said, revolved around at least finding out what had happened to her. Weren’t we getting bored here? Wasn’t it time maybe to do something that meant something? It took her several days to bring it out, but it finally became clear that she wanted us to go with Mike and help him search for the girl. I wanted no part of it.
She went into Tossa several times to meet with him and to try to plan what should be done. I couldn’t understand why this had suddenly become such a major problem when for the past several years he’d been content to let it slide into his past. Now, with Lea’s interest, it had again apparently become a priority. Lea told me that it had always been on his mind, but that he’d needed to develop a plan to find her, to make connections with certain people who would or could help him.
“Why does he need you?” I asked. We were in the back courtyard in the late afternoon. A few stray chickens pecked lazily about. She’d been in town during the day, but had come back in a fine mood. She seemed, for the first time in days, genuinely glad to see me.
“He doesn’t really, I suppose, but I want to help him.” She rested her hand on my arm. “I’m surprised at you, Douglas, that you don’t seem to care at all about this. You’re the one who’s been talking lately about how everything seems meaningless to you. You can’t seem to get involved. Well, here’s a boy who really needs support. He’s so involved. Maybe some of it would rub off on you.”
“Look,” I said. “It’s just that I have a very hard time believing in what he says. Too much of it makes no sense to me. And what would you and I be doing if we came along? Making a diary of the trip to read to our grandchildren? ‘. . . And here we are in Istanbul seeking a lost waif who’s been gone for six or seven years, if she ever existed at all.’ ”
“Do you really doubt that?”
“I can’t believe you don’t.”
She stood up. “I don’t like being called a gullible fool.” She started back toward the door.
“Oh, Jesus, Lea, wait a minute. Come back here. I didn’t say you were anything of the sort.” I got up, went over to her and put my arms around her. “Look, why don’t we just drop this whole thing for a day or so? I’m just tired of talking about it all the time, and I’d like to think that you and I have other things to do besides worry about this boy’s problem.”
She looked at me for a moment with her jaw set and her eyes hard. Then she put one arm on my shoulder and laid her head against me.
“I’m sorry, Doug, but seeing someone care so much about something really affects me. There’s an intensity in him that I don’t see in anyone else, and I find it stimulating being around him.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“Douglas! God, no.” Her arms circled my neck and she kissed me, pressing her body up against mine. “It’s you I love. Remember?”