The Prisoner of Heaven: A Novel (23 page)

‘We’re going to have that crib hanging around for a long time,’ grumbled Fermín with little or no enthusiasm.

After 6 January, the feast of the Three Kings, my father instructed us to wrap up the nativity scene carefully and take it down to the basement for storage until the following Christmas.

‘With care,’ warned my father. ‘I don’t want to be told that the boxes slipped accidentally, Fermín.’

‘With the utmost care, Señor Sempere. I’ll vouch for the integrity of the crib with my life, and that includes all the farm animals dotted round the swaddled Messiah.’

Once we had made room for the boxes containing all the Christmas decorations, I paused for a moment to have a quick look round the basement and its forgotten corners. The last time we’d been there, the conversation had covered matters that neither Fermín nor I had brought up again, but they still lay heavily on my mind at least. Fermín seemed to read my thoughts and he shook his head.

‘Don’t tell me you’re still thinking about that idiot’s letter.’

‘Every now and then.’

‘You won’t have said anything to Doña Beatriz, I hope.’

‘No. I put the letter back in her coat pocket and didn’t say a word.’

‘What about her? Didn’t she mention that she’d received a letter from Don Juan Tenorio?’

I shook my head. Fermín screwed up his nose, as if to say that it wasn’t a good sign.

‘Have you decided what you’re going to do?’

‘What about?’

‘Don’t act innocent, Daniel. Are you or are you not going to follow your wife to her potential tryst with that old boyfriend at the Ritz and cause a little stir?’

‘You’re presupposing that she’ll be going there,’ I protested.

‘Aren’t you?’

I looked down, upset with myself.

‘What kind of a husband doesn’t trust his wife?’ I asked.

‘Would you like me to give you a list of names and surnames, or will statistics do?’

‘I trust Bea. She wouldn’t cheat on me. She isn’t like that. If she had anything to say to me, she’d say it to my face, without lying.’

‘Then you don’t have anything to worry about, do you?’

Something in Fermín’s tone made me think that my suspicions and insecurities had disappointed him. Although he was never going to admit it, I was sure it saddened him to think I devoted my time to unworthy thoughts and to doubting the sincerity of a woman I didn’t deserve.

‘You must think I’m a fool.’

Fermín shook his head.

‘No. I think you’re a fortunate man, at least when it comes to love. And like most people who are so fortunate, you don’t realise it.’

A knock on the door at the top of the stairs interrupted us.

‘Unless you’ve discovered oil down there, will you please come back up right away, there’s work to do,’ called my father.

Fermín sighed.

‘Since he’s got out of the red he’s become a tyrant,’ he said.

The days crawled by. Fermín had at last agreed to delegate the preparations for the wedding and the banquet to my father and Don Gustavo, who had taken on the role of parental authorities. As best man, I advised the presiding committee, but mine was a merely honorary title since Bea acted as chief executive and artistic director and coordinated all those involved with an iron fist.

‘Fermín, I have orders from Bea to take you along to Casa Pantaleoni to try on your suit.’

‘A striped prisoner’s suit is all I’m going to wear …’

I’d given him my word that when the time came his name would be in order and his friend the parish priest would be able to intone those words: ‘Do you, Fermín, take Bernarda to be your lawful wedded wife?’ without us all ending up in the police station. But as the date drew closer Fermín was being eaten up by anxiety. Bernarda survived the suspense by means of prayers and egg-yolk flans, although, once her pregnancy had been confirmed by a trustworthy, discreet doctor, she spent much of her day fighting nausea and dizziness. Everything seemed to indicate that Fermín’s firstborn was going to be a handful.

Those were days of apparent and deceptive calm, but beneath the surface I’d succumbed to a dark, murky current that was slowly dragging me into the depths of a new and irresistible emotion: hatred.

In my spare time, without telling anyone where I was going, I would slip out and walk over to the nearby Ateneo Library on Calle Canuda, where I tracked every step of Mauricio Valls’s life in the newspaper room. What for years I’d regarded as an indistinct and uninteresting figure took on a painful clarity and precision that increased with every passing day. My investigation allowed me to reconstruct Valls’s public career during the last fifteen years, piece by piece. A lot of water had flowed under the bridge since his early days with the regime. With time and good contacts, if one were to believe what the papers said (something Fermín compared to believing that orange squash was obtained by squeezing fresh oranges from Valencia), Don Mauricio Valls had seen his wishes come true and become a shining star in Spain’s literary and artistic firmament.

His ascent had been nothing short of spectacular. From 1944 onwards he landed posts and official appointments of growing importance in the country’s cultural and academic institutions. His articles, talks and publications multiplied. Any self-respecting award ceremony, conference or cultural event required the participation and presence of Don Mauricio. In 1947, with a couple of business partners, he created Ediciones Ariadna, a publishing company with offices in Madrid and Barcelona mostly devoted to his self-promotion, which the press spared no effort in canonising as the ‘most prestigious editorial brand’ in Spanish literature.

By 1948, the same papers began to refer regularly to Mauricio Valls as ‘the most brilliant and well-respected intellectual in the New Spain’. The country’s self-appointed intelligentsia and those who aspired to join the club seemed to be conducting a passionate romance with Don Mauricio. Journalists covering the cultural pages went out of their way to extol Valls, seeking his favour and, with luck, the publication by Ediciones Ariadna of some manuscript they’d been keeping in a drawer, so that they could become part of the official scene and taste at least a few sweet crumbs falling from his table.

Valls had learned the rules of the game and controlled the board better than anyone. At the start of the fifties, his fame and influence had already extended beyond official circles and were beginning to seep into so-called civil society and its members. Mauricio’s slogans had been fashioned into a canon of revealed truths adopted by the same three or four thousand Spaniards who saw themselves as the chosen few and who made it a matter of pride to parrot the gospel like diligent pupils while looking down at the low-brow masses.

En route to the top, Valls had gathered around him a clique of like-minded characters who ate out of his hand and were gradually placed at the head of institutions and in positions of power. If anyone dared question Valls’s words or his worth, such an individual would be mercilessly crucified by the press. After being ridiculed in malicious terms, the poor wretch would end up as a pariah, a beggar to whom all doors were slammed shut and whose only alternatives were obscurity or exile.

I spent endless hours reading every word as well as between the lines, comparing different versions of the story, cataloguing dates and making lists of successes and potential skeletons in cupboards. In other circumstances, if the purpose of my study had been purely anthropological, I would have taken my hat off to Don Mauricio and his masterly moves. Nobody could deny that he’d learned to read the heart and soul of his fellow citizens and pull the strings that moved their desires, hopes and dreams. He knew the game inside out, and nobody played it better.

If I was left with anything after endless days submerged in the official version of Valls’s life, it was the belief that the building blocks of a new Spain were being set in place and that Don Mauricio’s meteoric ascent to the altars of power exemplified a rising trend that, in all probability, would outlast the dictatorship and put down deep and immovable roots throughout the entire country for decades to come.

In 1952 Valls reached the summit of his career when he was named Minister of Culture for a three-year period, a position on which he capitalised to consolidate his authority and place his lackeys in the last few posts he had not yet managed to control. His public projection took on a golden monotony: his words were quoted as the source of all wisdom. His presence on jury panels, tribunals and all sorts of formal audiences was constant, while his arsenal of diplomas, laurels and medals continued to grow.

And then, suddenly, something strange happened.

I wasn’t aware of it at first. The litany of praise and news flashes continued relentlessly, but after 1956, I spotted a detail buried among all those reports which was in stark contrast to everything published prior to that date. The tone and content of the articles were unchanged, but by reading each one of them and comparing them, I noticed something.

Don Mauricio Valls had never again appeared in public.

His name, his prestige, his reputation and his power were still going from strength to strength. There was just one piece missing: his person. After 1956 there were no photographs, no mention of his attendance nor any direct references to his participation in official functions.

The last cutting confirming Mauricio Valls’s presence was dated 2 November 1956, when he received an award for the year’s most distinguished achievements in publishing. The solemn ceremony, held in Madrid’s Círculo de Bellas Artes, was attended by the highest authorities and the cream of society. The text of the news report followed the usual, predictable lines of the genre, in other words a short item couched in flattering tones. The most interesting thing about it was the accompanying photograph, the last published picture of Valls, taken shortly before his sixtieth birthday. Elegantly dressed in a well-cut suit, he was smiling modestly as he received a standing ovation from the audience. Some of the usual crowd at that type of event appeared next to Valls and, behind him, slightly off-camera, their expression serious and impenetrable, stood two individuals ensconced behind dark glasses, dressed in black, who didn’t seem to be part of the ceremony. They looked severe and disconnected from the whole farce. Vigilant.

Nobody had photographed Don Mauricio or seen him in public after that night in the Círculo de Bellas Artes. However hard I tried, I didn’t find a single appearance. Tired of pursuing avenues that seemed to lead nowhere, I went back to the beginning and pieced his story together, until I got to know it as if it were my own. I sniffed his trail in the hope of finding a clue, some sign that might tell me where he was. Where was that man who smiled in photographs and paraded his vanity through endless pages with an entourage of flatterers, hungry for favours?

My hatred grew during those solitary afternoons in the old Ateneo library, where not so long ago I’d devoted my cares to nobler causes, like the smooth skin of my first impossible love, the blind Clara, or the mysteries of Julián Carax and his novel
The Shadow of the Wind
. The harder it became to follow Valls’s trail, the more I refused to admit that he had the right to disappear and erase his name from history. From my history. I needed to know what had happened to him. I needed to look him in the eye, even if it was just to remind him that someone, a single person in the entire universe, knew who he really was and what he had done.

8

One afternoon, tired of chasing ghosts, I cancelled my session at the newspaper library and went out for a stroll with Bea and Julián through a clean, sunny Barcelona I had almost forgotten. We walked from home to Ciudadela Park. I sat on a bench and watched Julián play with his mother on the lawn. As I gazed at them I reminded myself of Fermín’s words. A fortunate man, that was me, Daniel Sempere. A fortunate man who had allowed blind resentment to grow inside him until he felt sick at the very thought of himself.

I watched Julián devote himself to one of his grand passions: crawling about on all fours until he was filthy. Bea kept a close eye on him. Every now and then he would pause and turn towards me. Suddenly, a gust of air lifted Bea’s skirt and Julián burst out laughing. I clapped and Bea gave me a disapproving look. I searched my son’s eyes: soon, I thought, they’ll begin to look at me as if I were the wisest man in the world, the bearer of all answers. I decided never to mention the name of Mauricio Valls again or pursue his shadow.

Bea came over and sat down beside me. Julián crawled after her as far as the bench. When he reached my feet I picked him up and he set about cleaning his hands on the lapels of my jacket.

‘Just back from the dry cleaner’s,’ said Bea.

I shrugged, resigned. Bea leaned over and took my hand.

‘Nice legs,’ I said.

‘I don’t see what’s so amusing. Your son will pick that up from you. Thank goodness there was nobody around.’

‘There was a little old grandad hiding behind a newspaper over there. I think he’s collapsed with tachycardia.’

Julián decided that the word ‘tachycardia’ was the funniest thing he’d heard in his life and we spent a good part of the journey home singing ‘ta-chy-car-dia’ while Bea walked a few steps in front of us, fuming.

That night, 20 January, Bea put Julián to bed and then fell asleep on the sofa next to me, while I reread, for the third time, one of David Martín’s old novels. It was the copy Fermín had found during his months of exile, after his escape from the prison, and had kept all those years. I liked savouring every turn of phrase and dissecting the architecture of every sentence. I thought that if I could decode the music of his prose I might discover something about that man whom I’d never known and whom everyone assured me was not my father. But that night I couldn’t do it. Before reaching the end of a single paragraph, my thoughts would fly from the page and all I could see in front of me was that letter from Pablo Cascos Buendía, arranging to meet my wife the following day at the Ritz, at two o’clock in the afternoon.

At last I closed the book and gazed at Bea, sleeping by my side, sensing that she held a thousand times more secrets than David Martín’s stories about the sinister city of the damned. It was after midnight when Bea opened her eyes and caught me scrutinising her. She smiled at me, but a flicker of anxiety crossed her face.