The Prisoner of Heaven: A Novel (3 page)

‘Have you ever spoken to him?’

‘One of my colleagues copied out a letter for him the other day; he’s missing some fingers, you see …’

‘Which one of your colleagues was that?’ I asked.

The scribe looked at me doubtfully, fearing the possible loss of a client if he replied.

‘Luisito, the one over there, next to the music store, the one who looks like a seminarist.’

I offered him a few coins in gratitude but he refused them.

‘I make a living with my pen, not with my tongue. There are plenty of the latter already in this courtyard. If you ever find yourself in need of grammatical rescue, you’ll find me here.’

He handed me a card with the same wording as on his poster.

‘Monday to Saturday, from eight to eight,’ he specified. ‘Oswaldo, soldier of the written word, at your service for any epistolary cause.’

I put the card away and thanked him for his help.

‘Your bird’s flying off.’

I turned and could see that the stranger was moving on again. I hastened after him, following him down the Ramblas as far as the entrance to the Boquería market, where he stopped to gaze at the sight of the stalls and people coming and going, loading or unloading fine delicacies. I saw him limp up to Bar Pinocho and climb on to one of the stools, with difficulty but with aplomb. For the next half-hour the stranger tried to polish off the treats which the youngest in the bar, Juanito, kept serving him, but I had a feeling that he wasn’t really up to the challenge. He seemed to be eating more with his eyes, as if when he asked for tapas, which he barely sampled, he was recalling days of healthier appetites. Sometimes the palate does not savour so much as try to remember. Finally, resigned to the vicarious joy of watching others eating and licking their lips, the stranger paid his bill and continued on his voyage until he reached the entrance to Calle Hospital, where the peculiar arrangement of Barcelona’s streets had conspired to place one of the great opera houses of the old world next to one of the most squalid red-light districts of the northern hemisphere.

5

At that time of the day the crews of a number of military and merchant ships docked in the port happened to be venturing up the Ramblas to satisfy cravings of various sorts. In view of the demand, the supply had already appeared on the corner: a rota of ladies for rent who looked as if they had clocked up quite a few miles and were ready to offer a very affordable minimum fare. I winced at the sight of tight skirts over varicose veins and purple patches that hurt just to look at them, at wrinkled faces and a general air of last-fare-before-retiring that inspired anything but lust. A sailor must have had to spend many months on the high seas to rise to the bait, I thought, but to my surprise the stranger stopped to flirt with a couple of those ladies of the long-gone springtime, as if he were bantering with the fresh beauties of the finest cabarets.

‘Here, ma’ love, let me take twenty years off you with my speciality rubdown,’ I heard one of them say. She could easily have passed for the grandmother of Oswaldo the scribe.

You’ll kill him with a rubdown, I thought. The stranger, with a prudent gesture, declined the invitation.

‘Some other day, my darling,’ he replied, stepping further into the Raval quarter.

I followed him for a hundred more metres or so, until I saw him stop in front of a narrow, dark doorway, nearly opposite the Hotel Europa. He disappeared into the building and I waited half a minute before going in after him.

Inside, a dark staircase seemed to trail off into the bowels of the building. The building itself looked as if it were listing to port, or perhaps were even on the point of sinking into the catacombs of the Raval district, judging from the stench of damp and a faulty sewerage system. On one side of the hallway stood some sort of porter’s lodge where a greasy-looking individual in a sleeveless vest, with a toothpick between his lips and a transistor radio, cast me a look somewhere between inquisitive and plainly hostile.

‘You’re on your own?’ he asked, vaguely intrigued.

It didn’t take a genius to realise I was in the lobby of an establishment that rented out rooms by the hour and that the only discordant note about my visit was the fact that I wasn’t holding the hand of one of the cut-price Venuses on patrol round the corner.

‘If you like, I’ll get a nice girl for you,’ he offered, preparing a parcel with a towel, a bar of soap and what I guessed must be a rubber or some other prophylactic device to be used as a last resort.

‘Actually, I just wanted to ask you a question,’ I began.

The porter rolled his eyes.

‘It’s twenty pesetas for half an hour and you provide the filly.’

‘Tempting. Perhaps some other day. What I wanted to ask you was whether a gentleman has just gone upstairs, a couple of minutes ago. An older man. Not in the best shape. On his own. Filly-less.’

The porter frowned. I realised from his expression that he was instantly downgrading me from potential client to pesky fly.

‘I haven’t seen anyone. Go on, beat it before I call Tonet.’

I gathered Tonet could not be a very endearing character. I placed my few remaining coins on the counter and gave the porter a conciliatory smile. In a flash, the money vanished as if it were an insect and the porter’s hands – with their plastic thimbles – the darting tongue of a chameleon.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Does the man I described to you live here?’

‘He’s been renting a room for a week.’

‘Do you know his name?’

‘He paid a month in advance, so I didn’t ask.’

‘Do you know where he comes from, what he does for a living …?’

‘This isn’t a phone-in programme. People come here to fornicate and I don’t ask any questions. And this one doesn’t even fornicate. So you do the sums.’

I reconsidered the matter.

‘All I know is that every now and then he goes out and then comes back. Sometimes he asks me to send up a bottle of wine, bread and a bit of honey. He pays well and doesn’t say a word.’

‘And you’re sure you don’t remember any names?’

He shook his head.

‘All right. Thanks and I’m sorry I bothered you.’

I was about to leave when the porter’s voice called me back.

‘Romero,’ he said.

‘Pardon?’

‘I think he said he’s called Romero or something like that …’

‘Romero de Torres?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Fermín Romero de Torres?’ I repeated, incredulous.

‘That’s the one. Wasn’t there a bullfighter going by that name before the war?’ asked the porter. ‘I thought it sounded familiar …’

6

I made my way back to the bookshop, more confused than before I left. As I walked past La Virreina Palace, Oswaldo, the scribe, raised a hand in greeting.

‘Any luck?’ he asked.

I mumbled a negative reply.

‘Try Luisito, he might remember something.’

I gave Oswaldo a nod and went over to Luisito’s booth. Luisito was cleaning his collection of nibs. When he saw me he smiled and asked me to sit down.

‘What’s it going to be? Pleasure or business?’

‘Your colleague Oswaldo sent me.’

‘Our mentor and master,’ declared Luisito. ‘A great man of letters, unrecognised by the corrupt establishment. And there he is, in the street, working with words at the service of the illiterate.’

‘Oswaldo was saying that the other day you served an older man, lame and a bit clapped out, with one hand missing and some fingers of the other …’

‘I remember him. I always remember one-handed men. Because of Cervantes – he lost a hand in the battle of Lepanto, you know?’

‘I know. And could you tell me what business brought this man to you?’

Luisito stirred in his chair, uncomfortable at the turn the conversation was taking.

‘Look, this is almost like a confessional. Professional confidentiality is paramount.’

‘I understand that. The trouble is, this is a serious matter.’

‘How serious?’

‘Sufficiently serious to threaten the well-being of people who are very dear to me.’

‘I see, but …’

Luisito craned his neck and tried to catch Oswaldo’s eye at the other end of the courtyard. I saw Oswaldo nod and then Luisito relaxed.

‘The gentleman brought a letter he’d written. He wanted it copied out in good handwriting, because with his hand …’

‘And the letter was about …?’

‘I barely remember, we write so many letters every day …’

‘Make an effort, Luisito. For Cervantes’ sake.’

‘Well, although I may be confusing it with another letter I wrote for some other client, I believe it was something to do with a large sum of money the one-handed gentleman was hoping to receive or recover or something like that. And something about a key.’

‘A key.’

‘Right. He didn’t specify whether this was an Allen key, a piano key or a door key.’

Luisito smiled at me, visibly pleased with his own wit.

‘Do you remember anything else?’

Luisito licked his lips thoughtfully.

‘He said he found the city very changed.’

‘In what way, changed?’

‘I don’t know. Changed. Without dead bodies in the streets.’

‘Dead bodies in the streets? Is that what he said?’

‘If I remember correctly …’

7

I thanked Luisito for the information and hurried back, hoping I’d reach the shop before my father returned from his errand and my absence was detected. The
CLOSED
sign was still on the door. I opened it, unhooked the notice and took my place behind the counter, convinced that not a single customer had come by during the almost forty-five minutes I had been away.

As I wasn’t busy, I started to think about what I was going to do with that copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
and how I was going to broach the subject with Fermín when he arrived. I didn’t want to alarm him unnecessarily, but the stranger’s visit and my poor attempt at solving what he was up to had left me feeling uneasy. Normally, I would simply have told Fermín what had happened and left it at that, but I knew that on this occasion I had to be tactful. For some time now, Fermín had appeared crestfallen and in a filthy mood. I’d been trying to cheer him up but none of my feeble attempts seemed to make him smile.

‘There’s no need to clean the books so thoroughly, Fermín,’ I would say. ‘I’ve heard that very soon only
noir
will be fashionable.’ I was alluding to the way the press was beginning to describe the new novels of crime and punishment that only trickled in occasionally and then in tame translations.

Far from smiling kindly at my poor jokes, Fermín would grab any opportunity to embark on one of his tirades in support of doom and gloom.

‘The entire future looks
noir
anyway,’ he would declare. ‘If there’s going to be a flavour in vogue in this age of butchery, it will be the stink of falsehood and crime disguised in a thousand euphemisms.’

Here we go, I thought. The Book of Revelation according to St Fermín Romero de Torres.

‘Don’t exaggerate, Fermín. You should get more sun and fresh air. The other day I read in the paper that vitamin D increases our faith in fellow humans.’

‘Well, I also read in the paper that imported cigarettes make you taller and that banks around the world are deeply committed to eradicating poverty and disease on the planet in less than ten years,’ he replied. ‘So there you go.’

When Fermín embraced organised pessimism the best option was not to argue with him.

‘Do you know, Daniel? Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog’s tail.’

‘Fermín, I prefer it when you go for the humanist and positive view of things, like the other day when you said that deep down nobody is bad, only frightened.’

‘It must have been low blood sugar doing the talking. What rubbish.’

These days, the cheerful Fermín I liked to remember seemed to have beaten a retreat and been replaced by a man consumed by anxieties and stormy moods he did not wish to share. Sometimes, when he thought nobody could see him, he would shrink into a corner, anguish gnawing at his insides. He’d lost some weight, and considering that he was as thin as a rake at the best of times and his body seemed mostly composed of cartilage and attitude, his appearance was becoming worrisome. I’d mentioned it to him once or twice, but he denied there was any problem and dodged the issue with Byzantine excuses.

‘It’s nothing, Daniel. It’s just that I now follow the football league and every time Barça loses my blood pressure plummets. All I need is a bite of Manchego cheese and I’m as strong as an ox again.’

‘Really? But you haven’t been to a football match in your life.’

‘That’s what you think. When I was a kid everybody told me I had the legs to be a dancer or a football player.’

‘Well, to me you look like a complete wreck, legs and all. Either you’re ill or you’re just not looking after yourself.’

For an answer he’d show me a couple of biceps the size of sugar almonds and grin as if he were a door-to-door toothpaste seller.

‘Feel that! Tempered steel, like the Cid’s sword.’

My father attributed Fermín’s low form to nerves about the wedding and everything that came with it, from having to fraternise with the clergy to finding the right restaurant or café for the wedding banquet, but I suspected that his melancholy had much deeper roots. I was debating whether to tell Fermín what had happened that morning and show him the book or wait for a better moment, when he dragged himself through the door with a look on his face that would have won top honours at a wake. When he saw me he smiled faintly and offered a military salute.

‘Good to see you, Fermín. I was beginning to think you weren’t going to come in today.’

‘I’d rather be dead than idle. I was held up by Don Federico, the watchmaker. When I walked past his shop he filled me in on some gossip about the fact that someone had seen Señor Sempere walking down Calle Puertaferrisa this morning, looking very dapper and en route to an unknown destination. Don Federico and that hare-brained Merceditas wanted to know whether perhaps he’d taken a mistress – apparently, these days it gives you a certain credibility among the shopkeepers in the district and if the damsel is a cabaret singer, all the more so.’