The Second Son: A Novel (19 page)

The note confirmed Han Shen.
Chess club at a Chink café,
it read. The club was in the back and up some stairs. Gardenyes gave the address.

As for the rest, Gardenyes had found a Karl Vollman on the Olimpiada rolls. A German. He was a chess player.

Perfect, thought Hoffner.

There was nothing else on the man.

The name Bernhardt had proved more interesting, or at least more plentiful. According to Gardenyes there had been nine Bernhardts listed at the Barcelona telephone exchange as of January. Two were printers (brothers), both of whom had left three weeks after the Popular Front victory in February. They had taken five other Bernhardts (sons) back to Germany with them. The last of the listed Bernhardts was a writer living with a Frenchwoman down by the water. Gardenyes had actually dealt with the man. He was a drug addict and most likely dead, but Gardenyes was sending one of his boys to look into it. As for the name Langenheim—and whatever Hisma might be—Gardenyes had come up empty.

Piera said, “You’ve found your boy?”

Hoffner folded the page and slipped it into his pocket. He had the Luger on his belt. “I’m assuming we can walk to this place from here.”

*   *   *

The smell of garlic followed them as they passed the storefronts and drawn metal gates of the Raval’s cramped streets. Why half the shops were closed remained a mystery. According to Piera, a joint order had come down last week from the anarchist CNT and the Communist POUM for everyone to head back to work: the city needed to move again; a few days of gunfire wasn’t going to stand in its way. Workers’ committees were now running the factories, collectives shipping the goods in and out. Then again, maybe the Raval had always been exempt from such things. Places built on corruption and defeat rarely take notice of the world flickering above them.

Even so, Hoffner had expected something a bit more exotic—animal parts dangling from hooks, barrels filled with God knows what—but there was something disappointingly tame to it all. Barrio Chino was little more than a few token lanterns on taut cords and gates here and there with those perfectly upturned oriental roofs; the whole thing felt a bit insincere.

Odder still were the little men and women standing outside or in, sporting their red neckerchiefs in an act of utterly indifferent solidarity. They wore them for security, nothing else. This week it was anarchists. Next it might be fascists. No doubt they had the appropriate colors waiting somewhere in their back rooms.

Piera walked with a stick, the wood as veined as the hand that gripped it. His neck was already beading from the heat.

“I bought this somewhere in here,” he said. “The Chino do well with wood. You can’t speak to them—maybe five words of Spanish among them—but the work is good.”

“They seem to like the neckerchiefs.”

Piera smiled. “It’s ten years since they’ve come here. Can’t see them staying much longer. Mostly roll carts, flophouses, the occasional shop. They work for almost nothing—at least up until a few weeks ago. Don’t imagine the whores get much out of them.”

As if to make the point, a woman emerged from one of the darkened archways. Her dress was pulled down low on the shoulders, the rest too tight around a figure that could best be advertised as replete with extra cushioning. Still, the face looked young even if the hair and skin had both gone an unnatural white—one from a bottle, the other from too many hours lost to needles and men—and there was a kind of girlish enthusiasm in the way she walked and smiled: big pouty lips encircling a remarkably straight set of teeth, and a chest with enough heft to smother a small cat. It might have been the heroin or the pills or whatever else was coursing through her body, but Hoffner let himself believe she took a pleasure in knowing that, despite the recent upheavals, she had never given up the gate.

She steadied herself against a wall, brought her foot up to adjust the strap of her shoe, and broadened her smile for Piera. The little man offered a surprisingly robust nod that seemed to catch even the woman off guard. Piera continued to walk.

“That’s why the anarchists are idiots,” he said. “You think they’ll get a girl like that off the streets?”

Hoffner looked back as they walked. The woman was still watching them, a handkerchief dabbing at the moist folds of skin on her neck. She seemed so much more impressive than a German whore, as if she had expectations of her own: not enough just to hand her the money; there had to be something in it worth her time.

Piera said, “You see.”

He was pointing his stick at a poster plastered across one of the storefront gates. It showed an intoxicated woman in a classic red dress drawn in hard angles, a cigarette dripping from her fat gray lips, her hand roaming into the jacket pocket of some faceless man. Across her chest was written the warning,
THE WHORE IS A PARASITE! A THIEF! LET
’
S GET RID OF HER!

Someone less troubled by the apparent threat had more recently drawn her other hand: it was reaching a bit lower down on the man’s leg, with the words
PLEASE! ROB ME! ROB ME! ROB ME!
scrawled across the logo for the CNT.

Piera said, “The anarchists promised to close down the brothels.”

“That’s a sad sort of promise.”

“Not to worry. It’s their boys who fill the places every night.”

Hoffner followed him down a few steps and into an open courtyard. Two young boys and a man were kicking around what passed for a ball. The man had set his rifle against a wall.

Piera said, “It’s not so much that they’re hypocrites.” The smell of the garlic had soured. “They are, but that just makes them anarchists. The question is, Why bother with morality at all? She harms no one—”

“Except perhaps herself.”

Piera dismissed the idea. “A man in a coal mine harms himself. A man who breathes fumes in some factory all day long harms himself. Work is harmful. What shattering news. It’s still necessary. As is what she does.”

“From each according to her ability—”

“Laugh all you want, but if you need a morality beyond that, find a priest. To go looking for it with an anarchist”—Piera shook his head—“that makes you a fool.”

It was heartening to hear this kind of mutual support among the newly victorious.

They moved through to another narrow street and Piera raised his cane and pointed to an archway. Chinese symbols were printed in thick black ink above the door, along with a more Spanish rendering of the name:
HAN SHEN
. Below it the cobblestones ran with the remains of some recent spillage; tiny yellow bubbles clung to the stone and gave off the distinct smell of onions and chicken fat. Hoffner was careful to step around them.

Inside, two old Chinese sat silently at one of four tables in the dim light, peeling little stalks of something and tossing the beans into a barrel on the floor. The air was damp, cooler than on the street, and smelled of day-old flowers.

A woman was standing in a long black smock by the stairs that led up to the back room. She had what Hoffner imagined to be the widest face he had ever seen. It was as if someone had taken the skin and bones and hammered them flat until the nose had all but disappeared; likewise the eyes and mouth seemed to crease to the very edges of the flesh. To make matters worse, her skin was a kind of mottled gray, and her hair looked as if it had been planted on the scalp in tiny clumps of baled black hay. Hoffner might have taken her for one of those sideshow curiosities one sees for a few coins at a country tent, but there was too much of the familiar in the way she stared across at them to make that mistake.

He said to Piera, “Café’s a kind way of putting it, isn’t it?”

Hoffner had seen enough of these faces back in Prenzlauer Berg not to appreciate the stamp of opium. On a German complexion, the needles and pipe left a kind of sticky residue; yellow and smooth, it sank the cheeks and narrowed the pupils to blackened pinpoints. With a Chinese, the face flattened and grew pale. It might have been bloating or bone disintegration, but whatever the reason, the addict was no less recognizable. This, however, was the most pronounced case Hoffner had ever seen.

He said, “You’re sure it’s only chess they play here?”

“The chess is upstairs,” said Piera. “What they do in the basement is someone else’s business.”

The woman was now walking toward them. Her head teetered from side to side but thus far remained planted on her neck. Piera reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. He placed it in her hand, and they stepped past her to the stairs.

It was a long narrow room above, bare wooden floors and the kind of stone walls that seemed to undulate from too many coats of white paint. A row of small windows were open at the topmost edge of the far wall; they made the air breathable. Fifteen or so tables filled the space, each with a hanging bulb above, along with a small colored shade in deep reds and oranges. There was probably something Chinese to the design, but Hoffner didn’t recognize it. Much to his relief, the place smelled of tobacco and sweat.

Only four of the tables were occupied, a pair of men at each, except for the nearest, where a young man sat by himself, staring at his board. Every few seconds he glanced up at the chair across from him with a look of mild confusion; he seemed genuinely surprised to find it empty.

Piera said, “They used to bring the addicts up here when the
asaltos
came to arrest them. Those long coats and perfect buttons, with their little truncheons in their hands—and staring in here with no idea who was on the drugs and who was simply crazy.”

“Until someone vomited or passed out,” said Hoffner.

“You’ve never played tournament chess, have you?”

The young man stood and moved over to the empty chair. He looked at it for several seconds before muttering something to himself and sitting. Again he began to examine the board.

“Does he ever win?” Hoffner said.

“Every time, I imagine.”

One of the men a few tables down looked up, not quite so young, rail thin, but with dark slicked-back hair. There were bruises on his face, along with some scabbing on the forehead. Evidently not everyone in the streets had fought with bayonets and guns. The man recognized Piera. He nodded and went back to his game.

Piera said, “He once drew three games with Capablanca. Rome, 1921. Remarkable player.”

Hoffner had given up following chess a long time ago, but even he recalled the great Cuban player.

Piera said, “He can tell you every move of every game, show you how Capablanca held the pieces before he moved them—forefinger and thumb, middle finger and thumb, entire palm—and how much time he took with each piece in the air. It’s like watching a film.”

“And he’s one of the sane ones?”

“He runs the place.”

The other two tables were deep into games. Hoffner said, “Do you recognize everyone in here?”

“No.”

“Good. Stay here.”

Hoffner made his way over to Piera’s friend and stood hovering above the table. Neither of the men playing bothered to acknowledge him. Finally Hoffner cleared his throat.

Piera’s friend reached for one of his rooks—there was more bruising on the knuckles—and said, “Yes, we know you’re there.” It was Spanish, but the accent was from elsewhere. “The idea was we didn’t care.” He placed the rook along the last rank and went back to studying the board.

Hoffner said, “You run this place, a room over an opium den?”

The man showed no reaction as he continued to scan the pieces. “You’re not Spanish, so I’m thinking I don’t have to care what concerns you.”

Apparently even the chess club boys were getting to play it tough these days, although there was something too comfortable in the way this one doled out his aggression. Hoffner wondered how much time the man was splitting between his upstairs clientele and those in the basement.

The man across the table ran the back of his fingers through his beard and then slid a pawn forward one square. Piera’s friend stared a moment longer, peering over at a completely different area of the board before sitting back. Only then did he look up at Hoffner. He took a moment and said, “He has a pretty daughter—Piera. Have you met her?”

“I’m impressed,” said Hoffner. “You’d think you’d be able to smell it up here.”

“What, Piera’s daughter? I hope not.”

In a different place, a different time, Hoffner would have cracked the man across the face, but that kind of brutality was too easy now. Instead, Hoffner picked up one of the pieces on the side of the board.

“You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” Hoffner said. When the man continued to stare, Hoffner added, “I was thinking Polish from the accent, but the face is wrong. Maybe Czech or Romanian. You boys are always good with chess.”

It might have been animal instinct, but the bearded man across the table now slowly pushed back his chair. He took out a pack of cigarettes and moved off, happy to go smoke in a corner.

Hoffner said, “Your friend’s accustomed to stepping away from the game?”

“Usually with his king down.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Hoffner said, as he set the piece down. “You’re quite the hero. Drawing with Capablanca. Very impressive.” It was nice to see the jaw tighten. “I’ve never understood that. No winner, no loser. It’s as if the game never happened, so why bother remembering it?”