The Street of the Three Beds

ROSER CAMINALS

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Original Title:
El carrer dels Tres Llits

copyright © 2002 by Roser Caminals

Translation:
The Street of the Three Beds

copyright © 2011 by Roser Caminals

ISBN: 978-1-4532-6480-5

This 2012 eBook published by:

Barcelona Digital Editions, S.L.
Av. Marquès de l'Argentera, 17 pral.
08003 Barcelona
www.barcelonaebooks.com

This 2012 edition distributed by:
Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

About the Author

The Street of the Three Beds
is set in Barcelona during the period from the 1880s to the 1920s. I wrote the original (
El carrer dels Tres Llits
[Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2002]) in my native Catalan, spoken by approximately ten million people. Catalan is the official language in the country of Andorra—between France and Spain—and Catalonia, the northeastern region of Spain. It has a robust media presence and a literary history harking back to the Middle Ages. In 2003, after becoming a bestseller, the book was published in Spanish.

Inspired by an urban legend revolving around the disappearance of a young woman from a lingerie store,
The Street of the Three Beds
explores the connections between the underworld, specifically the white slave trade, and the prosperous Barcelona bourgeoisie of the industrial revolution. Its faltering hero, Maurici Aldabò, is the scion of a manufacturing family who, through his affair with an obscure seamstress, finds himself enmeshed in a nightmarish search in a seedy side of town.

A major Mediterranean port and the leader of economic development in Spain, turn-of-the-century Barcelona was a study in contrasts and urban vitality: privileged factory owners rubbed elbows with underpaid, exploited workers; a cultural renaissance in literature and architecture—best represented internationally by the buildings of Antoni Gaudí—coexisted with corruption, social unrest, and political violence. It was a hotbed of artists and anarchists. As a native of the city and an early reader of Dickens, I have always been fascinated by the invisible ties that bind together the upper and lower
classes, upstanding citizens and underdogs, in a web of interdependence, hypocrisy, and deceit.

The center stage of the novel is the old city, occupied by the extensive medieval part surrounded by a maze of narrow streets, one of which is the Street of the Three Beds. The main thoroughfare in this part of town is The Ramblas (spelled
Rambles
in Catalan), a promenade with a wide central walk and traffic lanes on both sides. I grew up within a short walking distance from it, in a busy street on the edge of the red-light district where family businesses—ours was a grocery store—alternated with restaurants, bars, two churches, and several boardinghouses. A couple of our neighbors ran profitable bordellos in distant areas of town. While most of the people who populated my childhood were petit bourgeois like us, prostitutes were not strangers, and nightclubs featuring transvestites and other risqué attractions were a stone's throw away. When I was ten years old we moved to a neighborhood of grid-patterned streets lined with trees and broad sidewalks, but it is the old city—with its potpourri of blind lottery-ticket peddlers, sailors from all over the world walking up from the harbor, fishmongers, tourists, door-to-door salesmen, and a variety of shady characters thrown into the mix—which finds its way into my fiction. The rich texture of the street life I witnessed throughout my formative years remains a powerful allure to the mature writer.

When I go back to Barcelona—about once a year, usually to promote a book—I stay in the oldest hotel in the city, just a few blocks from the grocery store my family used to own. The neighborhood I once knew intimately, and that Maurici Aldabò discovers through his journey, is now, fittingly, claimed by immigrants from four different continents. Maurici lived at the close of a century and the dawn of the next, in a city undergoing a transformation. A century later, Barcelona is, once again,
transforming itself. New challenges and opportunities lie ahead for the contemporary novelist who, like the wicked, must know no rest.

My warmest thanks to Professor Frederick Fornoff, who proposed this translation and helped to start it, and to my husband, fellow writer William Heath, for his constant and generous support.

 

Roser Caminals

Frederick, Maryland

November 2010

“Did you know that in Barcelona there are more rats in the sewers than people in the streets?”

“Stop that!” Rita flapped one hand like the wing of a butterfly; in the other, she held the ice cream cone Maurici had just bought her at a stand in Plaça Catalunya. The vanilla scoop was melting from the heat of the afternoon sun and the warmth of Rita's tongue that, like the tip of a greedy, pink arrow, rhythmically attacked it. The two were in no hurry, drifting along in the tide of strollers.

“I'm serious!” he insisted. “I read it the other day in the paper. The authorities can't get rid of them. Under the streets, Barcelona's a vast breeding ground for rats. They multiply at an alarming rate and survive everything. The faster the city grows, the more rats there are.” Maurici watched in amusement how Rita's nose wrinkled in disgust at the morbid details.

“Speaking of the newspaper, I haven't read it yet today.” He stopped at a kiosk.

While Maurici paid, the vendor stared at Rita, who kept caressing the ice cream with her tongue. She looked up now and then to make sure the admiration hadn't faded from the man's eyes. Maurici folded the
Diari de Barcelona
and stuck it under his arm as if he owned the city. Rita, shaded by the brim of the straw hat trimmed with flowers and a bow, watched him out of the corner of her eye. Suddenly, she linked her arm with his in an attempt to complete the picture of a permanent union. Noticing that her gesture left Maurici unperturbed, she decided the time was right to speak.

“Remember what I told you the other day?”

A long lick at the cone.

“What did you tell me the other day?”

“Surely you remember. About the visit.”

“What visit?”

“You know what visit! The one that comes every month!”

“Oh, right.”

“Well, no sign of it yet. I've been waiting three weeks and, so far, nothing, not a thing.”

The yellow scoop had totally surrendered to the assault of Rita's tongue. Trading weapons, she was now crunching the flaky cone between her teeth. Maurici seemed as unruffled as ever.

“So? That's nothing to worry about. As I understand it, that's not uncommon with women. Like I said, you just have to wait a bit.”

After pushing aside the protective brim of her hat, Rita lifted her face and skewered him: “Easy for you to say! What's it to you! But I'm getting nervous. I've never been late before. Always on time, like a clock. And on top of that, when I got up the other day I had morning sickness. Soon as I stood up, everything began to spin like a merry-go-round.”

Her agitation was evident in her voice and the sparks in her eyes. She hadn't meant to get so upset. Her plan had been to stay calm and in control. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, she'd told herself over and over while plotting her strategy in the dark, shabby bedroom of her boardinghouse. Now her own show of temper annoyed her as much as Maurici's cool demeanor. Rita might be nearly illiterate, but her instinct never failed her: she knew when she was on target, and when she was
wide of the mark. This time she'd been too direct. It would have been wiser to take a more roundabout path, longer but safer. Maurici wasn't going to melt as easily as the ice cream. She toned down her voice and went on. “We should start thinking about the future. Can't you see that if it turns out as I think it will, waiting will only make things worse?”

“What if you're wrong and we rush into it? Imagine how upset my parents would be and the fuss their friends would make if we rushed into such an important decision blindly. What a mess we'd have on our hands! We could never put it behind us. Not to mention your relatives back home.”

“What relatives? I've got no family, I already told you. I grew up without a father, and my mother died shortly before I came to Barcelona. I have an uncle in Caracas, but I never hear from him.” Rita moved closer to Maurici to make room for a woman carrying a basket of laundry.

For a moment, their physical proximity drew a circle around them. Nobody outside it seemed to count, and so he took the conversation to a more intimate level.

“Rita, darling, aren't we happy as we are? We're young. Why don't we focus on the present instead of the future? Look at my father. Old before his time from worrying so much. Fifty years old, and his hair's already white. He's spent his whole life working, paying bills on Saturdays, and going to mass on Sundays. Do you believe in the hereafter? As far as I'm concerned, if it exists, I couldn't care less.”

Shocked, Rita fluttered her hands nervously as he spoke.

“Don't fool yourself, my dear. We're in this world to enjoy a good life. And just think, at our age, how much we have ahead of us. C'mon, honey, don't look so glum—it's not a catastrophe. Now show me that lovely face . . .”

He took her by the shoulders and bent down to kiss her. But Rita was in no mood for sweet talk. No, sweet talk wouldn't get him anywhere. Even in the acutest throes of passion she'd never deviated from her path, never lost her bearings. The shrillest cry of pleasure had never smothered the inner whisper,
keep your head
. Maurici's charm and good looks had certainly made things easier, but they hadn't altered her calculations. She knew exactly who she was and who she could become if she clung to the reins of her life with the necessary skill. From the moment, a year earlier, when she'd come to serve in his house, it had been her intention to cross the doorstep of the sewing room and move about freely in the halls and parlors she could now only glimpse. Maurici was interested in the present; why not, his was quite interesting. But hers? To be a seamstress in a wealthy household wasn't very interesting at all. Otherwise, why had she left her hometown at twenty and worked so hard to eliminate every trace of country twang from her speech? What good was her beauty if it couldn't open one by one every door of the Aldabò house?