The Street of the Three Beds (11 page)

He rose from the chair slowly, with movements that weren't just languid as usual, but unsteady. As he was about to charge the bill to his father's account, he abruptly changed his mind and took the money out of his wallet, mumbling to Albert that he'd forgotten some urgent business. Albert gave him a perplexed look.

“What about riding? Can you make it tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow. I'll let you know.”

“All right, then. I'll be seeing you.”

He went down the stairs by holding on to the rail, whose touch felt new because he'd never used it, and found himself in the middle of the square where Amphitrite used to read the future. He stood there like a sleepwalker or an amnesiac, like a friendless,
undocumented stranger; a voyager without a compass. A couple of minutes went by before he could start on the way home.

At dinner Lídia cast him furtive glances out of the corner of her eye. As soon as her husband withdrew to his office to smoke, she asked him, “What's troubling you, Maurici? You barely touched your food and you look pale. What's wrong?”

He attempted a smile. “Old age, Mother.”

“This is no time for joking. Since you were a child you've had the bad habit of never giving a straight answer to a question.”

“No jokes, then. I have a monumental headache.”

“I'll tell Dorotea to fix a cup of tea and bring you an aspirin.”

He accepted the tea and the aspirin just to kill the conversation and escape to his room. Through a crack in the office door, he said good night to his father who, pipe between his teeth, responded with an absent-minded grunt. With his back turned to the door, he was looking over some papers. Maurici stood watching him as if he knew that one day his father would vanish from his thoughts and he hoped that his gaze could slow his progress toward oblivion.

Once in his room, he flopped on the bed. His eyes wandered over the moldings of the ceiling, striving in vain to evoke Rita's face and body. When he realized it would be impossible, he was seized by an anxiety that, like an intruder, took possession of his usually calm nature. Maurici's temperament wasn't given to extremes but now he felt panic. It seemed as if Rita had never existed and the news of her death was also a figment of his imagination. He jumped from the bed thinking of a picture she'd given him in their early days together. He turned on the lights and rifled through the armoire, the dresser, the bedside table, and the dressing room with a sense of urgency he'd never experienced before, pushing his fingers into the corners of the furniture and the pockets in his clothes.
Sweat trickled down from every pore in his skin. At last, buried in a pile of ill-assorted letters he couldn't remember why he'd kept, the picture turned up. One corner was dog-eared. Rita's beauty of a country girl without mystery, subtlety, or nuance, looked trite in an affected pose against a background of camellias. Her insistence that he must carry that sort of picture with him had been one of those characteristic whims that had once amused him. At that moment, however, the risible image of the girl that, just like all the others, he'd never loved, moved him. A spasm bent his waist, lingered in his throat, and exploded into tears. He cried as he hadn't cried even as a child, with impotence and despair, sobbing wholeheartedly and without restraint, relinquishing his body to the stabs of pain.

Incapable of facing the night ahead, he left the oil lamp burning, just as he had when he was a boy. He undressed and, still crying, got into bed, his eyes and cheeks burning as if with fever. He couldn't say where all those tears came from, or how his heart could pound so violently that it smothered the ticktock of the clock on the nightstand. For the first time he wished to die and, even worse, feared he was going mad. Impossible to think clearly or to explain what had come over him. An unknown emotion attacked him so furiously as to drown out his mental powers. At dawn, exhausted, he finally fell asleep on the wet pillow.

* * *

His early arrival surprised his father. He worked quietly in his office; when there were no tasks to carry out he'd make one up, just to keep his mind focused and his feelings under control. Efficiency made up for lack of energy as he answered telegrams, processed orders, checked the looms, and inspected a load of yarn with the foreman in tow
keeping a respectful distance. Close to seven in the evening he asked his father if he needed anything else and, barely aware of his negative answer, walked out into the street and hailed a cab.

He knew what to do but didn't know anything else: What exactly was La Perla d'Orient? Who was Mrs. Prat? Who had Rita been? Who was his father? Who was he himself? But he did know what to do. The catharsis of the previous night had drained him of emotion and drive for anything outside of his goal. He felt no desire to talk to anybody, see his friends, or resume his daily routine despite the impression of diligence he gave in the factory. He wished to be alone with his purpose and pursue it to its ultimate consequences. If he failed, he'd be lost beyond salvation. How and when the change had taken place, he couldn't say: he'd fallen asleep in a state of utter confusion and had woken up with a clear vision. It was simple. The roles had been reversed: from that moment on the other Maurici, the one who worked at the factory and played cards at the Equestrian and fulfilled familial and social expectations, would be a phony. The real one had just crossed the square and entered into the Street of the Three Beds.

As he went down the steps of the tavern, Bartomeu greeted him warmly. In those surroundings, his bearing made him easy to remember. Sitting at a nearby table were two gossiping women of dubious air who wore large aprons. A little further, a solemn, lonely drinker stared at them with glazed-over eyes.

He ordered coffee and the evening paper as he took pen and paper out of his pocket.

“How much will it be?” he asked, putting the money on the table in preparation for a quick exit.

During the first ten minutes nobody went by except a man pushing a wheelbarrow and peddling his trade with the timeless call, “Sharpen your knives, sharpen your . . .”
A woman ran out to him with a pair of scissors. Having completed the operation the wheelbarrow rumbled off, bouncing noisily on the cobblestones all the way to the square. Throughout the next uneventful minutes the two women cast so many side glances at Maurici that he began to get used to it. The drunken misanthrope slumped in his seat, as still as a mummy.

There was some traffic in and out of other buildings but not at number five, until the shape of a man in his fifties, snooty looking and smartly dressed, appeared at the doorway. Maurici looked up and saw that behind the balcony of the third floor the blinds were down as usual. Determined to wait as long as necessary, he took a sip of coffee and scanned the newspaper headlines. The two women paid and left, giving him a brazen once-over as they swished by. A few minutes later, a man he'd never seen before came from the square and went into number five. Maurici rushed out of the tavern and with great caution crossed the doorway into the lobby. The man had just climbed the first flight of stairs.

Maurici gave up the shelter under the stairway because he knew from experience that voices weren't audible from there. He stood still for a second and, when he heard the footsteps on the landing of the second floor, slipped off his shoes to minimize noise and began to climb. The stairway was dark and steep; the tiles and wood trims badly worn out. The shabbiness of the landing remained in the shadows, for the light shaft behind the cracked windowpane was narrow. Maurici, holding his shoes and his breath, sat very still on one of the two tiny benches built at the corners, waiting to hear where the footsteps stopped.

The sound of creaking boots died out and there were two knocks at the door of apartment one. He sat at his post on the opposite side, next to apartment two of the second floor, from where he commanded a good view of the scene. Of course, he might in turn be seen, but
the darkness of the corner and the grey suit he'd had the foresight to wear reduced the risk. After some jangling of locks and chains, the door slowly opened. A heavy woman with white hair pulled up in a bun greeted the visitor, who produced from the pocket of his coat an object Maurici couldn't identify as the man's back shielded it from his sight. He stuck his head further out and, when the woman took it in her hands, it appeared like it might be a card. His impression was confirmed by her words.

“Come in, come in. You're like family. No need for formalities.”

And the door was quietly closed. He put his shoes back on and descended the steps carefully, almost in the dark. As he entered the tavern again, Bartomeu stopped scrubbing the counter. Ignoring his puzzled look, Maurici sat at the closest table and ordered a second coffee with anisette. He'd barely touched the first.

“Yes, sir, anything you say,” Bartomeu remarked quite freely, taking in his stride the antics of the stranger who liked to pay in advance.

At the back, a group of rowdy men played checkers in a cloud of stinking cigarette smoke. The mummified drinker had vanished, while another of a different variety had just stumbled in. Funny, Maurici reflected, suddenly remembering the ill-named Mr. Sànchez, that there should be so many ways of drinking. The new customer, no spring chicken, staggered to the counter with an empty bottle in his hand.

“F-filler up, buddy, fi-f . . .”

“We're in a fine condition today, aren't we, Proverbs?”

“Fill-filler up . . .”

“Sure thing. How much you got on you?”

Bartomeu ransacked the man's pockets, shaking him in the process like a rag doll.

“F-f . . .”

“All right!”

And he turned his back to him, muttering between his teeth, to fill up the bottle with wine from one of the casks. Meanwhile, Proverbs leaned against the counter facing the audience and declaimed, “Barcelona's a fine town if you got a fat purse.”

Pause.

“If you ain't got a fat purse . . .”

Pause, and then in one fell swoop, “Barcelona's still a fine town.”

“Olé!” shouted one of the checker players.

Encouraged by the warm reception, Proverbs proceeded as could be expected.

“Fat purse or no fat purse . . .”

Extended pause to underscore the punch line.

“Barcelona h-has a hangover.”

The players burst out laughing. Even Maurici, who hadn't taken his eyes off the street and was in a somber mood, allowed himself to smile.

Suddenly Proverbs faced the owner, grabbed him by the straps of his apron, and moaned rather pathetically, “A bundle, th-there was a bundle . . .”

“Yes, I know. You told me a hundred times. Come on now, go home. The duchess's getting impatient and the pheasant's getting cold.”

More laughter coming from the players.

“At the end of the street there was a b-bundle . . .”

“All right, Proverbs, go home to sleep it off and God help you.”

“A big white b-b-bundle . . .”

In the middle of a rambling soliloquy, Proverbs staggered across the room, balanced himself precariously up the steps, and drifted toward the square, babbling about the bundle all the while.

Shortly after Proverbs's exit, Maurici caught sight of a man who walked past the tavern and into the building. He jumped to his feet and repeated the previous surveillance down to the last detail. When he saw the visitor knock on the same door, he sharpened his senses to concentrate on what came next. The white-haired woman materialized again. Protected by the darkening veil of night and the poor lighting in the stairway, he stuck his head out further than the last time. Like a clone of his predecessor, the man took something out of his pocket and raised it to the woman's eyes. She inspected it briefly and, opening the door wide, said, “You may come in.”

The key, then, was the card.

* * *

Although he'd come to the Street of the Three Beds determined to knock on the door of the apartment, he realized that if he ruined this chance there might not be another. He was ready to put all his chips on the first card, but the first was also the last. If admission was denied the first time, maybe it would be denied permanently.

At home he didn't see his father.

“Where's Father?”

“He has a visitor. Have you had dinner?” replied Lídia, who was reading in the parlor.

Her son had reverted to the self-absorbed state that worried her so much. “Can it be a woman?” she brooded, only to come to the conclusion that no woman had ever crept under Maurici's skin.
On the other hand, what else could it be? Gambling debts? This possibility was even more remote: Maurici played at the Equestrian and it was unlikely that his father, a charter member, wouldn't have heard about it.

Maurici started down the hallway and, as he passed the office, noticed that the door was closed. A strip of light filtered out through the crack below, but he couldn't hear voices or sounds.

After he changed his clothes, he had dinner alone without paying attention to the food. As soon as he swallowed the last bite of dessert, he sneaked out to check the office. The visitor must still be there because the door remained closed and the light on. Perhaps they'd already left and his father had forgotten to turn it off, he thought with little conviction, before he gently rapped with his knuckles. Silence. He pushed the door partly open and stuck his head in. Roderic Aldabò slouched on his throne behind the mahogany desk, his cheeks flushed and his white beard resting on his chest that heaved with the rhythm of deep sleep. In the chair turned away from the door somebody was concealed, except for a man's shoe resting on the rug. He tiptoed across the room and turned to face the visitor. The pale man with the black moustache he'd often seen in the Street of the Three Beds was now sleeping quietly in his father's office. On a little table next to him stood two glasses, a half-empty decanter of cognac, and a smoking cigar.