The Street of the Three Beds (12 page)

Maurici's eyes rested briefly on the stranger's slight body and translucent skin. Moving like a cat, he stubbed the cigar in the ashtray and tiptoed out the door. Back in his room he left the oil lamp lit and lay fully dressed on the bed to avoid the temptation to fall asleep. After an interval of listening for any creaking of doors, he heard his mother head for the master bedroom. And thus, keeping watch like an intruder in his own home, he spent the next two hours.

Shortly after half past twelve, there was activity in the hallway. He got out of bed and opened the door a few inches. The darkness was so dense he could barely make out the two shapes. He caught, however, the mutter of subdued voices and the sustained groan of the front door. Evidently, they'd both succumbed hours ago to the comforts of the office and the warmth of the cognac rushing through their veins. They must have woken up past midnight.

He closed his door again, waiting for his father to retire. After twenty minutes he groped his way down the dark hall, taking care not to hit any furniture placed against the walls. Fortunately, his parents' bedroom and the office were located at opposite ends of the apartment. When he got to his destination, he quietly closed the door behind him and turned on the table lamp instead of the chandelier. He sat in the leather chair, permanently molded to the contours of Roderic Aldabò's body, and began to rummage through drawers unhurriedly and thoroughly. Inside a cigar box he found cards belonging to the doctor, the tailor, the lawyer, and other acquaintances and business firms that sounded familiar. He checked them one by one, noticing that none of them bore the name of La Perla d'Orient, and restored them to their place. Then he checked papers and notebooks in the middle drawer. Nearly all the way to the back, his hand bumped against a small bundle. It was wrapped in white silk paper and fastened with a string. He loosened the string and unfolded the paper, scattering a pile of identical cards.

Fidelity

Moving Company

29 Villarroel Street

Barcelona

His attention was struck by the brevity of the text and the volume of cards—a total of twenty-two—as well as by the fact that they were carefully wrapped and placed out of sight. He kept one, retied the bundle with steady fingers, and pushed it to the back where he had found it.

The air in his bedroom was warm and heavy. He opened the windows and, having secured the card in his wallet, took off his clothes and climbed naked into bed. Sleep came almost instantly.

The next evening after work, the carriage took him to Villarroel Street. Number twenty-nine was an old three-story building with a grocery store in the front. Last-minute shoppers stood in line at the counter. He waited his turn at a distance, until the last customer left and the shopkeeper, a small blondish man, addressed him:

“Good evening. You're not the soap salesman, are you?”

“No,” he smiled, vaguely amused at having been taken for a salesman.

“I didn't think so. How can I help you?” As he spoke, he wiped the marble top with a rag, picking up bits of cheese and meat.

“I'm looking for a moving company called Fidelity.”

“What's the address?”

“This one. Twenty-nine Villarroel.”

Maurici took the card out of his wallet and handed it to him. The man dropped his task to read the address and then shook his head.

“There's only two floors above the store. I live upstairs with the missus and the kids and an old couple live on the top floor. You've been misinformed. In all the ten years I've been here, I never heard a word about a moving company.”

That Saturday afternoon Maurici found himself, like a puppet set in motion by mechanical strings, once again in the Street of the Three Beds. Instead of taking his usual post in Bartomeu's tavern, however, he unabashedly walked through the doorway of number five. As he stepped openly into the lobby, declining the shelter under the stairway and braving the darkness in a white suit, a feeling of liberation came over him. For the first time, he climbed the stairs without imposing silence and invisibility on his footsteps. He knew that this time he was gambling all or nothing and held the trump card in his pocket. He also knew that there was no gain without risk and that, sooner or later, he'd have to face the critical moment.

The steps seemed so high and deep that, despite his good physical condition, he reached the second floor breathless. He paused in front of the gold-trimmed peephole, picked up the bronze hand, and knocked twice. Screams that didn't sound human echoed from inside. The peephole opened with a circular motion. Behind it, an eye searched for his face in vain, as he'd moved so close to the door that the hole came to the height of his chest. Although this was probably an unnecessary precaution, he found a perverse satisfaction in concealing himself, either as a result of the spying habit or as a subconscious desire of revenge against those who stood between him and the truth.

After the now familiar rattling of locks and chains, the white-haired woman appeared. Maurici, keeping his eyes fixed on her, buried a hand inside his coat and produced the card that advertised Fidelity, the moving company. She craned her neck
and strained her eyes, as if she had difficulty reading it in the dimness of the hall. The door, obeying the power of the talisman, opened wide. “Welcome. Come in.”

The foyer, bathed in soft rosy light, was only slightly wider than the rest of the hallway. Maurici hung his hat in a rack, next to another, and followed the woman into a parlor papered and carpeted in dark blues and reds. Among the Louis XV furniture, there was an elegant set of sofa and chairs, and four small tables occupied the corners. On one of them, a silver tray held a glass decanter of port, goblets, and some ladyfingers. A curtain hid the balcony; close to it, a parrot—no doubt responsible for the screams he'd heard from the landing—scrutinized the visitor impertinently from a wooden perch, with a leg up in the air. A musty smell lingered under the low ceiling; the lighting was even poorer than in the hall. Two bucolic pictures—nymphs and shepherds frolicking in some sort of Arcadia—provided the only bright notes, in contrast to a sacred heart crowned with thorns and dripping with blood.

“I'm Miss Pràxedes.”

“Delighted,” Maurici lied, taking the seat she indicated and crossing his legs. “What's the parrot's name?”

“Do you like it? We haven't named him yet. We just got him. When I bought him at a local store he had the foulest language you can imagine. I don't know who'd taught him to say such atrocities. It's taken a lot of patience to teach him to say the Hail Mary.”

“Hail Mary! Hail Mary! Rrrr . . . ,” the strident echo repeated.

Miss Pràxedes had buttery cheeks, cloudy little eyes that didn't focus on anything, and a brief, placid, elusive smile that never left her lips. She offered the tray of goodies to Maurici, her eyes momentarily glowing like embers of her golden age.

“Would you like some refreshments?”

The last thing he wanted was to munch ladyfingers and sip port in the company of that harpy but, as he couldn't afford to be unsociable, he accepted.

“And how can we help you?”

“That will be for you to say.”

Miss Pràxedes's smirk widened somewhat.

“You've heard about us, haven't you?”

“Your house has been recommended to me.”

“In that case, let me tell you that we have three pupils: three girls from the country that have no relatives in Barcelona and need a boardinghouse. Of course I won't have anybody who doesn't come recommended. We take good care of them here, believe me. Shut up!” she said to the parrot. “There's nothing I wouldn't do to make them feel at home and provide for their needs. They are nice clean girls; no one has ever complained about them. And, thank goodness, they all enjoy excellent health. Would you like to meet them?”

“Please.”

Miss Pràxedes rose and trod heavily down the hall, as if it took her an effort to drag her weight. Now and then she coughed with a rattle of congested lungs. Maurici noticed that, past the foyer, stained-glass doors hid the back side of the apartment. As the hostess opened them, he heard smothered voices and men's laughter. A few moments later, she returned in the company of two young women.

“Let me introduce two flowers of our garden: Margarita and Hortènsia.”

A potent perfume filled the room. Maurici stood up and greeted them with a nod and a slight smile. They responded with a well-rehearsed bow.

“Ladies, . . . I was told there were three of you.”

“Violeta's with a customer,” Hortènsia, petite and with disproportionately large, round eyes, chirped in.

“You mean she's with a visitor,” the madam scolded.

The girl shook her curls in affirmation. “That's it, yes.” And she threw a furtive, impish glance at Maurici.

Miss Pràxedes proceeded, “If you wish to . . . get to know them all at once, that would be fine. You can make an appointment for another day.”

“That won't be necessary. Flowers should be picked one by one.”

The flowers burst out laughing and the hostess, with the excuse of going to brew fresh coffee, left them alone. Of course, Maurici was acquainted with a variety of bordellos. But none of them had been an apartment masquerading as a boardinghouse for young ladies who received gentlemen callers according to the rules of bourgeois propriety and respectability; none of them served port in delicate wine glasses instead of champagne by the bottle or featured a parrot that greeted him with a Hail Mary. His debut had taken place, with the pomp and circumstance that befitted the occasion, at Madame Petit's: a choice establishment catering to boys of his class. The loud opulence of Madame Petit's proclaimed unapologetically what it was; this discretion, on the other hand, came as a surprise and required tact. In the Street of the Three Beds one wasn't allowed to refer to facts by their real names.

Margarita was tall and beautiful, with a mop of black hair, an amber complexion, and features that hinted at an exotic origin. A gleam of intelligence sparkled in her intensely blue eyes. He approached Hortènsia and whispered something in her ear that she found immensely amusing, then he offered his hand to her companion and followed her down the hallway.

Maurici had never seen such a constricting, gloomy dwelling. It felt like the inside of a box: a compressed space that evoked the visual effect of nearby objects seen through the wide end of binoculars. Past the foyer, a black porcelain cat with eyes of jade curled up on a window sill. A heavy curtain covered another small window and a crucifix hung on the wall. Behind two closed doors on the other side, he heard the same hushed voices as before. Margarita's boudoir was in the back. Surprisingly spacious, it contained a dresser, a plush sofa, two armchairs, a couple of small tables, and a large, canopied bed. The open armoire displayed an assortment of silk gowns, fine lingerie, silk and velvet dresses, more or less garish hats, and fluffy as well as leathery accessories. Next to it stood a gramophone. Scattered around the room, potbellied lamps—some of which had survived the transition from oil to electricity—cast a purple glow. Behind a half-closed curtain he made out shelves lined with towels and a washstand with a metal pitcher. A window that presumably looked onto the back street was covered by a curtain, like every other opening in the apartment. The door in the back wall seemed permanently closed. Altogether, the place suggested informal comfort and perfect isolation from the outside world, as if it didn't exist.

Maurici took off his coat and sat in the sofa.

“Are you comfortable, sir?”

“Let's drop the formalities. Where are you from?” he asked, noticing Margarita's slight accent.

“French.”

He gave her a thorough, connoisseur glance.

“
Très belle. Our est-ce-que tu est née à la France?
”

Her body stiffened as she laid her hands on her hips with ill-repressed irritation.

“Actually, I'm Algerian,” and she added in the same breath, “but my father was French.”

“What brought you to Barcelona?”

Margarita turned on the gramophone and the opening bars of a rumba flirted with the air. She opened her negligee, letting it slip to the floor, and stood in a lace petticoat that revealed more than it concealed. She took a few undulating steps towards Maurici, slipped onto the sofa close to him, and applied herself to the task of delicately unbuttoning his vest.

“It's a long story. Will you do me the honor to dance with me?” she whispered, burning his ear with her breath.

Maurici stood up and held her cheek to cheek to the libidinous rumba.

“Tell me about it,” he whispered in her ear.

“I was a starving dancer in Algeria from the age of twelve. My father left us and went back to France and my mother didn't make enough to support herself and a child. They said in Barcelona there were jobs for girls in show business, so when I turned fifteen I stowed away in a ship that brought me here.”

“At fifteen?”

“Don't be surprised. At fourteen a filthy Moor had already taught me everything I needed to know to succeed in this profession.”

Maurici, who had never asked himself how a prostitute was made, found these revelations so bizarre that he even doubted their authenticity.

“So, did you work as a dancer?”

“At the beginning, in the Paral·lel, which at the time was just a fairground for carnivals. Then I got involved with a two-bit impresario, and when his wife got wind of it, the son of a bitch left me high and dry. For a couple of years I worked for third-rate
companies kicking around from fair to fair, doing the same stuff I do now but without getting paid. I was sick of it. Till somebody told me about this house, and here I am. Nothing and nobody will make me leave,” she concluded defiantly.

“Who told you about this place?” he asked.