The Street of the Three Beds (16 page)

“A man.”

“Not a customer?”

“No.” She, too, had lowered her voice. “A man.”

“What's the difference? What's a man to you?”

Her eyes, still gleaming with misgivings, took on a new ambiguous, obscure expression.

“The enemy.”

There was a long pause.

“And if I told you I'm not the enemy? That in fact I may be the only friend who'll ever walk into this room and can help you? That maybe I have some power and influence to change things?”

“We've only met twice. Why would you want to help me? It doesn't make sense. What's in it for you?”

He sighed, planning his next move. After a brief hesitation, he went to get his wallet from his coat and came back with a picture in his hand.

“Remember I mentioned a friend who knew Rita?”

He handed her Rita's picture, ignoring her startled reaction as she looked at it.

“There's no such friend.”

“Then, you're the one who was involved with her?”

Maurici nodded.

“You're the rich boy she boasted about! The son of an industrialist, the son of a big man!” and suddenly she whispered, “Be careful! You don't know what they're capable of.”

“You tell me: What are they capable of? What did they do to Rita? What have they done to you?”

Anxiety and fear, incompatible as they seemed with her temperament, disturbed the calm in her face.

“Take my advice. Get out of here and forget all about it. It's too late, anyhow.”

“I can't forget it, I can't pretend it never happened. If I did that, then I'd really be lost.”

“Did you love Rita?”

He averted his eyes.

“No. And that's the trouble.”

“Then let her rest in peace. It's over for Rita, Lluís. Too late!” she repeated.

“It may be too late for her, but not for you.”

“What do you think you can do for me? Set me up in a little nest somewhere in Barcelona and pay for the expenses till you get tired of me?” she asked with anticipated resentment, echoing Margarita's words. “And what about my son? I don't need your money; just what you pay me to come here, that's all. This is the deal and that's all I want. I don't want to exchange this kind of bondage for another.”

“If you help me, you'll break free. I'll find you a job. Isn't that what you'd like, to go back to work and be able to support your son? Well, I can make it happen. I told you I have contacts. Rita wasn't kidding when she said my father's a big man.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Break free? You don't know what you're saying. Obviously, life has been kind to you. Do you think we can come and go as you do? Once you're in here,
there's no way out. We are all mortgaged to Miss Pràxedes. For starters, she buys us clothes, furniture, jewels. She makes it sound so easy. For me, on top of everything else, there's a child to consider. Before you realize, you have a rope around your neck and a pile of debts on your plate. You have to make monthly payments besides the rent they charge us for the rooms. If business is slow for a while and you go broke, they give you a loan, and if you can't pay the interest they raise it till the rope tightens and tightens so much it strangles you. Do you think we haven't tried to leave? The few times we go out we're always escorted by the boss or some other woman in the same line of work, always under her watch, just in case we get the notion to split for good. Some time ago Margarita almost made it. They reported her to the police as a thief and twenty-four hours later she was back in here. Then they made it real hard for her for a while. As for me, I also tried once . . . when Miss Pràxedes took us to church on Easter. Can you imagine three whores under a madam's surveillance going to church? I took advantage when she got distracted for a moment to leave her behind and blend in with the crowd, but they found me. I still have marks from the beating.”

Rage had distorted her features.

“Who beat you up?”

“I won't tell you or they'll do it again. How do I know I can trust you? What proof do I have?”

“You can trust me for a simple reason: because I need you. I'm in your hands. I just told you the truth and you're my only hope.”

Violeta studied him as if she waged an inner struggle to believe in his sincerity.

“Supposing I wanted to help you, what could I do?”

“Start by telling me who beat you up.”

The struggle went on, unresolved.

“Who beat you up?” he repeated, holding her firmly by her arms.

There was a silence.

“I don't know his name . . . He's a retarded man who comes with a woman.” Her voice was as thin as a thread. “He does what he's told. You can't imagine how strong he is. He can't say a word but, God, can he handle the strap!”

“He beat you with a strap?” he asked, his naïveté yielding to shock.

“The boss has him well trained, like a circus animal.”

He slowly let go of her, visualizing the scene as if it unfolded in front of him. Jaumet, with his apish body, gaping smile, and gleaming eyes, brandishing the strap and swinging it down on Violeta—or was it Rita?—with impeccable timing and blissful ignorance of any relation between cause and effect, proud to be useful, basking in Violeta-Rita's screams as if they were applause or down payments on the award he'd receive from the trainer, a monster at the service of another monster.

He closed his eyes to exorcise the image.

“I promise . . . I swear that if I succeed, no one else will lay a hand on you. Help me and I'll get you out of here. There will be a future for you and the boy.”

Her eyes grew softer, her expression more relaxed.

“The future always goes to the devil. I know from experience. I'm twenty-five years old but it's as if I was twenty-five hundred,” she replied, laying her hands on his chest. “Only the present belongs to us.”

The clock had already struck eleven. That night, Maurici didn't sleep at home.

That night washed old wounds and offered a glimpse of a new beginning. Violeta's wound, inflicted by her first lover, had been constantly reopened by the pretence, the parody, the empty gesture, the mechanical repetition of strictly outer signs of love, to the point that it no longer hurt. By contrast, Maurici's injury was a recent stab that hadn't yet stopped bleeding. The wounds persisted, but after that night they ceased to fester in darkness and were exposed to the air and the sun: a healing sun that would gradually tame their virulence.

He'd delivered himself to the joy of discovery, deferring the next attempt to extract more information from her. Sooner or later he'd have to proceed, but his intuition told him that the relationship was beginning to set its own pace and that he shouldn't try to force it. The morning after, as he left before nine to go to the factory, she refused his money and gave him an address where he could see Pere Anton.

In the afternoon the carriage took him to Aurora Street. In the past he'd rarely set foot on the jigsaw puzzle of the lower city connecting The Ramblas to the Paral·lel. Only the main arteries that ran across the battered body of the red-light district were vaguely familiar. Far from qualifying as one of them, Aurora Street was merely a thread of the cobweb: narrow and glum like the rest, festooned with clothes lines that connected opposite façades as if to erase the minimal distance between them. He sauntered through the neighborhood oblivious to the nearby Black Island, the graveyard of veteran street walkers Margarita had so decried; nor did he realize that many of the children he
was about to meet would spend their entire lives within those few blocks which, like a possessive uterus, refused to release them. Women's voices and children's cries flew from the balconies up to the strip of sky that crowned the street.

A tin box of candy under his arm, he passed through a relatively wide doorway. There was no doorkeeper inside, only darkness. As he climbed the stairs, a racket of racing footsteps and children at play grew louder and louder. By the time he reached the third floor, it was so deafening that he had to knock several times on the door. A stout woman greeted him, wiping her hand on a grey apron that covered her skirt. Her name was Maruja.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

“Good afternoon to you, sir. How can I help you?” She didn't speak Catalan, but a variety of Spanish that lilted with southern rhythms.

“I'd like to see a boy called Pere Anton,” Maurici answered, also in Spanish.

Maruja's eyes took him in from head to toe; a smile played on her lips.

“You a friend of Violeta's? My, how that girl has prospered. Good for her! Come in and watch your step, them little brats are worse than usual today.”

While she spoke a boy and two girls between six and nine years old clung to her apron. The boy stuck his long tongue out. The offence earned him a rather ineffectual slap.

Other children joined them down the hallway, some of them pulling and tugging at Maurici's coat with uninhibited curiosity. The youngest was barely walking and the oldest couldn't be more than twelve. Some rooms were open and in disarray, like the rest of the apartment, but the walls were clean and freshly painted. The entire place smelled of bleach.

“How many children do you have under your care?”

“Seven, right now. I tell you, at the end of the day I can barely stand. I'm sore all over, yes sir. Look, there's
Perentón
. That one's a little angel. You won't hear a peep from him. Come here, sweety pie, this gentleman's come to see you.”

They stepped into a large room, empty except for a few low chairs and brightened by the last breath of afternoon sun that slanted through the balcony. The boy took a few steps in Maurici's direction, stopping in front of Maruja. He wore a patched-up frock with pockets. The eyes—his mother's eyes—questioned unblinkingly the stranger's intentions; the blond hair, clumsily and closely cut, gave him the appearance of a tin soldier. The woman mumbled an excuse and returned to the kitchen, while the boy uneasily watched her fade away. Suddenly, he broke into a run to follow her but Maurici bent down and cut him short.

“Come here. I have something for you.”

Maurici sat in a chair, immediately surrounded by other children, and gave the boy the candy box.

“There's enough for everybody. If you're nice and share it, I'll come back and bring you more.”

The little soldier hugged the box that covered his chest like a shield, his eyes riveted on it. Maurici's smile was not reciprocated. Seen up close, the boy looked like an old man who didn't trust anybody or expect anything from life. He endured the proximity of a stranger as he would that of an enemy, in a state of alert, ready to beat a hasty retreat. His eyes had the same imperious urgency as those of Remei Sallent and, just like hers, demanded an explanation.

The enemy held him by the arms and placed him between his legs, careful not to upset him.

“What's your name?”

The boy, as if he hadn't heard the question, didn't flinch. He simply pursed his lips, casting furtive glances in the direction of the kitchen.

“Aren't you going to tell me your name? Mine's Maurici.”

“He's dumb, he never talks,” cut in a girl with self-sufficiency.

“That's because he doesn't know me. I bet he talks to you.”

“Now and then he says ‘I need to go potty' or ‘I want mama.' But he doesn't talk good, nobody can understand him.”

“How old are you?” Maurici insisted.

He remained entrenched in his silence, until an older boy coaxed him skillfully, “Come on, tell the gentleman how old you are,” and then he added in Spanish, “How-old-are-you?”

Pere Anton's eyes strayed toward the boy. After giving it much thought, he stuck up three fingers in front of Maurici's face. The laughter and applause that followed didn't brighten his expression.

Encouraged by this response, Maurici lifted Pere Anton onto his knee. Instantly he recognized in the little body the bow-like tension he'd sometimes felt in his mother, a stiffness that eluded his gentle grip, while the prisoner's feet kicked his chins harmlessly. Finally, and always clutching the box, he surrendered to Maurici's soft touch and ended up tolerating it.

“Do you love Maruja?” She'd just entered the room again.

“Don't mind him, sir, he's awful shy with strangers. That's ‘cause they never see nobody, poor things . . . I take them out to play in the square when I can, but there's so many of them, . . . and days go by so fast . . .”

“Does his mother come to see him?”

“Sure, when that old snake lets her.”

As she spoke, Maruja doted over the boy with much fanfare of laughter and affection.

“Tell me, sunshine, d'you love Maruja?” she asked.

Pere Anton gave her a quiet look and then a hesitant smile.

“All right, go to her, then,” were Maurici's parting words.

On his way out, he slipped a few bills into Maruja's palm, faithful to the habit—and the luxury—of buying spiritual peace. A cluster of screaming, rambunctious children escorted him to the door.

* * *

Friday, his regular day with Violeta, he strolled down the Street of the Three Beds carrying a gift-wrapped cashmere shawl. The thought of bringing her a pair of his family's brand of silk stockings had crossed his mind, but he feared she might be offended by what could be interpreted as a tactless present.

No sooner had Miss Pràxedes opened the door than she cried, “Violeta!” and the parrot chimed in, “Hail Mary!” From the back rooms came sounds of laughter and revelry.

Violeta smiled a warm welcome, rising on her tiptoes to kiss him. She still regarded him with reserve and a hint of mistrust, torn between the need to keep her sense of reality and the need to believe in a stranger who promised miracles. The two seemed irreconcilable; the passage along the tight rope that connected them would be risky, indeed.