The Street of the Three Beds (20 page)

Hortènsia got her cosmetic case and began to make up the dead woman as if for a fancy ball. Rouge replaced the fading purplish tint of the cheeks; the livid lips lit up to a fiery crimson. Then she pinned the woman's hair up as she had worn it when alive, and rubbed her wrists with a narcotizing perfume. Suddenly, after years of banishment, the black and yellow harlequin twisting in the air emerged from the depths of Maurici's mind. Margarita quietly followed the motions of the mortuary grooming, while Violeta brewed coffee in the kitchen.

“Who was the woman who opened the door?” he asked.

“The one with the half-wit? A friend of the boss,” Margarita answered indifferently.

“And who's he?”

“Her brother. I don't envy her lot. She can't leave him alone for a minute. He's as dumb as he's mean,” and, turning to Hortènsia, “We have to put a cross on her chest, the way she wanted.”

Hortènsia rushed diligently out of the room. Two minutes later she came back with the crucifix that usually hung from the wall in the hallway. It was cast iron and a good ten inches long.

“What are you doing with that? Don't you see it's too big?”

Undaunted, Hortènsia walked out and came back shortly with a pair of scissors. Displaying unsuspected ingenuity, she opened the scissors at a right angle and placed them on Miss Pràxedes's chest, restful at last.

“Look how puffy she is. You'd think she could burst,” she sniveled, smoothing down the dead woman's clothes.

“A plate of ashes.”

“What's that?”

“In the town where I was born, we put a plate of ashes on the belly of the dead so that they wouldn't burst.”

“Oh, so that's what them Moors and Gypsies do . . .” Hortènsia ventured to speculate.

“Shut up! How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not Moorish, understand? I'm French. Let's see if you can get it through your thick skull.”

Shortly after, a plate containing a handful of ashes protected Miss Pràxedes's belly.

It was barely seven in the morning but Socrates had long been heralding the sunrise. Maurici asked for the bathroom, where he undressed and washed himself only to put on the same clothes. As expected, he found a razor, shaving soap, and lotion.

He sipped the coffee Violeta offered, kissing her on her way out. “Remember you said we'd talk about it? The time's come.”

As he declined to participate in the farce of the funeral and the evening burial, he told her he'd be back the next day.

* * *

That Monday the ladies of the Street of the Three Beds didn't receive any visitors—in part because they were tired and needed to catch up on their sleep, in part because Margarita summoned them to discuss the future direction of the establishment. The first ruling of the new regime was to claim possession of the house keys that so far had remained in Miss Pràxedes's power. For different reasons, none of the other two challenged her supremacy. Early in the morning the newly crowned queen uncovered the cage of the parrot, who saluted dawn with a deafening screech. Then she opened the balcony to let the air caress the virgin tiles of the floor. Miss Pràxedes's bed was stripped; the mattress, shaken up; the French doors and room doors, opened wide. Up and down the corridor flew Socrates's harmonies and specks of golden dust. The morning breeze blew death out of the corners.

When Maurici arrived earlier than usual in the afternoon, Violeta informed him of Margarita's promotion. He took her by the shoulders, fixing his eyes on hers.

“This is the moment of truth. If you want, today you'll be free.”

“There's still so little I know about you . . . you come from a world so different from mine . . . and you're doing this for Rita.”

“No. I started doing it for Rita; for a long time now I've been doing it for you.”

He made her sit next to him.

“You have a right to know who I am. My name is Maurici Aldabò, my father is a manufacturer of silk stockings. I think at last I know how Rita ended up here.”

“What do you mean?” Her pupils searched his.

“One afternoon we were taking a walk and she told me she was pregnant. We had an argument in the street and she went into a lingerie store called La Perla d'Orient. She never came out. The owner or the manager of the store is Mrs. Prat.”

“How do you know?”

“Because when I got tired of waiting outside I went in to ask for Rita. The woman I talked to was Mrs. Prat, if that's her real name. Her brother was also there, sitting in the back. They hadn't counted on me; they must have known Rita had no family and they thought she was alone, so, by some means I haven't figured out yet, they made her disappear.”

“You mean she didn't come here of her own will?”

“Right.”

“What did Mrs. Prat say?”

“That no girl like that had come into the store.”

“Are you sure she went in?”

“Positive. I've been following Mrs. Prat and her brother ever since, hiding like a criminal so that I wouldn't be seen. That's how I found this place on the Street of the Three Beds. They brought me here; not that they know, of course. If you knew how many hours I've spent keeping watch in the tavern across the street and hiding under the stairway . . .”

“Who gave you the card you need to get in?”

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs in preparation for the last sprint.

“I've got reason to believe this isn't the end of the line. There's somebody else behind Mrs. Prat and the woman you've just buried. For the time being, I can't tell you anything else. Will you forgive me and keep trusting me? Later, when I'm sure, I'll tell you the rest. I don't think it'll be long before I find out the whole truth. So far I haven't talked to anybody about Rita's disappearance. I've carried it stuck inside me like a thorn, feeling it day and night. I won't have peace or anything to offer you till I can pull it out once and for all. I have to go on to the end. You're the first, maybe the only one, to know what happened. Maybe nobody else will ever know. If it hadn't been for you, these past few months I'd have gone mad.”

She looked at him in astonishment, struggling to read him like a book written in code. After a long pause she asked a totally unrelated question, “Where do you spend your day when you're not here?”

“I work at the factory. I have a law degree but I was a lousy student and have never practiced as a lawyer. My family takes it for granted that I'll carry the torch when my father retires. They're wrong.”

“Where's the factory?”

“In Poble Nou. Do you want to know how many workers there are? How many looms?” he asked, a gleam of irony in his eyes, a hint of amusement in his voice.

“I want to know exactly what you do.”

“Exactly? Well, I get bored. I'm in charge of the foreign clientele: interviews, telegrams, paperwork, shipments, now and then a trip to France . . .”

“Where have you been in France?”

“Paris, Lyon . . .”

“Is Paris as nice as they say?”

“Nicer. Would you like to go there some time?” He ran his hand over her cheek.

“What school did you go to as a boy?”

“The French Lyceum. I also spent a year in a boarding school in Switzerland.”

She'd been inching closer, with an increasing rustling of silk, until her lips fluttered over his face every time she spoke. When he encircled her with his arm, her waist accommodated it.

“Did you have measles and chicken pox?” she cooed as intimately as if she'd asked if he had an erection.

“I don't remember, I'm a big boy now.”

He whispered too, his incomplete smile never staying still on his lips. Through the fog of her breath and her perfume, he realized that she was trying to reconstruct his existence out of the most trivial realities.

“What did they teach you in Switzerland?”

“French, more or less.”

“Did you like studying in Switzerland?”

“No.”

“What are your hobbies?” she probed in hypnotic tones, her eyes glazed behind invisible smoke.

“Music and sports.”

“Do you really play the piano?”

“Really. Some day I'll prove it to you, if you let me.”

“What sports do you play?” Her voice tickled in his ear.

“Squash, and I go horse riding. Violeta . . .”

His body hummed like a bee nest. He didn't know how long it could endure the diabolical cross-examination.

“What's your favorite dish?”

“My favorite dish? I don't know, . . . lobster cardinal. Violeta, . . . what's your name?”

Her lips stroked his, muffling his words as they came out.

“Are you married?”

Maurici threw his head back to let out a burst of laughter. It seemed rather hilarious to think of that at this point.

“No!'

“Don't laugh! One never asks a customer this question. Only a man,” and she resumed her sensuous, implacable, frontal attack.

“What's your name?” he pressed her harder, locking his arms around her waist.

Her face didn't pull back at all. “If you lie to me, I'll kill you,” her narcotizing murmur concluded, while subtle fingers brushed his hair back from his forehead.

She rose and led him by the hand to Margarita's door. Her free hand gave two dry knocks on the door. Margarita, in a pink satin robe, her face bare of make-up and her hair trailing loose halfway down her back, let them in.

“I'm leaving this place,” Violeta announced.

“Do you know what you're doing?”

“I know I'm taking a big chance. But my mind's made up. Before the end of the month, I'll pay my rent and move out of my room.”

Margarita, resting a hand on a swishing hip, threw a scornful glance at Maurici.

“If he turns out to be a son of a bitch, which they always do, you can always come back.”

“I don't think so.”

“What? You don't think he'll turn out a son of a bitch or you don't think you'll come back?”

Violeta gave a cryptic smile for an answer.

He faced her and insisted, “What's your name?”

Her smile turned bittersweet.

“In my hometown, when I was very young, they called me Caterineta.”

He studied the face of the new madam waiting for her reaction, which was to open the curtain of the closet where she kept the basin and the pitcher. She beckoned Violeta to approach. When she stood by her side, Margarita gathered Violeta's hair in her hand, pushed down her head and, lifting up the pitcher, poured a thin stream of water.

“I baptize you Caterina.”

That Saturday morning, as he lathered up the bluish stubble on his jaw, he studied the stranger in the mirror. He also studied the black and white tiles on the floor, the large bathtub resting on lion's claws, the gold faucets, the marble sink. He heard the maid and the cook bustling with breakfast preparations, he smelled the lotion his father had patted on his face an hour before. He knew these perceptions were soon to be extinct, that they'd reoccur only a limited number of times in the future. He knew life in the luminous avenue would soon fade to become as unreal as Amphitrite the siren.

He still read the papers as often as possible. His mother, in a white gown and robe that made her look slimmer and with her black hair braided, sat opposite him at the table. For years they'd been having breakfast together and he knew that, inevitably, he'd miss those mornings. Every now and then he lifted his eyes from the paper and smiled. It was in one of these moments that he asked, “What are your plans today, Mother?”

“Same as every Saturday. At three thirty, after my nap, we have our get-together at the Maison Dorée.”

“Who will be there?”

“The regulars: Lita Ramalleres, Pirula Camprodón, Montserrat Despí, and Adela Coromines. I'm sure they'll ask about you. All my friends adore you.”

Visions of Mrs. Ramalleres at the peak of past intimacy flashed though his mind like meteorites. He almost blushed.

“Oh, right. I'd forgotten your gatherings at the Maison Dorée.”

“You've been very absent-minded lately.”

Ignoring the remark, he kept feigning interest in his mother's Saturday routines as he browsed through the paper.

“And then, what will you do?”

“Father and I have tickets for the theater.”

“What's on?”

“Crehuet's
The Dead Woman.
Afterwards we'll go to the Lyon D'Or for a bite. In the evening, you find la crème de la crème of Barcelona gathered there.”

She played with her cup for a moment.

“Maurici . . . are you sure everything's all right?”

Her eyes were so imploring he was tempted to confess that perhaps for the first time he loved a woman, that she was not a society girl, that . . . Then he thought of Lita Ramalleres and Pirula Camprodón, the musical quintet, and bucolic fantasies in pastel colors splashed on the walls of the Lyon D'Or, and answered, “You don't need to worry. I feel better than ever.”

Slurping the coffee dregs and folding the paper, he stood up to leave. As if she understood that a forbidding chasm had opened between them, she lowered her voice to beg, “Why don't you play something?”

He expected anything except that particular whim.

“So early in the day?”

“Why not? What's wrong with it?”

He went to sit at the piano.

“What would you like to hear?”

“Anything you want, . . . but make it cheery.”

“As you please, Madame.”

After thumping through several sheets, he tackled a Slavic piece that had recently become popular, “Hora Stacatto.”

She smiled behind his back. Seconds later, tears welled up in her eyes and began to roll down her cheeks: farewell tears that glazed her smile.

He skimmed over the opening notes rather indifferently, but little by little Dinicu's feverish brilliance infected him. The fingers that gripped his squash racket like tongs and melted at the touch of skin now ran the entire gamut: they beat, banged, leapt, vibrated, brushed, trembled, fluttered. It had been a long time since he'd sat at the piano; he'd forgotten the orgiastic power of its keys. He didn't even miss the violin. For a few minutes all the thoughts that had burdened his mind faded: his mother's questioning, the pending reckoning with his father, Dr. Serra, Rita, Caterina, the plan of action he'd drawn up that morning. There was only the whirlwind of music, the pirouette of notes flung into orbit like spinning tops that, like a juggler, he caught in mid-flight just to twirl them again into a new rotation. A burst of sunlight danced in through the windows. He'd never played so well.