But There Was Another Solution

New tenants are arriving today. A Dutch couple with two kids, who will stay in my flat for six days and pay cash. I’d better hurry and do some shopping and fill the fridge. Breaded ham, chorizo, sliced bread, cheese, salad greens and lots of fruit. I’m tired of frozen or pre-cooked meals you heat up in the microwave. Besides, my doctor says I must watch my cholesterol levels.

It’s the first time I’ve rented out the flat since the incident. That was five months ago, but I’ve still not entirely got over it. I don’t think anybody on the staircase noticed, because the neighbours haven’t said a word. I’ve been lucky. Though I’m sure the man who lives in number 2 on the fifth floor got a whiff of something, because, one day when we were waiting for the lift, he started criticizing people who illegally rent their flats out to tourists and he told me that if it was up to him, he’d put their owners behind bars for a good long time to teach them a lesson. The man at number 2 on the fifth floor is very full of himself. Or else he’s filthy rich.

After what happened, I really wasn’t intending to go back to the flat. It didn’t appeal one bit. But then the gas bill arrived a month ago and I had to rethink things – I was penniless yet again. With the heating on in winter, the meter goes crazy and my bank account empties out. And my pension runs out.

It’s so miserable to be old and poor.

Marisol, my nephew’s daughter, had the bright idea of renting my flat out to tourists; she’s studying at the university and is very smart.

I was still convalescing, and one day when she paid me a visit, I told her how worried I was that my paltry savings were all disappearing on the girl I’d had to hire to help with the housework. A couple of months earlier a gypsy had tried to steal my handbag in the street and I’d gone down head first on the pavement and broken my right shoulder and hip. Old bones and a nasty fall, the worst combination …

“And I don’t know how I’ll cope without Anita,” I told her, “because my arm hasn’t mended enough yet for me to manage in the kitchen. I can see I’ll have to sell the flat and go and rent somewhere. Or go into a residential home, because, at my age —”

“You know, this flat of yours is so large and so central … Why don’t you split it into two and rent out half to tourists on the internet?” she suggested. “Barcelona is so trendy, you’ll earn lots of money renting it out on a daily or weekly basis. Of course, you’ll need to do some refurbishing …”

At first I thought Marisol’s idea was totally mad. Start refurbishing the flat? Rent it out to complete unknowns? Nevertheless, at my age – sixty-nine – and with a miserable widow’s pension as my only source of income, I realized I had no alternative: either I sold the flat where I’d lived my whole life, or I rented it out on the sly in order to cope with the cost of care and all the associated unforeseen expenses.

Although the flat was old and quite shabby, it was one of those fancy first-floor flats in the Eixample with a big courtyard at the back which caught the sun in the afternoons. I told my friend Rosa about Marisol’s suggestion and Rosa, who’s not slow on the uptake, immediately said she’d ask Rafael to come and have a look. Rafael, Rosa’s son, is a builder and knows about these things. I told him I wanted to split the flat into two so I could rent one, and we totted up the cost. It was impossible. The work was too expensive.

But there was another solution.

Roger, my deceased husband, had inherited the flat from his grandparents, who had always lived with Auntie Paquita. Auntie Paquita was the older sister of Roger’s grandfather, and as she’d remained a spinster and didn’t like living alone, she rented two of the flat’s five bedrooms from them: a smaller room she used as her bedroom, and a bigger one where she kept a table, a couple of chairs, a rocking chair, a small butane gas cooker and a sink with running water. That room was also her living room and allowed her to exist with a modicum of independence, as if she were living in a boarding house: it was where Auntie Paquita cooked, had lunch and dinner and listened to her favourite radio programmes without anybody bothering her or her being a nuisance to anyone. Roger had told me that when she wasn’t there, her door was always locked.

When Roger’s grandparents died, she went to live in a residential home (she was almost ninety) and we moved into the flat. We improved it a bit, particularly the kitchen and bathroom, but we never touched Auntie Paquita’s living room. The flat was big enough, and as the children never came to visit and we never needed to use that room, it turned into a storeroom that was always locked. And that’s what gave me the idea: as the room had running water and a sink to wash dishes, I decided I could live in it on the sly and rent out the flat without needing to refurbish a thing.

Rafael, Rosa’s son, helped me empty the room and throw out all the junk. We brought in a bed, a table and a chair, and, as the fridge in the kitchen was very old, I bought a new one and had the old one installed in Auntie’s room. The small butane stove didn’t work and, very sensibly, Marisol advised me to buy a microwave and eat pre-cooked food rather than buy a new cooker. While I had tourists in the flat and was living in hiding, as it were, I was hardly going to start cooking and flood the inside yard where the neighbours hung out their washing to dry with fumes and smells.

Marisol and Rafael gave the flat a once-over to make sure it looked lovely in the photos. They painted it, changed some of the kitchen cupboards and threw out the mats and furniture that were in a bad state. Marisol helped me to choose a sofa, bed linen, a dining-room table, chairs, furniture for the patio, crockery and towels in one of those stores that’s cheap and fashionable. As one of the walls in Auntie’s room separated it from the dining room, Rafael made a little hole he hid beneath a wall light; he also made a small hole in the corridor partition. That way, I could see if anyone was prowling round the dining room or corridor and see what my tenants were getting up to. Rafael also fixed a bolt on the inside of the door just in case anyone tried to force the handle. Bolted doors keep nosy parkers at bay, he told me. On the outside of the door, which opened onto the corridor, he hung up a small notice that said NO ENTER, and said everybody would understand that.

I spent the few savings I had left on doing up the flat. Marisol took some photos and put them on the internet. “Flat in listed building in heart of modernist Barcelona for rent. No Agencies”, read the advert. She also put it in Catalan, naturally.

And we crossed our fingers.

And it worked very well. People immediately started responding to the advert and tenants began to arrive. Some tourists rented for three or four days, a week, even a fortnight. And it was first-rate from a business point of view. As I’m not greedy and didn’t want to spend my life shut up in a room in my own flat, I calculated that if I rented it for a couple of weeks every month I’d have more than enough income to compensate for my widow’s pension and put a little aside for a rainy day. When you reach a certain age, you have to bear in mind that you’re going downhill. I’d recovered well enough from my fractures – my bones are strong even now – but I couldn’t do what I used to and I needed help cleaning the house. On the other hand, if I was going to break the law, I was determined to make the most of my investments. I’d enjoy going to the market or supermarket and not be forced to buy the food that was on offer because its best-before date was up. Or I’d allow myself the luxury of sitting on a terrace on the Rambla de Catalunya and having a coffee while I watched the world go by, rather than sitting at home watching the telly all by myself. And what a relief it would be not to be cold in winter or to have to watch every cèntim I was spending!

Even so, initially I found it hard being imprisoned in that room hour after hour. Luckily, the tourists spent the day out visiting the city, and, when I heard them leaving, I’d come out of my hiding place, walk round the flat and take the opportunity to go to the bathroom. Before they arrived, I’d stock up my fridge, calculating what I’d need in terms of the number of days they’d stay in the flat and, as my room had a sink, I could wash dishes and wash myself, a bit at a time, like we used to when I was a child. Though I had to try not to make any noise.

One of the other drawbacks was that I couldn’t risk going out in the street. Once, when a German couple were staying in the flat, I went out to do some shopping and take a walk while they weren’t around and they almost caught me going into the flat. Apparently the wife had had a bad turn and they’d decided to come back after half an hour. The fact is, I was stuck out in the street and had to phone Marisol, who lives with some girlfriends, and ask her if I could spend the night at her place. Luckily, Marisol is a lovely girl, and not like her awful parents. But my nephew will find out soon enough, because when I die, the flat will be for Marisol, and not for him. Even though Sergi, the boy she’s going out with now, is on the strange side and I can’t really figure him out …

The truth is, despite the inconvenience of having to live in hiding in my own flat when I’ve got tourists staying, everything went swimmingly for a long time.

But then that happened.

I immediately realized that the Russians who had rented my flat weren’t two executives on a business trip, as they’d said in the message they sent me, but coarse, loudmouthed mafiosi, the kind you see in films. The first day they arrived, when I saw through the hole in the wall what kind of people they were (bawling at each other, walking around bare-chested, with gold chains around their necks and arms covered in tattoos) it scared the living daylights out of me. And the day after, when I saw the pistols, the collection of liquor bottles and the little packets of drugs they stuck up their noses, I was even more frightened. Not to mention the women they brought into my flat! My God, they were real harlots! And they made such a din, with their screaming and the music on so high … I still don’t understand why the neighbours didn’t ring the police.

But what could I do? Leave my hideout and chase them out with my broom? Ring the mossos and tell them I’d illegally rented out my flat to tourists who’d turned out to be criminals? On the other hand, they had paid me in advance and not tried to bargain down the price for the five days they wanted. Five days wasn’t so long, I reflected. I’d make sure I invented something to tell the neighbours, because I was sure there’d be complaints after all that din.

And when more men arrived on the fourth day, it all went haywire.

I don’t know what happened, because I didn’t understand most of what they said. I think the Russians were having a sort of meeting with some Frenchmen, a few Catalans and a plump woman who was acting as interpreter, and all of a sudden I heard them quarrelling. I looked through the hole and saw them shout at each other, and then one of the men pulled out a knife, another a pistol, and the wall got splattered with blood. Then one of the Catalan speakers fell on one of the Russians, stuck a knife in his neck and blood went everywhere.

I don’t remember anything else, because I think I fainted, stunned by the spectacle I was watching.

*

I don’t know how long I was unconscious. I only know that once I did wake up, it was a long time before I dared look through the hole. When I mustered the strength to do so, I saw men in white overalls wrapping the corpses in black plastic sacks and stuffing them into metal trunks. After that, the same men cleaned up the bloodstains and repainted the walls that had been splattered and cracked. They must have been a good three hours painting and cleaning. I don’t know what language they spoke, because they whispered the whole time. Even though they had to move all the furniture, they made hardly any noise.

They left mid-afternoon, but it was still a while before I dared emerge from my hideout. When I did so, I found that the flat was spotless, as if nothing had happened. I didn’t know what to do, and for a time I wondered whether I shouldn’t ring the mossos, confess that I was illegally renting and tell them what had happened. But the flat was so clean and tidy I thought they’d take me for an old fool and might even shut me up in a sanatorium.

And I was too young to live surrounded by old folk.

It’s one o’clock and Anita has just finished giving the flat a clean. Auntie’s room is also spruce and tidy, with the bed made and the fridge full. I reckon everything is as it should be.

The truth is I’m not crazy about having little kids in the flat, because they make a noise and a mess, and break things, but I now feel happier renting the flat out to families with children, although it generates more work. I’ve learned my lesson as far as businessmen go, even though they pay over the odds.

The Dutch family who are coming this afternoon look just the ticket. Marisol has researched them on the internet and found nothing untoward. They are a normal family. But who can tell?

When you’ve got strangers in your house, you never know what might happen.