Dr. Serra, Dr. Miralpeix, Dr. Butcher, the alcoholic boxing referee: the elusive mutant had fallen into limbo, beyond time. Too late to find him at home or in one of his hangouts; too soon to find him in La Mina. He’d vanished from space, burrowing in some obscure hotel impossible to locate on the city map. Another business trip to France—shortened by taking the night express both ways—kept Maurici away from his mission for a few days. On his return, he came face to face again with the anxiety and frustration of his fruitless search.
His memory often replayed the conversations with Caterina about the chain that encircled the women of the Street of the Three Beds. In Rita’s case, Dr. Miralpeix was simply the last link—sooner or later, he was certain to reach it. Meanwhile, he must backtrack to the first.
One evening he sauntered into La Perla d’Orient with a hint of resigned fatalism, feeling confident, invulnerable, validated by the inevitability of his own actions. After shutting the door behind him, he took off his hat and flung it unceremoniously on the counter. Mrs. Prat looked at him askance, as one might look at a stranger disturbing a private peace, but didn’t turn her head or give any sign of recognition.
Jaumet remained in his usual observation post by the curtain of the fitting room. The sphinx tended to a mother accompanied by a child who sucked her thumb while she ran her eyes over the entire store. An older woman awaited her turn sitting on a chair and impatiently spinning her closed parasol, whose tip rested on the ground. Mrs. Prat’s voice was merely a mutter, like an insect’s buzz. Prepared to wait as long as necessary, Maurici leaned his back against the wall.
Large crowds streamed up and down the street. All of them struck him as being the same people with the same faces, endlessly walking in the same circle. Some women would stop to look at the window, a few would make a visor of their hands to check if there was a line inside.
The customer who’d been waiting lifted her eyes up to the newcomer, somewhat perplexed to find a suit in a lingerie store. Mrs. Prat fished out white garments from a pile on the counter and wrapped them in silk paper. She cut lengths of blue ribbon to tie bows with hypnotizing dexterity as if her fingers lived a life of their own, independent from the rest of her body. For a moment, his thoughts digressed, speculating whether that woman played the piano.
The mother took the child by the hand, picked up the boxes, and walked to the exit. He opened the door for her, and she responded with a slight nod. The one remaining customer asked to see buttons for an evening dress. Jaumet smiled, unperturbed.
Mrs. Prat opened little drawers in the wall and took out sets of buttons fastened to cardboard strips. The dress was for the Liceu, the customer let it be known, dithering between mother-of-pearl and gold. More buttons—pearls, beads, ebony—lined up on the counter. “Oh, I don’t know,” she sulked, until after a long ten minutes she decided to go with the initial mother-of-pearl. Once again Mrs. Prat did a dainty wrapping job and, this time, saw the customer to the door herself. He noticed that she locked it from inside and ran the curtain across the window, even though it was ten minutes to closing time.
Resuming her post behind the counter, she asked, “How can I help you?”
Neither surprise nor any other emotion betrayed her. She behaved as if the person standing opposite her was about to order a meter of lace or a roll of gold trim; as if his previous visit to La Perla d’Orient and the encounter in the apartment on the Street of the Three Beds had never happened.
“I want to know how Rita Morera disappeared from this store. And you’re going to tell me, willingly or by force. It’s up to you.”
He uttered these words staring at her unblinkingly. Picking up the scattered items one by one, she replied in her usual flat tone, “You’re mistaken. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
From the other side of the counter, and so abruptly that at last the stony face registered alarm, his fingers rushed to clamp her throat. His violence, surging from a previously untapped source, astonished him as much as her.
“You’re the one who’s mistaken, you damn bitch!” he spat, as his hand kept shaking her. “If you don’t tell me right now what you did to Rita I’ll choke you to death. I swear I will!”
The fingers that a few minutes before had wrapped boxes with such delicacy, now scratched and fought to loosen the clutch around her neck. Her mouth opened to scream while her eyes shot terrified glances at Jaumet, but no sound came out of her throat. Suddenly, blood rushed to her face. Her eyes grew larger as if at any moment they might pop out of their sockets. Jaumet kept smiling.
“Talk! What happened?”
Taking advantage of an instant when the pressure yielded just enough to let her voice through, she hissed, “Jaumet! Hurry! He’s hurting Sis!”
While his fingertips pressed the sinews of her throat, Maurici slapped her across the face with his free hand. She coughed and choked, on the verge of fainting. Jaumet sprang from his chair like a puppet from a box and charged toward the aggressor, his face lit by fury and his arms flailing in the air. A push from Maurici’s hand sent him reeling backwards against the wall. When Maurici had turned around to repeal the attack, his grip slackened. Mrs. Prat took advantage of his divided attention to say in a broken, hoarse voice, “Jaumet, help!”
Maurici slapped her even harder this time, shoving her away. Mrs. Prat’s rotundity slammed against the little drawers on the wall with a loud thud while he made a run for the fitting room. When Jaumet pounced on him once more like an enraged beast, Maurici knocked him to the floor. He yanked the curtain open and ran his eyes over the walls, feeling them with the palms of his hands and stopping on the mirror. From outside he heard Mrs. Prat’s moans and the guttural growls of her brother, who’d gone to her rescue. Under the pressure of Maurici’s fingers, the upper and lower right corners clicked and the mirror opened like a door. He leaped into the black mouth that summoned him while in the background Mrs. Prat chocked and screamed, “Jaumet! The club, get the club!”
He paid no attention. Fear itself spurred him further down the corridor. A pit-a-pat of rat-like steps signaled that Jaumet had started off in pursuit. Maurici didn’t care. Now that he’d found the source—the labyrinth of the Minotaur, the belly of the whale—there was nothing to do but embrace its darkness and keep going. Maybe Dr. Serra-Miralpeix would be waiting at the end, exultantly brandishing the scalpel that had torn apart Rita’s body; or, worse, maybe there would just be a blank wall, the final boundary of time and space. Pure speculations into a distant future. The present rested on tangible facts: the touch of humid walls right and left, the bumpy, gritty surface under his feet. The creaking of leather boots marked his long stride like a metronome and smothered the echo of Jaumet’s wimpy steps, assuming he still followed. He couldn’t say how long the blind race, the voyage down the river of gloom, lasted—his memory could only retrieve a sliver of light framing a vertical rectangle and, almost simultaneously, a short circuit in the back of his brain that blew all his fuses.
* * *
Somewhere a spotlight shot color beams into his pupils. Gradually, a many-sided crystal ball began to assert itself. For a few moments it remained an elusive object, until with great effort he identified a familiar paperweight. When he tried to turn in search of other friendly shapes, a sharp pain ran up a nerve in the back of his head all the way to his clenched teeth. Just in time, Doro walked in with a damp towel, a glass of brandy and two aspirins. Moving cautiously to avoid another stab of pain, he placed the towel on the bruise. Then he took a couple of sips to wash down the aspirins and left the glass on the side table. Black spots floated through the room. Little by little his eyes made out the green lamp, the Cordovan leather cigar box, the mahogany bookshelves. As his glance wandered over the objects, his memory recognized them.
Behind the desk stood Roderic Aldabò. He had his hands in his pockets and a grave expression, between sympathetic and contemptuous, on his face. His voice sounded even—unruffled. “I’m waiting for you to explain what this means.”
“What are you referring to when you say ‘this?’” The pinpricks in Maurici’s brain interfered with his speech.
“You know very well what I’m talking about: your tempestuous visit to La Perla d’Orient and the assault on Mrs. Prat and her poor brother.”
“Her poor brother? If I’m not mistaken it’s my head that’s about to burst.”
“You asked for it. She tells me you acted like a madman. Against a woman and a retarded man. Of course they defended themselves. Tell me, what was your business at La Perla d’Orient?”
Holding the towel to the back of his neck, he fastened his eyes on his father.
“I think it’s you who owes me an explanation.”
“Maurici, don’t abuse my patience.”
Forgetting the pain for a moment Maurici jumped to his feet and slammed a fist on the table, taking the patriarch by surprise.
“Let’s not talk about abuse! You’re the last person to lecture anyone on that subject. You want to know what I was doing at La Perla d’Orient? I was trying to find out what happened to Rita Morera. Does the name ring a bell?”
“Of course, it rings a bell. She used to be a seamstress in this house.”
“Right! And, suddenly, she vanished, didn’t she?”
“She left, if that’s what you mean.”
As usual, Roderic Aldabò measured his words carefully. It would take several rounds to corner him.
“No, that’s not what I mean, and you know it, Father.”
“No, I don’t; you’ll have to explain it to me.”
“We agreed it’s you who’s due for an explanation. I don’t owe you a thing, understand? Nothing! Let’s be clear on that.”
Lowering his voice, Maurici resumed his seat and continued, “One April day, Rita and I were strolling in the old city. She said she had to stop by La Perla d’Orient and buy petticoats and I don’t know what else Mother had ordered. I waited for her outside, but she never came out. I’m sure Mrs. Prat has informed you that later I went in to ask, and she denied even having seen her. Several weeks later Rita turned up dead on the Street of the Three Beds.”
“First of all, what were you doing with the girl?”
“The issue’s not what I was doing with her but what you did with her.”
Roderic Aldabò blinked, pondering the answer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The papers said Rita Morera had committed suicide. Her suicide has nothing to do with you or me. As far as your mother and I are concerned, she was a seamstress who worked in this house for a while. Her death is regrettable, of course, but it didn’t affect us personally since we weren’t close to her. If, as it seems, you had a liaison with her, that’s your business; you know what I think of your relationships with the domestic staff. Apparently, this has clouded your judgment and you’re confused.”
“On the contrary. My judgment is clearer than ever and the only confusion there was has just been dispelled. You say you don’t know what I’m talking about? That Rita’s death has nothing to do with you and me? What do you think I’ve been doing for the past few months? I followed Mrs. Prat and Jaumet everywhere. I know where they live, I’ve found the little nest on the Street of the Three Beds, and one day Mrs. Prat’s steps took me—guess where, Father—right to this house!”
Roderic took the blow without showing any signs of panic.
“It’s childish to waste your time following Mrs. Prat in the streets. Aside from that, there’s nothing strange in her visit here. La Perla d’Orient is one of the stores we supply.”
“You do more than supply it. La Perla d’Orient belongs to you, am I wrong?”
“I have investments in it, but that doesn’t concern you.”
“Where did you find Mrs. Prat? I assume she retired from a brothel herself.”
“Mrs. Prat supports a disabled brother! What do you think of that?” He lowered his voice. “Listen, you’re old enough to live your own life, I’m not going to argue about that, but don’t stew on it anymore. After all, what’s happened is no more than a series of unfortunate events.”
“Unfortunate events? The kidnap and murder of a twenty-two-year-old girl you call ‘unfortunate events?’” Maurici and his voice rose at once. “How lucky for you, Father, that nothing disturbs your sleep! What about Dr. Serramiralpeix: the abortionist, the butcher, is he also our customer? Is that why he was here, sleeping it off, keeping you company that night? Is that why he vanished from his place and the Boxing Club?”
This time Roderic Aldabò was knocked off the fence of aloofness and shouted, “I have many contacts in Barcelona, I conduct many operations that are none of your business!”
“Like Fidelity, the moving company?” Maurici took the card out of his pocket. “That’s one of your operations, right? A non-existing operation—just one more cover, a password for respectable bastards like you and me who enjoy the services of the Ritas of this world without asking where they came from and how they got there.”
“Watch it or I’ll . . .”
He leaned close to his father across the desk. The lock of hair flapped on his forehead like a declaration of war. His eyes glittered like embers and his voice was a poisonous whisper. “Go ahead. Try it. Come on, try it. Don’t deny yourself the pleasure.”
Roderic hesitated and asked at last, “You had the nerve to ransack my drawers?”
“You bet I did! I’d ransack your mind, if I could, to find the man who killed her.”
“I couldn’t tell you. The last time I saw Dr. Miralpeix was that night when, so you tell me, you spied on us. Since then, I haven’t heard from him. What makes you think Rita Morera was murdered?”
“The police photo hides the lower body, so that no one can see that the cause of death was hemorrhage. But the person who found her remembers the blood-stained petticoat. I wonder if it was the same petticoat she’d bought that afternoon at La Perla d’Orient.”
Maurici felt calmer, noticing the ill-repressed anguish that distorted his father’s face as the details unfolded.
“Have you gone to the police?”
Maurici nodded.
“And to the cathouse on the Street of the Three Beds. In case you didn’t know, the Fidelity card works like magic.”
His father shrugged. “All right. So you’ve found out I have stakes in a house of ill repute. It’s time for you to open your eyes, son. Most Barcelona industrialists have shares in the prostitution business. It’s no secret and there’s no reason to be shocked. Sooner or later you had to find out—at the very least, you’d have inherited it at my death. It doesn’t matter. But you’ll never convince me or anybody else that Rita Morera didn’t commit suicide by jumping from the balcony.”
“She was pushed when she was already dead. Let’s not play cat and mouse anymore, Father. You weren’t counting on this disaster, but it happened. You own La Perla d’Orient and Mrs. Prat recruits girls for the Street of the Three Beds bordello, which you also own.”
His father opened his mouth to speak.
“Don’t interrupt me! Once they’re there, the wretch who calls himself Dr. Serra makes sure they can’t have children. Except in Rita’s case he ran into a complication that exceeded his abilities: Rita was pregnant. Dr. Serra, who can’t practice medicine probably because of his drinking and other shortcomings, couldn’t handle it. When she bled to death he panicked and, maybe acting on the brilliant advice of Miss Pràxedes—may she roast in hell—threw the body over the balcony.”
“The police ruled the death a suicide.”
“Sergeant Vila, as I recently found out, has a brother who sold smuggled jewels to the madam and is involved with one of the girls. I have no great respect for his professional opinion.”
“I see you’re informed of every detail. How do you know Rita Morera was pregnant? Don’t tell me . . .”
“I know because she told me.”
“Was it yours?”
“According to her, yes. Maybe it was, I can’t be sure. I didn’t love her, I had no right to expect her to be faithful. I don’t care if the child was mine or not; the thing is that Rita and the life project she carried inside her were lost.”
“How do you know she didn’t go to Mrs. Pràxedes’s house of her own free will or that the abortion wasn’t her idea?”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Maurici shouted. “Have you forgotten I found the passage behind the mirror? No doubt, it runs to the back alley. That’s how they found me, right? When I was unconscious they put me in a carriage and sent me back here. In case of trouble, they know where to go.”
“They went through your wallet and found your name and address in your identification papers.”
“Really? And why didn’t they call the police? Isn’t that what any citizen does when attacked by a madman? Please, Father, enough of this farce.”
Roderic Aldabò paced across the room behind the desk, which stood like a wall between him and his son. Finally, he repressed a sigh of defeat. He seemed to be beaten. The phase of denial, when he’d sought to reduce facts to appearances, had concluded. It was time to move to the next phase and play his last card: persuasion.
“I’m sorry this girl has died, no matter the circumstances. What I don’t understand is where this . . . sudden bout of altruism comes from. You, who never gave a damn about anything except having a good time, should be the first to realize that brothels are a necessary evil. Public women have always existed and always will exist; you, for one, have known your share of them. Let me tell you man to man—and I’ll swear to this on a stack of bibles—I haven’t once been unfaithful to your mother. At your age, I already had a family and lots of responsibilities. I despise anyone vile enough to buy these sort of favors. You, on the other hand, with your gallivanting, are in no position to point fingers. You know better than anybody that these women exist for a purpose. Prostitution may be a social problem, but it’s not a crime.”
“Crime is a social problem, Father, and it is a crime that we’re discussing here. What you say is all very fine, but what about Rita and the others? How many has the corridor of La Perla d’Orient swallowed? How many? I accepted my guilt a long time ago. All I ask is that you accept yours.”
His father wasn’t assuaged by his appeal to reason; on the contrary, it was counterproductive. Roderic’s stare fell on him like a death sentence.
“What guilt? If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been somebody else. And it’s philanderers like you who take advantage of it. I’m not responsible for the sins of others. Without demand, there’d be no supply.”
The business terminology acted as a detonator. Maurici reached across the desk to grab his father’s lapels and shook him with more pity than violence, his voice pitched between a plea and a cry.
“Demand and supply? Supply and demand? Do you think we’re talking about a few pairs of stockings? Rita walked into La Perla d’Orient to buy frills, was knocked unconscious, and one day woke up in a bordello bed with a knife in her insides! I’ve learnt a few lessons these past few months, and they’ve left a bitter taste. I’ve seen the world through a different lens, and what I’ve seen hurts. Doesn’t it hurt, Father? Not a bit? Is it still a matter of demand and supply for you? I’m willing to live with it, but you . . . Did Grandpa forget to slap your cheek at the moment the noose tightened? Which robe would be right for us, Father? Tell me! The same yellow robe as for parricides? Aren’t you and I parricides too, don’t we also kill women and children? What was the name of the convict in the clown outfit? What was his name?”
Roderic Aldabò’s features had gradually become humane. The last words out of his son’s mouth were incomprehensible. His gaze lingered on the sweat-beaded face as if it belonged to a madman, until he whispered softly, “Who are you talking about . . . ?”
“Isidre Mompart.”
Lídia’s voice came from the threshold. Her expression revealed that she had overheard most of the conversation. Her husband’s eyes, bewildered and interrogating, strayed in her direction, but she only acknowledged her son’s presence.
“The name of the parricide was Isidre Mompart.”
Slowly, Maurici let go of his father’s lapels and turned around to face Lídia. The movement increased the pain in the back of his neck.
“Did you know, Mother?”
“No.” It was Roderic who answered. “Your mother didn’t know. You two have been happily unaware of it while you’ve enjoyed the benefits all along. Did you really think a small factory can be so profitable? God knows it was enough for me, but not for her. We had to hire a cook and a carriage, build a villa in the country, throw big parties, travel, send you to Switzerland for a whole year, join the Equestrian Club, keep a balcony at the Liceu . . . She had to live like a Palau. She’d forgotten that by then she was an Aldabò. I’d grown up believing I had a duty to provide for my family, to make sure they lacked for nothing and had everything they wanted. As long as I fulfilled that duty, I didn’t have to explain myself to anybody, . . . least of all to you, Maurici. It wasn’t me who craved the high life. I didn’t need to have lobster or vintage wine every day. You are the socialites, not me. To indulge your tastes I did what many heads of respectable families do: I went to the most inexhaustible source of revenue. Barcelona’s rich in vice. Silk stockings will sooner or later be obsolete, but the white slave trade will thrive. Ask your son why, Lídia. He can tell you better than I can.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears that couldn’t find their way down. Her voice also trembled. “Maybe it is my fault. I won’t deny it. It’s true I wanted those things, but not at such a high price. Your silence through all these years is very hard to take, Roderic. You’ve pushed me into a corner of your life as if you had sent me into exile. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you.”
For a few seconds no more words were spoken. They had told each other everything there was to tell, and the office seemed too small to hold the three of them. For the first time in the conversation, Maurici referred to the future.
“I won’t judge you, Father. But from now on I don’t want any part in your business or to depend on you in any way.”
“Is that so?” his father quipped. “And what will you do? How do you plan to make a living? You’re not fit for any kind of work!”
“I’m a lawyer. I’ll open a practice.”
“A lawyer! Ha! A lawyer! Don’t make me laugh! You passed the examinations thanks to my connections, otherwise you’d never have graduated. Some lawyer! You better forget it.”
Maurici gave him a serious, distant look—too distant for him to be touched by the scorn or by the truth he recognized in those words. When Roderic’s hilarity subsided, he simply said, “Farewell, Father.”
* * *
Maurici intended to finish up the tasks still pending at the factory and to leave in a week. With Caterina, he’d rented an apartment with a long balcony in the old city, where she planned to run a preschool. One afternoon, when his days at the family home in Passeig de Sant Joan were nearing the end, his mother went to the weekly card game at her friend Adela’s. On her return, she was taken ill with nausea and a fever and had to go to bed. Doro, the maid, helped her undress and tried to reassure her with brandy, hot towels, and a running monologue.
When Maurici came back from the factory, he found her as pale as a ghost. Her forehead was burning. Influenza or a summer cold, he assumed. Doro had sent for the family doctor, who would arrive any minute.
As he was leaving the bedroom, Lídia called him. “Don’t go! Stay with me for a while.”
He took off his coat and tie and sat by the bed, which smelled of cologne. Then he realized it had been years since he’d set foot in his parents’ bedroom. Casting a circular glance, he thought that if Lídia’s taste had prevailed in the rest of the apartment, that room—imposing and bleak—was Roderic’s haven and bore his mark. The wallpaper was a plain, dark blue; the rugs, minimal, leaving most of the cold tiles exposed; the oak bed, brought from his parents’ home, heavy. Above the headboard hung a cross made to the measurements of the Aldabòs’s faith, a timid reminder of a possible afterlife. He couldn’t help but wonder if his mother had been happy in that room, in that bed inherited from the father-in-law to whom she’d never warmed. The dressing room, on the other hand, with its Louis XV furniture; the armoire with the full-length mirror and gold tassels hanging from the door keys; the carefully selected, graceful crystal and porcelain knickknacks; all the sensuous comforts civilization could conceive of, was clearly Lídia’s territory.
Roderic Aldabò returned from work at the usual time: well past nine. As Maurici heard the key turn in the lock, he went to meet him.
“Mother’s not feeling well.”
They exchanged no more words than those that were necessary. Roderic, with a scowl engraved on his face, avoided his son’s eyes. Without taking off his hat, he walked straight to the bedroom.
From the hall, Maurici watched him bend over the pillow, place his hand on his wife’s forehead, and ask in a tone reserved just for her, “Lídia, what’s wrong?”
Five minutes later the doorbell rang. It was Dr. García, a small, plump, bespectacled man in his fifties. The birth of Maurici in that very room had been one of the earliest challenges of his career. Needless to say he’d been the doctor of the Palau family, who deemed him not presentable but highly competent.
With the preoccupied expression characteristic of the medical class, whether the case was serious or not, he listened to the patient’s heart and lungs before examining her tongue, eyeballs, and the skin of her face, neck, hands, arms, and legs. Lídia’s eyes, fixed on him, glowed like torches.
“Mrs. Aldabò, have you drunk from a public fountain lately?”
She looked up at the ceiling, pondering her answer, which came out in a weak voice, “A few days ago I went shopping downtown with Doro. Instead of getting a cab, we walked to see the construction around the old bridge. It was very hot and in one of those narrow streets there was a fountain.”
“Did Doro drink too?”
“I never would have if she hadn’t encouraged me. I’m not used to drinking from fountains as maids do, . . . but she drank so eagerly . . . and she kept saying, ‘Aren’t you thirsty, Madam?’ And it was so hot under the afternoon sun, and the water was so cool . . .”
Dr. García also examined Doro, who showed no symptoms so far. Then he stepped into the office where father and son waited in a state of high tension.
“I’m afraid it’s typhus.”
“What?” Roderic Aldabò’s face was distorted with shock.
“You mean there is a typhus epidemic?” asked Maurici, also stunned by the blow.
“We have one every time there’s hunger and hardship.”
“Hunger and hardship?” Roderic repeated. “Barcelona’s more prosperous than ever. How can hunger and hardship affect my wife?”
“Hardship affects everyone, Mr. Aldabò. Who knows what lives in the sewers of this city besides thousands of rats.”
Maurici’s memory replayed like a phonograph the last conversation with Rita. He could hear the echo of his own voice repeating what he’d read in the papers: that in Barcelona rats outnumbered people. At the time, it was just a meaningless statement—a figure, an abstraction. Since that day, he’d plunged into sewers and smelled them from inside. He’d seen a few rats, big and small. Up close, they looked worse than from a distance.
“This time there are infected waters coming down from the mountains,” Dr. García went on, wiping the sweat off his forehead with a wrinkled handkerchief. “I must be frank with you, it’s a severe case. When the symptoms are so virulent . . . you’d better watch out. It’s highly contagious.”
Roderic moved to the guest room. Maurici, with an air of defeat he’d never shown before, explained to Caterina that his mother was seriously ill and he’d have to postpone the move for a few days, perhaps a few weeks . . . Dr. García had given her less than a month. Father and son took turns going to the factory, so that one of them could stay home monitoring the course of the disease.
The doctor, on his frequent visits, instructed Doro to scrub the bedroom with bleach and change the sheets daily. All the windows remained open. A nurse wearing a mask bathed the patient, rubbed her body with alcohol, and stayed with her at night. Even so, father and son—both alert to her every whisper and breathing—rarely slept. Lídia lost weight—and hair in handfuls, while a smattering of red flowers bloomed on her skin. She refused to eat, but the thirst she’d attempted to quench that hot afternoon constantly revived, like an inexhaustible longing. The water she’d drunk from the fountain had exacerbated rather than extinguished it.
Sometimes her temperature would subside and a wave of euphoria would ripple through the Aldabò home. It was a hallucination. A few hours later the fever climbed with renewed vigor, reclaiming that body contaminated by a rare moment in her life when she’d blended with the people.
The second week inaugurated the phase of mental confusion Dr. García had foretold. In the wee hours she called “Maurici! Maurici!” It was useless for the nurse to try to calm her down. When he went to her, her vacant gaze wandered over his face, “You’re not Maurici.” If Roderic sought to reassure her, she replied in a tone of strange desolation, “Roderic, where’s my son? I want Maurici. I’ve lost my child.” On those few occasions when she recognized him she whispered secretively and in feverish excitement, “Let’s run away to the country!” Or she begged him to play the piano at four in the morning. One night when the nurse dozed off, Lídia drew strength from some deep recess of her being and left her bed. Trailing the sheet like a bridal train, she wandered into her son’s bedroom. In those days it didn’t take much to wake him up. He jumped to his feet in time to catch her before she fell to the floor. As he took her back to her room, she repeated like a naughty child, “Let’s go, Maurici, now that no one can hear us! You are the real Maurici, aren’t you? Not the other one, are you?”
One early morning, while night and day fought the battle of dawn, her breathing became irregular. The two men, alerted by the nurse, rushed to the sickroom. For an instant, she stared at them with the expression of someone who has glimpsed an extra dimension. She turned her head slightly to the oil lamp on the nightstand and said, “Blow it out.” It was the definitive good night.
After mass at Santa Anna’s church and the funeral at the new cemetery in Poble Nou, Roderic and Maurici Aldabò shook hands like automata with the endless line of mourners. Maurici felt as if in a state of weightless levitation, his legs flabby at the knees. Maybe it was he who had died. Despite his ashen complexion, the circles of fatigue under his eyes, and the trails of tears on his cheeks, his face had the vulnerability that makes men beautiful.
As he stood alone in the Palau pantheon, he realized that his father was not only crushed with grief but deprived of the emotional resources to release it. Roderic’s eyes appeared glazed over, his body limp, his pain unable to flow. Maurici felt an impulse to embrace him for the last time, but his father’s gaze froze it. Maurici understood that he blamed him for everything. His mother’s death, instead of bringing them together, had pulled them apart.
* * *
The next Monday when Maurici left the factory, where unattended business had piled up throughout Lídia’s illness, he went to La Mina. It was unlikely he’d find Dr. Miralpeix there, but he wanted to inspect the place and see if somebody could give him information.
When, a long time ago, Proverbs had mentioned La Mina, Maurici hadn’t imagined it as it was: a ramshackle tavern with a front entrance and a side door that opened to a courtyard, where two women picked minuscule fauna from each other’s hair. Inside there was a metallic bar, and ill-assorted tables and benches were scattered everywhere. Beyond the tavern, Maurici saw a larger room under a dome held by columns. The dark, humid stones of the floor were unevenly covered with sawdust. One of the walls was lined with wine casks; the others featured built-in benches with ropes hanging from hooks at either end. The purpose of the ropes eluded him. The architecture of the building betrayed its past as a medieval convent, which had survived as an anachronistic witness to the period when the neighborhood had been the sacred ground of the city. Even though some sunlight squeezed into the narrow street, the inside atmosphere was a murky brew of smoke, sweat, alcoholic breath, and germs.
One man stood up every time a pedestrian tossed a cigarette butt in the street. He picked it up eagerly and buried it in his pocket. When he’d collected a few, he rolled a cigarette and tried to sell it to one of his mates.
The stench and squalor made a strong impact on Maurici’s state of mind, already devastated by his mother’s recent death. He felt faint and it took him a few seconds to stop the objects from spinning around him. When he gathered the strength to face the cave dwellers he identified tubercular men, tattooed sailors with protruding jaws who seemed stuck in a lower rung of the evolutionary ladder, hustlers and rogues flashing knives under their belts, and over-the-hill women clinging to their necks, . . . the debris of the harbor, jail, or syphilis—faces that didn’t know if they were inside or outside and whether it was night or day.
When he asked the bartender for Dr. Miralpeix, he met with a hostile look.
“Nobody’s got a name in here.”
Uneasy about the concentration of jackknives mounting around him, he took a couple of bills from his wallet. Instantly men, women, and specimens of other sexes—not enough among all of them to compile a full set of teeth—swarmed to the summons.
“Tell me who you’re lookin’ for, I’ll find him.”
“What did you lose, honey?”
He gave a description of the abortionist. As he fought off an army of hands prying at his clothes an old woman broke through the crowd, palm held out. Her speech was so slurred Maurici had to cock his ear to make it out.
“Come back six in the mornin’, when they wake ‘em up. They—us—see, we mostly sleep here. Come six, they kick us out. Then you’ll find ‘im . . . some day or other.”
Mumbling his thanks, Maurici tossed out a handful of coins to buy his escape.
* * *
It took him almost a year to find Dr. Miralpeix. He’d lost track of how many days he’d risen at five o’clock; of the winter nights when, fending off desperate hookers and fearing criminal assaults, he’d landed at La Mina around midnight, when drunken fights peaked at the stage of pandemonium. Sooner or later, amidst the parade of nameless ghosts, he’d identify the light frame, the waxy skin, the wilted moustache, the narcotized eyes. Come that moment, he didn’t know what he’d do.
At last he saw him. He saw him one day long after he’d deserted the family home and the factory and had lost all contact with his father. It was a rainy morning. At ten minutes before six, La Mina looked darker than ever. His memory brought back the corridor at La Perla d’Orient and a shiver ran through his body—hard to tell if it was the recollection or the morning frost.
The benches along the walls were packed full. Men and women slumbered sitting up, pressed against each other. Some snored noisily, others muttered fragments of dreams dictated by alcohol. The taut ropes, tied at the hooks, held the torsos up at a forty-five degree angle, while the heads dangled like those of the hanged. The stench of communal sleep was nauseating.
The bartender lit an oil lamp and to the summons of “C’mon, on your feet!” he went around the room unhooking ropes. As soon as the rope slackened, the sleepers tumbled forward like rag dolls, some of them all the way to the floor. Watching them, Maurici forgot why he’d come, until his gaze stumbled on Dr. Miralpeix’s brittle frame bending at the waist. His eyes were still closed. As they blinked open, they roamed around the room. His head bobbed on his chest, his face gave no sign of recognition. His body swung limp on the bench without losing its balance.
He watched his antagonist for a long time. The good doctor was the only customer wearing a coat and tie. The cuffs of his trousers and sleeves were frayed; the black fabric shone unevenly with wear and tear. Curiously, it was he, Maurici, who felt vulnerable and strangely helpless. Other pursuers of Dr. Miralpeix had beaten him to the punch and done his work for him. Giants had become windmills.
And he knew what to do. For the last time, he walked away from La Mina.