The following morning we met up in the San Marcos, a café on the high street in Sarrià that we convert into a kind of second office in winter, because the central heating doesn’t work in our own office and we freeze to death. After everything that had happened, we decided it would be best not to go to the office for a few days and thus avoid bumping into the mossos. That way, we’d not have to give explanations or answer any questions.
“Remember we know nothing and have never seen the inside of Brian’s flat,” said Borja, chewing on his Danish pastry.
“What do you mean?”
“From now on we forget this whole business and concentrate on the Teresa Solana investigation.”
“Our next move being…”
“To ring Mariona. She will know which door we should be knocking on.”
Mariona Castany was undoubtedly our shortest route to finding a centre to fit our client’s needs, even though I felt it unlikely my brother’s friend would be a fan of alternative therapies and esoteric medication. Mariona was more one for martinis, antidepressants and plastic surgeons – in that order, I think – although she didn’t have much use for the last one. Unlike many of her friends, who looked like failed experiments performed by Dr Frankenstein’s most inept apprentice, Mariona had yet to have recourse to Botox or silicone lips, even if everyone knew that her adolescent breasts were the fruit of the endeavours of the city’s most prestigious plastic surgeon.
Borja phoned Mariona from the San Marcos to tell her we needed her help and suggest meeting up.
“Ah, this morning is rather difficult,” she replied. “I’m just leaving the house. And this afternoon I have to visit a friend.”
“Don’t you worry,” said Borja. “Whenever it suits you. You choose a day.”
“My friend lives on Santaló. We could meet there today in the Gimlet for drinks before dinner.”
“Eight o’clock, usual table?”
“Perfect. See you soon, dear.”
“Goodbye, my lovely.”
Mariona is one of the richest, most illustrious women in Barcelona. She is sixty-seven, the age our mother would be if she were still with us, though you would never have guessed. When Borja discovered she’d attended a school in Santander as a child, he immediately used the information to tell her she and his imaginary mother, a Sáez de Astorga, had studied together in the same boarding school and had even been friends. Mariona swallowed that and took Borja under her wing, or rather, the character he had invented for himself: the heir with aristocratic names who’d lost his inheritance because of foul play by the Revenue. I sometimes think Mariona must know the truth by now because she is nobody’s fool, but I have the impression she finds his little game amusing and laps up all his extravagant tales. Borja, on the other hand, behaves towards her with the exquisite manners of a nephew out of a Victorian novel, and Mariona, a widow with two daughters she can’t stand and no nephew fawning on her, lets my brother benefit from all her contacts.
Borja announced he had business to see to (that is, Merche) and had to be off. I went home and, on the way, stopped at the supermarket to buy powder for the washing machine, which we’d run out of. When I reached our flat, my mother-in-law was in the kitchen, at the ready in her apron, but, as she’d not started cooking lunch, I told her not to bother because Montse and I would have lunch out. My wife and I were worried, because we’d received a letter from Arnau’s school saying he was having “problems”.
Gràcia is full of small restaurants that offer decent, cheap set lunches. Even so, the crisis meant that lots of people had renewed the tradition of going home for lunch or taking sandwiches to work, and most places were empty. The spectacle of empty tables and idle waiters was depressing, and in the end we chose a restaurant on Verdi that had a couple of customers and a spark of life. Even so, the waiters were on the slow side and we had to rush off without eating our puddings so as not to be late for our meeting.
We were breathless and panting when we reached the school at one minute to three. We hardly had time to gather ourselves together, because Arnau’s teacher arrived punctually on the hour, gave each of us a couple of kisses and asked us to accompany her to the staffroom.
“I’m very worried about Arnau,” she declared in the tone of voice that a doctor who has discovered you have an incurable disease might use.
She read out a long report that Montse and I suffered in silence. According to the teacher, Arnau was a fidgety child (she actually used the word “hyperactive”) who found it hard to concentrate because he spent the whole time chatting to his friends and winding the girls up. His interest in football, and in Barça in particular, was verging on an obsession, she added, as you could see at playtime when he found it impossible to interact with the girls because all he ever wanted to do was play football.
“You must realize that if Arnau continues in this vein he will be facing failure in life,” she warned, looking as severe as a judge delivering a death sentence.
Arnau is five years old. At home he is a loving, communicative child, as they say nowadays, and, like most kids his age, rather mischievous. At the annual meet-the-teachers session with the other parents at the start of term, the teacher had lectured us on the dangers of television, video games, football and Barbie dolls, that, according to her, transformed girls into anorexic adolescents first, and sex objects second. At the time, Montse and I felt she’d laid it on rather thickly, but the majority of parents were in agreement and applauded.
“But what is Arnau doing exactly? Does he hit other children? Does he break things? Does he show a lack of respect towards you?” I asked.
“He never sits still and spends the whole time chatting. And sometimes uses swear words,” said the schoolmistress in a hushed voice. “Obviously, children normally pick up swear words at home…” she added pitilessly.
I looked down, shamefaced, and Montse remained silent. I initially interpreted her silence as an act of contrition, as implicit acceptance that we had failed as parents and had no idea how to bring up our son. I was wrong. When I looked up and saw the expression on my wife’s face, I realized Montse was so angry that her silence was caused by the effort she was making to stop herself going for the teacher’s jugular.
“So what do you suggest?” Montse asked curtly, not returning the smile of commiseration the teacher had given us when she finished her little speech.
Her advice was to ban Arnau from playing football and to give him a course of homeopathic medication. Many children in the class are already taking some, she said. The other option was to start on Bach flower remedies that worked extremely well.
I’d been shocked to hear that Arnau ran the risk of becoming an illiterate, foul-mouthed, male chauvinist piglet, and was at a loss for words. Montse, who is feistier, thanked the teacher dryly and reminded her she was a professional psychologist and that, in her view, Arnau’s behaviour wasn’t abnormal in the slightest. In any case, she would take her remarks on board, she added, though she didn’t feel it necessary either to have recourse to medication or to ban him from playing football.
“You are his parents. You must make these decisions,” said the teacher, raising her eyebrows, with a knowing smile that meant we were to blame for Arnau’s problems and she was washing her hands of the whole business.
“Indeed,” Montse retorted as she got up. “My husband and I will do whatever we think necessary. Thank you for your concern.”
“That’s a stupid teacher, if ever there was one!” Montse grunted as soon as we were outside the school gates.
“Yes, I do think she was exaggerating rather…”
“What does she mean when she says Arnau is hyperactive because he likes playing football? He’s only five years old, for Christ’s sake!”
“Anyway, I think he’s too young to start taking pills…”
“Forget it! I know my son. There’s nothing wrong with him.” Montse was beside herself. I suggested going for a coffee, although what my wife needed right then was a herbal infusion. We sat at a small café terrace and, while we were waiting to order, Montse asked me for a cigarette. I took out a packet and gave her one, but said nothing. She’s been trying to kick the habit for three years, and that was her first in five days.
“The fact is,” she explained after a couple of drags had calmed her down, “leftist teachers now think it’s trendy to recommend homeopathy or Bach flower remedies.”
“I thought you were all for that kind of thing…”
“Not any more. Besides, you shouldn’t experiment on kids,” she asserted as she savoured her sinful cigarette.
I’d suspected for some time that my wife was beginning to doubt the effectiveness of some of the so-called alternative therapies, from when some children in the school who had bronchitis developed pneumonia after their parents put their trust in some esoteric juice or other. Montse was also quite against the idea that vaccinations were simply an evil conspiracy by the pharmaceutical companies to boost their profits, and was worried by the tendency of her radical acquaintances to refuse to give permission for their children to be vaccinated and hand them homeopathic rather than antipyretic pills when they got a temperature.
“There’s only one way to keep a kid quiet in class, and that’s fear,” she continued. “That’s why priests and nuns are so good at keeping order.”
“So what should we do? Change Arnau to another school?”
“No, it’s almost the end of term and they say the teacher he’ll have next year isn’t so dopey. Anyway, I don’t think there’s a single school in Barcelona that doesn’t have at least one specimen of that kind.”
“What are you getting at now?”
“They have a thing about authority and don’t know how to instil discipline. On the one hand, they are against punishment and expect kids in kindergarten to behave like little adults. When they realize they can’t keep control halfway through the year, they start blaming television or parents who don’t spend enough time with their children…”
“I don’t think they’re so wide of the mark in that respect,” I retorted. “Arnau does watch too much TV. In my day —”
“Exactly, that’s what they always say: in our day we did this or didn’t do that. That old refrain about things not being what they used to be.”
“We all fall for that…”
“But the world has changed and you can’t bring up kids nowadays trying to tell them that the TV and video games don’t exist, as the way to get them interested in books. And whatever they say, kids today are much more aware.”
“I agree.”
The waiter came and put the bill on the table.
“Are you missing your old job?” I asked as I searched for my wallet. “It’s been almost two years since you…”
“Not at all, and even less so after that little chat with Arnau’s teacher!”
In the days when I was still earning my bread in a bank, before Pep returned to Barcelona transformed into Borja, Monte worked as a school counsellor thanks to her degree in psychology. She too was bored with her job, and, as soon as she could, she did what I had done and changed her lifestyle. She and some friends opened up the Alternative Centre for Holistic Well-being in Gràcia, close to the plaça de la Virreina where, apart from selling beauty treatments using organic concoctions, they provided anti-smoking group therapy and yoga and meditation courses.
“I must be off. I have a session,” she said, looking at her watch and putting out her cigarette.
“I expect I’ll be back late tonight. We’re going for a drink with that girlfriend of Borja’s.”
“Merche?” she scowled.
“No, Mariona Castany. It’s to do with our new case.”
“Your partner’s affair with Lola will end in disaster. You do realize that, don’t you?” she sighed.
“Don’t be such a spoilsport.”