IT HAD ALL STARTED, ANA said that evening after dinner, when a newly pregnant client came to her and requested a house for herself, so that she could lie in it and think maternal thoughts. Ana at first thought of it as something of a challenge, because she had never been pregnant. A thorough researcher, Ana went to the library and bookstores and obtained big tomes on pregnancy and childbirth, complete with full-color photographs.
She was fascinated by the thought of a house that grew, month by month, and at the beginning investigated pliable construction materials into which could be pumped air or water. There was even a point at which she envisioned the house as a giant amniotic sac in which the woman could float like a fish in an aquarium. However, like all architects, even of miniature houses, Ana had to reckon with the conservatism and impatience of her client.
She wasn’t going to be pregnant forever, the woman reminded Ana.
So Ana had come up with a bright papier-mâché shell in the shape of a woman with a big belly and huge, wide-spread legs. The entrance was between the legs and the interior was fitted out with a foam mattress covered in rose velvet. There was a little skylight in the belly button, and a tape recorder in the head that played gentle pop music.
“But all that reading about pregnancy and childbirth had done something to me,” said Ana. “I’m thirty-five and I’ve been constructing children’s houses for ten years. Am I never going to have a child of my own?”
“I thought you said you got what you needed from making children happy with their houses?”
“I used to,” said Ana, absently stroking her flat belly. “But all those books awakened deep-seated feelings. Strange maternal feelings. On the streets I sought out pregnant women and stared at them, I haunted maternity clothes shops, I even arranged with a doctor friend of mine to be present at a birth in the hospital.”
“I think you should just go ahead and have a child,” I said.
“I couldn’t raise a child alone.”
“Of course you can. My mother raised us alone. Not that we turned out very well, but still.”
“I don’t want to raise a child alone.”
“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me, Ana.”
“You’d be perfect, Cassandra. Intelligent, cultured, humorous and active.”
“You skipped warm, accepting and reliable. Probably because you know me.”
“The point is, I don’t know anybody else I could possibly consider.”
“Well, at least that takes it out of the realm of the personal. I don’t have to worry that it’s only me who will do.”
Ana had one of her sudden fits of temper. They always came upon her like an allergic reaction. Her pale face turned blazing red, her dark eyes grew enormous and hard. “Yes, laugh at me, that’s right. I’m trying to tell you something important, but just go ahead, laugh at me!”
“Ana, Ana, calm down. I just meant—”
“Yes, I know exactly what you meant. You don’t want to have anything to do with me!” she wailed. “And you’re my one hope.”
“Ana,” I said. “You’re not even attracted to me.”
As suddenly as it had begun her temper tantrum abated. She got up and cleared off the table. “My god,” she said. “You know, that’s true.”
She looked me over critically. “Especially with that haircut.”
I slept in the next morning and was awakened by an energetic-sounding Frankie, who told me that Ben had agreed to meet her at a restaurant in the Plaça Reial at one o’clock. If I could come then too and order myself lunch, Frankie would signal me when the time was right to join them. All she wanted was my presence at the table, she emphasized. Ben was always better behaved when there were other people around.
I supposed Frankie had chosen the Plaça Reial because it was such an obvious tourist spot. What the tourists rarely realized was that the formal plaza with its arcades and palms, its fountain of the Three Graces in the center, was a hang-out for drug dealers and pickpockets. There used to be a Thieves Market in the corner of the plaza but the police had put a stop to it by parking their own van there. Still, the square was still not a place to go by yourself at night.
During the day it was filled with tourists, who congregated especially at the outdoor bars and restaurants facing the sun. I didn’t see either Ben or Frankie so I sat down at an empty table and took out my notebook and my copy of La Grande y su hija.
I was pleased that I was making progress on Cristobel’s adventures even in the midst of my own. At this rate I would be done with the translation before my deadline and out of London, with my three thousand dollars from Frankie, before the end of May. I had in mind to visit friends in Eastern Europe and see how they were surviving the political changes of recent years. It was time to brush up on my Romanian, which I hadn’t had much use for since a rather uncomfortable incident in Bucharest with a black marketeer and a member of the secret police.
Thus occupied with dreamy thoughts I almost didn’t notice Ben cross the plaza and take a table right next to me. Bugger. Would this be too close? Frankie could hardly remark, Oh look, there’s my friend Cassandra, about a woman seated right next to them. But there was nothing to be done about it. I buried my face behind the jungle green nakedness of the novel and hoped for the best.
Ben looked as out of place as I felt. He was wearing jeans again and a striped Oxford shirt, but somehow he looked less American than he had yesterday at the Parc Güell. Perhaps it was just the proximity to real Americans. Perhaps it was the gold hoop in his ear or the blue ostrich leather boots. If Frankie had chosen this place because she thought we’d blend in, she was mistaken.
The waiter came over. “Señor?”
I looked around and realized he was talking to me. I quickly ordered the menu of the day. I began with an ensalada de tomates, followed by a tortilla español and then roast chicken. Afterwards I’d have a flan perhaps, and coffee. I thought I might need all three courses if Frankie didn’t show up soon.
Even though we were outside, the noise among the tables was deafening. Maybe there was a tour group here enjoying a taste of the real Barcelona. Women in pantsuits with strong midwestern accents and pink and blue hair talked about how they just loved this Gaudy architecture, while their husbands discussed bullfights and how many miles they’d covered that day. Young couples carrying The Rough Guide to Europe or Frommer’s Spain on $40 a Day (hadn’t it once been five dollars a day?) argued about whether they could fit in Seville before Madrid or whether two days in Granada was too much.
I read a few pages of La Grande but I couldn’t help eavesdropping on the conversation of two college-aged women nearby. They had obviously just met and were trading horror stories about the French.
“They might as well have put their hands over their ears when I asked them a question. It was that blatant!”
“You’d think they thought of French as some kind of sacred holy language. It’s just a language, for pete’s sake.”
“Boy, I never was so glad to get out of a country in my life. I like Barcelona. The Spanish seem really friendly.”
“Oh, I think so too. I met the cutest guy at my hotel. He wanted to talk English with me.”
Then a most awkward thing happened.
“Isn’t that a great novel?”
I jumped. It was Ben, smiling disarmingly and pointing to the book in my hand.
I put on my best Irish accent. “Well and it’s certainly a vivid picture of life in South America today. From a woman’s point of view of course.”
“That’s what I thought,” Ben said, leaning closer. “I mean, we’ve been hearing from Garcia Márquez and Donoso and Vargas Llosa for years. But what about the women?”
Oh god, he was a feminist type of guy. And he knew about South American writers.
“May I join you?” he said, convinced that we had a lot in common. “I’m waiting for a friend, but she hasn’t shown up yet. I can’t stand eating by myself, it really makes me lose my appetite, especially in a place like this.”
Curiosity has always been my downfall. I invited Ben to sit down with a wave of my hand. Frankie would just have to lump it.
“I’m Hamilton Kincaid,” he said, holding out a firm brown hand. “Originally from New York, but I’ve been living in Barcelona for the last few years.” He had blue eyes and a couple of days’ growth of blond beard.
If he wanted to bluff it so could I. “Brigid O’Shaughnessy,” I said. “From Dublin.”
“That name sounds familiar somehow,” he said.
“I’m a journalist.”
“I don’t read newspapers much,” he apologized. “I try to keep up with contemporary fiction—Eco, Kundera, the Latin Americans, naturally—but I always feel I’m behind. Of course I try to read literature in the original and that takes a bit longer.”
“What do you do?” I asked him. Besides try to impress girls like me?
“Oh, I play a little music. Saxophone.”
Dilettante. I smiled charmingly. “So you think you’ve been stood up?”
“She said one and it’s one-thirty. But then my friend is— how shall I put it?—something of a free spirit.”
Strange that Frankie had said the same about him. Just a couple of free spirits with hidden agendas.
“Is she Spanish?”
“No, she’s another American. It’s her first visit to Spain.”
“Oh dear, and you’ve been cajoled into playing tour guide.”
“Not exactly,” Ben sighed, and broke off a piece of bread. “I just met her yesterday. I never would have guessed.”
“Guessed what?”
“That she was transsexual…. Do you know any transsexuals?”
Now that you mention it, I guess I did. A dozen details about Frankie flashed through my head and reorganized themselves.
Ben went on quickly. “Not that I’m judgmental. People are different. I’m gay for instance.”
He misinterpreted my stunned silence and apologized. “I’m sorry. Being from Ireland, you’re probably not used to talking about homosexuals, much less transsexuals.”
“You’d be surprised,” I managed with a wan smile. “We Catholics love to dress up.”
The waiter brought our salads over and I had another surprise. Ben spoke to him in quite credible Catalan. There was something I didn’t understand going on here. If Ben had only recently arrived from San Francisco, how on earth could he have picked up Catalan? Spanish he might have studied at school. But Catalan?
“So, Brigid,” he said, pouring me a glass of wine from the carafe. “What brings you to Barcelona?”
I told him that I was doing a piece for the Irish Times on how Barcelona was preparing for the 1992 Olympic Games, while all the time my mind was reeling in confusion.
If Frankie was a transsexual then Ben could hardly be her ex-husband.
Unless Ben had married Frankie thinking she was a woman.
Perhaps Frankie was blackmailing Ben, threatening to tell his family that he’d been married to a transsexual.
But if Ben were gay why would he have married Frankie in the first place?
Why had Ben said he only met Frankie yesterday?
And just where was Frankie anyway?
Our first course was taken away and our second course and our third course put before us, but still there was no sign of Frankie. It was now two o’clock and Ben was telling me about how he’d come to Barcelona because of the jazz scene. Some of the best musicians in Europe had congregated here, at places like the Harlem Club and the Cova del Drac.
The more details he gave the more worried I got. It sounded more and more as if he really did live in Barcelona. And if he lived in Barcelona and lived at La Pedrera, then it was likely that High Tops, Delilah and April Schauer were visiting him and not the other way around.
“I keep thinking you look familiar,” I finally said. “And now I remember where I saw you. Yesterday, at the Parc Güell. You were with two women and a little girl.”
Ben shot me a rather strange look, as if it had occurred to him for the first time that he had reason to be on guard with a stranger. “Yes,” he said finally. “I usually go there around this time of day. I like to eat my lunch outside. It’s a place I showed to some friends who are visiting. I usually meet them there around this time—”
He broke off suddenly, and stared at me.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I’ve just remembered something.”
He threw down a thousand pesetas and rushed across the square.
I threw down another thousand and followed him. The thought had probably come to both of us simultaneously that if Frankie wasn’t here, she might well be at the Parc Güell. Only Ben knew why.
He was nowhere to be seen when I came dashing out of the Plaça Reial onto the Ramblas. I quickly hailed a cab. Would I get there before him, and if so, what would I find?
Twenty minutes later I arrived at the Parc Güell and rushed breathlessly through the portals, up past the blue lizard fountain to the plaza supported on wide pillars. There was no sign of Frankie, no sign either of High Tops, Delilah and April. I came back down the stairs and looked between the pillars. Nothing.
It was a warm afternoon and I had gotten myself in a sweat with my haste and alarm. I’d been trying to remember the pronouns April and High Tops had used when talking yesterday. When they’d talked about being worried they’d said “he,” hadn’t they? But when Ben had joined them they’d talked about a “she.” Ben had said “she” in the restaurant.
I set off along the Passeig de las Palmeras, up the road that wound itself around the hillside. Unlike the Doric columns that supported the plaza, the columns underneath me now were a forest of wildly tilted trees, encrusted with dusty brown stones. The crazy thing about Gaudí was that his structures were so absolutely sound, perfect parabolas capable of bearing enormous weight, and yet his surfaces were so irregular. They gave the appearance of being natural, of having been part of the planet for millennia, and at the same time looked completely new, completely unlike anything you’d seen before.
Above the parabolic brown forest the road progressed in a stately, if precipitous, fashion around the curve of the spring green hill. At regular intervals were vast columns that held up nothing but the sky, rocks bleached a pinkish brown, great columns that resembled women marching slowly upwards with gargantuan baskets of fruits and vegetables on their heads, or a religious procession. The Festival of the Cacti, one could almost call it, for from the planters balanced on the columns spewed blades and spears, green-gray, desert-dry.
There were grandmothers in black with children, resting on the benches set into the railing along the edge of the road, the railing airily pieced together from sharp rocks; there were tourists sweating with cameras and guidebooks, in sturdy shoes and sleeveless shirts. Finally I reached the top of the hill and, turning a corner, saw the three of them. April, High Tops and Delilah were seated on a bench in the shade. Even from a distance I could see that High Tops looked shaken, April serene and Delilah merely apathetic and tired. I was wondering whether to go up to them and say something (could I possibly remind April that she’d once rubbed my soles?), when I heard the sound of running behind me.
“You!” said Ben, astonished. Then he saw them ahead of us off the road.
“Hamilton,” said April dramatically. “You’ll never guess what almost happened!”
“Where have you been, Hamilton?” asked High Tops. “He never would have tried anything if you had been here.”
Hamilton shook his head irritably.
“This is Brigid O’Shaughnessy,” he said. “And I think she knows more than she’s let on.”
“Well, actually,” I said, “I think I’m more in the dark than any of you.”
“Let’s begin at the beginning,” April said. “I’m April Schauer.”
“I know,” I said. “You massaged my feet once.”
“I did?” She seemed pleased. “You remembered me from that?”
“April,” High Tops said. “This woman’s name is not Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Not unless mine is Sam Spade.”
“I’m Cassandra Reilly,” I admitted. “And who are you?”
“Me?” she said, as if surprised I had to ask. “I’m Ben.”