Golden Earrings (48 page)

I expected that I would be accused of the crime, and sat for a while in a chair, staring at the body. No doubt I would be slowly garrotted for my act.

But as time passed, my will, or perhaps the desire not to die at somebody else’s hand, forced me to my feet. I walked to the wardrobe and put on one of Salazar’s suits, flinching at the smell of hair oil and sweat that permeated the fabric. I added a hat, shoes with two pairs of socks, and a short overcoat. My disguise was so poorly assembled that I should have been stopped in the foyer, but no one noticed me when I walked past.

No one paid any attention to me on the street either; they were too absorbed in the Nationalist soldiers’ victory parades or
in looting the houses of those who had fled. I walked onwards as if protected by some angelic force that had made me invisible.

When I reached the outskirts of the city, I found my van where I had left it. I brushed off the rubble and pulled away the blankets. To my amazement, the engine started. I filled the tank with the jerry can of petrol I had saved for our escape, pumped up the tyres and drove out of Barcelona. I expected at any turn to be stopped by a patrol, but there were no barriers to my escape. I was skilled at driving at night without lights and I had become an expert at dodging bombers. I kept driving until I reached the border. The French had closed it, unable to cope with the thousands of refugees who had fled to their country. It was guarded by Senegalese battalions armed with machine guns. But I was a ghost and ghosts can go where they please. I left my van at the border and slipped across into the mountains undetected.

I managed to make contact with el Ruso, who had remained in Paris after retiring from show business. He spoke to a government contact in Perpignan who in turn sent his official car to collect me. I was given a change of clothes, and was relieved to burn Salazar’s suit, but not before I emptied the pockets and carefully poured the soil I had collected in the mountains into a handkerchief. The soil of Spain was all I had left of my home.

W
hen he’d finished his story, Ramón stared at his hands for a long time before speaking again.

‘I too fled to Paris after the Republic collapsed, but Celestina didn’t stay in the city long. She was shunned by the Spanish émigré community, who, thanks to Evelina Montella, believed that she had betrayed Xavier and had worked as a spy for the Nationalists. All sorts of people accused my sister of denouncing their relatives. Even some of the patients she had rescued from Vallcarca Hospital turned on her, convinced that she must have used them as a cover in some way.

‘My sister tried many times to contact Evelina Montella to explain what had happened, but in the end she saw it was easier for everybody if she left France for the United States. You see, Celestina believed that she had caused Xavier Montella’s death and she loathed herself for it, even though she had revealed his whereabouts in order to save his family and their child.

‘It was only in Paris that I learned that el senyor Pinto and Xavier Montella were the same man; and that my sister had loved one of the greatest heroes of the Republican cause.’

‘The benefits of hindsight,’ I said sympathetically. ‘I’ve learned a lot about that myself lately.’

Ramón looked at me sympathetically. ‘You’re lucky you’ve learned that lesson so young,’ he said. ‘Self-righteousness is the greatest squanderer of time … time you will never get back.’

His words gave me an insight into a deep sense of regret that was belied by Ramón’s loud clothes and flashy apartment.

‘What did your sister do in the United States?’ I asked him.

‘She danced in flamenco bars and gave private lessons to movie stars. She made herself into a new person — but she kept to herself and lived alone. She never saw her gypsy clan again, although she set up a trust fund for them. She wrote to me prolifically, which enabled me to piece together what had happened during the years we were separated. I hated myself for being so stupidly stubborn. She was still my sister and I had always loved her, but I’d let my pride cloud my judgement about her.’

‘Yes, I know that mistake too,’ I told him.

‘In one letter she mentioned that she was experiencing pain in her lower abdomen.
A wound I received in the war playing up
, she wrote. After that, I didn’t hear from her for months. Then one night she turned up on my doorstep. “I’ve come back to Paris,” she announced. Her eyes had retained their hypnotic beauty and she still held herself proudly, like a dancer, but her legendary energy was no longer there. I knew straight away that something was wrong. She told me that the pain in her side wasn’t an old war wound at all; it was caused by the kidney disease she had contracted due to the deprivations she had suffered as a child. Kidney disease was common among the gypsies and the poor of Barcelona.’

My heart pinched. La Rusa must have been the most misunderstood woman in the world.

‘“The doctors can’t help me,” Celestina told me matter-of-factly. “So I’ve come to a city where I was once happy in order to die.”

‘The money Xavier had moved to a Paris bank account for her had all gone into the trust fund for her clan, but she was
under the impression that she still had millions of dollars. In truth, all her funds in Spanish banks had been seized. There was only her apartment in Paris left. So I let her believe she was still a rich woman while I took care of the bills.’

Ramón sucked in a breath. The antagonism he had initially shown towards me had dissipated. I knew he was telling me what was in his heart.

‘My sister did not bother anyone in the Spanish émigré community. Thirteen years had passed since the end of the war; those who saw her in the street either no longer recognised her or decided to ignore her. She did not attempt to contact Evelina Montella again either, but she had one dying wish … She showed me an article from a dance magazine about the ballerina Julieta Olivero, her daughter. She was one of the youngest students ever to be accepted as a
quadrille
in the Paris Opera Ballet.’

Ramón’s face turned dark as a painful memory came back to him. ‘Although she was weak, Celestina dressed beautifully for the opening of
Swan Lake
in a satin ball gown with a tulle scarf over her hair. “You look like an Indian princess,” I told her as I led her to the box I had chosen especially to stay out of sight of Evelina and her husband Gaspar, whom I knew would be there. What a delight it was to see the glow on Celestina’s face as she watched her daughter dance. She almost became young and well again before my eyes. After the performance, my sister seemed at peace. “Now I’ve seen her, I can die without sadness,” she told me. “I was right to try to save her. Xavier would have been so proud. She is beautiful.”

‘In the foyer, as we were leaving, Celestina caught sight of Evelina and Gaspar. Julieta came out to greet them. Celestina hesitated, and for a moment it seemed to me that she wanted to approach them. But then her face clouded and she turned to me with tears in her eyes. “Come on, Ramón,” she said. “Let’s go.”

‘When Celestina began to seriously deteriorate, I moved her from her apartment to mine, and brought all her clothes and
furniture with her so that she would be surrounded by things she had once loved. The disease and pain made her mind fragile. With nothing ahead of her but suffering that morphia would not be able to completely deaden, she decided to take her life so as not to be a burden to me.’ Ramón shook his head and covered his eyes. ‘The stupid thing is … she seemed much better that week. She didn’t show any signs of pain. I didn’t realise she was rallying her strength to end her life.

‘On the day she had decided to leave this world, I woke to find that she had prepared for me an elegant breakfast of croissants, fruit and coffee on her finest china. She hadn’t been well enough to do anything like that in a while. “I wish I’d had a lifetime to spoil you, dear brother, as you used to spoil me,” she told me. “But these last few months have been the most wonderful of my life. Don’t worry about anything; everything has been taken care of.”

‘I thought that she was talking about the fortune she thought she had in the bank and willed to me after her death. I had no inkling she was referring to her decision to die that day. I left her with kisses and a promise to cook her
paella
that evening. But when I returned to the apartment, it was dark and she wasn’t in her room. Then two policemen arrived to tell me about the “accident”. But it wasn’t an accident, of course … She chose a method she knew there would be no coming back from — no stomach pumping, no resuscitation. And a spot where the trains travel too quickly for even the alertest driver to stop.’

Ramón fell quiet. Then he placed his hand to his face and began to cry. It was terrible to watch his bitter tears. I wanted to cry with him, but I couldn’t. I had to explain that he’d been as wrong about Mamie as he’d once been about his sister. He’d judged her too quickly.

‘Ramón,’ I said, ‘Mamie didn’t know.
She didn’t know
. She truly believed that Celestina had denounced Xavier maliciously. Why didn’t you tell her — even after your sister’s death? Why
didn’t you settle the record then? Mamie would have been devastated that she had falsely accused your sister, but at least she wouldn’t have gone through her life cursing the woman who had once been her friend, who had loved her brother, who had … borne her child.’

Ramón looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. ‘I was angry and full of hate,’ he said. ‘Yes, I could have told Evelina Montella the truth, but I wanted revenge.’

I shook my head. ‘Why was it revenge
not
to tell her? Imagine how she would have felt to know that the woman she had accused of murder had actually saved her life? And the life of her family?’

Ramón sat back and closed his eyes. ‘It was because of what I had learned after Celestina’s death from a former Spanish criminal that made me decide to keep it a secret.’

I waited for Ramón to explain. Then he uttered something that rattled me completely.

‘I thought it a fitting revenge that the person who had really betrayed Xavier … was the woman Evelina Montella sheltered under her roof.’

I paced the courtyard for some time before I found the courage to knock on Conchita’s door. I wasn’t sure if I could go through with this conversation. But I decided that responsibility didn’t diminish with age, especially when I considered the enormity of what Conchita had done to my family.

When Ramón had explained Conchita’s betrayal, my initial urge was to go straight to Mamie to tell her the truth about her ‘delicate’ sister-in-law. But once my anger and excitement wore off, I knew that Mamie was too fragile to cope with such a revelation. Her heart was still weak, and the shock of the truth could be fatal. I had to protect Mamie at all costs.

Conchita must have sensed a change in my manner towards her. After she had invited me inside, she kept glancing at the
photographs of her deceased second husband and twins, as if to warn me that she was frail and had experienced a terrible tragedy.

There was so much that was unknown about this woman. She had pushed Xavier away so they wouldn’t have more children, but she had borne twins to another man. Why? To keep his love? Who knew? When I studied her, I no longer saw an eccentric old lady but the woman Margarida had described: ‘A black hole … a drama queen who wants attention and wants everyone to be responsible for her.’ This woman, whom I had always felt sorry for, had betrayed Mamie, deceived her and then used her!

‘Feliu came to visit Mamie at the hospital after her surgery,’ I said.

Conchita shrugged as if the news was of no consequence to her, but her face stiffened. ‘He never loved me, that child. He never responded to me. Not like the twins …’ She turned towards the photographs of her dead children and wiped a tear from her eyes.

I wasn’t going to let her use that piece of manipulation on me again.

‘Does he avoid contact with you because he knows that you, not la Rusa, betrayed his father?’

Ramón had explained to me that when it seemed certain that the Republic was going to lose the war in Spain, Conchita had attempted to make contact with her father through his friends in the Falange. She had hoped for a reconciliation with her family if she shunned the Montellas.

Conchita’s eyes flashed at me. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about!’ she said. ‘From whom did you hear such lies? You have wounded me deeply by believing them!’

‘You offered information you had overheard about Xavier’s intelligence work to the Nationalists in order to get back on side with your father,’ I said. ‘You knew the night that la Rusa came
to collect you all that you were going to be arrested. You had telephoned your father’s friend, Salazar. That’s why you didn’t bother dressing properly for an evacuation. You and Feliu weren’t even put in prison.’

Conchita cast me a look of contempt, but I knew what I was saying was correct. I could see it in her eyes.

‘Salazar was grateful for your information, but your father still didn’t want you back,’ I went on. ‘That terrified you. Not only were you a traitor to the Republic and the Montellas with no place to go, but you were also a potential target of Nationalist extremists because you were Xavier Montella’s widow. Salazar could protect you against official prosecution but not against individual vendettas. You had no choice but to cling to Mamie to save you. You had already arranged with Salazar to let you escape to France. He had his own reasons for convincing la Rusa that she had betrayed Xavier, but the truth was that the information she gave made no difference to Xavier’s fate — that had already been sealed by you!’

Conchita’s mouth pinched into a narrow line. I thought she was going to deny my accusations, but to my surprise she stood up and shouted at me.

‘So what if I did, you prissy little ballerina? How dare you sit there with your serious face and point the finger at me! What would you know about war? What would you know about survival? You know nothing!’

She walked over to the pictures of her children and second husband and placed them face down before turning back to me. It was an odd gesture: as if she didn’t want them to hear what she was about to say.

‘The Montellas ruined my life!’ she continued. ‘Do you think Xavier Montella was the only man who wanted to marry me? I was the greatest beauty in Barcelona. My parents arranged our marriage thinking I would have a privileged existence for the rest of my life. Well, that was Xavier’s first deception. I despised
him for his foolish talk about equality and a better life for the masses. What about
my
life? What about
my
birthright?’

I stared at her in disbelief. Everything Margarida had said about her was true. She was beautiful on the surface, but a black hole inside. And she had sucked everyone into her vortex.

‘You’ll never know what a great family the Montellas were … their wealth, their standing in society,’ Conchita continued. ‘Xavier threw all that away as if it were nothing. He was the family’s heir! He had responsibilities. I was a fool to have married him. The Montellas brought shame on me — their stupid liberal ideas ruined my life. It’s only right that Evelina Montella should have made it up to me. She
should
be responsible for taking care of me!’

When she saw that I was too lost for words to respond, Conchita sat down. ‘All that happened long ago,’ she said with a wave of her hand. ‘It no longer concerns me.’

It shocked me even more that she felt no remorse for what she had done. Xavier had been Feliu’s father! And for the first time I understood how she truly saw Mamie — not as her friend, not as her sister-in-law, but as her servant. Poor Mamie. I could never tell her what Conchita had done … how could Mamie ever reconcile herself to that? Ramón had been right: this was the most terrible revenge of all.

‘So,’ said Conchita, folding her hands in her lap, ‘I suppose you intend to tell Evelina now and have me thrown out.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not going to tell her — for her sake not for yours. But I won’t let you suck her into your little tricks any more. You can pay your own way from now on. As far as I’m concerned you are no longer a part of this family.’