The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman (34 page)

T
hat morning, after his unexpected dose of unbridled passion, Marlow Craftsman was munching on bread rolls with olive oil, tomato, and ham in the tiled courtyard of the charming little hotel when Atticus arrived in last night's clothes, having not slept a wink, with raw fingertips, a throat like sandpaper, and messy hair. Atticus asked for a glass of tap water and sat down opposite his father at the table for two.

They had always gotten along well. Perhaps in contrast to his brother, Holden, the rebel, who had never bent to paternal authority and always did what he liked, Marlow and Atticus knew each other so well that a glance was enough to understand what the other was thinking at any moment.

“Business is business,” said Marlow. “We're not an NGO.”

“But, Father—”

“We've already lost a lot of money with
Librarte.
”

“We wouldn't have lost so much if we hadn't been robbed,” protested Atticus. “Give us a loan,” he pleaded, as if he too was part of the disaster.

“With what guarantees, Atticus?” replied Marlow. “
Librarte
has no readers, no advertisers, no name for itself, nothing.”

“But it will. You'll see.”

Marlow shook his head and swallowed half a bread roll. Oil ran down from the corners of his mouth. After sitting in silence for a few seconds, Atticus had an idea. While his father devoured his breakfast, he drew up a plan in his head that would help save the magazine and its staff from ruin. He would lead the project himself if necessary.
Librarte
would relaunch, would be reborn from its ashes, like a phoenix, thanks to Remedios Heredia, her granddaughter, Soleá, and Hemingway himself.

“Okay,” he spoke up. “You want guarantees? I'll give you guarantees!”

He pushed his chair back, got up from the table, and, driven by hot-blooded fury, grabbed his father by the arm, dragged him out of the hotel, led him through the narrow streets, and stopped in front of the door to the Heredias' house.

He knocked loudly. They waited.

The family was spread out among various houses in Sacromonte. Some had found places to sleep on sofas or mats, in hammocks or shared beds, others were still in Dolores's cave, passed out on the floor, and still others were sleeping soundly in the backs of their trucks. The only person who was awake at noon that day was Remedios, wearing her housecoat and an apron spotted with tomato, her gray hair up in a bun, her face clean, her movements brisk from all that yoga, and with a smile showing off her gold teeth, ready to face a day of salt cod and potatoes, a collective hangover, and the retelling of old stories.

She wasn't ready, however, for the surprise of being confronted by Marlow's blank face and Atticus's excitement. As soon as he saw her, Atticus threw himself into her arms and covered her with noisy kisses.

“Granny Remedios, go and wake Soleá, this is important.”

Remedios shot off, convinced that those two upright Englishmen had come to ask for her granddaughter's hand in marriage, and because Soleá's father wasn't alive to give his blessing, she would have to call Manuela and Tomás as well so they could be witnesses to what was about to happen.

“Soleá! Soleá, Manuela, Tomás, come down to the courtyard, all of you!”

“What's going on, Granny?” various rasping voices said from the windows.

“Tico has come to formally propose!”

Atticus heard Remedios and was terrified. He hadn't intended to publicly declare his love for Soleá; that wasn't the motive for his visit that morning. In reality—which now seemed treacherous—it had occurred to him, faced with his father's refusal to cover the costs of
Librarte
, to tell him the story about Hemingway.

Atticus thought he had found the solution to the magazine's problems in the family secret, which they could shout to the four winds, spread across the six continents, to bring renown to
Librarte.
“We found Hemingway's unknown and illegitimate daughter,” the headline would say. “Remedios, an old woman who lives in her Andalusian house in Granada's El Albaicín district, surrounded by her large family, many of them grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the world-famous North American writer.”

There was an enormous difference between that plan and the glorious prospect of getting down on one knee in front of Soleá and declaring his love to her, with his father and the entire Heredia family as witnesses. But when he saw the shocked Soleá with
her tangled hair and shining eyes, and behind her all the other members of the clan, he was left in no doubt that Remedios was right: There was no other reason for that visit than to ensure he would be by Soleá's side forever.

Atticus dropped one knee onto the floor, bowed his head, took Soleá's hand in his, and said in Spanish with a London accent, “Soleá, I came to your house with my father as my witness. Will you marry me?”

“That's not how it's done, Tico,” she said. “Your dad has to ask my brother.”

Tomás came out from behind a group of cousins, with his arms open wide and a smile across his face. Since Marlow Craftsman was unable to speak a single word of Spanish, it was unanimously decided that they should skip the formalities. Marlow received the hug with a smile, not really understanding what it was all about.

Then Soleá's sisters and cousins started dancing around the couple, clapping and singing a folk song that went: “
Ali ali ay! Ali ali ay! Ali, ali, alay, he's taken her away!
”

Arcángel, noticing how pale Marlow looked, went up behind him and whispered in his ear in rudimentary English, “My cousin woman, your son man,” so that he could at least participate in the general merriment with some idea of what was going on.

Marlow, wide-eyed, sat down on a step next to a very old earthenware jar. He took a silk handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe away the sweat that covered his forehead and started racking his brain for ways to tell Moira without the shock killing her.

Just then, Granny Remedios sat down beside him.

CHAPTER 53

L
ook,
Míster Crasman
,” said Remedios, despite knowing perfectly well that Marlow couldn't understand her, “my Soleá hasn't got any kind of dowry. The only thing that all the girls have among them is this house and the little we have left from when Arcángel bought the land from Manuela. But it upsets me to give her away like this, without a penny to her name, and I've come up with an idea. You're an editor, you like books, and authors, and all that stuff, right? Well, come upstairs with me because I'm going to show you something.”

Remedios took Marlow's hand and tugged hard until she got him to stand up. Then she pulled and pushed him inside, crossing the living room, up the three flights of narrow stairs to the attic door, which she opened with one of the keys that hung around her neck in a bundle that included ten or so medallions bearing images of the Virgin Mary.

The roof sloped and light entered through a small window at floor level. There were bits of furniture, lamps, books, and cobwebs. It was obvious that someone went up there a lot but never did any cleaning. Remedios bent to unlock a velvet-lined wooden chest with another key that hung around her neck.

By this point, Marlow didn't know what to think. The sound of shouting, clapping, stamping feet, and singing was drifting through the walls from the courtyard, and there he was with this solemn old woman, who was turning the key to what looked like a coffin. It could just as easily contain treasure as the body of some unburied relative. A mummy, complete with hair, teeth, and scraps of clothing.

The lock gave, the lid opened with a piercing squeal, and Remedios moved aside so that Marlow could see the contents of her best-kept secret.

“These things belonged to my father, Ernest Hemingway,” she said. “My mother kept them to remember him by. She didn't steal them,” she clarified, “he gave them to her to wash and then, when she went to give them back, he said he didn't want to see them again and told her to burn them. But she didn't burn them, because she was in love with him. And then, when she found out she was pregnant and left the house, she brought them here, put them in this box, and didn't tell anyone.”

Marlow knelt down next to Remedios. Two big fat tears were rolling down her cheeks. With great ceremony, the old woman showed him a First World War soldier's jacket, with the name
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
sewn onto the lapel.

Seeing the disbelief on Craftsman's face, Remedios found the two English words she was looking for: “My father,” she said.

Then she removed the rest of the uniform from the chest: trousers, socks, boots, and a rusty pistol. Finally, she held out a very old leather-bound notebook that was full of the famous writer's famous handwriting.

Marlow turned the pages one by one; there were more than a hundred.

Taken aback, he understood that what he held in his hands was no less than Hemingway's personal, secret, and unpublished diary, with notes, drawings, thoughts, verse, stories, and love poems. On the last page he discovered the key to the mystery in a drawing showing a woman's name piercing a heart: Macarena.

“My mother,” said Remedios.

At the bottom of the chest there was a small black-and-white photo of a very pretty and very young woman who had doe eyes, dark hair, and Gypsy blood. She was dressed in a long skirt, a black shawl, and a white apron, and she was coquettishly lifting the hem of her skirt above her ankle. He took it, thought Marlow, Hemingway took it himself when he was in Granada for the first time. He mentioned her in countless stories, and we never knew who he was thinking about when he described Spain with female characteristics.

“My mother told me when I was old enough to understand, after my father had died, the poor thing, because she thought I'd see him differently if I knew that I wasn't his daughter and my father was another man, Hemingway, whom I'd never seen in all my life. She said that she had really loved him, because it was the kind of first love that you don't forget however many years go by, and a lot of the time, without me noticing, she used to try to find things in me that looked like him. The square chin, the fierce look. Not much more. In the end, my Soleá inherited most of it, to the great surprise of her father, Pedro Abad, who couldn't understand where the girl's blue eyes came from when everyone on both sides of the family was so dark. So I had to tell him too, and Manuela. I said to Manuela, ‘My girl, your grandfather wasn't your grandfather, this guy Hemingway was, but you must swear you won't tell anyone.' Then one day, my Soleá was shut in the
attic as punishment, and she opened the chest and found all this. She didn't understand anything. She asked me, ‘Whose is the uniform, Granny?' and I said, ‘It was your grandfather's.' ‘Who wrote the poetry, Granny?' And I said, ‘I did.' And because she was only little and couldn't read or write yet, she believed me.”

Marlow didn't understand a word of what Remedios was saying. What he did understand was that he had discovered a treasure that would generate immense interest, an incalculable fortune, and unknowable consequences.

The story of Hemingway and Macarena's affair needed to be told. Someone would have to do the research, analyze the writer's words one by one, together with the context and situation in which they were written, the effects of that passionate love story on Hemingway's later work, and his indomitable spirit. They would have to revisit his entire oeuvre in the light of the new information and, of course, the diary would have to be published, with notes and contributions from biographers and scholars. They would have to arrange for the diary to be exhibited at an important museum, to present Remedios in society as the illegitimate daughter of one of the greats of universal literature, along with the whole family, including Arcángel, Potaje, Aunt Consuelos, and the seventeen cousins from Antequera. They would have to track down the family in Granada that the author stayed with and the house where Remedios was conceived. There was so much to do that they would probably need a whole team of researchers to work on it for months, or even years.