The Serpent Papers (41 page)

‘She doesn’t make you uncomfortable?’ I ask.

‘No!’ he says, aghast. ‘Quite the opposite. She demands that I remember to feel alive.’

The walls are covered with a wide-ranging assortment of framed photographs and prints – ‘
All original
,’
he chirps behind me – dipping into a kitchen behind a silk curtain. I hear him turning on the tap. ‘I have Federico García Lorca, three weeks before he was shot in 1936!’ He shouts. ‘A rare Margarida Xirgu, the Catalan actress, on tour in South America. Gandhi in 1948! Oscar Wilde
in Paris! And I have the anarchists – Émile Henry! And our very own Santiago Salvador, who so felt the fervour of his cause he threw two bombs into the Opera Liceu!’ He whisks through a collection of faces I don’t recognize – ‘This sub-exhibit is dedicated to Poets-Murdered-Under-Nazi-and-Soviet-Regimes,’
he tells me, holding a crystal glass of water in each hand. ‘The second collection immortalizes Spanish Republicans assassinated by Fascist forces in the Civil War.’

‘And the women?’ I ask.

Retracing my steps to the centre of the living room, looking at the wall facing Natalia Hernández.

Garish photographs. Modern.

‘The third wall is dedicated to the Assaulted Feminine. I have titled the collection: “Victims of the Unknown Assassin”.’

Four rows of three. Twelve photographs. Five vulgar and bright, done by a cheap photographer’s studio, hot pinks and nuclear yellows. Souls hidden beneath thick make-up, peroxide blonde hair, lips and brows provocative. I scan down the faces – until I reach one placed in the centre of the quadrant, eye to eye with the poster of Natalia Hernández, a bright pink frame among the cheap painted gold.

‘That’s Natalia’s mother,’ I say, pointing at the studio portrait of Cristina Rossinyol.

‘Indeed, indeed.’ Fons draws each blind shut behind me as I look at their faces.

‘And who are these?’

‘Victims of a common murderer. Or so I believe. I assumed you might be interested in seeing what I have. The police have no creativity. It takes an urban curator to unearth these beauties – a lifetime of dedication. Have you seen the Raval? Do you think the maître d’s of the finest establishments would talk to anyone about the murder of their illegal girls? Ferran Fons –’ he pounds his chest – ‘is a man of the people. A man whom the ladies of Carrer de Sant Ramon trust.’

‘But only three women were murdered alongside Natalia.’

‘Three were found,’ Ferran says factually. ‘Three women, mind you . . .’
He’s mad. These are conspiracy theories.
‘My art, my Museum to Departed Glory, juxtaposes theory with image. My more illicit friends, who must remain anonymous for the preservation of our working
relations
 – a diplomatic stance if you get me – my
friends
have supplied me with their portraits, though they are not sure of their true names. Here you have dear
Roseanne
and poor
Rosa
.’
He points at two girls arranged either side of Cristina. ‘These were women found by the police in that week. But I have recorded the deaths of many others. Or rather, disappearances. I find them very unsettling. But what does most of humanity do when a girl who does not exist disappears? She has no papers, no documentation – she might have never been born – what does society do when a girl who has never existed disappears from the streets of a city? They forget. They never know to begin with. But not Ferran Fons. No, he records. He collects the images of their lives, and he records them here, amongst the great and the departed artists who were also disappeared by history.’

The girls are arranged above a mahogany chest of drawers decorated with enamel flowers.

‘But the true gems of the collection – for the work you are embarking on . . .’

He pulls out a drawer. I step back, stunned.

‘. . . rest in here.’

Clipping after clipping. Thousands of newspaper scraps. Photographs yellowed, neatly trimmed. Laid one over the other. He draws them out slowly.

‘You are welcome to return. There are more than you can read in an hour.’

I feel my nerves mounting.

‘This is me in the
Tragafuegos
. That is Cristina Rossinyol, there is Villafranca.’ He turns another over.

‘The full company is pictured here. They ran this in the local paper. There is Oriol, Villafranca, Cristina and myself. You would not find it in a typical archive. These were done on the small presses, barely any distribution.’

The faded yellow clipping frames a photograph of the full ensemble. In the picture a much younger Fons, with thick black hair and a broad grin, is holding the head of a papier mâché dragon.

‘What role did you have?’

‘
El Diablo.
’ He pauses. ‘I was cast as the Devil . . . But things became . . .’ He slows again, and frowns. ‘
Fraught.
I gave it up after the first round of shows.’

‘Why?’

‘I became possessed by something cruel.’ He bats a memory away with his hand. My heart skips faster.

‘Could you describe that for me?’

He pauses. Chews his lip. I can see the thoughts running across his face.

‘Please. Sit,’ he says. I make my way back to the sofa, staring at Natalia Hernández. He pulls up a chair behind me. He clears his throat.

‘Àngel Villafranca made a pact with the devil that summer.’

He pauses. Eyeing me up.

‘He won’t say so – no, of course he won’t, but the truth is that he sold us out for success. He wanted us to play with things – to push ourselves beyond the normal restrictions of human behaviour.’

I nod.

‘At first I didn’t listen to the rumours. I was a young actor, at the start of my career, it was an honour to work with his company, but when the devil came to me I took it more seriously. First he entered my dreams. In the beginning he was a striking young man, black hair, blue eyes, exquisitely dressed, like a nineteenth-century English gentleman. He would look at me, talk to me . . . tell me what to do. I listened. I did as I was told, because I thought it was a manifestation of my subconscious helping me in the role – that I was constructing a character – not –’ he coughs and clears his throat – ‘interacting with a kind of spirit.’

‘Have the police ever spoken with you about this?’ I ask.

‘With me? No.’ His eyes narrow. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Curiosity.’

He raises an eyebrow.

‘I am allergic to authority.’

‘When I spoke with the case officer, he said there was no unifying characteristic of the killings,’ I lie.
See what he will do.

Fons sputters. Bright red.

‘I know who you’re referring to – Inspector Fabregat is a self-preserving fool. There was a hell of a significant “characteristic”, as you call it, a
stamp
:
the killer gave thought to – was obsessed by . . . tongues
 . . . 
No one likes to talk about it, because the suspicion is, the real knowledge was, that it was in-house.
One of us.
Took. Each one.’ Fons waves at the wall of women before us. ‘Each one with the exception of Cristina. All the rest lost their tongues. Which is why I have decided to immortalize them. Preserved for perpetuity in silence.’

The air inside the shuttered room becomes claustrophobic.

‘Do you mind if I take some photographs?’

He nods. ‘You’re welcome to document the exhibition as you please.’

The camera comes out of my shoulder bag. As I press down on the shutter, his eyes sear into me.
Snap, snap
, goes the camera.

His smile broadens. ‘I am an artist, you know.’

I catch his eyes boring into me, as he stands, arms crossed, before the print of Natalia Hernández, she suprahuman. A goddess to be worshipped in solitude.

‘You must tell no one what you have seen. I wish to be an anonymous source,’ he tells me formally, as he leads me to the door. ‘I wish to be known only as the Curator of Departed Glory.’

I accept this. Perturbed. I duck into the metro
.
Invisible eyes hot on my spine. Skin-coloured tiles, green strips. Sound like a train roaring. A man with a ukulele busking. Through the crowds I sense a presence.
Had Fons followed me from the apartment?
Hunched shoulders. Dark silhouettes. I get out at the next station, change carriages. Making my way north. Again the feeling of being trailed. Of a lingering attachment. I veer through the underground maze, thoughts tumbling and spinning.
No one. There is no one here with you.
And yet I am convinced of being watched.

Oriol Duran stands with his back towards the theatre door, smoking a cigarette slowly, a cheap cup of espresso in his right hand. His curls, the colour of burnt sugar, blond caramel, part to the side, in keeping with the period, with short sideburns from the inner rim of his ears to the neat line of his cheekbone, coiffed at the back of his neck, where his hair is kept neatly ruffled. His eyes owl-specked, ruddy hazel, with shards of honeyed gold, into the depths of which many lovesick women have fallen, but Oriol cannot help this fact (beauty is as beauty does) and, despite the multitudes of fans, the orgiastic presence of his blinking beneficence on the television screens of Spain, his eyes preserve a certain innocence, cloaked in dainty lashes, elongated and doe-like. Oriol’s cheeks are smooth and firm like a Roman soldier’s, and were he not so small, and slight in form, a sculptor might have rendered him a model for David or Marcus Aurelius.

He hasn’t aged
at all
, I think with a start.
Not a single year, not a single wrinkle. He could be a decade younger than he is.

‘Duran. A pleasure,’ he continues. Outstretched hand. Warm grip. I can feel the heat rising on my cheeks – I curse myself –
Don’t blush. There’s nothing more humiliating.
He waits for my response with eyebrows raised.

‘I’m sorry if this comes as a surprise – I always get in early, Fons mentioned you might be here, I asked at the house and . . .’

He shrugs.

‘. . . thought I’d catch you.’

His gaze locks onto me. ‘We’re rehearsing Oscar Wilde. You familiar with
Salomé
?’

I can make out the scenery for the new show – the backdrops and curtains, the wooden sets. The only lights are the exit signs, green above the rows of velvet seats, and two exposed bulbs above either side of the stage doors.
Rest in the quiet.
There is something sad about an unlit theatre. Something ghostly.
The closest thing we have to an experience of death.
Oriol strides to theatre flies and switches on the lights.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
A giant wooden terrace behind me, set above a banqueting hall, to the left of an enormous staircase and an ageing cistern engulfed by a wall of bright green bronze.

Oriol raps the wooden staircase with his knuckle. ‘Do you know the play?’

I shake my head. He looks straight into my eyes, again that piercing stare. No shame. A bizarre vulnerability.

‘An arresting piece, Wilde’s strangest and his best.’ His face changes ever so slightly. ‘How beautiful is the Princess Salomé tonight!’

I blink. He is reciting lines.

‘
Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems. She is like a woman rising from a tomb.
’ Oriol comes closer. ‘I play John the Baptist.’ He draws a line across his neck and makes a rushing sound with his lips. ‘Head ends up on a plate. I hope you’re not intending to do the same to me. Writers have a tendency towards violence.’