The Whispering City (19 page)

Ana pulled out a handkerchief and dried her eyes. Then she stood up and made to collect her papers. Beatriz placed a hand on top of them to stop her.

‘Leave them here. I will take a look at them.’

Ana still hadn’t let go of the papers, and gazed at her with a mix of surprise and scepticism. Beatriz didn’t want to tell her that she considered it her moral obligation after her obvious tactlessness.

‘Out of scientific curiosity. Perhaps I can find something out about their author. But, if I do find something, I don’t want anyone to know I helped you. I don’t want to have anything to do with the police. Understood?’

Ana let go of the letters.

‘I appreciate it. And you have nothing to fear; I won’t reveal where I got any information you might give me.’

‘Then I’ll see what I can do.’

‘When might you know something?’

Beatriz looked at her. She had recovered a hint of her previous sparkle, but she squeezed the handkerchief in one hand.

‘I don’t know. Right now I have a lot of work, but I will try to find some time for it.’

She escorted Ana to the door.

‘Why don’t you call me tomorrow?’ said Beatriz. She searched for a slip of paper and jotted down her number.

‘At what time?’

‘Around midday.’

‘At twelve noon on the dot.’

‘Sure, like the Angelus.’

Ana smiled again. Beatriz closed the door with relief.

After Ana had left, Beatriz began to read the letters.

Love letters. The spelling throughout was correct. Ana had told her she’d copied the texts word for word. Mariona’s lover wasn’t a bad writer.

While she was at it, the best thing to do would be to work systematically. She spread out the papers over her desk, ordering them chronologically.

The first one began with a very formal address:

The author had made prolific use of motifs from Spanish literature, but his great inspiration was undoubtedly the Vicomte de Valmont. What could she tell Ana about him? The author was very well read, and seemed to be having a lot of fun. The torrent of words that supposedly flowed directly from his ardent heart onto the page was a collage of literary quotes.

The third letter in particular caught her eye: the author was now addressing her familiarly and in a bolder tone. He no longer praised Mariona Sobrerroca’s spirit and charm from a respectful distance; rather, he launched into a description of her physical charms:

Beatriz raised her eyebrows. How vain, lovestruck and, most of all, dim-witted does someone have to be to fall for such compliments, which were obviously cribbed from an anthology of Spanish love poems!

Except for that ‘standard’. Why had the scarf been a standard? Because he had taken it off her, fondled her neck that shone brighter than crystal, and the rest had just happened naturally? Or what? Hadn’t he also mentioned it in the first letter? He had.

Beatriz thought it over. She tested her hypothesis. It held up.

23

Surely Ana would be late. Beatriz glanced at her watch. She had arrived at the Athenaeum ten minutes early. As she almost always did, since she calculated that the trams could be running late, or so full that she’d have to wait for the next one, or that one of the frequent power outages would leave them stranded, immobile in the middle of the street.

Ana’s call the day before had already been behind schedule. She had said she’d call at noon, and she’d called three hours later. She apologised, and Beatriz accepted her explanations reluctantly. She hated being made to wait; it bothered her because she knew that if she used that waiting time to get something done, it might be interrupted at the worst possible moment.

‘Have you found out anything?’ Ana asked when she called.

‘I think so.’

‘Are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess?’

‘It’s a bit involved to go through over the telephone. Why don’t we meet tomorrow at the Athenaeum and I’ll explain it to you?’

‘Tomorrow is Mariona Sobrerroca’s funeral.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing: just that it’s better if we meet up afterwards. That way I can tell you what I saw.’

She wasn’t interested in what Ana might see at the funeral. She had other things to do. In fact, she had suggested the meeting place because once she had resolved this business with the letters, she could consult some books in the library there. The Athenaeum was located in an eighteenth-century palace in the old part of the city. She liked to work there, in one of the reading rooms with its green leather-topped desks and its tall bookshelves. She was still a member; a former school friend had made sure she didn’t lose her affiliation after the war. The library’s collection had grown during that time, bolstered by the private libraries of various scholars who had been forced into exile. At first she had found it difficult to work with volumes whose bookplates showed the names of their previous owners. With time she’d grown used to it, as with so many other things.

The leather sofas in the café were the same as before the war. Unlike the watered-down coffee. On the table there was a copy of that day’s
La Vanguardia
, with a photo of the
Santa María
at anchor in Barcelona’s port and another of the Director of Prisons visiting the workshops at the Modelo prison. The third photograph was of a reservoir in Badajoz. She leafed through the newspaper. The announcement of an homage by the army to the Blessed Sacrament during the International Eucharistic Congress; an article by Tristán La Rosa about the novel
La noria
, which she didn’t want to read. Who wants to read about the reality of life in Barcelona? Wasn’t it enough having to live it? She noticed a long headline that trumpeted the end of food rationing. Thanks to the abundance of consumer goods that would be available in Spain from now on. So when you didn’t have to use ration cards to buy bread, you were living in ‘abundance’.

She took a black notepad from her bag, jotted down the word ‘abundance’ and wrote in the margin: ‘When there is barely enough of something’. In recent years many words had changed their meaning. Like ‘red’, which was used vehemently to single out communists and enemies of the state. Little Red Riding Hood was now called Little Crimson Riding Hood. She had found a book of stories with that title in a bookshop a few days earlier. They had also changed the names of streets and squares, in the typical way that regimes take possession of places. The Library of Catalonia had been rebaptised as the Central Library. Some words disappeared, the meaning of others shifted and yet others became omnipresent, such as Spain, destiny, manhood, holy. She took notes on it all in her little book, without knowing if she’d be able to make use of her observations one day. Then, her gaze landed on the article about the most recent speech given by Barcelona’s Civil Governor.

The crime rate in the new Spain is low. Precisely because our government is tolerant and humane, precisely because the rights of citizens are respected, precisely because we are not a police state, we value our security forces’ tireless work even more highly. They are men who are as patriotic as they are capable, who watch day and night over the well-being and peace of our citizens.

Beatriz made a surprised face. Tolerant and humane were relatively recent additions to the list of qualities the Regime used to characterise itself. They were new labels, to be hung on the chest like medals. She turned a page in her notebook and took down the words and the quote, adding a brief commentary. Then she glanced at the photo illustrating the article and the text accompanying it.

His Excellence, Señor Acedo Colunga, Civil Governor of Barcelona, accompanied by his personal secretary, Señor Sánchez-Herranz Robles.

The Civil Governor was in uniform, his semi-bald head surrounded by a halo of curls. Beside him stood a young man, dressed in civilian clothes, with sloping shoulders and a doughy face.

She continued reading and wrote down the reference to ‘the highly modern methods used by our police’. Modernity was another of the new labels. In the second half of his speech, however, the governor began to threaten the press. He had nothing, he declared, against open criticism; that was healthy and appropriate. Beatriz shook her head as she read. How much of that supposedly healthy criticism got through the censors? Soon the Civil Governor got to his real target, the journalists who wrote with apparent correctness but who underneath that smooth, polished surface hid arrogant, when not treacherous, judgements on the well-intentioned actions of the Regime. The message was quite clear: ‘Be careful that even the slightest hint of critique of the Regime can’t be found in any of your copy’. Beatriz looked away from the newspaper in disgust. Then a shadow fell over the table.

It was Ana. The girl had been running, and a lock of her hair had slipped out, which she’d tucked pell-mell behind her ear. Beatriz invited her to sit down, pointing to the sofa beside her and waving to the waiter.

After they’d ordered, Ana picked up the newspaper and made a scowl of displeasure. She pointed to the young man in the suit.

‘Acedo Colunga and his lackey. He’s the one who writes all his speeches.’

Beatriz said simply, ‘Dreadful.’

She didn’t say that she wondered how she could work under such conditions, because to do so might put her cousin in the position of having to justify herself and she didn’t think that was right.

Ana folded the newspaper so the article couldn’t be seen.

‘Yes, the man is terrifying, a really evil character. He was at the funeral too, standing in for his boss. All of Barcelona society was there. All of them very worked up and demanding that the murderer be arrested without delay. All in their finest black clothes.’ Her voice darkened as she added, ‘The article will appear in the society pages.’

The waiter arrived with a coffee and poured in the hot milk. Ana said it was plenty just as the milk threatened to overflow the cup.

‘Will you have sugar, madam?’

The waiter was already extracting one of the cubes that filled the sugar bowl with a pair of tongs.

‘Leave the sugar bowl there, I’ll serve myself.’

She waited until he had gone and, to Beatriz’s surprise, managed to dissolve two cubes into her coffee without spilling a drop.

Their eyes were still on her cup as they both started to talk at the same time.

‘I have the letters.’

‘I’m dying to know what you’ve discovered.’

Beatriz put on her glasses and brought the letters out of her handbag.

‘Let’s see, where do I start? The first thing that caught my eye was that our author uses a lot of literary models. In the earliest letters he puts a great deal of care into winning over his beloved. At times I was reminded of epistolary novels in which the only thing the characters do is write letters to each other.’

Ana eyed her expectantly. Beatriz enjoyed the attention.

‘He is a cultured, well-read person. The letters are a mosaic of quotes. That makes it difficult to say much about the author. He could be said to be wearing a mask.’

‘
Der Rosenkavalier
.’

Beatriz shrugged. ‘It’s a very well-known opera; I’d say it forms part of the general culture of the well-educated bourgeoisie. And the decently educated. So it’s a banal choice that doesn’t tell us much about the writer.’

She gazed at Ana.

‘But there is something that the letters do reveal.’

She moved aside Ana’s coffee cup to put the copy of the letter on the table. She pointed with her finger to a few lines.

‘Here he describes her.’

She gave Ana a little time to read the passage in which he compared Mariona’s blue eyes with the shimmer of the sea at dawn. The source of his inspiration was widely known and she expected her cousin to recognise it straight away.

‘He’s taken fragments from Bécquer’s
Rhymes
.’

‘Right. But I’m referring to something else. He mentions a silk scarf that showed him the path, calling it a standard.’

‘Surely that’s a metaphor. He is the lost wanderer who finally finds his way, thanks to Mariona.’

‘No. I believe that here it refers to something literal. I think they used the scarf to recognise each other.’

‘You mean, they made a date without having met?’

Beatriz nodded in satisfaction. Ana was proving to be clever.