The Whispering City (29 page)

The ticket cost him three pesetas.

Once inside the cinema, he realised that he hadn’t even looked at the posters to see what film was showing. It didn’t seem to matter much to most of the other patrons either, he deduced from the deep breathing and snores he heard as he walked down the dark aisle. Many were, like him, simply looking for warmth and darkness.

He sat on the left side with his jacket folded over his legs. Then he glanced at the screen. In a tavern, Lola Flores was speaking, her deep black eyes opened very wide, to a group of avid listeners. ‘Soon she’ll start singing and dancing,’ thought Abel. Waiting for the music to start, he didn’t realise that a woman had approached him. He noticed her presence when he felt a hand on his thigh and the tinkling of her bracelets. A handjob harlot.

‘No, thanks,’ he said to her.

‘Only two pesetas,’ she replied, her hand creeping towards his fly. His jacket hid her movements.

‘Thank you, I’m fine. What I want is to take a little nap.’

‘I’ll help you sleep better. That bloke up there is sleeping soundly after my services.’

‘I appreciate it, sweetheart, but please, let me sleep.’

Abel pulled her hand from his crotch and gave the woman a kiss on the cheek. Now that his eyes had got used to the dark, he could see her face. She was about fifty years old and the half-century had dragged down her features. She smiled at him sadly.

‘You’re a sweetheart; good-looking too,’ she replied with the shyness of a teenager. ‘I’ll make sure they let you sleep.’

She headed off as silently as she had come.

Lola Flores was finally about to sing ‘La niña de la venta’ up on a stage. Abel curled up in his seat and rearranged his jacket so that it covered him better. The newspaper rustled in his pocket, reminding him that the article in
La Vanguardia
had been written by a woman, somebody named Ana Martí. A woman, a journalist, not the police. As the flamenco handclapping began on the screen, he thought that anyone else in his situation would have rushed to call the newspaper to refute the news of his death. Several rows behind him, the whore’s bracelets shook to the rhythm of the handclapping. The clapping accelerated and revealed the firm thighs of the dancer for a few seconds. The bracelets sped up as well. Lola tucked up her skirt and her foot-stamping increased its pace, as did the metallic tinkling of the bracelets. The scene ended with the stamp of Lola’s heel, a moan from the man in the rows behind and Abel’s sigh as he remembered that he was dead. Fine. It’s good to be thought dead when you’re hiding from the police. Actually it was better than fine, it was perfect for him to be able to do what he had planned. And then finally to be able to flee the country. But reading the news of his death had given him a superstitious fear that he couldn’t shake off. It was like dreaming about his own funeral. Was it a sign? A warning? What had his brother told him that one time? That you can’t witness your own death in dreams, that everybody wakes up before seeing themselves as a cadaver. Was it true? He didn’t remember ever having seen himself dead in a dream; he hadn’t ever dreamed of his burial either. That was the absurd romanticism of poems, of romantics like Bécquer and Espronceda. The kind of thing that poor Mariona was so fond of. And his poor brother.

Thinking about the two of them brought him back to reality, to the newspaper article.

What if he tried to talk to the author of the article? He could call her. And say what? She was a journalist; journalists are interested in information and he had plenty of that. He could give her some bits of information in exchange for her telling him what the police knew, something that would let him know how safe his position really was. Tit for tat.

What would he tell her? Most importantly, that he hadn’t killed Mariona. Would she believe him?

And what if she turned him in? That was the risk, but he could hold out the bait that he had even more interesting information for her. Or maybe it would be better to use another tactic. One of the ones he used with the women. The women liked to protect him, even though they didn’t really know what from. Maybe Ana Martí would want to protect him too. Ana Martí was her name. Where did he know that name from? Of course! Aneta Martí, the one who did those society write-ups that Mariona enjoyed so much. He would talk to her.

He suddenly felt he was being observed. He turned and saw the whore sitting at the end of the row looking at him, watching his profile. She gestured to him. Come on, come over. The night before, Mercedes hadn’t let him touch her; she wasn’t in the mood. The woman sat beside him, stuck her hand beneath his jacket and nimbly opened his fly. It was done properly, though he was disappointed by two things: her routine efficiency and the fact that she charged him. His handsome profile hadn’t earned him a free handjob, not even a discount.

Didn’t matter; at least it had relaxed him and he trusted that the darkness, the voices and the music from the film would help him to forget his situation for a while.

A few minutes later, in the left-hand block of seats of the Argentina Theatre, one more man was sleeping like a baby.

Before ringing the bell, Abel had checked his outfit one last time. He had undone one button on his shirt, just one, the way she liked it, and he had run a hand through his slicked-back hair.

‘Like Valentino. No, better, like Ramón Novarro,’ Mariona had once said to him before ruffling his hair with both hands.

‘The way she liked it,’ he repeated to himself, looking at his compressed reflection in the shining copper plaque that bore the name of Mariona’s husband.
Dr Jerónimo Garmendia. General Medicine
. Dr Garmendia, physician to the best families in Barcelona, had died two years earlier, on Three Kings’ Day in 1950, but the plaque remained there to remind anyone who wished to know that Mariona Sobrerroca was Garmendia’s widow.

Abel always turned up well groomed, with his white shirt well ironed, his trousers impeccable with a perfect crease and his shoes shined by the expert hands of the bootblack in the Plaza Real, so that she could ruffle his hair, unbutton him and wrinkle his clothes.

He rang the bell and waited. Nothing. He rang again and put his ear to the door. He couldn’t make out any footsteps or sounds. Although he wasn’t wearing a watch, he was sure that it was the time they had agreed on. Mariona had left the wrought-iron gate open so she wouldn’t have to go out to the street to receive him. He waited a few seconds and pressed the bell again as he knocked, as if the buzz he could hear perfectly as he held the black button down needed the reinforcement of percussion.

Again, silence.

He could think of only one explanation: she had fallen asleep in the garden. That had happened once before; she had been sitting in her double swing seat with the satin cushions beneath the pergola and within minutes he saw her nodding off, victim to drowsiness, in a languid pose she surely imagined was very romantic.

Abel smiled. Mariona was sometimes quite twee.

And when she slept, she slept soundly. So banging on the door wasn’t going to do him any good; the only thing he’d achieve was to attract the attention of someone in the neighbouring houses.

He pricked up his ears to make sure that no one was approaching the house. Then he pulled out a picklock he carried in his jacket pocket and, since it wasn’t locked with a key, he had the door open in less than a minute.

He headed towards the terrace with sure steps, convinced he would find her asleep in some ridiculous pose on the swing. She wasn’t there; only the point lace cushions. One had fallen to the floor; he picked it up and tossed it back with the others. In case she was spying on him from the gallery, he corrected his gesture and plumped it up with feigned care. Then he turned with a smile. He was expecting Mariona’s blonde head, and he gave a slight start when he saw his own reflection in one of the panes of glass.

This must be a new game.

He started to move through the house with exaggerated slowness.

‘Mariona, where are you?’

He repeated the question like children playing hide and seek, dragging out the ‘o’ of her name.

‘Mariona, it’ll do you no good, the wolf is going to find you and he’s going to eat you up.’

He leapt into the bedroom. Empty. The bed was unmade, the coverlet hung crumpled over it, the mattress somewhat out of place. The doors to the wardrobe and drawers stood open. What had Mariona been doing?

He went into the dressing room. Empty. Clothes and shoes lay strewn over the floor. What ensemble had she chosen that day?

He went into the dining room. Also empty, like the maid’s room – it was her day off – and like the parlour, which he gave just a quick glance, and like the kitchen. There was only one room left. Her husband’s office. She kept it intact, like a sanctuary. Abel trembled with excitement as he opened the door.

‘This is what you want today, you naughty girl?’

There lay Mariona. Pale, blonde, voluptuous… and dead.

Fortunately, he had found what Mariona had hidden and what the person who’d killed her had surely been searching for. Mariona had kept it very well concealed. Once it was in his possession, he hid it even better, using a technique his brother had learned from his comrades in the resistance.

That night, worn out from another day of erratic wandering, he took refuge in Mercedes’s bedroom. While she slept, drunk on absinthe, Abel wrote two letters. One he sent to
La Vanguardia
, to the attention of Señora Ana Martí. The other he put into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He would send it after he’d spoken with the journalist.

That was the most dangerous step. He was afraid. Over the course of the day, the apprehension brought on by the news of his alleged death had become fear. Now he felt those words like a latent threat.
Abel Mendoza, presumed murderer, committed suicide by throwing himself into the Llobregat River.
An icy wave travelled up his spine, and he felt the cold, dark waters closing around his body. You can’t dream of your own death, but you can imagine it as you lie trying to fall asleep. The body dragged downriver, battered by branches, nibbled by fish, wrapped in a cold blanket of water. He hugged Mercedes’s feverish body to keep from drowning in that image, and submerged himself in sleep.

39

It was almost ten thirty when the telephone rang in Mateo Sanvisens’s office.

‘Hello, Mateo. It’s Joaquín Grau.’

Sanvisens unconsciously pushed his back up against the chair, as if he were on a mountain climb and searching out a solid wall to protect him.

‘Yes?’

‘I just want to know one thing. What are you playing at, Mateo? What? Tell me.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

A moment of silence hung at the other end of the line, the kind you hear in the mountains before a dry crunch announces an avalanche. It wasn’t a crunch, but rather a weary, irritated sigh that preceded Grau’s words.

‘Why is the article you published about the Sobrerroca case so lukewarm? Or did you think we wouldn’t realise, because you butter up the police and the public prosecutor?’

‘Realise what?’

‘Well. I can see that the situation is worse than I thought. I am speaking with the editor-in-chief of
La Vanguardia
?’

Sanvisens wasn’t going to fall into the trap of answering. Grau realised that and continued speaking.

‘Supposedly every article goes through your hands before it’s published. Isn’t that right?’ Since he already knew that he wasn’t going to respond, Grau forced him to. ‘Isn’t that right? Answer me.’

‘It is.’

‘Then I have to infer that you don’t agree with the resolution of the Sobrerroca case either.’

While Grau was speaking, Sanvisens had searched for a copy of the newspaper and opened it to the page with Ana’s article, being careful not to make a noise with the paper. As soon as his eyes fell on the first ‘according to the police version’, he knew what Grau was talking about.

The day before he hadn’t been feeling very well. Digestive problems had given him an acute headache. For the third time that year, he hadn’t reviewed the articles. He had got away with it the first two times; this third one was going to cost him. He couldn’t let the authorities accuse him of questioning the job the police had done. Not again, like the time they cast doubt on the official version of the Carmen Broto murder. So he interrupted Grau to keep him from doing what he usually did: getting worked up into a fit of rage.

‘I overlooked it. I read the text too superficially. I admit that it was my mistake, and I apologise. What do you want us to do? Issue a correction?’

Grau was slow to respond. Sanvisens waited with his back glued to the chair.

‘I accept your apology because I know you. A correction doesn’t seem to me to be the right solution. It calls too much attention to the article that’s already been published. What I want is another article. And I want it in the proper tone.’

‘I understand.’

‘That’s better. I want it tomorrow, and I also want you to make it clear to the author of the text that these slip-ups won’t be tolerated. Why do you send a woman to do these things?’

It was a rhetorical question. Grau had been pacified by his concessions and was now going on about the importance of the press in the attainment of the Movement’s objectives. Sanvisens agreed just enough to make it clear that he had been listening to the five minutes of monologue.

After hanging up, he sat for a moment, defeated. From his chair, he glanced sadly at the framed photos of mountains that covered the wall. Montblanc, Everest, Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua. The best ones were outside of Spain. The highest, in Nepal. The most dangerous, Nanga Parbat, in Pakistan. The most beautiful, in Africa. ‘And we’re here.’

Had he made a mistake about Ana Martí? She had quickly outgrown the society pages, and ghostwriting for her colleagues had given her experience. He had thought that her ambition would be compensated for by her womanly compliance, that her eagerness to follow in the family profession would make her more reasonable, more pragmatic. She had made a mistake, but it was only a mistake in that place and time. In other circumstances, he would have sworn that she was a good journalist. No, he hadn’t made a mistake about Ana.