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My father frowned.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going up to the apartment.”
“Of course I don’t mind. And put on some dry clothes. You’re going to catch your death.”
The apartment was cold and silent. I went into my bedroom and peeped out the window. The second sentinel was still there, by the door of the Church of Santa Ana. I took off my soaking clothes and put on some thick pajamas and a dressing gown that had belonged to my grandfather. I lay down on the bed without bothering to turn on the light and abandoned myself to the darkness and the sound of the rain on the windowpanes. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up the image of Bea, her touch and smell. The night before I hadn’t slept at all, and soon I was overcome by exhaustion. In my dreams the hooded figure of Death rode over Barcelona, a ghostly apparition that hovered like haze above the towers and roofs, trailing black ropes that held hundreds of small white coffins. The coffins left behind them their own trail of black flowers on whose petals, written in blood, was the name Nuria Monfort.
I awoke at the break of a gray dawn. The windows were steamed up. I dressed for the cold weather and put on some calf-length boots, then went out into the corridor and groped my way through the apartment. I slipped out through the door and walked down to the street. The newsstands in the Ramblas were already lighting up in the distance. I steered a course toward the one that was anchored at the mouth of Calle Tallers and bought the first edition of the day’s paper, which still smelled of warm ink. I rushed through the pages until I found the obituary section. Nuria Monfort’s name lay printed under a cross, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. I walked away with the newspaper folded under my arm, in search of darkness. The funeral was that afternoon, in Montjuïc Cemetery. After walking around the block, I returned home. My father was still asleep, and I went back into my room. I sat at my desk and took the Meinsterstück pen out of its case, then took a blank sheet of paper and hoped the nib would guide me. In my hands the pen had nothing to say. In vain I tried to conjure up the words I wanted to offer Nuria Monfort, but I was incapable of writing or feeling anything except the terror of her absence, of knowing she was lost, wrenched away. I knew that one day she would return to me, in months or years to come, that I would always relive her memory in the touch of a stranger, in the recollection of images that no longer belonged to me.
·43·
SHORTLY BEFORE THREE O’CLOCK, I GOT ON A BUS ON PASEO DE Colón that would take me to the cemetery on Montjuïc. Through the window I could see the forest of masts and fluttering pennants at the docks. The bus, which was almost empty, circled Montjuïc Mountain and started up the road that led to the eastern gates of the boundless Barcelona cemetery. I was the last passenger.
“What time does the last bus leave?” I asked the driver before getting off.
“At half past four.”
The driver left me by the cemetery gates. An avenue of cypress trees rose in the mist. Even from there, at the foot of the mountain, one could already begin to see the vast city of the dead that scaled the slope to the very top: avenues of tombs, walks lined with gravestones, and alleyways of mausoleums, towers crowned by fiery angels and whole forests of sepulchers that seemed to grow against one another. The city of the dead was a pit of palaces guarded by an army of rotting stone statues sinking into the mud. I took a deep breath and entered the labyrinth. My mother lay buried a hundred yards away from the path along which I walked. With every step I took, I could feel the cold, the emptiness, and the fury of that place, the horror of its silence, of the faces trapped in the old photographs that had been abandoned to the company of candles and dead flowers. After a while I caught a glimpse of distant gas lamps lit around a grave, the shapes of half a dozen people lined up against an ashen sky. I quickened my step and stopped where I could hear the words of the priest.
The coffin, an unpolished pinewood box, rested on the mud. Two gravediggers guarded it, leaning on spades. I scanned those present. Old Isaac, the keeper of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, had not come to his daughter’s funeral. I recognized the neighbor who lived opposite. She shook her head, sobbing, while a man stroked her back with a resigned air. Her husband, I imagined. Next to them was a woman of about forty, dressed in gray and carrying a bunch of flowers. She cried quietly, looking away from the grave with tight lips. I had never seen her. Separated from the group, clad in a dark raincoat and holding his hat behind his back, was the policeman who had saved my life the day before. Palacios. He raised his eyes and observed me for a few seconds without blinking. The blind, senseless words of the priest were all that separated us from the terrible silence. I stared at the mud-splattered coffin. I imagined her lying inside it, and I didn’t realize I was crying until that woman in gray came up to me and offered me one of the flowers from her bunch. I remained there until the group dispersed. At a sign from the priest, the gravediggers got ready to do their work by the lamplight. I kept the flower in my coat pocket and walked away, unable to express my final farewell.
It was beginning to get dark by the time I reached the cemetery gates, and I assumed I’d missed the last bus. I was about to start a long walk, under the shadow of the necropolis, following the road that skirted the port on the way back to Barcelona. A black car was parked about twenty yards ahead of me, its lights on. Inside, a figure smoked a cigarette. As I drew near, Palacios opened the passenger door.
“Get in. I’ll take you home. You won’t find any buses or taxis around here at this time of day.”
I hesitated for a moment. “I’d rather walk.”
“Don’t be silly. Get in.”
He spoke in the steely tone of someone used to giving orders and being obeyed instantly. “Please,” he added.
I got into the car, and the policeman started the engine.
“Enrique Palacios,” he said, holding his hand out to me.
I didn’t shake it. “If you leave me in Colón, that’s fine.”
The car sped off. We joined the traffic on the road and traveled a good stretch without uttering a single word.
“I want you to know I’m very sorry about Señora Monfort.”
Coming from him, those words seemed an obscenity, an insult.
“I’m grateful to you for saving my life the other day, but I must tell you I don’t care a shit what you feel, Mr. Enrique Palacios.”
“I’m not what you think, Daniel. I’d like to help you.”
“If you expect me to tell you where Fermín is, you can leave me right here.”
“I don’t give a damn where your friend is. I’m not on duty now.”
I didn’t reply.
“You don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you. But at least listen to me. This has already gone too far. There was no reason why this woman should have died. I beg you to let this matter be and to put this man, Carax, out of your mind forever.”
“You speak as if I’m in control of what’s happening. I’m only a spectator. The whole show has been staged by your boss and all you lot.”
“I’m tired of funerals, Daniel. I don’t want to have to go to yours.”
