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“A woman like that…anyone could lose his senses.”
I started to run up the Ramblas with only one thought in mind: Clara.
Bernarda had said Barceló was away on business. It was her day off, and she usually spent the night with her aunt Reme and her cousins in the nearby town of San Adrián del Besós. That left Clara alone in the cavernous Plaza Real apartment and that faceless, menacing man unleashed in the storm with heaven knows what in mind. As I hurried under the downpour toward Plaza Real, all I could think was that I had placed Clara in danger by giving her Carax’s book. When I reached the entrance to the square, I was soaked to the bone. I rushed to take shelter under the arches of Calle Fernando. I thought I saw shadowy forms creeping up behind me. Beggars. The front door was closed. I searched in my pockets for the keys Barceló had given me. One of the tramps came up, petitioning me to let him spend the night in the lobby. I closed the door before he’d had time to finish his sentence.
THE STAIRCASE WAS A WELL OF DARKNESS. FLASHES OF LIGHTNING BLED through the cracks in the front door, lighting up the outline of the steps for a second. I groped my way forward and found the first step by tripping over it. Holding on to the banister, I slowly ascended. Soon the steps gave way to a flat surface, and I realized I had reached the first-floor landing. I felt the marble walls, cold and hostile, and found the reliefs on the oak door and the aluminum doorknobs. After fumbling about for a bit, I managed to insert the key. When the door of the apartment opened, a streak of blue light blinded me for an instant and a gust of warm air graced my skin. Bernarda’s room was in the back of the apartment, by the kitchen. I went there first, although I was sure the maid wasn’t home. I rapped on the door with my knuckles and, as there was no answer, allowed myself to enter. It was a simple room, with a large bed, a cupboard with tinted mirrors, and a chest of drawers on which Bernarda had placed enough effigies and prints of saints and the Virgin Mary to start a holy order. I closed the door, and when I turned around, my heart almost stopped: a dozen scarlet eyes were advancing toward me from the end of the corridor. Barceló’s cats knew me well and tolerated my presence. They surrounded me, meowing gently, but as soon as they realized that my drenc
hed clothes did not give out the desired warmth, they abandoned me with indifference.
Clara’s room was at the other end of the apartment, next to the library and the music room. The cats’ invisible steps followed me through the passageway. In the flickering darkness of the storm, Barceló’s residence seemed vast and sinister, altered from the place I had come to consider my second home. I reached the front of the apartment, where it faced the square. The conservatory opened before me, dense and impassable. I penetrated its jungle of leaves and branches. For a moment it occurred to me that if the faceless stranger had managed to sneak into the apartment, this was where he would probably choose to wait for me. I almost thought I could perceive the smell of burned paper he left in the air around him, but then I realized that what I had detected was only tobacco. A burst of panic needled me. Nobody in the household smoked, and Barceló’s unlit pipe was purely ornamental.
When I reached the music room, the glow from a flash of lightning revealed spirals of smoke that drifted in the air like garlands of vapor. Next to the gallery, the piano keyboard displayed its endless grin. I crossed the music room and went over to the library door. It was closed. I opened it and was welcomed by the brightness from the glass-covered balcony that encircled Barceló’s personal library. The walls, lined with packed bookshelves, formed an oval in whose center stood a reading table and two plush armchairs. I knew that Clara kept Carax’s book in a glass cabinet by the arch of the balcony. I crept up to it. My plan, or my lack of it, was to lay my hands on the book, take it out of there, give it to that lunatic, and lose sight of him forever after. Nobody would notice the book’s absence, except me.
Julián Carax’s book was waiting for me, as it always did, its spine just visible at the end of a shelf. I took it in my hands and pressed it against my chest, as if embracing an old friend whom I was about to betray. Judas, I thought. I decided to leave the place without making Clara aware of my presence. I would take the book and disappear from Clara Barceló’s life forever. Quietly, I stepped out of the library. The door of her bedroom was just visible at the end of the corridor. I pictured her lying on her bed, asleep. I imagined my fingers stroking her neck, exploring a body I had conjured up from my fantasies. I turned around, ready to throw away six years of daydreaming, but something halted my step before I reached the music room. A voice whistling behind me, behind a door. A deep voice that whispered and laughed. In Clara’s room. I walked slowly up to the door. I put my fingers on the doorknob. My fingers trembled. I had arrived too late. I swallowed hard and opened the door.
·9·
CLARA’S NAKED BODY LAY STRETCHED OUT ON WHITE SHEETS that shone like washed silk. Maestro Neri’s hands slid over her lips, her neck, and her breasts. Her white eyes looked up to the ceiling, her eyelids shuddering as the music teacher charged at her, entering her body between her pale and trembling thighs. The same hands that had read my face six years earlier in the gloom of the Ateneo now clutched the maestro’s sweat-glazed buttocks, the nails digging into them, as they guided him toward her with desperate, animal desire. I couldn’t breathe. I must have stayed there, paralyzed, watching them for almost half a minute, until Neri’s eyes, disbelieving at first, then aflame with anger, became aware of my presence. Still panting, astounded, he stopped. Clara grabbed him, not understanding, rubbing her body against his, licking his neck.
“What’s the matter?” she moaned. “Why are you stopping?”
Adrián Neri’s eyes burned with rage. “Nothing,” he murmured. “I’ll be right back.”
Neri stood up and threw himself at me, clenching his fists. I didn’t even see him coming. I couldn’t take my eyes off Clara, wrapped in sweat, breathless, her ribs visible under her skin and her breasts quivering. The music teacher grabbed me by the neck and dragged me out of the bedroom. My feet were barely touching the floor, and however hard I tried, I was unable to escape Neri’s grip, as he carried me like a bundle through the conservatory.
“I’m going to break your neck, you wretch,” he muttered.
He hauled me toward the front door, opened it, and flung me with all his might onto the landing. Carax’s book slipped out of my hands. He picked it up and threw it furiously at my face.
“If I ever see you around here again, or if I find out that you’ve gone up to Clara in the street, I swear I’ll give you such a beating you’ll end up in the hospital—and I don’t give a shit how young you are,” he said in a cold voice. “Understood?”
I got up with difficulty. In the struggle Neri had torn my jacket and my pride.
“How did you get in?”
I didn’t answer. Neri sighed, shaking his head. “Come on,” he barked, barely containing his fury. “Give me the keys.”
“What keys?”
He punched me so hard I collapsed. When I got up, there was blood in my mouth and a ringing in my left ear that bored through my head like a policeman’s whistle. I touched my face and felt the cut on my lips burning under my fingers. A bloodstained signet ring shone on the music teacher’s finger.
“I said the keys.”
“Piss off,” I spit out.
I didn’t see the next blow coming. I just felt as if a jackhammer had torn my stomach out. I folded up, like a broken puppet, unable to breathe, staggering back against the wall. Neri grabbed me by my hair and rummaged in my pockets until he found the keys. I slid down to the floor, holding my stomach, whimpering with agony and anger.
“Tell Clara that—”
He slammed the door in my face, leaving me in complete darkness. I groped around for the book. I found it and slid down the stairs with it, leaning against the walls, panting. I went outside spitting blood and gasping for breath. The biting cold and the wind tightened around my soaking clothes. The cut on my face was stinging.
“Are you all right?” asked a voice in the shadow.
It was the beggar I had refused to help a short time before. Feeling ashamed, I nodded, avoiding his eyes. I started to walk away.
“Wait a minute, at least until the rain eases off,” the beggar suggested.
He took me by the arm and led me to a corner under the arches where he kept a bundle of possessions and a bag with old, dirty clothes.
