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For the second time that night I began to tell the story of Julián Carax and the enigma of his death. Fermín listened very attentively, writing things down in a notebook and interrupting me every now and then to ask me some detail whose relevance escaped me. As I listened to myself, it became increasingly clear to me that there were many lacunae in that story. More than once my mind went blank and my thoughts became lost as I tried to work out why Nuria Monfort would have lied to me. What was the significance of all this? Why had she, for years, collected the mail directed to a nonexistent lawyers’ office that was supposedly in charge of the Fortuny-Carax apartment on Ronda de San Antonio? I didn’t realize I was voicing my doubts out loud.
“We can’t yet know why that woman was lying to you,” said Fermín. “But we can speculate that if she did so in this respect, she may have done so, and probably did, in many others.”
I sighed, completely lost. “What do you suggest, Fermín?”
Fermín Romero de Torres sighed and put on his most Socratic expression. “I’ll tell you what we can do. This coming Sunday, if you agree, we drop by San Gabriel’s School, quite casually, and we make some inquiries concerning the origins of the friendship between this Carax fellow and the other lad, the rich boy….”
“Aldaya.”
“I have a way with priests, you’ll see, even if it’s just because I look like a roguish monk. I butter them up a little, and I get them eating out of my hand.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I guarantee this lot is going to sing like the Montserrat Boys’ Choir.”
·23·
I SPENT THE SATURDAY IN A TRANCE, ANCHORED BEHIND THE BOOKSHOP counter in the hopes of seeing Bea come through the door as if by magic. Every time the telephone rang, I rushed to answer it, grabbing the receiver from my father or Fermín. Halfway through the
afternoon, after about twenty calls from clients and no news from Bea, I began to accept that the world and my miserable existence were coming to an end. My father had gone out to price a collection in San Gervasio, and Fermín took advantage of the situation to deliver another of his magisterial lectures on the many mysteries of romance.
“Calm down or you’ll grow a stone in your liver,” Fermín advised me. “This business of courtship is like a tango: absurd and pure embellishment. But you’re the man, and you must take the lead.”
It was all beginning to look pretty grim. “The lead? Me?”
“What do you expect? One has to pay some price for being able to piss standing up.”
“But Bea implied that she would get back to me.”
“You really don’t understand women, Daniel. I bet you my Christmas bonus that the little chick is in her house right now, looking languidly out of the window like the Lady of the Camellias, waiting for you to come and rescue her from that idiot father of hers and drag her into an unstoppable spiral of lust and sin.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s a mathematical certainty.”
“What if she’s decided she doesn’t want to see me again?
“Look, Daniel. Women, with remarkable exceptions like your neighbor Merceditas, are more intelligent than we are, or at least more honest with themselves about what they want or don’t want. Another question is whether they tell you or the world. You’re facing the enigma of nature, Daniel. Womankind is an indecipherable maze. If you give her time to think, you’re lost. Remember: warm heart, cold mind. The seducer’s code.”
Fermín was about to detail the particulars and techniques of the art of seduction when the doorbell tinkled and in walked my friend Tomás Aguilar. My heart missed a beat. Providence was denying me Bea but was sending me her brother. A fateful herald, I thought. Tomás had a somber expression and a certain despondent air.
“What a funereal appearance, Don Tomás,” Fermín remarked. “You’ll accept a small coffee at least, I hope?”
“I won’t say no,” said Tomás, with his usual reserve.
Fermín served him a cup of the concoction he kept in a thermos. It gave out an odor suspiciously like sherry.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
Tomás shrugged. “Nothing new. My father is having one of his days, and I thought it best to get out and breathe some fresh air for a while.”
I gulped. “Why’s that?”
“Goodness knows. Last night my sister, Bea, arrived very late. My father was waiting up for her, a bit worked up as usual. She refused to say where she’d been or who she’d been with, and my father flew into a rage. He was screaming and yelling until four o’clock in the morning, calling her all sorts of names, a tart being the least of them. He swore he was going to send her to a nunnery and said that if she ever came back pregnant, he was going to kick her out into the goddamn street.”
Fermín threw me a look of alarm. The beads of sweat already running down my back grew colder.
“This morning,” Tomás continued, “Bea locked herself up in her room, and she hasn’t come out all day. My father has plonked himself in the dining room to read his newspaper and listen to operettas on the radio, full blast. During the intermission ofLuisa Fernanda, I had to go out because I was going crazy.”
