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We started off briskly down Calle Balmes, walking under the trees to shelter from the drizzle. It seemed to me that Bea was quickening her pace at every step, almost dragging me along. For a moment I thought that if I let go of her hand, Bea would start running. My imagination, still intoxicated by her touch and her taste, burned with a desire to corner her on a bench, to seek her lips and recite a predictable string of nonsense that would have made anyone within hearing burst out laughing, anyone but me. But Bea was withdrawing into herself, fading a world away from me.
“What’s the matter?” I murmured.
She gave me a broken smile, full of fear and loneliness. I then saw myself through her eyes: just an innocent boy who thought he had conquered the world in an hour but didn’t yet realize that he could lose it again in an instant. I kept on walking, without expecting an answer. Waking up at last. Soon we heard the rumbling of traffic, and the air seemed to light up like a flame of gas with the heat from the streetlamps and traffic lights. They made me think of invisible walls.
“We’d better separate here,” said Bea, letting go of my hand.
The lights from a taxi rank could be seen on the corner, a procession of glowworms.
“As you wish.”
Bea leaned over and brushed my cheek with her lips. Her hair still smelled of candle wax.
“Bea,” I began, almost inaudibly. “I love you….”
She shook her head but said nothing, sealing my lips with her hand as if my words were wounding her.
“Tuesday at six, all right?” she asked.
I nodded again. I saw her leave and disappear into a taxi, almost a stranger. One of the drivers, who had followed the exchange as if he were an umpire, observed me with curiosity. “What do you say? Shall we head for home, chief?”
I got into the taxi without thinking. The taxi driver’s eyes examined me through the mirror. I lost sight of the car that was taking Bea away, two dots of light sinking into a well of darkness.
I DIDN’T MANAGE TO GET TO SLEEP UNTIL DAWN CAST A HUNDRED TONES of dismal gray on my bedroom window. Fermín woke me up, throwing tiny pebbles at my window from the church square. I put on the first thing I found and ran down to open the door for him. Fermín was full of the insufferable enthusiasm of the early bird. We pushed up the grilles and hung up the OPEN sign.
“Look at those rings under your eyes, Daniel. They’re as big as a building site. May we assume the owl got the pussycat to go out to sea with him?”
When I returned to the back room, I put on my blue apron and handed him his, or rather threw it at him angrily. Fermín caught it in midflight, with a sly smile.
“The owl drowned, period. Happy?” I snapped.
“Intriguing metaphor. Have you been dusting off your Verlaine, young man?”
“I stick to prose on Monday mornings. What do you want me to tell you?”
“I leave that up to you. The number of estocadas or the laps of honor.”
“I’m not in the mood, Fermín.”
“O youth, flower of fools! Oh, well, don’t get irritated with me. I have fresh news concerning our investigation on your friend Julián Carax.”
“I’m all ears.”
He gave me one of his cloak-and-dagger looks, one eyebrow raised.
“Well, it turns out that yesterday, after leaving Bernarda back home with her virtue intact but a nice couple of well-placed bruises on her backside, I was assailed by a fit of insomnia—due to those evening erotic arousals—which gave me the pretext to walk down to one of the information centers of the Barcelona underworld—i.e., the tavern of Eliodoro Salfumán, aka ‘Coldprick,’ situated in a seedy but rather colorful establishment in Calle Sant Jeroni, pride of the Raval quarter.”
“The abridged version, Fermín, for goodness’ sake.”
“Coming. The fact is that once I was there, ingratiating myself with some of the usual crowd, old chums from troubled times of yore, I began to make inquiries about this Miquel Moliner, the husband of your Mata Hari Nuria Monfort and a supposed inmate at the local penitential hotels.”
“Supposed?”
“With a capital S. There are no slips at all ’twixt cup and lip in this case, if you see what I mean. I know from experience that when it comes to the census of the prison population, my informants in Coldprick’s tabernacle are much more accurate than the pencil pushers in the law courts, and I can guarantee, Daniel, my friend, that nobody has heard mention of the name Miquel Moliner as an inmate, visitor, or any other living soul in the prisons of Barcelona, for at least ten years.”
“Perhaps he’s serving in some other prison.”
“Yeah. Alcatraz, Sing Sing, or the Bastille. Daniel, that woman lied to you.”
