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“I suppose she did.”
“Don’t suppose; accept it.”
“So what now? Miquel Moliner is a dead end.”
“Or this Nuria is very crafty.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“At the moment we must explore other avenues. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to call on the good nanny in the story the priest foisted on us yesterday morning.”
“Don’t tell me you also suspect that the governess has vanished.”
“No, but I do think it’s time we stopped fussing about and knocking on doors as if we were begging for alms. In this line of business, one must go in through the back door. Are you with me?”
“You know that to me you walk on holy ground, Fermín.”
“Well, then, start dusting your altar-boy costume. This afternoon, as soon as we’ve closed the shop, we’re going to make a charitable visit to the old lady in the Hospice of Santa Lucía. And now tell me, how did it go yesterday with the young filly? Don’t be secretive. If you hold back, may you sprout virulent pimples.”
I sighed in defeat and made my confession, down to the last detail. At the end of my narrative, after listing what I was sure were just the existential anxieties of a moronic schoolboy, Fermín surprised me with a sudden heartfelt hug.
“You’re in love,” he mumbled, full of emotion, patting me on the back. “Poor kid.”
That afternoon we left the bookshop precisely at closing time, a move that earned us a steely look from my father, who was beginning to suspect that we were involved in some shady business, with all this coming and going. Fermín mumbled something incoherent about a few errands that needed doing, and we quickly disappeared. I told myself that sooner or later I’d have to reveal part of all this mess to my father; what part, exactly, was a different question.
On our way, with his usual flair for tales, Fermín briefed me on where we were heading. The Santa Lucía hospice was an institution of dubious reputation housed within the ruins of an ancient palace on Calle Moncada. The legend surrounding the place made it sound like a cross between purgatory and a morgue, with sanitary conditions worse than in either. The story was, to say the very least, peculiar. Since the eleventh century, the palace had housed, among other things, various residences for well-to-do families, a prison, a salon for courtesans, a library of forbidden manuscripts, a barracks, a sculptor’s workshop, a sanatorium for plague sufferers, and a convent. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was practically crumbling down in bits, the palace had been turned into a museum of circus freaks and atrocities by a bombastic impresario who called himself Laszlo de Vicherny, Duke of Parma and private alchemist to the House of Bourbon. His real name turned out to be Baltasar Deulofeu i Carallot, the bastard of a salted-pork entrepreneur and a fallen debutante, who was mostly known for his escapades as a professional gigolo and con artist.
The man took pride in owning Spain’s largest collection of humanoid fetuses in different stages of deformity, preserved in jars of embalming fluid, and somewhat less pride in his even larger collection of warrants issued by some of Europe’s and America’s finest law-enforcement agencies. Among other attractions, “The Tenebrarium” (as Deulofeu had renamed the palace) offered séances, necromancy, fights (with cocks, rats, dogs, big strapping women, imbeciles, or some combination of the above), as well as betting, a brothel that specialized in cripples and freaks, a casino, a legal and financial consultancy, a workshop for love potions, a stage for regional folklore and puppet shows, and parades of exotic dancers. At Christmas a Nativity play was staged, sparing no expenses and featuring the troupe from the museum and the whole collection of prostitutes. Its fame reached the far ends of the province.
The Tenebrarium was a roaring success for fifteen years, until it was discovered that Deulofeu had seduced the wife, the daughter, and the mother-in-law of the military governor of the province within a single week. The blackest infamy descended on the place and its owner. Before Deulofeu was able to flee the city and don another of his multiple identities, a band of masked thugs seized him in the backstreets of the Santa María quarter and proceeded to hang him and set fire to him in the Ciudadela Park, leaving his body to be devoured by wild dogs that roamed in the area. After two decades of neglect, during which time nobody bothered to remove the collection of horrors of the ill-fated Laszlo, the Tenebrarium was transformed into a charitable institution under the care of an order of nuns.
“The Ladies of the Final Ordeal, or something equally morbid,” said Fermín. “The trouble is, they’re very obsessive about the secrecy of the place (bad conscience, I’d say), which means we’ll have to think of some ruse for getting in.”
In more recent times, the occupants of the Hospice of Santa Lucía were being recruited from the ranks of dying, abandoned, demented, destitute old people who made up the crowded underworld of Barcelona. Luckily for them, they mostly lasted only a short time after they had been taken in; neither the conditions of the establishment nor the company encouraged longevity. According to Fermín, the deceased were removed shortly before dawn and made their last journey to the communal grave in a covered wagon donated by a firm in Hospitalet that specialized in meat packing and delicatessen products of doubtful reputation—a firm that occasionally would be involved in grim scandals.
“You’re making all this up,” I protested, overwhelmed by the horrific details of Fermín’s story.
“My inventiveness does not go that far, Daniel. Wait and see. I visited the building on one unfortunate occasion about ten years ago, and I can tell you that it looked as if they’d hired your friend Julián Carax as an interior decorator. A shame we didn’t bring some laurel leaves to stifle the aromas. But we’ll have enough trouble as it is just being allowed in.”
With my expectations thus shaped, we turned into Calle Moncada, by that time of day already transformed into a dark passage flanked by old mansions that had been turned into storehouses and workshops. The litany of bells coming from the basilica of Santa María del Mar mingled with the echo of our footsteps. Soon a penetrating, bitter odor permeated the cold winter breeze.
“What’s that smell?”
“We’ve arrived,” announced Fermín.
·30·
A FRONT DOOR OF ROTTED WOOD LET US INTO A COURTYARD guarded by gas lamps that flickered above gargoyles and angels, their features disintegrating on the old stone. A staircase led to the first floor, where a rectangle of light marked the main entrance to the hospice. The gaslight radiating from this opening gave an ocher tone to the miasma that emanated from within. An angular, predatory figure observed us coolly from the shadows of the door’s archway, her eyes the same color as her habit. She held a steaming wooden bucket that gave off an indescribable stench.
“Hail-Mary-Full-of-Grace-Conceived-Without-Sin!” Fermín called out enthusiastically.
“Where’s the coffin?” answered the voice from up high, serious and taciturn.
“Coffin?” Fermín and I replied in unison.
“Aren’t you from the undertaker’s?” asked the nun in a weary voice.
I wondered whether that was a comment on our appearance or a genuine question. Fermín’s face lit up at such a providential opportunity.
