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I had left it inside, stuck in the lock. I felt no desire to go back and look for it.
“I think I dropped it on the way out. We’ll look for it some other day.”
We walked briskly away down the avenue, crossed over to the other side, and did not slow down until we were a good hundred yards from the mansion and its outline could hardly be distinguished in the dark. It was then I noticed that my hand was still stained with ashes. I was thankful for the mantle of the night, for it concealed the tears of terror running down my cheeks.
WE DESCENDED CALLE BALMES TO PLAZA NÚÑEZ DE ARCE, WHERE WE found a solitary taxi. As we drove down Balmes to Consejo de Ciento, we hardly spoke a word. Bea held my hand, and a couple of times I caught her gazing at me with glassy, impenetrable eyes. I leaned over to kiss her, but she didn’t part her lips.
“When will I see you again?”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, or the next,” she said.
“Do you promise?”
She nodded.
“You can call me at home or at the bookshop. It’s the same number. You have it, don’t you?”
She nodded again. I asked the driver to stop for a moment on the corner of Muntaner and Diputación. I offered to see Bea to her front door, but she refused and walked away without letting me kiss her again, or even brush her hand. She started to run as I looked on from the taxi. The lights were on in the Aguilars’ apartment, and I could clearly see my friend Tomás watching me from his bedroom window, where we had spent so many afternoons together chatting or playing chess. I waved at him, forcing a smile that he probably could not see. He didn’t return the greeting. He remained static, glued to the windowpane, gazing at me coldly. A few seconds later, he moved away and the window went dark. He was waiting for us, I thought.
·35·
WHEN I GOT HOME, I FOUND THE REMAINS OF A DINNER FOR two on the table. My father had already gone to bed, and I wondered whether, by chance, he had plucked up the courage to invite Merceditas around for dinner. I tiptoed off toward my room and went in without turning on the light. The moment I sat on the edge of the mattress, I realized there was someone else in the room, lying on the bed in the dark like a dead body with his hands crossed over his chest. I felt an icy spasm in my stomach, but soon I recognized the snoring, and the profile of that incomparable nose. I turned on the light on the bedside table and found Fermín Romero de Torres lying on the bedspread, lost in a blissful dream and moaning gently with pleasure. I sighed, and the sleeper opened his eyes. When he saw me, he looked surprised. He was obviously expecting some other company. He rubbed his eyes and looked about him, taking in his surroundings more closely.
“I hope I didn’t scare you. Bernarda says that when I’m asleep, I look like a Spanish Boris Karloff.”
“What are you doing on my bed, Fermín?”
He half closed his eyes with longing.
“Dreaming of Carole Lombard. We were in Tangier, in some Turkish baths, and I was covering her in oil, the sort they sell for babies’ bottoms. Have you ever covered a woman with oil, from head to toe, completely and meticulously?”
“Fermín, it’s half past midnight, and I’m dead on my feet.”
“Please forgive me, Daniel. It’s just that your father insisted that I come up and have dinner with him, and afterward I felt terribly drowsy. Beef has a narcotic effect on me, you see. Your father suggested that I lie down here for a while, insisting that you wouldn’t mind….”
“And I don’t mind, Fermín. It’s just that you’ve caught me by surprise. Keep the bed and go back to Carole Lombard; she must be waiting for you. And get under the sheets. It’s a foul night, and if you stay on top you’ll catch something. I’ll go to the dining room.”
Fermín nodded meekly. The bruises on his face were beginning to swell up, and his head, covered with two days of stubble and that sparse hair, looked like some ripe fruit fallen from a tree. I took a blanket from the chest of drawers and handed another one to Fermín. Then I turned off the light and went back to the dining room, where my father’s favorite armchair awaited me. I wrapped myself in the blanket and curled up, as best I could, convinced that I wouldn’t sleep a wink. The image of the two white coffins in the dark was branded on my mind. I closed my eyes and did my best to delete the sight. In its place I conjured up the image of Bea in the bathroom, lying naked on the blankets, in candlelight. As I abandoned myself to these thoughts, it seemed to me that I could hear the distant murmur of the sea, and I wondered whether, without my knowing it, I had already succumbed to sleep. Perhaps I was sailing toward Tangier. Soon I realized that the sound was only Fermín’s snoring. A moment later the world was turned off. In all my life, I’ve never slept so well or so deeply as that night.
MORNING CAME, AND IT WAS POURING. STREETS WERE FLOODED, AND the rain beat angrily against the windows. The telephone rang at seven-thirty. I jumped out of the armchair to answer, with my heart in my mouth. Fermín, in a bathrobe and slippers, and my father, holding the coffeepot, exchanged that look I was already growing used to.
“Bea?” I whispered into the receiver, with my back to them.
I thought I heard a sigh on the line.
“Bea, is that you?”
There was no answer, and a few seconds later the line went dead. I stayed there for a minute, staring at the telephone, hoping it would ring again.
“They’ll call back, Daniel. Come and have some breakfast now,” said my father.
She’ll call again later, I told myself. Someone must have caught her phoning. It couldn’t be easy to break Mr. Aguilar’s curfew. There was no reason to be alarmed. With this and other excuses, I dragged myself to the table to pretend I was going to have breakfast with Fermín and my father. It might have been the rain, but the food had lost all its flavor.
It rained all morning. Shortly after we opened the bookshop, there was a general power cut in the whole neighborhood that lasted until noon.
“That’s all we needed,” sighed my father.
At three the first leaks began. Fermín offered to go up to Merceditas’s apartment to borrow some buckets, dishes, or any other hollow receptacle. My father strictly forbade him to go. The deluge persisted. To alleviate my nervousness, I told Fermín what had happened the day before, though I kept to myself what I’d seen in the crypt. Fermín listened with fascination, but despite his insistence, I refused to describe to him the consistency, texture, and shape of Bea’s breasts. The day wore slowly on.
