Apocalypse Baby (29 page)

‘No, really, I'm afraid I can't help you. I'm so sorry. The last time I saw Valentine, she mentioned some friends… squatters somewhere, I think? I tried to persuade her to go home, but…'

She doesn't have time to finish her sentence. A harsh animal cry escapes from the Hyena, who has closed her eyes in a grimace. She turns to face the nun, rage darkening her gaze. Her state of alarm is grotesque. The old woman shows neither surprise nor fear. She knows all about the brutality of the weak. Degenerates mistake this for strength: an emotional outburst. The lesbian snarls: ‘Aren't you ashamed of yourself?'

Without replying, Sister Elisabeth looks her straight in the eye, simulating sincere astonishment, while thinking to herself, What right have
you
got to talk about shame, you poor pervert?

The Hyena replies out loud, as if she had read her thoughts. ‘I can't lecture anyone about morality, but I don't ponce about in a little white sari and a holier-than-thou expression. I don't do deals on the backs of children.'

Sister Elisabeth feels the bite of cold sweat on her back. She has nothing but scorn for the kind of pathetic sentimentality behind that kind of remark – there's no way nations can be governed simply with good intentions – but she can't suppress a moment of panic at the thought that this lesbian really can read her mind. The Hyena hammers home her advantage: ‘Yes, of course I can! What did you think? And you won't get away with it. I'm picking you up on my radar, like I've never picked anyone up before!'

‘But what on earth has come over you, my child?'

Never admit anything. Block your thoughts. Matters mustn't be compromised by this stupid incident. A little bird perches a few feet from them and pecks at crumbs from a tourist's sandwiches. Sister Elisabeth spreads her hands as a sign of impotence. ‘My child, what can you be imagining? What is there so terrible that could concern this little girl? Lord in heaven, perhaps I should have taken more care of her than I did. Do you want me to try and help you find her? I could ask around if you like, and let you know if I get any news?'

‘Why
her
? Didn't you have anyone else from your own people? Couldn't you send your own children?'

‘But I'm offering you my help, to get her home safe and sound… And I think I really want to help you. As I said, I'm sure it would be worth trying to find out something from these squatters…'

‘Because she was all alone, wasn't she? Alone and easy to influence?'

WE AVOIDED THE SUBJECT BUT ZOSKA KNEW
that what we were doing didn't make sense. After lunch, waving Valentine's photo, we checked the bars, the tobacconists, the record shops, the stores selling T-shirts and trainers. Then we had a coffee on a terrace, and after that we just strolled aimlessly, without asking ourselves whether it wasn't a bit odd to spend a day doing nothing in the middle of an investigation that was already more or less stalled.

Sticking close to Zoska, I'm electrified whenever her elbow brushes against mine. We eat ice creams on a bench in the sun, and I wonder whether I have ever lived such a sweet and perfect moment, as round as a bubble. Zoska says she doesn't want to stay in Barcelona, that the city has been ruined by tourism, that she's doing drugs too much here, and that everything's expensive. But for someone who wants to get away, she seems to me to be pretty pleased with the life here.

I really want to have sex with her. The side effects of the scene of that evening when we arrived here, which horrified me at the time, are disturbing now. Flashes of images, of sensations, running in a loop, are obsessing me, but pleasantly. The expression she had on her face, the slight smile on
her lips, when she pulled on the gloves. I really want to have sex with her. As fiercely as I'm afraid of it at the same time.

Everything she does drives me crazy. She makes the things she's interested in seem important, even if they're super-boring at first. She's only got to look at a car she likes, and I want to know more about engine size.

I like the way she lets me know I'm attractive to her. It's peaceful. I don't bother my head wondering how we're going to get round to kissing, and if it'll be the way I want it. The pit of my stomach is the centre of my feelings, I can feel it reacting with fear, desire, impatience and excitement. I'm listening exclusively to it now. I'm in orbit round her gestures. Fascinated by her hands. Worried by the toughness of her gaze. I love the way her voice goes down a few semitones when she speaks in Spanish.

We end up on a square, in front of the gallery of contemporary art. A huge white building, with about thirty skateboarders on the space in front of it. A deafening noise. Kids sitting round the edges are drinking from beer cans sold by Pakistani vendors. Zoska spots something I can't see, asks me to wait a minute. She goes over to a group of teenagers, talks to them, takes them aside, and comes back a couple of minutes later. I put two and two together and gather she's dealing. That explains why she has this fancy motorbike, although she's only a part-time waitress getting six euros an hour. And why she moves from place to place so much, since her love of foreign languages isn't enough to explain her perpetual need to travel on.

In the Raval, the windows have posters up saying ‘Respect the dignity of this district'. I ask Zoska if it's a protest about
the horrible new buildings they're putting up in the city centre. Zoska says it's against prostitutes. My mistake makes her laugh. She glances into a bar, I imagine she doesn't see the clients she was expecting to find, and she turns to me. ‘I'm worn out. I've parked a long way from here. I want to go back to my place before I have to go to work.'

‘Yes, I'd better be going too.'

‘Want me to give you a ride? It's further to your hotel than to my bike.'

Clinging to her as we speed along, I fling my head back. It's night-time. The sky's nothing like in Paris. Here, you can see the stars.

I'm aware of her back, her body against mine. To be able to clasp my hands round her belly, pretending to be afraid of falling off, makes me deliriously happy. Everything becomes interesting when you want someone. When it happens, you get this special kind of intoxication. It's been a long time. I tell myself it's as good as when I was fourteen. But that's wrong. Being fourteen was never as good as this. On the contrary, it was a tough, lonely sort of time, the worst moment of my life. I was never a little princess. My life was full of humiliations, brutal prohibitions, failures, and the inability to do things. I was scared of everything when I was fourteen, with nothing to protect me.

I gaze at the silver chain she wears round her neck. My entire body focuses on this detail. And I feel that even my ankles are enjoying looking at the metal links on her skin. Her profile when she turns her head to change lanes. Her way of turning round at a red light to ask if I'm OK. She likes me.

In front of the hotel, she takes back the helmet she lent
me. I ask her if we'll see each other tomorrow. She looks at me, moves slowly closer, and stands still, less than a pace away. We stay there like that, facing each other, for a long moment without touching. She comes nearer, I sway on my feet. Slide into her, between her lips. Under my skin, my libido is doing crazy somersaults. I'm high, on her. It lasts a long moment, just that kiss.

Then she leaves me there, saying we'll be in touch.

A pure high, without coming down. Like helium. A quiet bomb with a warhead that I need to explode on her.

At three in the morning, I'm not asleep when she finally texts me: ‘Can I come to C U?'

The sun is flooding the grotty carpet with golden light. My tongue feels numb – after so much mucus contact with her I've picked up the remains of the coke. It's 8 a.m. by the hotel alarm clock, and I'm smoking by the window. Zoska's asleep, lying on her back. When she came to join me, in the middle of the night, she was a bit drunk, warmer and more expansive than in the day. I liked it that she was like that. Easy to make contact with. We made love until dawn made her roll on to her side, and close her eyes, leaving me unsleeping. It was all reflexes: I touch her and I feel inside my own body what I'm doing to her; she strokes me and it's in my own skin that I feel hers when I touch her, the limits have melted, we're wound round each other. I wake her up, sit astride her, clasp her to me, her whole body tells me to go ahead. She rakes me with her fingers, something is released, I'm soaking the sheets. It's a tempo quite different from anything I've ever known, unending, happening to a different rhythm.

When she leaves in the morning, I'm not sure if I'll see her again. I ask her this while she's doing up her trainers. ‘What are you going to do today?' She turns to look at me over her shoulder and smiles. ‘I keep forgetting you work for the police.' Then she gets up, picks up her jacket, kisses my shoulder, says I smell nice, and goes out. I tell myself that she's doing it on purpose, it's a ploy to make me come apart, a ridiculous manoeuvre. It works. I spend the morning with one eye on my mobile. I go down to rejoin the Hyena. Finding Valentine has frankly never been an obsession for me, but now it's become the outer edge of the outer edge of my worries. I arrive in the bar where she's waiting for me and she gives me a long hard stare.

‘You look very well, that's odd. Have you been in the hotel beauty parlour or what?'

I make like I have no idea what she's talking about, ask her what she did yesterday, and pretend that we combed the whole city like lunatics. She's not listening, she frowns as if she is trying to resolve a particularly thorny problem.

‘Very strange. You look much more, well, luminous, don't you?'

And as I say nothing, she starts to sing ‘Like a virgin, touched for the very first time like a v-i-i-irgin'.

I ask again whether she's found anything new in our search, and she sighs. ‘I'll spare you the details of what my day was like yesterday. Cutting it short: Valentine got pally with this nun. Don't look like that, I thought it was weird too. This said nun has advised me to go and have a look in some squat…'

‘We've already checked out Nazis, Muslims, toffs from the
sixteenth arrondissement… so now it's the Church and the loony left. You are joking, aren't you?'

‘Well, she's certainly getting around, she's touched all the bases.'

‘Do you have any serious leads?'

‘No. But I get the feeling someone's going to help us find her. We're not going to have to strain ourselves.'

‘And this feeling's based on what?'

‘Call it my instinct. Don't ask. Meanwhile our programme for today is, go and have a coffee in the central bookshop in Eixample.'

‘Has someone tipped you off about this?'

‘No, but I have met this bookseller. A redhead. She's playing hard to get. Really kills me.'

‘And you met her where?'

‘In a bar, last night, I don't know if you remember, but last night you seemed to want to stay in your hotel. Busy, apparently. So I went out on my own.'

‘We're not being paid to pick up hard-to-get booksellers.'

‘Well, no. As I recall it though, I haven't been paid. Are you coming, or do you have some other plan?'

So we find ourselves on the first floor of the bookshop, La Centrale. Wooden floors, low voices, white benches. Their hot chocolate's good, but I don't know what the heck we're doing here. The Hyena is hyped up. She's put on the table all the books she could find about Montserrat. I'm afraid she's decided to go and do some tourism. She flips through the pages, and sometimes stops reading to tell me it's this fantastic site, that aliens are known to have visited it, that flashing lights have been seen in the sky overhead, or that
Himmler in person went there in search of the Holy Grail. I glance absently at the photos and say yeah, it does look nice. Big rocky mountains. I don't know what else to say.

I'm thinking about Zoska's sunglasses, I'm thinking about the space between her shoulders, I'm thinking about the little half-moon tattoo over her navel. And the bracelet of plaited leather on her wrist. The bookseller comes over to us. She doesn't look that great to me.

‘I really would like to learn Catalan. But I've never found someone to give me lessons.'

‘There are free linguistic normalization classes, you know…'

‘I can't possibly go to anything called normalization. But I saw this book downstairs about Montserrat, it looked very good. But it's in Catalan! Do you think you might be able to translate a few paragraphs for me?'

The bookseller, who has very short hair and such a strict expression that it's depressing, to me at least, puts her down. No, she doesn't know the book. Then she gets up and leaves us. The Hyena watches her walk away, then goes and leans on the counter, she looks more like she's trying to pick up the barista by the end. Two whole hours doing bloody nothing. I'm getting fed up.

‘Are we going to hang around a long time like this, doing nothing?'

‘It's quite simple. I'm not budging from here till you tell me everything you did yesterday.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about. Shouldn't we be finding out about these leftie squatters?'

‘What you don't understand is that we've moved into a
kind of Zen phase of the search. It works if you sit still. We don't go looking, but we'll find. Get it?' The Hyena crosses her legs and puts her elbows on the table. ‘If we find our little Valentine, what will you do about Zoska? Are you going to have a serious relationship with her?'

‘It's not at all what you think.'

‘Oh really? Would you be freaked out if you had to tell people you're with another girl?'

‘I can't see what's freaky about it. Excuse me, I don't live in the nineteenth century.'