Barcelona Shadows (14 page)

“Marianne, Monique, Rosa, María, Adriana and Eram,” lists Madame Lulú. “If the gentlemen don’t find what they are looking for, I can show you more…”

But the harlot is playing it safe, because she knows that the redhead drives Makarov wild, and she sensed quickly that Corvo (because it’s his first time, and because of his gaze and tone of voice) will choose the Oriental, as he does. The woman puts one
hand over the other and lets a gold incisor show between her lips, which tense into the smile of a fox.

Electric light, heat, running water and a Tahitian named Adriana are the main luxuries Moisès Corvo finds when he closes the door to the suite. The girl led him up some stairs from the main patio, and he allowed himself to be hypnotized by the small but hard and round ass that swayed on each step and hadn’t been broadened by any babies. The whores Corvo usually visits lost that firmness years ago. And, obviously, that, the exoticism, the mystery of the playing cards at the door and the discretion of not passing anyone (even though moans and screams of pleasure can be heard through the walls) comes at a price. And what a price. A policeman’s salary couldn’t cover the layout of 150 pesetas the service would cost him, but the inspector came with his pockets filled with money. When a robber is arrested and carries part of his spoils on him, you can always negotiate a small fee in exchange for talking to the judge about his repentance. Golem and Babyface, who are the ones that do most of the bank-robber chasing during the day shift, turn a blind eye when Corvo chats with one of their clients. In the end, the inspector has done them quite a few (a lot of) favours, so they can be delicate about the money. If the bank’s already lost it, they won’t miss it much. Moisès Corvo has saved up some cash from that percentage he gets off the detainees and the full sum he gets off the dead that die at home (the easiest, quickest way to make a little extra), and now he can pay the Tahitian in advance, as she settles onto the softest mattress he’s ever felt in his life.

The girl, who doesn’t say a word, unbuttons his shirt and caresses his chest, without taking her eyes off his, to lick his nipples softly, as if she planned to melt them with her tongue like
a candy. Wow, thinks Moisès Corvo, and he goes along with it, because he’ll question her better once he’s shot his wad. She, obliging, kisses his belly and undoes his trousers, and takes out the policeman’s member, erect, pink and about to explode, places it in her mouth immediately and fellates him like the hookers he’s used to screwing never have.

I could tell you how she kept Corvo from discharging right away, parcelling it out, taking the lead (unheard of!), guessing at each moment what he wanted and satisfying it. But there’s no need for me to get into descriptions that don’t move the story along. Moisès Corvo stayed in the bed, dozing lightly, he still had enough time, while she kept stroking him affectionately as if she were really in love. He rolls a cigarette and lets the ash drop gradually onto his chest. He could do this for ever. Every once in a while he looks at her, she smiles but stays silent.

“Adriana.”

She responds agreeably, like a dog anxious to please its master. If she had a tail, she’d be wagging it.

“You’ve got a great tongue, but you don’t loosen it much, do you?”

“Mr handsome.” She has a wisp of a voice, with a strange accent.

“How old are you?”

She seems only to understand the things she understands, because she starts slowly to approach the policeman’s crotch again.

“Handsome.”

“No, no, no.” He moves the girl’s head aside, she is now looking somewhat annoyed. “I’m too old to recover that quickly, sweetie. Old, you understand me?”

“No?”

“No, no, and don’t look at me like that… Look, I…” He opens his hand and mimes counting on his fingers. “Forty-three years old.” He points to her with his finger. “And you?”

She imitates him, and now she does understand.

“Twennon.”

“Twenty-one.”

“Yes, twennon.”

“Yeah. That’s what they told you to say. Have you been here long? You, here?” He raises his tone of voice and gesticulates exaggeratedly.

She laughs, angelic, and Moisès Corvo realizes that Adriana is no older than sixteen and he’s not going to get a word out of her.

“Mister like Adriana?”

“Yes, baby, yes, I like you a lot, but you’re too dear and not much of a conversationalist.” Now he doesn’t shout, because he fears someone in the hallway might hear him asking questions.

Adriana laughs again, and the inspector can’t (nor does he want to) help getting another erection, and it doesn’t escape the prostitute’s notice. It seems she’s pleased about it, because she applauds and says something I didn’t catch and all of a sudden she’s got her mouth full and stops talking but keeps looking him up and down.

“You’re a doll, Adriana, you’re an angel from heaven.”

When the time’s up, Madame Lulú receives them again on the patio. On the way Moisès passes three clients emerging from a small room where there must be Turkish baths, towels at their hips and wrapped around three girls he hadn’t seen before. He doesn’t recognize any of the men but his attitude awakens complicity in one of them, who takes off his towel and, using it like a lash, whips one of the whores’ butts while winking at the policeman. Cream of the crop! he bellows.

“I hope it was to your liking,” says Lulú, expectantly.

“It was quite an experience,” and looks around him.

“Your companion asked me to tell you that you can leave on your own, that he is planning to stay with us a while longer. I hope you will return very soon, Mr Lestrade.”

“Undoubtedly, but I’d like to ask you a small favour.”

“Your whims are our commands.”

“Adriana is a wonder.”

“She is one of our best ladies. We can reserve her for when you return.”

“Yes, yeah, but… I’d like to know… would it be possible to get one that’s more innocent?”

“They’re all as innocent as you desire, Mr Lestrade.”

“Yes, but I meant, don’t misunderstand… younger.”

“I think I understand.” Madame Lulú hesitates. “You aren’t with the police, are you?”

“Do I look like a policeman to you?”

She decides that no, he doesn’t.

“Here we don’t deal in younger girls.”

“I understood that if I asked for the service expressly…” Moisès Corvo has set out the bait and crosses his fingers that she’ll bite.

She grabs him by an elbow and takes him aside.

“You realize that girls bring more problems, and the price isn’t the same.”

“I’m prepared to pay whatever it takes.”

“If I find out that you’re a policeman and this is a trap, I’ll send Hugo to cut off your balls and I’ll fry them up for my breakfast.” The warning comes out as sweetly as the rest of the conversation. Madame Lulú is quite the actress and the man who opened the door for them only has to hear his name from the doorway and
he perks right up. Now he really looks like a circus gorilla, dressed up ridiculously like a human.

“It’s not easy for me to ask for certain things, you know it’s not well looked upon.”

“You do realize that what I am doing is an exceptional favour.”

“And I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.” And from his heart he pulls out a wad of bills, 100 pesetas more.

“I don’t have any here, and I won’t bring one to you. The risk is too high, but I can put you in touch with someone who can provide you with what you’re looking for. Wait here.” And she goes into an adjoining office, where she makes a call. “No problem. Go to the Casino de l’Arrabassada and ask for André Gireau. Tell him I sent you.”

“I’ll tell my cousin that you treated me as he said you would, Madame.”

“You’re a devil.” It’s obvious she doesn’t really believe that he is related to Alfons XIII, and he didn’t say it seriously either, but with these things you never know.

“And you, my redemption.”

Sunday, at midday, the Ciutadella Park is a concert of children shrieking. Blackmouth walks among the little tables where couples sip vermouth. A feline on the hunt, searching for a solitary victim. The roller coaster of Saturno Park thunders along its path, as if the open mouth of the monstrous devil face that is the first car were roaring. Parents wave at their children every time the coaster turns near the group of tables, and they respond with shouts and laughter, not daring to release the grip of their hands.

Blackmouth was born an adult. He was never a child, he never
played in the streets with other boys and girls his age. Not ball, not tag, not hopscotch, nothing. He begged for food, the police would catch him, they’d take him to the poorhouse and he’d escape. No friends, just cohorts in mischief. No affection, just cold institutional protection. Really, Blackmouth could have been in a Dickens novel, and nobody would have batted an eyelash. And I’m not trying to justify him by saying that. Not every orphan who grew up on the street turned half wild with necrophilic and paedophilic tendencies. And in Barcelona at the turn of the twentieth century, the prosperous Barcelona of the world fairs, there are many of them: some end up dead from tuberculosis, others run over by the tramcar, most of them become thieves until a bad thrashing kills them, and there are a few who start families. Blackmouth feels bad when he does something really wicked; he blames himself and hates himself and wants to kill himself. But while he’s doing it, as he acts, he is a real son of a bitch.

Enriqueta forced him to shower, or more accurately she showered him herself. She soaped him up with a scratchy sponge and threw a bucket of water over him.

“You have to be presentable or women will be afraid of you. And a scared woman keeps her children under her skirt. There are too many rumours going around, and that doesn’t help us at all.”

Only the nuns in the reformatory on Aribau Street had treated him like that. Blackmouth fears Enriqueta, but at the same time finds in her a protector. He feels like one of those mice at risk of being devoured by their mother at birth, if she sees it as a threat.

He meanders through the attractions, acting casual, observing the nursemaids to find one who is distracted.

A boy about four years old is in a crowd of people, with a lost gaze. Blackmouth spies on him for a while. He watches him
wander, his eyes brimming with tears. He tries to find his parents or whoever might also be looking for him, but there is no one. Blackmouth’s bones are still aching from the test Enriqueta subjected him to in the café and he doesn’t want to get another thrashing for choosing the wrong moment. The demoniacal convoy passes again screeching very close by, as if it were the devil pushing the boy to take the definitive step.

“What’s your name, cutie?” says Blackmouth, squatting, with the sweetest tone he is capable of.

“Antoni,” he responds without looking him in the eye. He is searching for a face he knows. Actually, they are both afraid.

“Your parents left and they told me to take you home.”

The boy does look at him now, but he remains mute. Like the entire park, which seems like a desert of sounds. As if everyone could hear each word that Blackmouth says.

“Come with me, I’ll take you to your parents.” His voice trembles.

The lad doesn’t dare, he is rooted to the spot. Blackmouth pulls out a sweet that Enriqueta had given him and offers it to the boy. For the way, he says. It works, because Antoni extends his arm and grabs the sweet, not without reluctance, and Blackmouth uses the gesture to take him by the hand and stand up. Let’s go.

Blackmouth feels that everyone is watching him. That the men in straw hats and the women in their Sunday best have turned to watch him leave with the boy. That they are following him with their gaze as they leave the park. That the attractions have suddenly stopped, the laughter silenced, the prams empty, the stream of water in the fountains frozen and a cry of alarm hatches in the throats of the parents of the boy he is abducting.

But none of that happens, and when he reaches Indústria Avenue, before heading down Fusina Street, the world regains its normality.

Antoni is about to cry when they pass by Santa Maria del Mar and the people just coming out of Mass, but a timely slap across the mouth, hidden among the doorways of Agullers Street, nips the tears in the bud.

J
UAN MALSANO
reaches the Hospital of Sant Pau about dusk. Even though it’s Sunday and he doesn’t have to work, Moisès Corvo had come looking for him because that afternoon a man was beaten for, it seems, giving out sweets to children at the Saturno Park in the Ciutadella.

“A four-year-old boy has disappeared: Antoni Sadurní,” he told him when he came by his flat. “I talked to his parents and they didn’t see a thing. Seems they lost him at the pergola near the lake, and they haven’t seen him since. They heard someone say they’d seen a man taking a lad who fits Antoni’s description, but there are no reliable witnesses. From what I’ve been able to gather, the kidnapper didn’t walk with a limp. Later in the afternoon someone reported seeing a guy talking to another boy in the Born and they beat him up. He’s at the Hospital of Sant Pau, but you’ll have to go there alone, I have another job tonight.” And he shows him a photograph of the boy dressed as a sailor, with a perfect parting in his hair.

Malsano doesn’t go alone. He is accompanied by Doctor Manuel Saforcada, the city’s forensic doctor, who is also a specialist in psychiatric disorders. He asked for his help in determining whether the subject they will find there (they don’t yet know in what condition) could be the monster they are looking for. And if he is, they’ll have to get little Antoni’s location out of him.

The large main entrance embraces them as they enter, beneath the watchful gaze of the spire that pokes through the December mist. The Hospital of Sant Pau looks like a fairy-tale castle on the outskirts of the city, Hansel and Gretel’s gingerbread house in mad dimensions.

A nun asks them whom they’ve come to see and makes them wait a while, until a tiny man appears who looks like he’s been soaking for a good long time. He extends his hand.

“Doctor Saforcada, I’m Doctor Martín. It’s a pleasure to have you here. I was your student five years back.”

“I remember.” It was the first year of students the forensic doctor had taught. “I see I passed you.”

The small doctor looks all smug and gestures for them to follow him. Since he is nervous about their visit, he can’t control his tic of opening and closing his eyes as if trying to catch flies with his lashes.

“Anyhow, the pleasure is mine,” he continues. “It’s a joy working in this building.”

“Well, on the outside it’s very original, but inside it’s not much different from the rest.”

“You must not have been by the Clínic lately. It’s as new as this one, but much dirtier and darker. Have you seen the autopsy room?” The other man shakes his head. “It’s like a latrine. And I ask them to please clean up, but it seems that only the dead dare enter there. And they’re busy enough with staying dead.”

“Superstition is still an obstacle to progress…” the doctor laments, turning down another hallway.

“Lack of hygiene is an even bigger one,” stresses the forensic doctor.

When they reach the pavilion, they have to wait for one of the nuns to finish washing the patient.

“I doubt you’ll be able to reason with him much.”

“What is it he has?”

“General contusions, nothing serious. But he’s not playing with a full deck.”

“Has he said his name?” asks Malsano.

Doctor Martín wrinkles his nose, hesitating before responding, and then scrunches it up three or four more times as a side effect of the tic. He decides to answer.

“Yes: Jesus Christ.”

“You talk to him first,” offers the forensic doctor to the policeman.

The man lying down is corpulent but not very tall, and the first thing that draws your attention is that his arms are tied to the bed with strips of torn sheets. The upper part of his body that’s visible has bruises and he has some bandages on his shoulder. He moves his head with relative calm, like a spinning top about to stop. The inspector calculates he must be about thirty or
thirty-five.
He is thirty-three.

“Good evening,” begins Malsano, managing to get the man to focus his eyes on him. He has the kind of gaze that emits fear.

“I’m Inspector Malsano, of the police, and we’re here to ask you a few questions.” The man opens his eyes wide. “Do you understand me when I speak to you?”

“Yes.” His is a reedy voice that is lost in the murmurs of the other patients.

“What’s your name?”

“Yes.”

“I told you he’s not well.” Doctor Martín puts in his two cents’ worth.

“What is your name?” Malsano says slowly.

The man looks for the nun, as if she were the only person who could understand him.

“I’m Juan. And you?”

The man being questioned is restless.

“He spoke, before, right?” asks Doctor Saforcada.

“Yes. Incoherently, but he spoke.”

“To whom?”

“I was there.”

“And he spoke to you directly?”

He hesitates, his face tenses and relaxes several times. Malsano looks at the man on the hospital bed because Doctor Martín is starting to make him nervous.

“No…”

“And?” The policeman is growing impatient.

“Conxita, I mean Sister Concepció was there.”

“Is she the one who was bathing him before?” asks Malsano.

“Yes.”

“And would you mind calling her over again, please?”

The doctor asks around for Conxita, until he finds her and she returns to the side of the bed. It seems that the nameless man calms down.

“Ask him his name,” enquires Doctor Saforcada.

The nun obeys.

“Jesús.”

“Jesús what?” Malsano looks at the man, but speaks loudly so that Sister Concepció realizes he’s including her. She once again acts as a bridge.

“Jesús of Nazareth.”

Malsano snorts and turns towards Doctor Saforcada who,
lifting his eyebrows, instructs him to continue.

“Ask him what happened this afternoon.”

I’ll spare you the transcription of Sister Concepció’s repetitions.

“I am the son of God, and I was sent here to save humanity. I am a martyr and those envious of me wanted to kill me. But the son of God cannot die.”

“No, he’s not well,” is the spot-on diagnosis of Doctor Martín.

“But why did they try to kill you?” Malsano furrows his brow.

“I can’t die, I’m immortal, I already warned Archangel Gabriel when he appeared to my mother, the Virgin Mary…” Blah, blah, blah, continues Jesus Christ. He’d been so quiet when the investigators arrived and now it turns out he’s a chatterbox.

“Why did they try to kill you?”

“…If you do not obey the divine mandate and you act like Pharisees, I will be your punishment…”

“How old are you?” It’s Doctor Saforcada’s turn. When Sister Concepció repeats the question, the man stops short his diatribe.

“Thirty-three.”

“And when are they going to hang you on the cross?”

Jesus Christ seems confused, and Malsano takes the opportunity to show him the photo of Antoni.

“Do you know him?”

Jesus Christ looks at him for a while, and for the first time responds directly to the inspector.

“Aren’t all children the same?”

“Do you know him?”

“I am me. You are you. We all are.”

“Did you take him this morning, from the Ciutadella?” He
uses a severe tone.

“He is the branch of a tree where another will be born. He is the love of God made flesh.”

“What did you do with him?”

“Let the children come to me!”

“Where is he?” Malsano stands up and gets just inches from Jesus Christ’s face.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.” He is about to break. He is not the same as a few seconds earlier.

“You killed him!”

“No… no. Jesus is love. Jesus is the son of God.”

“It’s not him,” ventures Doctor Saforcada. “This man suffers from schizophrenia.”

“Premature dementia?”

Doctor Martín still employs old terms. The Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler had coined the name schizophrenia to specify a phenomenon that wasn’t so much an early deterioration of the mental faculties as a disease in which outbreaks produce a rupture with reality. If I have to be frank, though, the break is imprecise, as you will now see.

“The subject has delusions and a persecution complex. He doesn’t present symptoms of alcoholic intoxication and he should be kept under observation to determine if this episode was brought on by medicines or drugs,” diagnoses Saforcada.

“But could he be the one we’re looking for?” asks Malsano.

“If it’s him, which I doubt, it’s impossible to know that now. We have to wait until he recovers consciousness, and interrogate him again.”

“Go! Go!” shouts Jesus Christ, and Sister Concepció places a hand on his forehead to calm him. But he pulls the sheets tied to his forearms taut and shakes the bed forcefully. “Go!”

“What happened to him?” asks Inspector Malsano, puzzled.

“Inject him with novocaine,” orders Saforcada, and Doctor Martín runs out, partly to search for a syringe and partly afraid that the messiah will escape his constraints.

“Get him out of here!” he bellows, looking me up and down, spitting drool and his face reddening. “The son of God demands that you take him out of here! I don’t want to see him! I don’t want to see him here!”

I told you. You know, but the people gathered around the bed (Inspector Malsano, Doctor Saforcada and Sister Concepció) wonder whom he is referring to. I get him to quieten down by putting my index finger over my lips and Jesus Christ, who is actually named Pere Torralba and is from Sant Andreu de Palomar, grows silent. Just in time for the injection and the deep sleep.

“This man is incapable of planning anything or hiding anyone without giving himself away,” the forensic doctor reflects aloud. “He is not the person we are looking for.”

If there is one widespread pastime in Barcelona, it’s starting trouble and getting worked up when people are on edge. Not long ago, around June, a car ran over a pedestrian on Gran de Gràcia Street. The enraged crowd turned over the vehicle and set it aflame in an act of urban justice that satisfied everyone except the pedestrian, who had a femur up in the air, and the driver, who had to run for his life.

“Another closed door,” laments Malsano. “I hope Moisès has some luck tonight.”

Luck is too dangerous a noun to employ with a vengeance. Sometimes, a dose of good luck can push us towards places we wanted to go, but which lead to a terrible end. Sometimes bad luck, like not achieving what we’ve set out to, puts us out of harm’s way. Now that a Swiss patent clerk is finishing up writing what will be one of the most influential scientific postulates of the century, I will remind you that, in the end, everything is relative.

But Moisès Corvo doesn’t even consider that, as he heads up the Arrabassada highway in the dark in the tramcar that goes from Craywinckel Street to the casino. The route takes forty-five minutes and costs sixty cents and a raging head cold. Luck is something else, and he is about to try it in the form of roulettes, cards and tombolas.

The Arrabassada Casino has been open for five months, since July of this year, and is destined to be a European landmark, or at least that was the intention of the project’s investors. Crowded in front are cars, private carriages and the tramcar that comes from the city, in a constant bustle of visitors who are dazzled by the large metal entrance, an imposing iron hoop that reads ‘La Rabassada Casino Attractions’ and is flanked by two Art Nouveau towers with neo-arabesque touches (it seems that’s very popular among well-
to-do
Barcelonian society). The towers are crowned by a dome with flags limp from lack of wind. Men in tuxedos beneath their coats escort their beloveds, showing off the jewels they keep hidden in flats during the week, secret nests not so much of love as of sex. There are many Frenchmen and Germans, and some British, Spaniards who’ve made their fortune in the Indies and owners of textile factories who’ve made some money out of army uniforms.

And there is Moisès Corvo, who gets out of the tramcar, huddled beneath his duster coat, protected by a wide-brimmed hat
that hides his face in shadow, with the cold permeating his bones. He pays the fifty-cent entrance fee that includes one attraction, as if he cared, and goes up to the large balcony with two staircases, one leading to the casino and the other to the restaurant.

He notices that everyone is laughing naturally, as if that were paradise, the happiest place in the world. There are people everywhere, going in and out of the buildings with drinks in their hands, getting lost among the hedges or walking along the little path that leads to the attractions as if they were children. And Moisès Corvo understands that that’s exactly why he is here, because that human desire to hold on to childhood is what makes people cross certain borders at any price. The inspector is disgusted and enraged, and he touches his revolver hanging from his belt, beneath his coat, as a way to relax. He doesn’t like shooting, he never has, but there are moments when you have to act despite what you might like, and he accepts that.

What he finds harder to accept is having to change 100 pesetas into two fifty-peseta chips to be able to play (he’s almost out of money) and mix with the moneyed people who pack the place. Anyhow, you can tell from miles away that he doesn’t belong in that atmosphere, from his clothes, the way he walks and the fact that
they
all know each other. The casino is well lit, filled with lamps in every hallway, with large windows that now, at night, reflect like mirrors what is happening inside, giving the impression that there are more people than there actually are. Also, the Christmas decoration is quite baroque and fills the building with colourful glass balls, banners and other aesthetic blights.

The policeman walks among the tables, where various games of chance are being played. Most of them, though, are playing baccarat. The players challenge each other at a round table. And
within baccarat, the
chemin-de-fer
version is the most popular, in which the bank lands on a different player each round. The policeman observes in silence, and watches how it is the men who play and the women who drive up the bets. On another table they shoot craps, and on some others further on there are French roulette wheels. After a while wandering around, Moisès Corvo realizes that they are already watching him: there are at least two men in charge of security who challenge him with their eyes from different corners of the place, brazenly. Perhaps they’ve mistaken him for an anarchist. The best thing, then, is to sit down and participate in some game before the suspicions turn into action. He chooses the roulette wheel he likes best, one with little figures of horses and riders that mimics a race when it spins, and he decisively places one of the fifty-peseta chips on black eleven.