Lost Luggage (26 page)

“Fury, Fury! There, Tyrant, there! Hark! Hark!”

Sarah turned up with her first-aid kit in case anyone was injured. Bundó, still counting the money, moved away from the scuffle and went over to the window, trying to find some peace and quiet. Then he looked outside—the ferry wasn't bucking so much now—and there before his eyes was an amazing, unearthly apparition, one that he'd go on to describe dozens of times and always with admiration. On the first deck, the widest one, a stark-naked girl was riding a charger. Woman and animal were moving so fast they seemed to be flying over the sea.

Anna was riding bareback, legs gripping the horse's flanks, hands clutching the bridle she'd put on before. Sans Merci was trotting rather than galloping but, with the blue ribbon of sea in the background, they seemed to be out to win the Derby. Bundó stared at the girl's small firm breasts but then he saw her face and realized it was Anna.

“Shit! Fucking hell!” he shouted. “Gabriel, it's Anna, that girl we're taking to London, and she's up there riding a runaway horse . . . She's going to kill herself!”

Though nobody understood what he was saying, interest switched from the brawl to the window. All the passengers came over and were mesmerized by the girl and horse. Someone was certain it was a reincarnation of Lady Godiva. As soon as he realized they were talking about a horse, Ibrahim broke free from Gabriel, spat on Monsieur Champion, and dashed up to the deck. Sarah followed. The onlookers in the cafeteria were then treated to a second impressive sight, the appearance of Ludovic and Raymond, dancing naked to the strains of a Celtic melody improvised by themselves. It wasn't clear whether they were chasing Anna and the horse or celebrating their passing. The floral erections still protruded from their groins.

When I'm feeling low, Christophers, or when I regress to my old bad habit of sniffing my fingers, I take refuge in this image of the naked equestrienne charging around the boat on her steed. It has the clarity of those recessive memories that help you, that top you up and save the day for you, but that can't hurt you because they didn't really happen to you. Ever since my thirteenth birthday when my mum told me about the adventure on the Channel, the image has stayed with me like a birthmark on my skin or a tattoo on my soul. Sometimes I think we should know what our parents were up to just before making us. I don't mean the moment of bonking or lovemaking—or whatever term they used—but just before that, the hours in the run-up. In fact, it wouldn't be at all bad if we were born with this information wired into our brains. That way, we'd understand more about ourselves.

In any case, that October day of 1966, the
Viking III
came into port five hours late, having exhausted its supply of seasickness pills. There were no victims to cry over. Anna, high as a kite, riding Sans Merci into the great blue yonder, was convinced they would leap over the prow and soar out across the sea to the white cliffs of Dover, but the horse showed he had more sense than his rider. When they got to the end of the deck he turned left, jumped over a low barrier and kept trotting, after which he dodged or hurdled every object that blocked his way. The ferry became an improvised steeplechase track. At the end of the second round, Ibrahim, running at his side, managed to stop him. The horse pranced for a few seconds. Ibrahim embraced him like a son and screamed at Anna until she dismounted, oblivious to her nakedness. She was shivering, her skin was damp and cold, and her lips were purple. Sarah swiftly bore her off to make sure she didn't have hypothermia, but the girl was young, and all the vital signs were in incredibly good shape.

Five minutes later Gabriel knocked at the infirmary door. He'd found Anna's clothes and was bringing them to her. The effects of the acid had almost totally worn off and now a sedative was battling to spare her mortification. Sarah helped her to dress. With feigned severity, Gabriel asked Anna if she would be so good as to go and find Bundó. He had to stay behind to sign some papers.

The ferry berthed in Dover, but Sarah and Gabriel took more than half an hour to emerge from the infirmary. They had lots and lots of papers to sign. All the vehicles left the ferry. Bundó settled accounts with Monsieur Champion. A large sum of French francs was burning a hole in his pocket, and he experienced the victory as his revenge against all the Frenchmen who'd ever passed through Muriel's bed. Sans Merci's owner had been ill-disposed to cough up the money but tried to act as if he didn't care, after which he swore that one day in the not-too-distant future they'd meet up again for the revenge game. “It's my right,” he insisted. Meanwhile, Anna had said good-bye to the two French brothers, Raymond and Ludovic, wishing them lots of luck in their musical adventure (and we have no further news of them, not even whether they got to savor Carnaby Street's sweetest days). And then she fell asleep in the truck.

Thanks to the delay, Bundó and Gabriel had to do the move the following morning, a day later than scheduled. Senyor Casellas grumbled into the phone but Gabriel threw him the best possible excuse.

“We can drive the trucks faster but we can't struggle against the elements. With that storm we endured, Senyor Casellas, you should be paying us danger money.”

Sarah, who had the next two days off, said she'd go with Anna Miralpeix to the clinic where they were going to perform the abortion. As a nurse, she'd be able to stay with her overnight, which, in normal circumstances, was something Gabriel or Bundó had to do. The next morning, after an especially placid night and while the two men were lugging furniture, a new Anna emerged from sleep. The mystical experience with the horse had awakened a hitherto unsuspected maternal instinct in her. Lying on the trolley as they bore her off to the operating room, she was beset by doubts.

Five months later, halfway through March, La Ibérica had another move across the Channel to London, this time without any abortive mission. Once on board the
Viking III
, Bundó and Petroli scoured the boat in search of Monsieur Champion and his easily won French francs. No such luck. Gabriel went directly to the infirmary
and knocked at the door. When Sarah opened it, he saw the incipient roundness of her belly under her white coat—me—and knew without having to do the sums that he was the father. Since he had some experience—by this time, Christof in Frankfurt was toddling about and calling him Daddy—he responded more naturally. Gabriel and Sarah were closeted in the infirmary throughout the entire crossing, first talking and then signing more papers. Sarah, who wasn't daunted by the prospect of being a single mum, told him she wanted to have it (wanted to have me) and wouldn't ask anything of him. Gabriel asked for just one favor: that she'd let him come to visit from time to time. Ah, and choose the child's name. If it was a girl, he wanted her to be called Ann, like the girl who'd brought about their second encounter in the infirmary and, if it was a boy, Christopher.

“Why Christopher?”

“Why not?” was his enigmatic response.

Mum said she'd think about it, but she already knew she liked the mystery.

Gabriel's next trip to London was a reunion with fatherhood as well as with Sarah, who was no longer working on the ferry because she was on maternity leave. I'd been born a month earlier, in July 1967. Mum had phoned Dad at the boarding house to tell him the good news, and he promised to come and visit us soon. Would he have come if I'd been a girl? We have to give him the benefit of the doubt, but we'll never know for sure. In any case, that trip should be counted as an oversight in the La Ibérica timesheets. The last Monday of July, when they were closing down for a month's holiday in August, Gabriel sweet-talked the secretary, Rebeca, into giving him the keys of the newest DKV without Senyor Casellas's knowledge. That very evening and all alone, with no physical or human cargo, he filled up the tank and headed up through Europe.

About halfway through her pregnancy, Sarah had left the flat she shared with some other nurses and installed herself in a two-bedroom basement in Martello Street, behind the railway lines, not far from London Fields station. Dad turned up at the new
address on Tuesday afternoon, as fresh as a daisy. He'd phoned as soon as he disembarked from the ferry in Dover, and Mum and I waited for him for ages in front of the house, counting the trains going by. As soon as he arrived, Dad took me in his arms (with an expertise that surprised Sarah) and whispered my name in my ear: Christopher . . . It's such a shame that these memories are stored under lock and key in some inaccessible part of my brain! I wish I could recall for myself what Mum told me later! Gabriel stayed with us six whole days. Six! A record. Christophers, it would have been the longest time we ever spent together. Fortunately, it was warm and sunny that first week in August, and we certainly made the most of it. It seems that we went walking in London Fields every day. As I slept in my pram, they had a picnic on the grass, and Gabriel tried to make sense of the choreography of a game of cricket that some enthusiasts were playing nearby. In the evening, before putting me to bed, we went to the pub, where they both enjoyed a pint of the black stuff. It was holiday time and the hours seemed longer. I like to think that during that week Dad came to sense the protective inertia of repeated days. I can say merely “sense” because at breakfast time on day six he told Mum he'd be returning to Barcelona that afternoon. He didn't offer any explanation, and Sarah didn't ask for any. Innocent and happy, still unaware of the privilege we'd just relinquished, Mum and I watched the van moving off down the street.

Now that we Christophers have got together, we know that Gabriel didn't go back to Barcelona that day but took a detour to Frankfurt where he visited Sigrun and Christof for four days. It's a strange sensation because the discovery of the lie brings with it instant forgiveness. Brother stuff, hey, Christophers?

And, as the actor in the ferry might have said, the rest is silence. The silence we're all trying to make more bearable.

L
et me give my chapter this title because it's true: The world's badly divided up, Christophers. Of all four brothers, take note, I'm the one who got to see our father most and am probably the one who received most gifts snaffled from La Ibérica clients. Paris was in the middle of many of their routes. He could talk to me because his command of French was passable. What a privilege, eh? Yet I've got almost no memory of all that. Less than three years had elapsed between my birth in February 1969 and the last time I saw him. It's not enough time. If I remember things it's because my mother kept telling me about them years later and because I can link them up with photos we still have of him. They're feelings more than memories. Once, half pushed into it by Mom, I went for a session of regression hypnosis with an Argentine psychoanalyst who lived in Porte d'Italie, and who'd been a sort of boyfriend of hers. I wanted to go back in time to the middle of that three-year period so I could dig up the first memory I'd kept of my father. I settled down on the couch and gave myself over to the whole ceremony. I started to count backward from a hundred softly. A hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven . . . After a while, just when I was dropping off to sleep, I dived like a pearl fisher into the depths of my subconscious but surfaced with lost bearings and empty hands. Not a single secret memory, trauma, or unexpected image let itself be caught. I'm no good at these experiments.

Now here's a hypothesis: I was the first son that Gabriel really wanted. I'm not taking any credit for this, for the record. The first Christopher born of a single mother could be considered an accident; the second Christopher we might see as carelessness (sorry, Chris); the third Christopher must perforce have been the product of free will. (The fourth Christopher, in Barcelona, goes a step further and is born as fruit of an obsession, but the hero of that story will have his moment of glory later.) Whatever desire there might have been for my existence, however, was soon canceled out by my real father—a Gabriel who turned up when it suited him—and four putative fathers who, through accumulation and excess, demagnetized my filial compass. You see how the world's badly divided up? While you lot were spending long periods with your mothers, asking where Dad had gone and listening to outlandish excuses, I had four fathers who had no hang-ups about taking his place. There should have been one for each of us. Now that I'm an adult, I'm certain that these four friends of my mom's must have loved me and that I meant almost as much to them as a son of their own, but they never saved me from attacks of the horrible feeling that I'd been abandoned. You know what I mean, Christophers. We've talked about this at our get-togethers. It's that heavy feeling that came over us sometimes, like a kind of annulment of our existence that was only alleviated—with a bit of luck—by our mothers' attention or, more rarely, the announcement of a visit from Dad. Not even when it was clear that Gabriel was never coming back and I was (fruitlessly) trying to forget him did the four substitutes rise in rank. I never think about them any more. Must be genetic.