Lost Luggage (66 page)

“Get to your room at once!” Fernando yelled at me, pointing at the door with his good hand. “Look what you've done to your mother . . .”

Otilia, who'd been secretly listening to the whole thing, came to me in the passageway and took me to my room. That night she undressed me and helped me to go to sleep. She hugged me tight and stroked my hair, telling me it was all right, that I was innocent, innocent, innocent.

The next morning they told me that Mother was ill and had to spend the day in bed. A doctor came to visit her, but they wouldn't let me see her. Halfway through the afternoon, Fernando came for me and took me back to the House of Charity. Otilia had already packed a bag with all the fine clothes. I got the new coat too. I don't recall whether I cried at any point during the taxi ride, which you might describe as my social descent down the steep slope of Career Muntaner. I don't remember, either, whether Fernando said anything to me, good or bad. He must have been too ashamed. So, like a defective piece of furniture being sent back, I was abandoned for the second time. The first time I'd been left naked with a bit of paper saying “Gabriel” stuck to my stomach and now, at least, they were giving me a collection of clothes, plus another label that said “Cristóbal Soldevila.”

The nuns were waiting for me. At first they gave me special treatment. They kept an eye on me and fussed over me too much, and the other boys got jealous. I hated that kind of popularity. The good thing was that I went back to being called Gabriel. They unstitched the labels from my clothes, but I kept wearing those trousers and pullovers until I grew out of them. When they were too small for me, some other kids in the orphanage must have inherited them.

Bundó was very happy that I was back in the House of Charity. For some weeks I missed all the toys and Otilia's attentions. I had trouble going to sleep without Peter Pan watching over me, and I had nightmares that always featured a one-handed man who was kidnapping me. Those two privileged yet traumatic weeks slowly faded away. Yes, in the end, it's the working days that count and the rest is a tip to squander.

Maybe you're wondering why there are such cruel people in the world. I'm not accusing them. We're talking about a time in which people with money and on the winning side of the war had it all sewn up. Was that their plan? Reality can be altered just like that? Well, it can. At least the political reality.

Whatever the case, this story has a second and a third part. Ten years later, when Bundó and I went to live in the boarding house, the Mother Superior apologized in the name of the orphanage. I was grown up, she said, and could now understand what had happened. She told me that my adoption had been the idea of that man, Fernando. They'd lost a son called Cristóbal three months earlier, and the only thing he could come up with was to look for another one to replace him. The mother, Maribel, couldn't handle it. As I say, I don't blame them, and I even feel sorry for her (in such a short time I came to love her a lot). As for the first Cristóbal, I don't know what he died of. Rich kids tend to die of sudden illnesses or terrible accidents. Decapitated in some stupid game, shot by a hunting gun, crushed by a horse running amok (and the horse is always slaughtered afterward in the stable).

Part three happened some ten years after that. One day, when we were doing a move in Barcelona, we landed at the mansion in
Passeig de la Bonanova. A family from Matadepera was moving in there, and La Ibérica was bringing the furniture. As soon as I recognized the marble staircase in the entrance, the majestic steps and the red carpet, those two privileged weeks of my childhood came back to me. And I have to say it wasn't a bad memory. You might say I'm kidding myself, but I also came to the conclusion that if I'd stayed with that family I might not have lived as much as I have. The fox says the grapes are green when he can't reach them, right?

In any case, while we were leaving the furniture there, I walked around rediscovering each of the rooms. The house no longer seemed as big as it had before.

“Excuse me,” I asked the boy who came with us to open up the house, “do you know anything about the family that used to live here?”

“Not much,” he said. “They were relatives of my mother's, and now she's inherited the place. In any case, it's more than fifteen years since anyone's lived here, and it's been closed up all that time. Apparently something awful happened. One of those family episodes that no one wants to talk about. . . Luckily, the apartment is very well preserved. Good materials.”

Just then Bundó, who was doing the move with Petroli and me, whistled in admiration as he was coming back from one of the bedrooms.

“They lived here like princes at the very least,” he commented. “Have you seen the kids' room?”

I didn't want to say that this was the house I'd been adopted into twenty years earlier. Jokingly, in his way, he would have reproached me for being unable to seduce that family, for failing to convince them to adopt him as well. I took advantage of a pause in the move to light a cigarette and go back to my old stamping ground. It was just the same but without the furniture, as if no time had passed. The drawings on the wall of Hansel and Gretel, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, the fireplace in the form of a dragon. . . This vision stirred up one of my old memories. The morning after that terrible night, before Fernando came to take me back to the House of Charity, I'd spent some time alone in my room. I took the drawing I'd done,
all crumpled up as it was, and looked for a hiding place for it. As I imagined the first Cristóbal had done, I decided to leave a clue for the adopted boy who was going to take my place. I went to hide it in the guitar, as my precursor had done with the trumpet, but then I thought that would be the first place Fernando and Maribel would look, so I climbed up on one of those dragon fangs and found a kind of niche inside the fireplace, a cavity in its mouth. That day of the move, I got inside the fireplace—I'm sure it had never been lit—and looked for it. And it was still there, dusty and discolored. I took it out, signed it with a pen—Cristóbal—and put it back so that the kids occupying that room would find it one day.

Then I went on lugging furniture like an idiot, up and down those stairs all day long, because that was what I knew how to do.

In some cemetery of Barcelona, there's bound to be a marble pantheon, one of the ones that are still standing, and there must be a stone that says:

C
RISTÓBAL
S
OLDEVILA
R
OGENT

(1940–1947)

For two weeks I did what I could to prolong the life of that boy. I tried but wasn't able to do it. For me, ever since then, Cristóbal—or Cristòfol, or Christof, or Christophe, or Christopher, whatever variations you want—has meant happiness. Or, rather, a chance to be happy in life. That's how you got your names, Christophers.

Our father's gone quiet. Since we didn't react, he clapped his hands, just once, hard, and the four of us all blinked together.

“What an earful I've given you,” he said. “And you haven't slept for ages.”

It wasn't that. On the contrary. His confidences had churned us up, and we were overwhelmed, mesmerized. We hadn't asked that much of him. Still feeling awkward after the revelation, we thanked him a thousand times. He saw that we were somewhat out of our depth and changed the subject to make things easier.

“How about some breakfast? What do you think? My mouth's dry and my stomach's rumbling. That's enough questions. Now you know the whole story, I hope.”

We don't know anything. Before we didn't know anything either. That's the truth of the matter. The story of the first Christopher has filled the veins of our story. The little boy who was sent back to the orphanage has pumped the blood necessary for us to live. This is the paradox: It's only now that we've found our father again that we Christophers have truly managed to capture his past.

And here we are on Sunday morning. We experience every hour that goes by as if trapped in a strange sensation—that of not knowing whether we're saying good-bye to Gabriel or whether we've just arrived. That's how it will always be. We finally understand what our mothers have said a thousand times. When he arrives he's on his way out. When he leaves, he stays behind.

The five of us are having breakfast, enjoying our bond of friendship. We feel restored to life, oblivious to the years we've missed. The bar's been filling up with people while we've been eating. The atmosphere is warm and unpretentious. Four old men are playing cards, and occasionally a raised voice is heard celebrating some trump or other.

“Now we're done with all the hard-luck stories, how about asking for coffee and having a game,” Gabriel says, pointing at the other table. “Do you like poker?”

The Christophers eagerly accept the invitation. It will be fun to see him playing after hearing so many stories about it. Our father asks a waiter to clear away the plates and to bring us some coffee and a pack of cards.

“What if we play with cash?” he asks. “Nothing much. Minimum bet of a euro. Otherwise, there's no fun in it.”

We empty our pockets and spill the change on the table.

“Hang on,” Christopher says. He opens up his wallet and pulls out the wad of banknotes that he swiped yesterday from the table in the Carambola. It's gambling money, predestined, and we'll share it out like good brothers.

Gabriel shuffles the cards with the elegance of a croupier and
deals. He could get a job in a casino, we think, but that could be too much of a temptation for a professional cardsharp. Each one of us looks at his hand and the betting begins. At last we're observing the famous poker face. The cards fly on and off the table. We're keeping an eye on his hands in case he slips something up his sleeve, but at no point do we see anything strange. Then he starts to win and doesn't stop until he's pocketed the last cent.

I
'd like to thank Stefanie Kremser, Jordi Cornudella, Enric Gomà, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Mònica Martín, Toni Munné, and Eugènia Broggi. They have all read the novel at different stages and have been most helpful with their comments, doubts, questions, and suggestions.

Xavier Folch and Bernat Puigtobella were the first to listen to the story of the three truck drivers who traveled around Europe. This was in 2003, and, instead of telling me to forget about it, they encouraged me to present it for the Octavi Pellissa Prize. Thank-you, too, to the jury for supporting the project.

Rita da Costa has translated the novel into Spanish. Her attentive reading spared me several headaches and helped me to polish the original text in Catalan. My thanks also go to Sigrid Kraus, my publisher in Spanish, for her confidence in me in all these years.

Mercè Gil told me her childhood memories of the House of Charity in the 1950s. Albert Romero supplied me with memoirs by, photos of, and readings about the situationists and May '68.

At several points, writing this book has obliged me to leave home. I wish to thank Miranda Lee and Terry N. Hill, Lise Schubart, and Jan Streyffert, and Montse Ingla, and the publishing company Arcàdia for their hospitality.

In the spring of 2009 I wrote the last part of the novel at the Santa Maddalena Foundation, which has been founded in Tuscany (Italy) in memory of Gregor von Rezzori. Hence I should like to say how grateful I am to Beatrice Monti della Corte for her invitation. I also wish to express my thanks to Bill Swanson and Nayla el Amin for their support. In Santa Maddalena I met the writers Sheila Heti, Tristan Hughes, and Adam Foulds, and I'd like to thank them for their friendly company and fine conversation.

There were four specific sources of inspiration as I was writing the novel, for which I should also like to express my gratitude. The book of photographs that the Christophers buy at the Sant Antoni market—Chapter 5, Part I—is
Barcelona blanc i negre
(
Black and White Barcelona
), by Xavier Miserachs (1964). In my references to the Camp de la Bota—appearing at the end of this same chapter of Part I—I am indebted to Francesc Abad's artistic project of the same name, which he embarked upon in 2004 and which he is still continuing on the Internet. Gabriel's ear infection and his subsequent visit to the otolaryngologist—in Chapter 5, Part II—were suggested to me when I read
The Year of Magical Thinking
, the essay on mourning written by Joan Didion. The image of Russian roulette that closes Chapter 6, Part II, comes from a musical number performed on
Saturday Night Live
by the actor Hugh Laurie on November 25, 2006.

I finally wish to express my gratitude for the digital files of the newspaper archive of
La Vanguardia
and the magazine
Triunfo.
They cleared up many of my doubts and frequently acted as a time machine taking me back into the past.