The Antiquarian (16 page)

As usual, her rousing presence immediately captured Enrique's imagination, and he couldn't avoid not-too-distant memories of the times they had shared a bed in the next
room, when Enrique came to Barcelona to visit his adoptive father. Bety moved with purpose to open the bedroom door and, with a final extra effort, dropped the bag on the bed. The squeaky retort of the mattress springs made it clear that no one had used it since they last had. Enrique waited patiently for her to finish emptying the bag and come talk to him.

Bety took her time sorting the contents of her bag. Her visit had been a surprise, but Enrique's icy welcome … Annoyed, she lost the desire to tell Enrique that she was in Barcelona to help him. His silence had worried her sick, and she didn't deserve such a rude greeting. Enrique eventually understood—after the fact, as usual—that his reaction to seeing Bety had been less than polite. He stood in the doorway and made an attempt to resolve the situation.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that.”

“Don't make it any worse. You said it, and you don't say things you don't feel or think,” answered Bety with false serenity.

“Don't be angry with me, Bety. You know how I am.”

“Yes, unfortunately I do. Even if I discovered it too late.”

“Come on, let's go sit out on the terrace.”

She didn't bother to answer, but simply followed him outside. They sat in two comfortable, bamboo deck chairs.

“Why did you come?”

“I was worried about you.” Enrique thought he detected a slight wavering in her rigidity. “For six days you've been avoiding me. I can't reach you at home or on your cell phone, and I thought you might need someone … someone to be by your side.”

“It's not that I didn't want to talk to you. But everything just feels so strange to me, being here without Artur. I don't know. It's like I want to isolate myself from the rest of the world.”

“That's the same thing: you didn't want to talk to me.” The conviction behind her words was so complete that nothing, and no one, could alter it. “Listen, at our last faculty meeting they set up the exam schedule, so until it's time to grade them, I'm free. The assistant professors can manage everything until then. That gives me a ten-day break. I decided to come see you because I don't think you're acting normally. I'm very worried about you.”

“You have no reason to be.” Enrique smiled to put her at ease. “Everything's fine. You know I like my solitude, and there's no better time to be alone than when a loved one dies and leaves us.”

“Liar,” Bety blurted mercilessly. “You can try that line elsewhere. You might fool somebody else, but not me. Not by this stage.”

“It bothers me—really bothers me—that you think I'm lying.” Enrique answered too emphatically.

A smile slowly grew across Bety's lips until it became an uncontrollable laugh, so contagious that Enrique ended up smiling, despite a concerted effort not to. Seeing the contortions of Enrique's face as he tried to restrain his untamable laughter, Bety's peals became more intense, until they were probably audible within a hundred-yard radius. Enrique's anger slowly faded under the balm of Bety's mirth. It took them several minutes to regain their breath and composure, still beset by jags of sudden euphoria that came out as nervous giggles and short bursts of laughter, the final throes of an unexpected explosion of joy.

“I don't think it was that funny,” said Enrique, once he had recovered.

“I do! Not lying? As if we didn't know each other.”

“You're right,” conceded Enrique. “We lived together too long for us to think we could fool each other. The truth is, that's just what I was trying to do. But now—”

“Now you need to tell me why you didn't want to talk to me.”

Enrique looked into Bety's face, so expectant, so intense, so lucid. A feeling of admiration came over him: with her usual shrewdness, she had detected that something was amiss, and her only clue—a couple of messages left on her voice mail—had made her drop everything to come help him. Nearly four hundred miles, and who knew how long she had been waiting in front of the house. He couldn't help it.

Over the next two hours, Enrique told her everything that had happened since the nefarious night of Artur's death. He had decided to tell her in a collected, relaxed narrative, omitting no detail. Bety listened to him as she had before, suddenly immersed in a well-structured, though dark, tale, with a loved one's death at its core. Enrique noted her mood changing as the story progressed: uneasiness, rage, disbelief, shock, fear. She had never hidden her emotions before, and was not about to now.

When he finished, Bety took a deep breath, clear evidence of the impact that the tension in Enrique's story had had on her. She hadn't interrupted him once. Enrique watched her closely; he wanted an opinion, a response.

“I'd like to see the letter and the manuscript,” she said.

In no time, Enrique had placed the leather satchel on the terrace table and taken out Artur's letter and the antique manuscript. Bety read the letter's postscript closely. She then slowly leafed through the manuscript, owing more to her curiosity at holding the cause of a murder in her hands than any historical interest.

“He died for this?” she asked, seeking confirmation.

“Yes. They killed him so he wouldn't find whatever that book is hiding.”

“Whatever the book is hiding, and whatever you don't want the police or any other expert to find—at least not until you do.”

She had hit the bull's-eye. That was the clincher, what Carlos had not said out loud out of pure courtesy, a consideration of little importance to Bety.

“That's right,” he admitted, and in doing so, felt somewhat relieved.

Bety didn't say a word or make a single move—not even a simple raising of the eyebrows or movement of her lips. But Enrique knew right then that she didn't share his point of view.

“I have a reason for doing it,” he argued. “In addition to the killer, I want to find what Artur gave his life for.”

“Carlos told you it was dangerous to use bait.”

Enrique thought he heard more in her words—a veiled plea.

“There's no danger if we're careful.”

“I wish I could help you.”

“You already have. You're here.”

Their eyes met; the old complicity between them had dwindled but not disappeared completely. The passion and the love had tapered to the point of vanishing, but something remained that kept their bond unbreakable: admiration and respect. Enrique extended his hand toward hers, knowing she would not reject it. They sat together a good while, fingers interlocked, with the city at their feet.

When he awoke the next day, Enrique found a big breakfast laid out on the dining room table. Bety, an early riser accustomed to the university's strict timetable, could never sleep past eight o'clock. She had risen with clocklike precision, partly out of habit, partly because she was one of those people with an intrinsic familiarity with time, with no distinction made between working days and holidays. She was not in the house, but the still-hot milk indicated that she could not have been gone long. For the first time in a week, Enrique ate breakfast in an excellent mood. Bety's presence in the house was reason enough to adjust his deteriorated humor and soothe his jangled nerves. The inevitable memory of better times brought with it a gentle yearning. The night before they had slept in separate rooms; for the first time, they had shared the house without sleeping in the same bed. Enrique had been tempted more than once to knock on her bedroom door. In fact, he had even stood several minutes outside her room, his knuckles poised in front of the wood, lost in doubt, debating whether to finally break with the past or prolong the agony of a separation that seemed final but could have been avoided. He didn't find the courage to knock, more out of the fear of rejection than any other theoretical consideration. Bety was unwavering in her decisions, logical in her actions, and infinitely responsible. But the night before, Enrique believed he picked up something else in her behavior that could have been an invitation to take that kind of action. Yet he dared not try. Fear of failure—or perhaps success—became an insurmountable barrier, and now he would never know what could have been.

He was finishing breakfast when Bety came in from outside wearing a light tracksuit, damp with sweat. Every day, she ran half an hour before she did anything
else, and traveling did not justify an exception. She waved at Enrique and then dipped into the bathroom. As Enrique cleared the table, Bety treated herself to a quick shower. Once finished, she came into the dining room wrapped in an oversized towel, her wet hair hanging down around her shoulders.

“Good morning!” she cried in a bright mood.

“Let's hope it is.”

“Get ready soon as you can. We have a lot of work to do.”

Enrique hated working in the morning, and she knew it. His schedule had been another kink in their cohabitation. Bety taught mornings, but Enrique did not feel inspired until after a late lunch, when she was just getting home and wanting to go out for a walk, meet friends, or go see a movie. She could never understand how creativity could be so adhered to a set timetable, and so never comprehended Enrique's insistence on working in the afternoon. “If you can create, if you have that God-given gift, I can't believe that gift is only available at certain hours of the day. Write in the morning, so we can spend the afternoon together,” she would tell him. Enrique answered that working in the morning would affect his quality and volume, and that it was impossible for him. This, like so many other subjects, did nothing to favor their life as a couple.

“Come on, wipe that look off your face! If you haven't been able to find ‘it,' and Artur could, you're failing somewhere in your understanding of the whole thing, or … I don't know, maybe it's your translation.”

“Has it occurred to you that his knowledge could have given him clues that I can't or don't know how to find?”

“I didn't mean to wound your manly ego. Yes, it has occurred to me. It just seems to me that the former is more probable than the latter. Anyway, we'll be able to discard one of the two possibilities, which will allow us to focus more on other areas. Come on,
get dressed. We'll go to one of those peaceful old archives where you've been working, and we won't be distracted.” She pushed him toward his room.

“Okay, okay! I give up. I'll take you. Just don't push me.”

“Good decision. Better to give in to logic in the beginning than at the end: it saves time, and time is money,” Bety stated.

“Either way I can't spend all morning with you,” Enrique added. “I have to go see Puigventós about the auction.”

“As long as you have enough time to get me started on the text and decode your hieroglyphic notes, I'll be fine. Once you've done that, you're free to go,” said Bety, winking at him.

“Fine. Let's get dressed.”

* * *

An hour later, they settled into the cavernous reading room of Casa de l'Ardiaca, a library and archive housed in the archdeacon's residence, which was nearly empty at that hour. Only a few academics getting on in years observed them with the curiosity of those who detect an invasion of what they consider their private territory. Once they had finished their reconnaissance and expressed their disapproval, they returned to their tasks. Enrique explained the overall content and keys to his translation. He gave Bety an overview of the text in its three parts: first, more a list of activities in a log book than anything else; the second, made up of the annotations that comprised the actual mystery, marked by the beginning of the lateral sidenotes; and third, the detailed list of buildings.

Believing it the most important, Enrique told Bety to begin with the translation of the second part, but she refuted his argument.

“That's the problem: you lack the soul of a researcher. You're just a second-rate amateur. Your notes are sketchy, and the key to solving the puzzle could be in there, though it's unlikely. We shouldn't overlook that part, and again, I don't think it contains the solution, so we ought to look at the manuscript as a whole. Haste makes waste.”

An hour later, with Enrique's translation properly organized and the code to his abbreviations and scribbles broken, Bety dismissed him.

“Now I can start work. You may leave.”

“Great. When should I come back for you?”

“Come this afternoon, late. I'll only leave to grab a bite.”

“Bety—”

“I'll be careful with the manuscript, don't worry,” she said, perfectly interpreting Enrique's unspoken suggestion. “I won't leave it alone even one second.”

“Bye, then.”

“Go, and don't worry.”

Enrique left Bety at work in the archive. A certain unease pursued him for leaving her alone with the manuscript. He walked toward Boulevard dels Antiquaris to meet old Puigventós, president of the professional Antiquarian's Association. He crossed Portal del Ángel, lined with fast-fashion megastores and packed with young shoppers intent on emptying them of their contents. Once in Plaça de Catalunya, he began the ascent up the stately Rambla de Catalunya. Taking the Rambla instead of Passeig de Gràcia meant straying slightly off course, as the entrance to the Boulevard was on the latter thoroughfare. But Enrique had always been inclined to what seemed to him like the French touch of that charming avenue lined with fragile lime trees. Its buildings, elegant and harmonious, showed few scars from metropolitan Barcelona's unbridled urban expansion. Here and there, an isolated hotel or an office building was reminiscent of the
city of today, which had not yet managed to penetrate that hallowed sanctuary of light and beauty. He walked down the broad central median, where pedestrians held priority over cars, a unique oasis from another time that topped off the charm of the Ramblas, submerged in memories of his childhood. He had lived there as a boy. He felt drawn to that peaceful avenue where he had spent so many afternoons with his mother, so quiet compared to its surroundings, so dignified, with the imaginative
modernista
buildings that gave it magic and color. Enrique had dreamed of living in one of those buildings with their magnificent bay windows, from which he could watch the promenade, carpeted in the green of its lime trees. Dreams from the past, intrinsically wrapped up with the memory of his parents, and the mother he had worshipped.