A Barcelona Heiress (16 page)

“You’re not seriously asking me, José María, to reveal to you where Lacalle is when your organization is employing thugs to ‘negotiate’ with the union men?”

“Yes, I’m serious. Everyone is tired of all the shootings and the deaths. Barcelona deserves an opportunity. Electricity is now part of life in the city, we’re preparing for a new World’s Fair, and work will soon begin on two subway lines, one to run from north to south, from the Liceo to Plaza Lesseps, and another cutting across it, from Plaza de España to Plaza Tetuán. Plaza de Cataluña is going to be remodeled, and will finally be the elegant and monumental urban center we need. This is a great time, and we need talented people to help us make the most of it. Think about it.”

We ate in silence for a while and our conversation appeared to have run aground when my friend seemed suddenly revitalized.

“Let’s change the subject. The truth is that I didn’t invite you here to talk about politics.”

I arched my eyebrows. “Then what?”

“There is something else … ,” he said, stammering.

“Well, come on, spit it out.”

“Look, Pablo, I’m thirty years old now, and I would like to settle down. I’ve already been around and seen a lot. Besides, my father insists that it’s time for me to start a family. I’ve always set my sights very high, and if I am to ascend, respectability is called for.”

“Very sensible. But how can I help you with that?”

“I wanted to ask you to explain the exact nature of your relationship with Isabel Enrich.”

The exquisite meal began to churn in my stomach.

“And why is that?”

“I would ask you to first answer my question, and my answer will depend upon what you say.”

“She and I are friends. Good friends.”

“But, do you hope to win her heart?”

The stirring in my gut intensified.

“That’s none of your business.”

There was a long silence.

“To be honest, it is as I suspected. She turned you down. Between us, and I am asking you this as a friend: would you object if I began to court her?”

“She’s an independent woman and may do whatever she pleases.”

“Then, if you don’t object, I shall ask her out. I think that she’s the person with whom I could very easily spend the rest of my life. I don’t want to upset you, of course. Waiter, the desserts! Pablo, how about some
glaces napolitaines
?”

The mood was icy as we finished our meal and I didn’t linger to order a coffee, leaving Rocabert to pay, for it was he who had invited me.

* * *

That afternoon I stopped by the offices of
El Noticiero Universal
to write an editorial and chat for a while with the editor-in-chief. The stately building on Lauria Street, with its cast iron doors and elegant first-floor tribune, designed by architect Torres Argullol, concealed a buzzing and at times frenetic atmosphere. At the central table one of the staff’s star writers, Rafael Maynar, was toiling over his daily satirical column, “With All Due Respect,” while city correspondent José Sarañana finished up a summary of the latest in the infinite series of crises at Madrid’s city hall. As I crossed the floor of the newsroom my colleague Amichatis stopped me.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said to me, with his characteristically gravelly voice.

José “Amichatis” Amic had ended up at
El Noticiero
after working for most of the city’s papers, all of which he had either left or been fired from. As an incurable bohemian, he was a model of indiscipline. One could not count on Amichatis to finish anything he was assigned, and he had left a long list of editors holding the bag, for which they had not forgiven him. Nevertheless, his articles had punch, and he claimed a following of readers. He found his muse among the dregs of society, his source of inspiration being its most degenerate corners, which he described with an intensity worthy of émile Zola. Wanton women, unredeemed bohemians, and delinquents with angelic souls were his favorite themes. The ruthlessness of the rich and the rapacity exhibited by the male sex truly outraged him, prompting his most stirring pages, both in Catalan and Spanish, as he wrote in both languages.

I had met him years before on the staff at
El Día Gráfico
, in a building on Boquería Street, where the ground floor housed the printing works while on the single story above was the
newsroom, separated from the administrative offices by a glassed-in patio. He used to show up, at times looking half-starved and reeking of absinth, his long hair flowing out from beneath a ragged cocked hat. All skin and bones, he wore a butterfly cravat, and a quirky pipe dangled from his paper-thin lips. He published a series of “Etchings,” which boasted a multitude of loyal readers. At the table we shared he alternated between feverish flurries of activity and hours during which he did nothing but stroke his pipe and stare out into space. Then he would go to see his friends at the Lion d’Or café, an establishment which attracted all of Barcelona’s literary types.

Of late, Amichatis seemed to have left his habitual penury behind him. After publishing a few unsuccessful novels that were a combination of social criticism and syrupy romance (he had a tendency to portray the female sex as intrinsically forlorn, which I found a bit idealistic), he finally triumphed in the theater, with works depicting his trademark marginal underworld in which, as a certain critic observed, a sad but elevated kind of poetry was fused with the stench of the city’s gutters. In actual fact, that critic was me, as I held José “Amichatis” Amic in high regard.

His most staged work,
The Harlequins of Silk and Gold
, told the tale of the rise, goring, and resurgence of the bullfighter “Lucerito.” It made its debut at the Teatro Apolo, and was a smashing success. And its popularity was not due to any pandering. Amid guileless matadors, double-dealing politicians, mediocre monarchs,
banderilleros,
and female dancers, Amichatis placed the figure of a plausible alter ego: Eugenio, an opponent of bullfighting who maintained that in Spain people go to shout at the bulls because they cannot do so freely in the street to denounce the outrages to which they are subjected. The character spent half the play launching
biting barbs of social criticism which portrayed Spanish bullfighting as a bread and circus show serving to ease political and class-based tensions.

The Harlequins
provided Amichatis with a small fortune which he promptly proceeded to squander. Meanwhile, my friend also wrote lyrics for songs sung at shows on Paralelo Avenue. And now here we both were again on a newspaper staff, that of the respectable daily overseen by Pérez Carrasco.

“Pablo,” he said, “you must accompany me tonight.”

“Where?”

“The Alcázar Español.”

“Well, it just so happens that I am representing one of its performers.”

“I know, and she’s going to be debuting my latest song. That’s why I would like you to come with me.”

We had dinner at a nearby tavern before heading down the streets of Barcelona’s District V which, as always, were positively hopping: sailors; bourgeois men in the company of lady friends; scoundrels adopting an aristocratic air; pickpockets; street urchins, both children and adolescents, deprived of their childhoods; prostitutes, young, old, and very old; repulsive pimps; and a large horde of more nondescript types all made their way cheerfully down the street, between organ grinders and neon signs. They say that in the middle of the French Revolution, at the peak of the Terror, when dozens of heads rolled each day into the baskets below the guillotines and the city of Paris had been torn asunder, divided between the denouncers and the denounced, over twenty-five theaters opened each night, to full houses. In Barcelona during the years I am describing, when gunmen bathed the city streets in blood in broad daylight, the nights were long and frenzied. As we walked toward the venue I reflected on how easily the different
circles of Barcelona society could interlace: through María I had come into contact with a world of anarchism of which I had hitherto been utterly ignorant, and my journalistic associations were now taking me back to the singer.

The auditorium at the Alcázar Español was oblong, with a capacity for some two hundred people. The tables were set up in a crescent pattern around a central stage for performances, and to the right was an area for the band, leaving an ample space as a dance floor. We sat down at a table near the stage. A waitress brought us a bottle of cognac and couple of glasses. The place was quite full and seemed as if it had never been ventilated. I could almost feel the thick smoke hanging in the air permeating my jacket.

“It’ll be a little while,” Amichatis informed me. “Let’s watch the shows. First up is the skit called
The Models
.”

As the band struck up quite a dissonant tune, the curtain slowly rose. The scene was set in a painter’s studio. A painter was working away in the company of a friend. On a platform a young lady dressed in translucent tights stood there for a good while, exhibiting her charms. The two men chatted and, after a while, the artist told the girl to leave. She strutted around the stage a few times, showing off her body before heading for the back, through the audience, wrapped up in a sheet. Next was a musical act by a group of chorus girls, who ultimately informed the painter that he had a visitor. An Englishwoman entered, offering herself as a model. The painter told her to disrobe, and she removed her velvet cloak, revealing herself in all her splendor. Amichatis sat at my side, drooling as the public roared. A closing musical number ensued to wrap things up.

We were later treated to a virtually toothless comedian who was not at all funny, and a small flamenco group composed of two guitarists and a dancer.

It was past midnight when María Nilo appeared onstage, her hair pulled back by a spectacular tiara, her eyes strongly lined with makeup, and wearing a flimsy, almost transparent tunic. As the band played the first few measures, María initiated a series of provocative contortions before approaching the director and reaching a hand out toward him. The musician handed her a small silver box. María opened it and took out what seemed to be a white powder. Placing it on the back of her hand she lifted it up to her nose and snorted it down. She then smiled and launched into an irreverent song:

“Cocaine …

I’m a flower fallen

from deadly vice,

a slave vanquished by destiny …

Alone in the world

—born of sin—

a villain

made me a woman!

That desire was the yoke

a child of evil

a fatal descent

of my deadly soul!

And in the end fallen

—sullied by the mire—

I’m a plaything of pleasure for everyone …

And in cocaine

which reveals another world to me

I seek tranquility

for my feminine soul!

It sweetened the bile

—of this pain—

that made me cruel!

Cocaine!

I know that in the end

it will kill me!

It’s killing me!

But it soothes my

pain …

If I can’t have it

my life is all darkness.
I know that in the end it will kill me
but it doesn’t make me suffer.

The singer paused, asked the musician for the little box again, and snorted some more.

Having lost all hope

I expect nothing of the world

and care about nothing at all

life …

Vanished

the shadow of the past

and destroyed

my heart … I anxiously seek my destruction,

the drug which

in the end

shall grant me

a merciful death …

Queen of the orgy

—its blessed tyranny—

little by little

consuming my soul …

It controls me

and reveals another world

when it soothes

my feminine

soul!

It sweetened the bile

—of this pain—

that made me cruel!

The crowd applauded amid laughter and a series of bawdy exclamations. I was incensed.

“Amichatis, this time you’ve gone too far! This song is a veritable celebration of vice.”

The old writer downed his cognac and flashed me a friendly smile.

“Oh, come on, old friend. Don’t be such a prude. Man is weak and needs some diversions to endure the Darwinian fight for survival. You’re a man from a good family, educated, with a university education, healthy, and intelligent … You’ve always had everything going for you. Many others have not been so fortunate. Shall you criticize these struggling souls who are not welcome at the Polo Club or the Marquess of Fontanellas’s parties, for seeking out their own artificial escapes? Besides, my song has a tragic ending, and a moral.”

“Oh, spare me your sophistic justifications. You know perfectly well that cocaine and morphine, which abound in these quarters, are addictive and turn their users into the traffickers’
slaves. As for women, it makes them fodder for the rings dealing in white slaves. Amichatis, do not romanticize degradation!”

Displaying his yellowish fingers as he lifted his glass, the writer knocked back the last drop of his drink.

“Oh, let’s not argue, Vilar. Let’s go say hello to María Nilo instead.”

I followed Amichatis across the floor where the waiters were collecting trays loaded with glasses and bottles handed to them from behind the ornately carved wooden bar, inlaid with shiny brass. In a corner there was a sign reading “Private Rooms” where a few stumbling and apparently impromptu couples headed, arm in arm. Off to the right was a hallway over which hung another sign: “Dressing Rooms.” We made our way down a narrow and dimly lit corridor with chipped walls.