Lost Luggage (35 page)

“She didn't even leave a toothbrush,” Bundó raved as Gabriel tried to calm him down.

After the holidays, in their first week back at La Ibérica, Bundó's doom and gloom only worsened. He was convinced that he absolutely
had to go and visit Carolina at the Papillon, but there was no foreign move planned at the time. They were doing jobs around the city instead or, in some cases, going to other parts of Spain. Every day that went by without seeing her, Bundó feared that Carolina was moving further away from him. Distraught, he phoned her at night but the minute he heard her voice he didn't know what to say and hung up. After the third call, Carolina started to insult the
putain de connard
that was harassing her. In the middle of all this exhausting folly, Bundó came up with a tailor-made solution. Carolina needed an incentive to come to Barcelona. She was terrified of being lonely and bored. If Mireille was here too, and since they were friends, it would be easier for her to adapt. Therefore Mireille had to come and live in Barcelona. Bundó set out on a crusade against our father's complicated love life and tried to convince him that he had to put his energies into making Mireille happy. In Barcelona. He abruptly deserted their lifelong, mutual, respectful discretion and started attacking him from every flank. Gabriel had to choose one woman—Mireille—and forget about the rest. This mix-up wasn't good for him. He nagged him to leave the boarding house—couldn't he see that La Rifà had set her sights on him, wanted to abduct him?—and get himself an apartment in Via Favència. “Everyone needs a family, Gabriel, but only one. That's enough, so let's not have any more fucking around about that.” “Surely you don't want to die all alone . . .” Stubborn as he was, Bundó never missed a chance to lay siege to Gabriel. When they were driving around in the truck, when they were unloading an extra-heavy wardrobe, when they were having dinner together after a gruelling day. He didn't care if Petroli witnessed his harangues. On the contrary, he was a friend and Bundó sought his support. Right, Petroli? True, eh, Petroli? Don't you agree, Petroli?

“Bundó, poor boy, really lost it for a while,” Petroli recalled when we went to see him in Germany. “It was terrible to see him so obsessed. His whole temperament changed. He wasn't eating, which was incredible for him, and it was almost worse when he was silent. He withdrew into himself. His jealousy was preying on his mind and we were scared stiff about him driving the Pegaso in
that state. In those days, people didn't take it seriously but now the psychologists would say he had a galloping depression.”

Gabriel knew Bundó like a brother—well, he was his brother, our uncle, dammit—and, when it started, was very patient with him. It'll pass, he told himself. This is just one of his fits. At the end of January they did the first international move for 1972 (Barcelona-Geneva, Move Number 198), and, at last, Bundó found a way of meeting up with Carolina. But the two-hour visit to the Papillon didn't help. On the contrary. Carolina received Bundó with tenderness and devotion as always—she'd missed him so much those three weeks!—but he was in such a state he didn't notice, was too blind in his zeal to convince her, and she ended up retreating behind her usual doubts and forms of evasion. Bundó climbed into the Pegaso feeling like he'd taken a step backward. The world was falling apart. The next day he was so down that he couldn't even go to work. He didn't have the phone turned on in the apartment so they couldn't contact him. Halfway through the morning he got on the bus, went to the boarding house, and asked Senyora Rifà if she had a room free. He wanted to forget about the apartment in Via Favència and to be near Gabriel. Showing very good judgment, Senyora Rifà made him a cup of linden-blossom tea and told him she had no vacancies, after which she sent him back home, making him promise to find some distraction and then go to work in the afternoon. When he got back to Via Favència, with the intention of staying in bed until Carolina came to rescue him, he found Gabriel and Petroli waiting at the door. They carried him off to do a move—Senyor Casellas was enraged—and that night, fearing he might do something stupid, Gabriel stayed in the apartment to sleep. In those four weeks without Carolina, the place had turned into a nest of dirt and neglect.

The spiral went on and on with no end in sight. Then came the trip to Hamburg, which changed everything.

After years of international haulage, Gabriel, Bundó, and Petroli had got into the habit of comparing every trip with climbing a mountain. It was Petroli's idea. He'd done some hiking when he was young. The climb was always the slowest, hardest part: loading
furniture, leaving first thing in the morning, ensuring the delivery time set by Senyor Casellas was met . . . Once they got to the destination and had done the unloading, which was the equivalent of planting the flag, things got easier and more agreeable. Europe was the downhill run. The Pegaso rolled along more lightly, they divided up the booty, invented excuses to take a break and, whenever the route permitted, stopped off to visit the family—interpret the word as you please. To stay with the simile, the journey to Hamburg was their Everest. The longest possible route within La Ibérica's radius. They'd only done the trip on one previous occasion and had a doleful memory of it. Hamburg, they'd found out, was at the northern edge of Germany. Just looking for it on the map made them feel cold.

“We're going almost all the way to the Arctic Circle,” Bundó announced with his usual flourish.

That first journey had been relentless and, since it was also in winter, they'd faced every kind of inclement weather. Rain and snow, and more rain and more snow, and driving with chains on the wheels, and police checkpoints every couple of hundred kilometers, and jam-packed motorways, and cab heating that kept breaking down . . . The truck was getting old and couldn't handle such extreme ordeals any more.

Two years later, the Pegaso was the same old grumbling heap, Hamburg was still in the same place on the map, and all three drivers had a dwindling spirit of adventure.

They began the ascent in the very early hours of Saturday morning, February 12th. Senyor Casellas had calculated twenty-four hours on the road to cross France and Germany, taking turns to sleep on the bunk, after which they'd do the unloading on Sunday the thirteenth first thing in the morning. At that rate, they could be back in Barcelona on Monday night and ready for work again on Wednesday morning. All three knew that these tight schedules never worked, but what intimidated them was the move itself. In addition, the Pegaso was chockablock: They were taking the furniture and all the mementos of a recent window who was going back home forty years after having fled from the Nazis. Since then,
she'd married a Catalan nationalist banker, gone through some lean times during the Civil War, and raised four children, who now wanted her out of the way.

Just after they crossed the French border—with Petroli driving—the first contretemps arose. Bundó had been unusually quiet and pensive. Now he broke the silence.

“Now, soon,” he said, “when we're going through Clermont-Ferrand, we need to stop for a moment at the Papillon. In and out. Ten minutes. I have to talk to Carolina.”

He said this in the calm, falsely naive tone of a kid begging for a gift knowing the answer will be no. Gabriel and Petroli were afraid this would happen. Before leaving, the three of them had agreed that they wouldn't be stopping anywhere on the way up so they could get to Hamburg as fast as possible. They'd gain time that way and then, on the descent, they could take it easy. Gabriel responded.

“You know that's not on, Bundó. You say ten minutes but it will be longer. We all know each other. We can't waste time this trip. This is Everest.”

“Why do we always have to do what you two say?” Bundó replied. “You know what, just drop me off and go on without me.” His friends laughed at the joke. “No, I'm serious. I'm off. I'll find something. I'm leaving La Ibérica. You two can tell Senyor Casellas. Bye-bye. I've been thinking about this for a while. I'll buy a van and do my own transporting. What with the shit wages we get . . .”

“Think before you speak, Bundó,” Gabriel countered. “On the way home you can spend as long as you want with Carolina. Anyway, I don't know why you're carrying on like this. She's crazy about you. Just seeing the two of you together on Christmas Eve was enough to know that.”

“No, it might be too late on the way back. I have to see her now. I need to convince her to leave that fucking job of hers and come with me. Tomorrow, if possible. I have to tell her that one day Mireille will be in Barcelona too.”

“You know you can't say that. That's never going to happen.” Gabriel was red with rage.

“Well, then I'll tell her something else. How would you like me to tell her that you've got a woman in Frankfurt and another one in London? And two more sons, to tip the balance.” He paused. “I've always been obliged to lie for you, Gabriel, to protect you, and I don't get anything in return!”

Our father—and this we know from Petroli—remained quiet and shot him a pitying look. Bundó forced a guilty smile, shocked at his own temerity. He would have understood it better if his best friend had thumped him, and hard. Behind the steering wheel and out of the corner of his eye, Petroli witnessed the silent massacre of thirty years of friendship and tried to stanch the bleeding.

“Okay, we'll stop for ten minutes at the Papillon,” he pronounced. “Ten minutes and that's all. Just time for a fag. If you take any longer, Bundó, we're leaving without you and you can go to hell.”

Bundó thanked them in a tiny voice and went back to his brooding. They covered the remaining kilometers to the brothel without saying a word. Gabriel was still in a state of shock, staring ahead empty eyed. Trying to drown the silence, Petroli tuned into the international service on Spanish radio.

“Ten minutes, Bundó. Six hundred seconds,” Petroli repeated as they pulled up in front of the Papillon. “We're timing you.”

Ten minutes later he started the truck, and Bundó shot like an arrow out of the brothel door. As they were having a smoke, Gabriel had thanked Petroli. Carolina waved at them from the top of the stairs, looking completely bewildered.

“She's giving me a date when I see her on the way back!” Bundó shouted as the Pegaso got underway. He was so excited his face had changed.

“Did you tell her?” Gabriel asked without looking at him. He was staring at the road.

“What?”

“Have you told her anything? About Sigrun and Sarah and Mireille and the boys?”

“Of course not! What do you take me for? A traitor?” Bundó exclaimed. “My friends, Carolina says that on the way back she'll give me a date. You understand? The exact day she's coming to
live in Barcelona! We miss each other too much and we can't go on like this.”

He was so wound up he couldn't keep still. Without further ado, he hugged Gabriel and ruffled his hair. It was his way of saying sorry. Our father broke free with a conciliatory shove, and Petroli gave three blasts of the horn.

Once that stumbling block was behind them, the ascent to Hamburg was accomplished with a fairly typical series of difficulties and distractions, no different from those suffered during the best of times. When they reached Strasbourg the truck broke down and they had to stop to change the fan belt. In Germany, nearing Karlsruhe, they had dinner in a roadhouse that served venison stew every day. It was one thing after another.

We Christophers would pay a fortune to be able to go back in time and witness one of those roadside dinners, to be with them inside the cab of the Pegaso, on a long trip. To join in with the chat, the rows, the jokes, to smell the stuffy stench of the cab and moan about that despot Senyor Casellas, to doze off and dream about the naked calendar girls. In short: to be one of them.

We tell ourselves that with all the hours we're spending tracking down our dad and his friends, we're saving on psychologists' fees. By learning about his circumstances, maybe we'll be able to understand ourselves a little better. Anyway, if we are not to go on too long about this last journey, we'll now take another short cut: As incredible as it may seem, that very day Petroli stayed behind to live in Hamburg.

The last hours of the last move were especially punishing. After Hanover, the snow covering the motorway had frozen over and the truck made exasperatingly slow progress. They got to Hamburg at midday on Sunday, five hours later than planned and it took them another hour to locate the building where they had to unload. They'd been on the road for more than thirty hours. It was always the same thing, however: They could be at dropping point but the sight of the peak gave them a lift of new-found energy, which they invested in their final effort. That day in Hamburg, luck smiled on their final exertions: The German widow had contracted two
strapping fellows to help them unload. Full of the Olympic spirit of Munich '72, they demonstrated that they could have earned a place in the German weightlifting team. Between the five of them, then, they finished the job after dark, but still early enough to find a restaurant open. Observing the ritual that always marked the end of any move, they took off their work gear, had a quick wash, and got into some clean clothes. Before taking their leave of the brawny Germans, they asked if they knew of a good place nearby where they could eat and, out of some kind of proletarian intuition, the men told them how to get to the Asturian Center. Petroli couldn't believe his luck. That one didn't appear on any list!

Christof and Cristoffini have got ahead of us here, but now it's time to go into detail. While Gabriel and Bundó dived into a trucker-size dish of Asturian pork-and-bean stew, the famous
fabada
, Petroli preferred to sit at the bar, have a glass of cider and enjoy a bit of conversation. Whenever his radar detected Spanish emigrants in his vicinity, all hunger and weariness vanished. Then someone introduced him to Ángeles and, in a space of a few seconds, his life changed. Completely.