Lost Luggage (62 page)

They'd abducted him, our father told Giuditta. Feijoo and Miguélez had done it. The usual suspects, of course. That night they'd forced him to play a game of cards at the Carambola. It was a trial run, a warm-up exercise. They didn't ask him for the money. They wanted him to play for them. More precisely, to win for them. From them on, he was their worker. Or, if he preferred, they said, pointing the pistol at him, their slave. They were going to make him play at least twenty games, and he'd have to win them all, of course. That was the only way he could repay his debts. They'd have a great time, he'd see. They'd reel in the victims, big fish primed to leave a nice pile behind them after a long night. Ah, and he'd better not think about escaping or going to the police. They'd take turns watching him if needed. Now he couldn't escape. That went for the Italian neighbor too. Not a word to anyone. He had to take it calmly. It was very simple and profitable for everyone. Two months of raking in money for them, and then it would all be over . . .

“Lying on his bed in the semidarkness,” Giuditta went on, “Gabriel reeled off their conditions. I had a flashlight with me, and every time I shone it on him I saw a resigned, scared, crushed man. It was a farcical scene and it only emphasized the level of insanity we'd reached. ‘I haven't played for a long time,' he said, ‘and I don't know if my fingers are up to it. When you cheat at
poker it's like what happens with pianists. It's all about fingers, always fingers. And I'm not as fast as I used to be, my brain's not as sharp . . .' I tried to cheer him up by telling him that there were other ways around this. I let slip your names, but he wasn't listening to me. He was too obsessed about the games he had to play. The next day, which was Tuesday, he spent the whole morning practising with his cards. He sat at this table here, with his jacket on and smoking one cigarette after another. He pulled the cards out of his sleeves and tucked them away again so fast that the human eye could barely see it. Sometimes the movement wasn't precise enough, and the card jumped into the air. It was a comical effect but he wasn't amused. At eight o'clock they came to get him. They were playing the first proper game that night. They knocked very politely at his door, and he followed like a lamb to the slaughterhouse. The same thing happened on Thursday and last night, Friday, at the same time. I could see that he was coming back more dejected, more broken each time, and it was clear that the tension had really got to him. He's destroyed. ‘There's a big difference between winning for yourself and having to win for other people,' he says. During the day he hangs around at home, like a man on death row, waiting, waiting, waiting. If he goes on like this he won't last long, and that's why, when I saw him leave with all that dread weighing on him today, I decided to ask for your help. I only needed a telephone or an address to find you, but providence stepped in and eased the way. All of a sudden the four of you materialized. It's a miracle wrought by the wardrobe.” She stopped and looked at her watch. “I think it's getting late . . .”

Yes, it was getting late. We were so enthralled by the story that the hours had flown by.

“Isn't the game at eleven?” Christophe asked. Giuditta nodded. The four of us racked our brains about how to save our father. “We've got an hour to get the whole thing ready.”

“How long ago did they take Gabriel away?” Chris asked.

“After lunch. It must have been about four . . . Lord knows where they hide him until it's time to play.”

“Have you got a car, Giuditta?” Christof asked. “Can we use it?”

“An Opel Corsa. Why do you want it?”

“If we're going to rescue Gabriel,” Cristòfol chipped in, emboldened by the turn of events, “we need a getaway car. A black luxury car with smoked windows would be perfect; I suppose a Corsa would do . . .”

It was time for action.

The Carambola was in Carrer Sicília, on the left-hand side going up, between Gran Via and Carrer Diputació, on rather a dark corner. The streetlights in that part of town leaked an orangey glow, and dense shadows cast by the leafy old plane trees swallowed up most of the light they gave. There was no other bar or business in the vicinity, and the Passatge de Pagès, the ghostly alley running off Carrer Sicília, only added to the impression that the whole area was under an evil spell. This setting worked in our favor. We'd come up with a plan that at first seemed like lunacy, but we had blind faith in it. Probably because we had no alternative. We Christophers had all tried to remedy our childhood loneliness by reading superhero comics. Adults had always told us that real life was rather different, but here we were out to contradict them. We were having fun, like a bunch of kids.

At eleven on the dot, when we double-parked the Opel Corsa not far from the bar, the street was dead quiet. We'd managed to persuade Giuditta to stay at home, and, while we other Christophers waited in the car, Cristòfol went to check out the situation. The blind was halfway down. You could make out a thin light at the back of the bar. Five minutes later, our bartender accomplice said good-bye to someone and left the bar, crouching to pull the blind right down. As he did, Cristòfol walked past him, not stopping, not breaking his step, and murmured, ‘Don't lock it, please.' The young man was startled but soon recognized the figure and the voice and nodded, right, okay.

Cristòfol came back to the car, and we waited another half an hour. It was better for us to make our triumphal entry when the players were well into the game. Meanwhile, we calmed down by passing around another bottle of whisky that Giuditta had presented us with just before we left. As we drank, we laughed at the way we were dressed. We weren't wearing masks, or multicolored capes, or balaclavas, but we'd foraged around in Gabriel's and Giuditta's old clothes and dressed up to get into the mood. We made a dramatic foursome and were counting on this theatrical show working in our favor. Christof, wearing a polo-neck sweater, in existential black from head to foot, might have passed as a Cold War spy. Chris, the tallest and thinnest brother, was decked out in a very distinguished striped diplomat's suit (nicked by our dad thirty years earlier, on Trip 123 to London) and had combined this with an eccentric cravat that transformed him into a David Niven–look-alike gentleman thief. Christophe, the shortest brother, had gone for the harlequin-style flourish of one of Giuditta's circus costumes and stood out like a madman, a seriously deranged psychopath, first cousin to Batman's nemesis, the Joker. Cristòfol, wanting to pay homage, finally chose a simple shirt and trousers. They were elegant but old fashioned, representing a style in danger of extinction, part of the last lot of booty that Bundó didn't get to enjoy, Number 200. This gave him a slightly shabby air, as though he were Jekyll caught midway in his transformation into Hyde, and he reeked so badly of mothballs that we had to open the car windows.

Christopher got hold of the bottle of whisky and took a long swig.

“Where would Porras, Leiva, and Sayago be now?” he wondered. His question was so unexpected that it cracked open like a piñata filled with nostalgia.

“They must be here in Barcelona,” Cristòfol ventured. “Like Senyora Natàlia Rifà, if she's still alive. Her boarding house isn't there any more, but maybe we should try to find her and go and visit her one day.”

“Yes, whatever happens with our father, Christophers, we have to round off our research,” Christophe interrupted. “Footnotes. They're necessary. There's nothing sadder than those half-empty municipal museums . . .”

“Petroli, El Tembleque, Senyor Casellas (he must be dead by now), Carolina . . . our mothers, Christophers, our mothers! It's so strange thinking about them all, here and now,” Christof muttered.

He was right. We were five minutes away from finding our father again, and the whole gallery of characters who'd led us to him, his escorts in memory, suddenly rose up one by one, like links in a chain, to join us with their mythical presence.

We toasted everyone who'd helped us get to this point and then, united in brotherhood by blood and full of unaccustomed courage, we got out of the car.

Since the game was being played at the back of the bar, you couldn't hear so much as a fly buzzing on the other side of the blind. Our plan was to raise it slowly—as many centimeters as required—and sneak in, creeping along in the shadows. Once all four of us were inside, we were going to swoop on them, roaring at the tops of our voices (which we hadn't rehearsed) and take them completely by surprise. Christophe was in charge of the blanket, and Chris had the ropes and hooks. Christof was going to drive the car. Cristòfol would be spokesman and translator.

The first attempt to raise the blind derailed our plan because, in those few centimeters, it let out a short, very shrill screech of the kind that makes your skin crawl and sets your teeth on edge.

“It's worse than chalk squealing on the blackboard,” Christophe muttered.

We looked at each other, listening hard, trying not to get the giggles, and waited twenty seconds. Nothing. They hadn't noticed. Taking them by stealth would be impossible. By means of gestures we agreed that the only alternative would be to burst in and take over the show. Christof and Christopher grabbed the blind. They counted to three—one . . . two . . . three—and heaved it up together. Up! The deafening noise worked in our favor. We flew into the bar and ran to the spotlit table.

“Sitzen bleiben!”
Christof yelled with all his lungs.

The five players saw him fly out of the shadows like an exterminating angel. The Nazi associations were inevitable, horrifying and extremely useful. They threw our victims into a state of terror.

“Don't move. Stay exactly as you are!” Cristòfol translated, trying to sound guttural. The situation was so fictitious, so unnatural that the words came out in Spanish, just as they had when he was a small boy playing cowboys and Indians.

The whole operation lasted five minutes, as we'd calculated—in and out—but now that we're replaying it, it seems to have taken much longer. Throughout the mayhem the players remained rooted to the spot. Dazzled by their bright pool of light, they tried to make out who we were in the shadows. The green baize cloth on the table was covered in banknotes. The four of us were hoping to catch Gabriel's eye, but he was sitting with his back to us, and we could only see the nape of his neck, his rigid back. In spite of the general alarm, he sat there immobile, still holding his cards. He must have had a good hand. Then we checked out the others. On Gabriel's right was an absolutely petrified gentleman of about fifty. He dropped his cards face up on the table and raised his hands, timorously, as if he thought this was a holdup. His tanned face—hours in the solarium—was getting paler by the minute. The smoke from a Havana wafted up from his lips, stinging his eyes, but he didn't dare take it out of his mouth. He looked exactly like someone called Manubens, the rich twit whose turn it was to be fleeced that night. The man next to him was pouring sweat, greasy sweat. His look of an itinerant fritter vendor marked him as one of Feijoo's gang. He was blinking nonstop and didn't dare look us in the eye. Glinting on the little finger of his right hand was a ruby ring. Without a word from us he took it off and put it on the table. Beside him was Feijoo, the host. He seemed calm, attentive, on the alert, but glanced sideways at Miguélez and kept gnawing on a toothpick. Last, on Gabriel's left, was the famous Miguélez. We checked out his lardy, flaccid face (of great advantage when it came to bluffing), the ragged moustache, the toadlike body that had so often attacked the door of Gabriel's mezzanine apartment.
He'd adopted an insolent air. His mouth was twisted into the sinister smirk of a wolf on the scent of blood. He, needless to say, was the one who broke the silence.

“Let's see-e-e, boys, now te-e-ell me where it hu-u-u-urts . . .” He drew out the vowels to convince himself and convince us that he had the situation under control.

Christof, as a man of the theatre, was really getting into his role. In two quick strides he went over and dealt him a resounding openhanded slap, a circus clown's wallop.

“Sitzen bleiben, habe ich gesagt!”
he screamed.

“Sit down, motherfucker!” This time, imitating Miguélez, Cristòfol adopted the tone of a member of the Guardia Civil in the midst of an attempted coup.

The authority achieved by something as simple as a good hard smack is an amazing thing. Gabriel was unperturbed, but the gentleman with the ring joined his hands in prayer, and Manubens whimpered (sprinkling the lapels of his jacket with ash from his cigar), while Feijoo tensed his body and spat the toothpick on to the floor. Miguélez had too much military pride to be cowed. In an instinctive gesture, he touched his burning cheek and made to get up again as if warding off a blow, at which point Christopher burst out of the shadows and—
click!
—got between him and Christof. Light flashed off the blade that he'd just released. The astounded Miguélez immediately reconsidered and sank into his chair again.

“She's thirsty,” Chris informed him in English, glaring at him and raising his arm, making sure they all took note of the stiletto elegance of the switchblade our father kept in his apartment, timid and withdrawn like himself because it was always in hiding. “My lovely dagger is thirsty . . .”

“La navaja tiene sed . . .”
Cristòfol offered something resembling a translation.

Then Chris snapped his fingers like a man used to giving orders and, in the midst of the general commotion, Christophe went over to Gabriel to carry out the next stage of our plan. With a grand gesture, mentally rehearsed a hundred times that evening, he shook out the blanket as if it were his cape and dropped it over our father.
Christof immediately came to his aid, pinioning Gabriel. With a few deft movements they soon had him trussed up and secured with ropes and hooks. Then, in order to discourage any resistance from their captive, Cristòfol shouted in his ear, “Easy now, Delacruz. Our mission is to hand you over alive to Mister Bundó.”