The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman (9 page)

“I'm going to tell
Míster Crasman
something that my grandmother told me when I was a little girl. A secret no one knows, which can't fail to pique his interest. Then I'll take him to Granada and keep him distracted until you think of something better.”

In the center of the circle they stoked a raging fire, and on the fire bubbled a cauldron into which they all spat curses. Soleá's
idea made sense. It could at least give them time to come up with a better, more civilized, and less esoteric plan, one that would convince Marlow Craftsman and Mr. Bestman to keep
Librarte
going for a few more years.

“While you entertain Atticus Craftsman, we'll go through the accounts, we'll talk to advertisers, booksellers, printers, and the distributor. We'll square the expenses and get the business in good health so that we can press on, if you'll pardon the pun. When we're done, the right decision will be to keep the magazine going, closing it down won't be an option.”

“I want you all here at nine o'clock sharp tomorrow,” said Berta, drawing the meeting to a close. “And you, Soleá, make yourself look gorgeous.”

CHAPTER 14

A
tticus Craftsman had felt like a man of the world ever since, at the tender age of twenty, he had traveled around half of Europe with only a backpack and the contents of his savings account. His grandmother had opened the account for him when he was a boy, and to his surprise, he discovered that it contained more than £20,000. Grandmother Craftsman had apparently spent her life transferring a small amount every month to each of her grandchildren, envisaging a bleak future for the family business. Her fears were unjustified: Marlow Craftsman had proved to be an excellent administrator and the publishing house was financially robust. For someone who had survived the crash of 1929 and two world wars, however, economic stability and world peace were two possibilities as remote as time travel or an alien invasion. As a big fan of Jules Verne, Grandmother Craftsman struggled to clearly delineate between reality and science fiction: She had never accepted the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution nor, of course, the big bang theory, and she was not convinced that a man had walked on the moon as the Americans would have everyone believe.

In the end, thanks to Grandmother Craftsman's skepticism,
Atticus was able to fulfill his dream of traveling to the Near East, exploring Arab countries, submerging himself in the Dead Sea, visiting the Holy Land, and sailing into Istanbul on board a cargo ship, with Asia on one side and Europe on the other.

He returned from his trip with no money, no Earl Grey, and absolutely no desire to eat lamb ever again, be it spiced, with rice, boiled, roasted, or stewed. In fact, he gave up meat altogether. It wasn't a life choice, he explained to his mother, it was indigestion.

Ten years had gone by and he still couldn't bear the idea of lamb with cumin. Or the prospect of leaving the comfort of his London flat or the family home in Kent. He had grown accustomed to sleeping between clean sheets, bathing in hot water, dressing like a dandy, and eating solely organic produce. He hadn't the slightest desire to leave England again.

So when his father entrusted to him the task of traveling to Spain for an unspecified length of time, Atticus was overcome with an irrational, shameful fear of the unknown. Yes, it was absurd—Spain was a modern, developed European country—but it was a real fear nonetheless. He felt a knot in his stomach, as if the heart of darkness awaited him, and he could almost hear its unsettling, dull, rhythmical pounding coming toward him through the dry leaves.

•  •  •

It was only May, but Atticus couldn't believe how hot it was when he stepped out of the hotel at two o'clock. The heat smothered him, flattening him against the pavement. And, along with the exhaustion from his early morning flight, it skewed his vision
of reality. To start with, the light was so blinding that it stung his eyes, and however much he screwed them up he felt as if he was sweating between his eyelashes. Everything looked liquid, undulating, miragelike.

He undid the top buttons of his shirt and he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. His feet were burning inside his woolen socks. He was strangely bewildered.

He found a bar in a shady alleyway a few streets away from the hotel. It reeked of fried food. He went up to the bar. He noticed that the floor was covered in toothpicks, napkins, seafood shells, and other unidentifiable detritus.

“I'd like a salmon and cream cheese sandwich, please,” he said in Spanish with an unmistakably English accent.

The three or four men who were sitting at the bar stopped talking. The barman looked at him as if he had told a joke.

“Sorry, sir,” he explained, “but that's not the sort of thing we do here. We're more traditional. More like
pinchos
and
tapas
, if you get me.”

One of the customers, the one nearest to Atticus, came to his aid. He told the barman, “Bring him some garlic prawns, Paco, see what he makes of them. And a nice cold beer.” Then he positioned himself a few centimeters from Atticus's face.

“Here no salmon, no nonsense,” he said loudly. “Here beer and prawns, amigo.” And he slapped Atticus on the back.

At five o'clock, after six liters of beer, four portions of Russian salad, two of Manchego cheese, three of tortillas, four of fried squid, and two plates of ham that he didn't try on account of his being vegetarian, Atticus managed to drag himself away from his new friends and went out into the liquid heat.

His head was spinning and his stomach felt heavy and slow. The sensible thing would have been to go back to the hotel, drink some tea, and wait for his body to assimilate the concoction of saturated fats. When he got to the end of the street, however, he found himself at the entrance to the Parque del Retiro and noticed that his feet were leading him into the inner-city woodland.

In London—in Hyde Park, for example—he would have found some shade, grabbed one of those deck chairs they have all over the place, and settled down for a nice snooze with the background noise of children playing and the quiet company of squirrels. But there was no one dozing peacefully on the grass in El Retiro. The noise was too much for an aching head like his. There were musicians, shouts, races, skates, bicycles, tourists, suspicious-looking vendors, Asian masseurs, tellers of predictable fortunes, mounted police, jugglers, tramps, and countless circus performers, each as astonishing as the next. In the midst of the chaos, Atticus glimpsed the murky water of a lake covered in little rowboats. His rower's instinct led him to the Municipal Sports Club, where some half-decent-looking sculls were kept. He went to inquire and was told that at this time of day he wouldn't find anyone except the caretaker's cat. It was suggested that he come back another day, at another time, when he didn't reek of alcohol. He was standing with his back to the water and didn't notice the girls who ran up to the jetty, fleeing from a group of guys who were trying to splash them.

“Out of the way, gringo!” shouted a bare-chested boy when it was too late for Atticus to avoid a shower of dirty water that soaked him from head to foot.

“Get in, blondie!” one of the girls shouted to him.

In the boat were five voluptuous young women with their wet T-shirts clinging to their bodies. Behind them, three or four boats full of eager young men were trying to catch up with them, surround them, besiege them, and splash them again. The girls were laughing, they had wet hair, and they were chattering wildly.

Atticus took control of the small craft. He grabbed the oars, put his hundred thousand hours of training into practice, and was able to row the girls safely to shore to the surprise and disgust of the louts in pursuit. The girls then took the opportunity to mock the other rowers, wring out their hair and T-shirts, share cigarettes and chewing gum, and invite Atticus to spend the rest of an unforgettable afternoon with them.

They were part of a large, carefree group who had decided to set up camp in the Retiro until the police threw them out. They were students who didn't appear to have homes or families and wanted nothing more than a good time. They had bottles of rum and Coke, guitars and drums, and an exam the next day that none of them planned on turning up for, because, as they explained to Atticus, they belonged to the Complutense University Anti-Exam League, an association created by students from various faculties who were fighting for the complete eradication of all testing because they believed that it bred competitiveness and failure.

“So, in protest, we've decided not to take any more exams,” said the very guy who had drenched Atticus in lake water. “We oppose the system because it's unjust and unequal.”

“The day will come,” added another guy, “when exam rooms are deserted and classrooms are empty. Lecturers will lose their jobs, and the government will be forced to change the law.”

Ignoring the fact that all those dreamers were going to fail comprehensively and get into a whole heap of trouble the following day, Atticus declared that he was absolutely in favor of their revolutionary proposal. This gave him the right to share their drinks, campfire, and fumbles on the grass. Atticus couldn't remember anything after about nine o'clock that evening. He never knew what police threats chased him and his new friends out of the park at midnight, along with the other drunks, homeless people, and crooks who were lying about on the grass, or what vehicle he got into later, or which dive his friends abandoned him in, or how he found his way back to his hotel.

The next thing Atticus knew, he was waking up naked on the messy bed of his luxury room with a headache that all the Earl Grey in England wouldn't ease. He had apparently slept alone, because there were no signs of a female visitor. Nor a male visitor, thanks to God and all the saints in heaven. It didn't appear that either of his kidneys had been removed during the night—there were no stitches down his sides—or that he had been raped, or beaten, or robbed. The most probable scenario was that he had made it back to the hotel under his own steam, although in a truly lamentable state, and that, incredibly, he had been able to remember his room number before passing out on the bed.

After recovering his physical composure and his dignity with a cold shower and plenty of cologne, Atticus, between throbs of pain, slowly remembered where he was (in Madrid), and why (on business), and about the meeting he had arranged with a certain Berta Quiñones at ten o'clock that morning.

He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven. He cursed alcohol and swore he would never again touch a drop as long as
he lived. In a flash of inspiration, he thought to blame his tardiness on the time difference between Madrid and London. Better to look like an idiot than a drunk, he said to himself, and with typical British foresight he ordered a taxi on the telephone in his room.

CHAPTER 15