The Whispering City (15 page)

Castro left without closing the door. Burguillos stayed in the office as she gathered her things. He had approached the small table that held the information on the Sobrerroca case and was openly browsing the papers in front of Ana, who didn’t dare say anything to a policeman. She stepped out of the office and closed the door behind her. Sevilla was at the end of the hallway talking to another policeman. He broke off his conversation and approached her.

‘Is that it? Can I take the typewriter?’

‘Yes.’

He went into the office without saying goodbye to her.

She hadn’t taken even a single step further before she heard angry voices from inside.

‘What are you doing here, Burguillos?’

‘Well, if it isn’t Sevilla…’

‘Come on, get out. If the inspector finds you’ve been snooping around in his things, he’s going to haul you over the coals.’

‘Fuck’s sake! I was just having a quick look.’

‘Get out. I hope you haven’t messed all this up.’

Ana slipped away so that they wouldn’t catch her snooping as well. She pressed the bag with her article and the copied documents close to her side and walked swiftly out of the headquarters.

17

It held up. Beatriz went over all the steps one more time. When she was at that point in her work, she always imagined it as a rope ladder. She had to control each rung. Would it break with the next step? She climbed it again in her mind. Every once in a while she looked down at the books on her desk. The argumentation was solid; Beatriz tensed the ropes, thinking of possible counter-arguments and jotting down those that seemed particularly cogent. But she could refute those, too. No, there was nothing more to say; her thesis was well constructed. And the best part was that she would give a conference about it in Tours, then she’d write her article and publish it in a prestigious French journal specialising in the subject. It wasn’t just going to sit in a drawer. She would write it up and people would read it.

Satisfied, she leaned back in her chair.

Then Encarni came through the door.

‘Can I make you a coffee, Professor?’

Why not?

‘Sure. I’ll be there in a moment.’

She emerged from her office. When she sat down at the kitchen table, her eye was drawn to a tin of powdered milk that Encarni had put there.

‘Why have you bought that?’

‘Because of the refrigerator, ma’am.’

Encarni looked at her as if she were from a distant planet and generously put three heaped spoonfuls of powdered milk into the cup of hot water.

The refrigerator was made of wood, painted white and had to be filled regularly with blocks of ice. Encarni hated it with all her soul. She opened the drawer that held the ice with noisy tugs and shoved it back into the old contraption with the same aversion and no less noise. Every time she turned the spigot to let out the thawed water, she spoke to it like a nurse bringing a bedpan to an annoying patient.

‘Come on, now we’re going to do a little wee-wee, we’re very old and not good for much, just for pissing in the chamber pot. Come on, let’s see you do it.’ The spigot creaked when she turned it and the water started to come out. ‘Good job. Look at you go.’

‘Are you going to buy powdered milk and tinned goods so that we can throw out the refrigerator?’

Encarni sighed.

‘The milk company is raffling off a prize. We have to fill out this form and tear off the label from a tin of milk and send them in together.’ Encarni searched with her finger on the paper on the table, ‘To Nestlé in Barcelona. With a bit of luck, you can win a refrigerator.’

She looked at Beatriz triumphantly.

‘A modern, electric refrigerator.’

She showed her a photo of a refrigerator that she had torn out of a magazine. A large box with rounded edges and a smooth bright surface. You couldn’t see any joints or seams, only a slightly convex metal sheet of light blue. An American Cadillac for the kitchen.

‘But, Encarni! You don’t have a chance of winning that refrigerator. How many people do you think are going to take part in the raffle? Half of Spain, I bet.’

‘And someone’s going to win it. Why not me?’

‘Yes, why not?’ sighed Beatriz.

There was no point; nothing was going to make Encarni change her mind.

‘Look, we have to put the answers here.’

‘We have to? It’s up to you to respond, not me.’

‘But maybe you could take a look and tell me if they’re right. It’s the least you could do for a new fridge! Because I would leave it here.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘Where my mother lives, in Monchuí, there’s no electricity. She would get on fine with the old one.’

Encarni’s family lived in a shanty town on Montjuïc.

‘Come on then, let’s have a look at those answers.’

Encarni held out the form for her. Beatriz read aloud.

‘What do most consumers use La Lechera condensed milk for? A. To make coffee a sweet, creamy delight. B. To prepare a delicious rice pudding.’

‘I put A.’

‘That’s what I’d put, too.’

‘But those are the easy questions. Look at this one.’

She pointed to question seven with one finger.

‘In what year did Enrique Nestlé invent the powdered milk that saved so many infants’ lives? A. 1867. B. 1810. C. 1905.’

She looked up.

‘I’d say that —’

Encarni didn’t let her finish.

‘We have to put 1810, Professor.’

Beatriz thought. When were soup cubes invented in Germany? Surely the milk was made in a similar way; in the end it was the same thing, extracting the water in order to conserve it. It must have been at some point in the mid-nineteenth century. She was irritated with herself because she used to know and her memory was failing her.

‘It’s clear, ma’am, that the earlier it was, the more lives they can say it has saved.’

‘Bring me the encyclopedia. The N volume. Let’s check when Mr Nestlé invented powdered milk.’

While Encarni was in the library, the doorbell rang.

‘I’ll get it, Encarni.’

Beatriz saw through the peephole that it was Manolo, the doorman’s son. She opened the door and the boy handed her a letter. She took it. Her mother had always kept a small bowl of coins on the pedestal table in the entryway. Now Encarni filled it up so that she would always have some to hand. She took out a few coins and put them into Manolo’s hand. He mumbled ‘Thank you’ with a surprised expression. She must have given him too much. The boy quickly hid the coins in his fist and turned and disappeared down the stairs even faster.

Beatriz closed the door. Just then the hand that held the envelope started to shake.

For a second she considered waiting until evening to open the letter, so that she could enjoy the feeling of being the one to decide when the big moment arrived. But as she was thinking this, she found she’d already entered her study and was gripping her father’s letter opener. The blade made its way along the bright white paper with the Oxford University seal.
Dominus illuminatio mea
. The Lord is my light.

She pulled the letter out of the envelope. She lowered the reading glasses she wore on her head; a few blonde and grey locks were tangled around the arms.

‘Esteemed Doctor…’

It was a no. They hadn’t given her the visiting professor job. Jackson, who she’d known since the days of Don Ramón in Madrid, had told her it wasn’t going to be easy.

There went her opportunity. Her ticket to another world. Her personal escape. She would have to stay here. The sky closed over her. This year, maybe the next one as well. There wouldn’t be many more such chances. She contemplated the frieze that ran around the room’s entire ceiling, a key pattern that repeated over and over. Always the same. Like the years that awaited her. In that city, in that narrowness; an endless succession of grey days.

Then she jammed the letter into a pile of papers.

18

Two envelopes, one white, the other with black edges. A funeral notice. Ana grabbed them and closed the postbox. Then a metallic click warned her that perhaps it would be better to leave the building again. She recognised it straight away: the sound that preceded the opening of Teresina Sauret’s door.

The old woman was familiar with the sound each of the postboxes made on opening, Ana was convinced of that. It wasn’t possible that she always had something to do at the very moment Ana was collecting her post. The doorkeeper could see which neighbours were going up and down the staircase, but in order to know who was arriving, Señora Sauret had to wait for the person to approach the stairs.

Teresina Sauret’s door was to the right, hidden in a recess at the foot of the staircase. From her peephole she completely controlled the first flight and landing, but the row of twelve postboxes was out of her line of sight. In the world of doorkeepers, some have more good fortune than others. Teresina Sauret hadn’t been lucky in her guard post.

Like musical instruments, which develop an unmistakably unique character over years of use, each of the postboxes had a sound of its own, the sum of the dents, creaking hinges and the rustiness of the lock. As for the doorkeeper, she had an incredibly sensitive ear, trained by hours of attentive listening behind the door, and thanks to which she also knew the footsteps of each tenant.

But that day it would do her no good, because Ana too had an excellent ear and immediately recognised the stealthy but not imperceptible sound of the door being opened with cunning slowness. Like field mice who are alerted not by the flapping wings of the owl who hunts them, but the slight creak of the branch when the bird leaves the tree. She put the two envelopes in her bag and in a couple of strides was back out in the street. Teresina Sauret’s voice reached her, muffled by the door to the building, which had closed behind Ana’s back.

‘Señorita Martí! Señorita Martí! Remember that…’

She knew full well what she had to remember; actually it had been on her mind all week. She also knew that Señora Sauret was lying in wait for her. It wasn’t the first and, given the situation, it wouldn’t be the last occasion when the doorkeeper would chase after her for the rent, but that evening she reached home too tired and hungry to face the disapproval in Teresina’s little weasel eyes.

It pained her to remember that the flat had belonged to her family. Hers and the one next to it, because her paternal grandparents had lived in twice the space before the war. Then, when things changed, the Serrahimas bought the flats and divided them into two. They rented out half of her grandfather’s old home and, as long as someone in the family lived there, and paid the rent, they could carry on living there. When her grandfather had begun to have problems managing on his own, Ana had moved there to take care of him. She was pleased to do it because it got her out of the house. Then two years ago her parents had decided that it was best that Grandfather live with them. But she stayed in the flat. Her parents had been reluctant to accept that, but conceded because it would allow them to hold onto the property. Since she had lived there with her grandfather, there wasn’t, as far as she knew, talk about a woman her age living alone. She gave the tongues no reason to wag. She never had visitors at home and had never even let Gabriel come up. Not that it was necessary; the hypocritical city offered plenty of options to slip past the gaze of its moral guardians.

She left Riera Alta and turned on to the Ronda de San Antonio. When she passed by the café Els Tres Tombs, she saw a free table and went in.

‘What can I get you, sweetheart?’

‘A café au lait, please.’

‘Any pastries?’

She had to say no to the waiter, although the sugar glaze on the heart-shaped puff pastries attractively laid out on the bar seemed to shine in the lamplight just for her. And the cigarette smoke couldn’t cover up the scent of the pile of madeleines beside them. But she only had enough money in her purse for the coffee.

She put the two envelopes on the table. She didn’t know which one to open first.

The waiter approached with the cup of coffee and the jug of hot milk. His short white jacket was small on him; it must belong to another waiter, who would put it on at the end of this shift. The waiter’s hands looked disproportionately large. He began to pour the milk. Ana saw that he was about to lift the jug before the cup was full.

‘A bit more, please. I don’t like my coffee too strong.’

The waiter grumbled, but she pretended not to hear. A finger of milk, even when watered down, is a lot. Defiant, the waiter filled her cup to the brim without spilling a single drop.

Once he had headed off, she considered her dilemma again: whether to open the funeral notice or the other envelope first. She remembered what Carlos Belda had once asked her, ‘Tell me, what is the page that women look for first in the newspaper?’

Of course, she’d replied that it was the society pages, the section that for the time being was keeping food on her table and paying her rent, though not always on time.

‘You’re wrong, dollface,’ Belda had declared somewhat pedantically. ‘It’s the obituaries.’

It was true.

So she opened the black-bordered envelope first.

The deceased was a woman named Blanca Noguer Figuerola. Who was Blanca Noguer Figuerola? She recalled that her mother had told her recently about a relative dying. She hadn’t paid much attention, and didn’t remember how closely they were related, but she had received the funeral notice, which meant that other members of the family did remember. She would have to go to the funeral, even if only not to disappoint her mother again.

She looked at the birthdate. She guessed Carlos Belda also knew that the first thing women do when they read an obituary is calculate the deceased person’s age and mentally pronounce one of the two de rigueur phrases, depending on the results of the calculation: ‘Poor thing, so young’, or ‘Well, she had a long life’. In this case, the latter was the appropriate one and, reviewing the deceased woman’s list of relatives, Ana came to the conclusion that she must be one of her mother’s cousins. The burial was the next day in the Montjuïc cemetery. Yes, she would have to go.