We escorted the doctor and his nurse to the door and thanked them effusively for their good offices. When we went into the bedroom, we discovered that, after all, Bernarda had challenged Barceló’s orders and was lying next to Fermín on the bed. The fright, the brandy, and the exhaustion had finally sent her to sleep. Covered in bandages, dressings, and slings, Fermín held her tenderly, stroking her hair. His face carried a bruise that hurt to look at, and from it emerged his large, unharmed nose, two ears like sails, and the eyes of a dispirited mouse. His toothless smile, through lips covered in cuts, was triumphant, and he greeted us with his right hand raised in the sign of victory.
“How are you feeling, Fermín?” I asked.
“Twenty years younger,” he said in a low voice, so as not to wake Bernarda.
“Stop pretending, damn it. You look like shit, Fermín. You scared me to death. Are you sure you’re all right? Isn’t your head spinning? Aren’t you hearing voices?”
“Now you mention it, sometimes I thought I could hear a discordant and arrhythmic murmur, as if a macaque was trying to play the piano.”
Barceló frowned. Clara went on tinkling at the piano in the distance.
“Don’t worry, Daniel. I’ve survived worse sticks and stones. That guy Fumero can’t even kick a bad habit.”
“So the person who’s sculpted you a new face is none other than Inspector Fumero,” said Barceló. “I see you two move about in the highest circles.”
“I hadn’t got to that part of the story,” I said.
Fermín looked at me in alarm.
“It’s all right, Fermín. Daniel is filling me in about this little play that you two are taking part in. I must admit, it’s all very interesting. What about you, Fermín, how are you on confessions? I warn you I spent two years in a seminary.”
“I would have said at least three, Don Gustavo.”
“Some things get lost along the way. Shame, for a start. This is the first time you come to my house, and you end up in bed with the maid.”
“Look at her, poor little thing, my angel. You must understand that my intentions are honest, Don Gustavo.”
“Your intentions are your business and Bernarda’s. She’s quite old enough. And now, let’s be frank. What kind of charade are you involved in?”
“What have you told him, Daniel?”
“We got to act two: enter the femme fatale,” Barceló explained.
“Nuria Monfort?” Fermín asked.
Barceló smacked his lips with delight. “But is there more than one? This sounds like The Abduction from the Seraglio.”
“Please lower your voice. My fiancée is present.”
“Don’t worry, your fiancée has
half a bottle of brandy in her veins. The trumpets of doom wouldn’t wake her. Go on, ask Daniel to tell me the rest. Three heads think better than two, especially if the third one is mine.”
Fermín attempted to shrug his shoulders under dressings and slings. “I’m not against it, Daniel. It’s your call.”
Having resigned myself to have Don Gustavo on board, I continued with my narrative until I reached the point when Fumero and his men came upon us on Calle Moncada a few hours earlier. When the story ended, Barceló got up and began pacing up and down the room, pondering. Fermín and I observed him cautiously. Bernarda snored like a baby calf.
“Little angel,” whispered Fermín, entranced.
“A few things have caught my attention,” the bookseller said at last.
“Evidently Inspector Fumero is in this up to his neck, although how and why is something that escapes me. On the one hand, there’s this woman—”
“Nuria Monfort.”
“Then there’s the business of Julián Carax’s return to Barcelona and his murder in the streets of the city—after a month in which nobody knows anything about him. It’s obvious that the woman is lying through her teeth. Even about the time of day.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying from the start,” said Fermín, casting a glance at me. “Trouble is, some of us suffer from an excess of juvenile ardor and a lack of strategic grasp of the situation.”