“Bea has left home, Daniel. My parents have been looking everywhere for her, desperately, for two days, and so have the police.”
“But…”
“The other night, when she came back from seeing you, my father was waiting for her. He slapped her so much he made her mouth bleed. But don’t worry, she refused to name you. You don’t deserve her.”
“Tomás…”
“Shut up. The following day my parents took her to the doctor.”
“What for? Is Bea ill?”
“She’s ill from you, you idiot. My sister is pregnant. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
I felt my lips quivering. An intense cold spread through my body, my voice stolen, my eyes fixed. I dragged myself toward the front door, but Tomás grabbed me by the arm and threw me against the wall.
“What have you done to her?”
“Tomás, I…”
His eyes flashed with impatience. The first blow cut my breath in two. I slid to the floor, my back leaning against the wall, my knees giving way. A powerful grip seized me by the throat and held me up, nailed to the wall.
“What have you done to her, you son of a bitch?”
I tried to get away, but Tomás knocked me down with a punch on the face. I fell into blackness, my head wrapped in a blaze of pain. I collapsed onto the corridor tiles. I tried to crawl away, but Tomás clutched my coat collar and dragged me without ceremony to the landing. He tossed me onto the staircase like a piece of rubbish.
“If anything has happened to Bea, I swear I’ll kill you,” he said from the doorway.
I got up on my knees, begging for a moment of time, for an opportunity to recover my voice. But the door closed, abandoning me to the darkness. A sharp pain struck me in my left ear, and I put my hand to my head, twisting with agony. I could feel warm blood. I stood up as best I could. My stomach muscles, where Tomás’s first blow had landed, were smarting—that was just the beginning. I slid down the stairs. Don Saturno shook his head when he saw me.
“Here, come inside for a minute, until you feel better.”
I shook my head, holding my stomach with both hands. The left side of my head throbbed, as if the bones were trying to detach themselves from the flesh.
“You’re bleeding,” said Don Saturno with a concerned look.
“It’s not the first time….”
“Well, then, keep on fooling around and you won’t have many chances left to bleed again. Here, come in and I’ll call a doctor, please.”
I managed to get to the main door and escape the caretaker’s kindness. It was now snowing hard; the pavement was covered in veils of white mist. The icy wind made its way between my clothes and licked at the bleeding wound on my face. I don’t know whether I cried with pain, anger, or fear. The indifferent snow silenced my cowardly weeping, and I walked away slowly in the dusty dawn, one more shadow leaving his tracks in God’s dandruff.
·2·
AS I WAS APPROACHING THE CROSSING WITH CALLE BALMES, I noticed that a car was following me, hugging the pavement. The pain in my head had given way to a feeling of vertigo that made me reel, so that I had to walk holding on to the walls. The car stopped, and two men came out of it. A sharp whistling sound had filled my ears, and I couldn’t hear the engine or the calls of the two figures in black who grabbed hold of me, one on either side, and dragged me hurriedly to the car. I fell into the backseat, drunk with nausea. Floods of blinding light came and went inside my brain. I felt the car moving. A pair of hands touched my face, my head, my ribs. Coming upon the manuscript of Nuria Monfort, which was hidden inside my coat, one of the figures snatched it from me. I tried to stop him with jellylike arms. The other silhouette leaned over me. I knew he was talking when I felt his breath on my face. I waited to see Fumero’s face light up and feel the blade of his knife on my throat. Two eyes rested on mine, and as the curtain of consciousness fell, I recognized the gap-toothed, welcoming smile of Fermín Romero de Torres.
I WOKE UP IN A SWEAT THAT STUNG MY SKIN. TWO HANDS HELD MY shoulders firmly and settled me into a small bed surrounded by candles, as in a wake. Fermín’s face appeared on my right. He was smiling, but even in my delirium I could sense his anxiety. Next to him, standing, I recognized Don Federico Flaviá, the watchmaker.
“He seems to be coming around, Fermín,” said Don Federico. “Shall I go and prepare some broth, to revive him?”
“It won’t do him any harm. While you’re at it, you could make me a sandwich of whatever you find. Double-decker, if you please. All these nerves have suddenly revived my appetite.”
Federico scurried off, and we were left alone.
“Where are we, Fermín?”
“In a safe place. Technically speaking, we’re in a small apartment on the left side of the Ensanche quarter, the property of some friends of Don Federico, to whom we owe our lives and more. Slanderers would describe it as a love nest, but for us it’s a sanctuary.”
I tried to sit up. The pain in my ear was now a burning throb.