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  That night I had a very clear dream in which an old, obsessive image reappeared: Gloria, leaning on Juan’s shoulder and crying … Gradually, Juan underwent curious transformations. I saw him enormous and dark, with the enigmatic features of the god Xochipilli. Gloria’s pale face grew animated and began to revive; Xochipilli was smiling too. Suddenly I recognised his smile: it was the white, somewhat savage smile of Román. It was Román embracing Gloria, and the two of them were laughing. They weren’t in the clinic but in the country. In a field of purple lilies, and Gloria’s hair was blowing in the wind.

  I woke without a fever, and confused, as if I really had discovered some dark secret.

  V

  I DON’T KNOW what caused that fever, which passed like a sorrowful gust of wind, disturbing the corners of my spirit, but also sweeping away its black clouds. The fact is it disappeared before anybody would have thought about calling the doctor, and when it was over it left me with a strange, feeble sensation of well-being. On the first day I could get up, I had the impression that when I pushed the blanket down towards my feet I was moving away the oppressive atmosphere that had hovered over me since I’d arrived at the house.

  Angustias, examining my shoes whose leather, as wrinkled as an expressive face, betrayed their age, pointed at the torn soles oozing dampness and said I caught a chill because I’d got my feet wet.

  ‘Besides, my child, when one is poor and has to live on the charity of relatives, it’s necessary to take better care of one’s personal possessions. You have to walk less and step more carefully … Don’t look at me like that, because I’m telling you I know perfectly well what you do when I’m at the office. I know you go out and come back before I do, so I won’t catch you. May I ask where you go?’

  ‘Well, no place in particular. I like to see the streets. See the city …’

  ‘But you like to go alone, my child, as if you were an urchin. Exposed to men’s impertinence. Are you by any chance a maid? … At your age, they didn’t even let me go down to the street door by myself. I’m telling you I understand that you need to go back and forth to the university … but that’s very different from wandering around loose like a lost dog … When you’re alone in the world do what you wish. But now you have a family, a home, a name. I knew that your cousin couldn’t have taught you good habits in the village. Your father was a strange man … It’s not that your cousin isn’t an excellent person, but she lacks refinement. In spite of everything, I hope you didn’t run around the village streets.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you certainly can’t do that here. Are you listening to me?’

  I didn’t insist, what could I say to her?

  Suddenly she turned, her hair on end, when she was already on her way out.

  ‘I hope you haven’t gone down to the port along the Ramblas.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My child, there are some streets where if a young lady were to go even once, she’d lose her reputation forever. I’m referring to the Barrio Chino … You don’t know where it begins …’

  ‘Yes, I know perfectly well. I haven’t gone into the Barrio Chino … but what’s there?’

  Angustias looked at me in a rage.

  ‘Loose women, thieves, and the glitter of the devil, that’s what’s there.’

  (And at that instant, I imagined the Barrio Chino illuminated by a spark of beauty.)

  The moment of my battle with Angustias was coming closer and closer, like an unavoidable storm. In my first conversation with her I knew we’d never get along. Afterwards, the surprise and sadness of my first impressions had given a great advantage to my aunt. ‘But,’ I thought in excitement after this conversation, ‘that period is coming to a close.’ I saw myself embarking upon a new life in which I would dispose of my hours in freedom, and I gave Angustias a mocking smile.

  When I resumed classes at the university I seemed to be boiling inside with accumulated impressions. For the first time in my life I found myself being expansive and making friends. Without too much effort I established a relationship with a group of girls and boys who were my classmates. The truth is that what drew me to them was an indefinable eagerness that I can name now as a defensive instinct: only these beings of my own generation and my own tastes could support me and protect me from the somewhat ghostly world of older people. And I sincerely believe I needed this assistance at the time.

  I understood immediately that with these young people the mysterious, allusive tone of confidences, which girls usually love, the charm of analysing one’s soul, the light caress of sensibility stored up over the years, all of that was impossible … In my relationships with the group at the university, I found myself deep in a profusion of discussions regarding general problems I hadn’t even dreamed of, and I felt off-centre and happy at the same time.

  One day Pons, the youngest boy in my group, said to me:

  ‘How did you survive before, when you always avoided talking to people? I tell you, we thought you were pretty silly. Ena made fun of you and was very comical. She said you were ridiculous. What was wrong with you?’

  I shrugged, a little hurt, because of all the young people I knew, Ena was the one I liked best.

  Even in the days when I wasn’t thinking about being her friend, I was fond of that girl and was sure the feeling was mutual. She had approached a few times to talk to me very politely on some pretext or other. On the first day of class she asked if I was related to a famous violinist. I remember that the question seemed absurd and made me laugh.

  I wasn’t the only one who felt a preference for Ena. She was something like a magnetic centre in our conversations, which she often presided over. Her mischievousness and intelligence were proverbial. I was certain that if she’d ever made me the target of her jokes, I really would have been the laughing-stock of our entire class.

  I watched her from a distance, with a certain rancour. Ena had a pleasant, sensual face in which a pair of terrible eyes glittered. The contrast between her gentle features, the youthful look of her body and her blonde hair, and her large greenish eyes full of brilliance and irony, was fascinating.

  While I was talking to Pons, she waved at me. Then she came over, making her way through the noisy groups waiting in the courtyard of the literature building for class to begin. When she reached my side her cheeks were flushed and she seemed to be in an excellent mood.

  ‘Leave us alone, Pons, okay?’

  ‘With Pons,’ she said as she watched the boy’s slim figure moving away, ‘you have to be careful. He’s one of those people who take offence right away. Right now he believes I’ve insulted him by asking him to leave us alone … but I have to talk to you.’

  I was thinking that only a few minutes earlier I had been hurt too by jokes of hers that I hadn’t known about before. But now I had been won over by her profound congeniality.

  I liked walking with her through the stone cloisters of the university and listening to her talk, thinking that some day I’d have to tell her about the dark life in my house, which to my mind became filled with romanticism the moment it turned into a topic of discussion. I thought Ena would be very interested and understand the problems even better than I. So far, however, I hadn’t told her anything about my life. I was becoming a friend of hers thanks to this new desire to talk; but talking and fantasising were things that had always been difficult for me, and I preferred listening to her, with a feeling like expectation, which I found discouraging and interesting at the same time. And so, when Pons left us that afternoon, I couldn’t imagine that the bitter-sweet tension between my vacillations and my longing to confide in her was coming to an end.

  ‘I found out today that a violinist I mentioned to you a while ago … do you remember? … not only has your second last name, it’s so strange, but lives on Calle de Aribau just like you. His name is Román. He’s really not related to you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, he’s my uncle, but I had no idea he was really a musician. I was sure
that except for his family nobody knew he played the violin.’

  ‘Well, you can see now that I knew him by reputation.’

  I began to feel a vague excitement at the thought that Ena might have some kind of contact with Calle de Aribau. At the same time I felt almost cheated.

  ‘I want you to introduce me to your uncle.’

  ‘All right.’

  We fell silent. I was waiting for Ena to explain something to me. She, perhaps, for me to speak. But without knowing why it seemed impossible now for me to discuss with my friend the world of Calle de Aribau. I thought it would be terribly painful for me to bring Ena to meet Román – ‘a famous violinist’ – and witness the disillusionment and mockery in her eyes when she saw his negligent appearance. I had one of those moments of discouragement and shame so frequent in the young, when I felt badly dressed, reeking of bleach and harsh kitchen soap, next to Ena’s well-cut dress and the soft perfume of her hair.

  Ena looked at me. I remember thinking it was a great relief that we had to go to class at that moment.

  ‘Wait for me when we come out!’ she shouted.

  I always sat in the last seat while her friends saved her a place on the first row. During the professor’s entire lecture my imagination wandered. I swore to myself I wouldn’t mix those two worlds that were beginning to stand out so clearly in my life: my student friendships with their easy cordiality, and my dirty, unwelcoming house. My desire to talk about Román’s music, and Gloria’s red hair, and my childish grandmother wandering through the night like a ghost, seemed idiotic. Aside from the charm of dressing all of it in fantastic hypotheses during long conversations, the only thing that remained was the miserable reality that had tormented me when I arrived and would be the one Ena might see if I ever introduced her to Román.

  And so as soon as class was over that day I slipped away from the university and hurried to my house as if I had done something wrong, running from the steady glance of my friend.

  But when I reached our apartment on Calle de Aribau I wanted to find Román, because it was too strong a temptation to let him know I was privy to the secret – a secret he apparently guarded jealously – of his fame and past success. But that day I didn’t see Román at dinner. This disappointed me though it didn’t surprise me, because Román frequently stayed away. Gloria, blowing her child’s nose, seemed like an infinitely vulgar creature, and Angustias was unbearable.

  The following day and for a few days after that, I avoided Ena until I could convince myself that she apparently had forgotten about her questions. Román was not to be seen in the house.

  Gloria said to me:

  ‘Don’t you know that he goes away from time to time? He doesn’t tell anybody and nobody knows where he goes except the cook …’

  (‘Does Román know’ – I thought – ‘that some people consider him a celebrity, that people still haven’t forgotten him?’)

  One afternoon I went to the kitchen.

  ‘Tell me, Antonia, do you know when my uncle’s coming back?’

  The woman quickly twisted her awful smile at me.

  ‘He’ll come back. He always comes back. He leaves and he comes back. He comes back and he leaves … But he never gets lost, right, Trueno? No need to worry.’

  She turned toward the dog that was, as usual, behind her, his red tongue hanging out.

  ‘Right, Trueno, he never gets lost?’

  The animal’s eyes gleamed yellow as he looked at the woman and her eyes gleamed too, small and dark, in the smoke of the fire she was beginning to light.

  The two of them stood there a few seconds, unmoving, hypnotised. I was certain Antonia wouldn’t add another word to her not very informative comments.

  There was no way to find out anything about Román until he himself appeared one afternoon at dusk. I was alone with my grandmother and Angustias, and found myself in something like a correctional institution, because Angustias had caught me just as I was about to escape, going out on tiptoe. At a moment like that, Román’s arrival caused an unexpected joy in me.

  He looked darker, his forehead and nose burned by the sun, but emaciated, unshaven, and with a dirty shirt collar.

  Angustias looked him up and down.

  ‘I’d like to know where you’ve been!’

  He returned the look, malevolent, while he took out the parrot to caress it.

  ‘You can be sure I’m going to tell you … who took care of the parrot for me, Mamá?’

  ‘I did, my child,’ said my grandmother, smiling at him, ‘I never forget …’

  ‘Thank you, Mamá.’

  He put his arm around her waist so that it looked as if he were going to pick her up, and kissed her hair.

  ‘You couldn’t have gone anywhere very good. I’ve been warned about your travelling, Román. I’m telling you that I know you’re not the man you were before … Your moral sense leaves quite a bit to be desired.’

  Román expanded his chest as if shaking off the exhaustion of his trip.

  ‘Suppose I told you that perhaps in my travelling I’ve been able to find out something about my sister’s moral sense?’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense, you fool! Especially not in front of my niece.’

  ‘Our niece won’t be shocked. And mamá, even if she opens those little round eyes, won’t be either …’

  Angustias’ cheekbones were yellow and red and it seemed odd to me that her chest would heave like that of any other agitated woman.

  ‘I’ve been wandering a little around the Pyrenees,’ said Román, ‘and I stopped for a few days in Puigcerdá, which is a charming village, and naturally I went to visit a poor lady I knew in better days whose husband has locked her away in his gloomy mansion, watched over by servants as if she were a criminal.’

  ‘If you’re referring to the wife of Don Jerónimo, the head of my office, you know perfectly well that the poor thing has lost her mind and rather than send her to an asylum he preferred …’

  ‘Yes, I can see you’re very familiar with your boss’s affairs, I’m referring to poor Señora Sanz … As for her being crazy, I don’t doubt it. But whose fault is it that she’s in that condition?’

  ‘What are you trying to insinuate?’ shouted Angustias, in such anguish (this time it was sincere) that I felt sorry for her.

  ‘Nothing!’ said Román with surprising lightness, while an astonished smile floated beneath his moustache.

  I was left with my mouth open, cut short in the midst of my desire to talk with Román. I’d spent days excited by the prospect of talking to my uncle; so much news that I thought he’d find interesting and pleasant and had saved up for him.

  When I stood up to embrace him with more drive than I ordinarily put into these things, the happiness of the surprise I had prepared for him was dancing on the tip of my tongue. The scene that followed cut off my enthusiasm.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Aunt Angustias – while Román was talking to me – leaning on the sideboard, very pensive, made ugly by a pained expression, but not crying, which for her was strange.

  Román settled calmly into a chair and began to talk to me about the Pyrenees. He said that those magnificent wrinkles on the earth that rise up between us – the Spaniards – and the rest of Europe were one of the truly splendid places on the globe. He talked to me about the snow, the deep valleys, the icy, brilliant sky.

  ‘I don’t know why I can’t love Nature, as terrible, as sullen and magnificent as it is at times … I believe I’ve lost my taste for the colossal. The tick-tock of my clocks awakens my senses more than the wind in the narrow passes … I’m closed off,’ he concluded.

  When I heard him I was thinking that it wasn’t worth telling Román that a girl my age knew about his talent, since the fame of that talent didn’t interest him. And since he also was voluntarily closed off to all external flattery.

  As he spoke Román caressed the dog’s ears, and the animal rolled his eyes with pleasure. The maid watched them from t
he door; she dried her hands on her apron – those oafish hands with their black nails – not knowing what she was doing and looking, certain and insistent, at Román’s hands on the dog’s ears.

  VI

  I OFTEN FOUND myself surprised, among the people on Calle de Aribau, by the tragic aspect that the most trivial events took on, even though each of them carried their own burden, a true obsession inside themselves, to which they rarely alluded directly.

  On Christmas Day they involved me in one of their violent quarrels; and perhaps because until that time I had tended to keep apart from them, this one made more of an impression on me than any other. Or it may have been the strange state of mind I was in because of my Uncle Román, whom I couldn’t help but begin to see in an extremely disagreeable light.

  This time the argument had its hidden roots in my friendship with Ena. And much later, recalling it, I’ve thought that from the start a kind of predestination joined Ena to life on Calle de Aribau, so impervious to outside elements.

  My friendship with Ena had followed the normal course of a relationship between two classmates who are extraordinarily fond of each other. I thought again about the charm of my secondary school friendships, forgotten now because of her. And I was not unaware of the advantages of her affinity for me. The boys thought better of me. Surely they thought it would be easier to approach my good-looking friend through me.

  But it was too expensive a luxury for me to share in Ena’s customs. She dragged me every day to the bar – the only warm place, aside from the sun in the garden, that I remember in the stone university – and paid my bill, since we had made a pact not to allow the boys, all of them too young, and most of them lacking money, to pay for the girls. I didn’t have money for a cup of coffee. And I didn’t have enough for the tram – if I could ever get past Angustias’ vigilance and go out with my friend – or to buy hot chestnuts in the afternoon. Ena provided everything. This chafed in a disagreeable way. All the happiness I enjoyed during this time seemed somehow diminished by my obsession with reciprocating her consideration. Until then no one I loved had shown me so much affection and I felt gnawed by the need to give her something more than my company, the need felt by all people who are not very attractive to make material payment for what is, to them, extraordinary: someone’s interest and affection.