The Street of the Three Beds (7 page)

“What can I do for you?” she said with an accent from the south.

“I'm looking for Miss Morera. Rita Morera.”

“Who wants to know?”

“I'm a friend, . . . an old friend.”

The woman ran her eyes all over him, from head to toe.

“They always have friends, . . . they're all friends.”

His expression hardened.

“I hope you're not referring to Rita . . . Frankly . . .”

“No, I'm not referring to Rita. I'm referring to all of them. They all have friends and they all disappear at the end of the month, and their friends, well, they're never around when they need them.”

Unaccustomed to meeting resistance to his wishes, he grew impatient with the brazen woman who, after all, must be just a maid.

“Listen, I'm asking for Rita Morera. Kindly let me know if she's in or not and stay out of other people's business.”

“Not so fast, sonny boy. You may be a very fine gentleman, yes siree, but I've been around longer. Step inside; I've got to mind the stove.”

He realized the woman he'd taken for the maid was actually the owner and so it would be unwise to aggravate her. A poorly lit, narrow hallway led to the kitchen. Since it had no windows or any other outlet, the acrid smell of burning coal and boiled cabbage stopped Maurici in his tracks. He stood at a safe distance from what
he mentally classified as slop, next to a portable zinc tub in which a naked child was soaking.

The woman, stirring the contents of the pot with a wooden spoon, cast another glance at Maurici's frame, languidly propped against a lame sideboard.

“I've got a pretty good notion who you are,” she mumbled.

“Has Rita talked to you about me?”

“She never told me your name, but she made a big deal of this well-to-do young man she was seeing. It's plain as daylight you're young and rich.”

“Is that all she told you?”

“That and that he was the son of a factory owner who lives uptown.”

The child splashed soapy water all over, including on the cuffs of Maurici's trousers.

“Does she still live here?”

“I haven't seen her in weeks. Like she's been wiped off the face of the earth! What's got me puzzled is that she left her stuff here.”

“She left without packing?”

“Didn't take no clothes, no trinkets, nothing. Not even her Saint Rita medal.”

Before he could recover from the surprise, the woman stopped stirring the pot and added, “She took off like a thief, without paying the rent. You wouldn't, by any chance, you couldn't . . .”

He hesitated while a man in a robe scurried through the kitchen and into an adjoining room. Then he fished his wallet out of his pocket and offered the woman a few bills. “Will that do?”

She smiled for the first time. “Yes, sir, I should say so. How nice, to have it always ready.”

“If you tell me where I can find Rita, I'll give you more.”

“God forbid! I don't want anything that ain't rightly mine. And even if I wanted to tell you, I couldn't. No one in this house knows what's become of her. So pretty and proper: too proper for a working girl, if you ask me . . . I saw it coming. But what am I gonna do with her things if she don't come back for them? Who can I send notice to?”

“Rita has no family.”

The woman wiped her hand with the apron before taking the card Maurici handed to her.

“If you find out anything, let me know.”

“Yes, sir, you can bet on it.”

Maurici fled from the stuffy kitchen and from the odor of poverty and made his way to the door. Downstairs the watchmaker let loose a “So lo-o-o-ong!” that sounded ironic and ominous to his ear.

Maybe she's gone back to her hometown,
he told himself as he went down the street toward The Ramblas.
If that's it, I'm not going after her. Or maybe she's found another position. In any case, clearly there's no baby. Otherwise, she wouldn't have run away from me. Rita's calculating, she knows what's good for her. If she was pregnant, she wouldn't have given up my protection so easily. She'd have stuck by me, or gone to Father to see what she could get. But why did she leave the boardinghouse? To save one month's rent? Because she has a job in another part of the city? Because she doesn't want me to find her? This business of leaving without packing looks like she made a rushed decision. On the other hand, she still may send somebody to get her things. Or stop by herself at the end of the month to pay the rent and collect her stuff. Meanwhile, where can she go with no shoes and no clothes? Is it possible she didn't leave the house of her own free will? Did Sleeping Beauty want to be sucked into the faucet?
Or was it the hand that turned it on and off that decided her fate? Where did she go inside the faucet?

Realizing his thoughts were taking a convoluted path, he chided himself.
This is crazy! Maybe Albert's right about the effects of absinthe. It all comes down to finding out where Rita is and be done with it once and for all. It will be a relief to have this matter behind me. That's all.
He checked his watch: eleven thirty. He was at the top of The Ramblas, by the fountain, and had enough time for a drink at the Equestrian before going to La Perla d'Orient.

Monday morning the Equestrian was almost deserted, except for a group of old timers who played cards or read the papers. Maurici picked up
The Catalan People
and sat at a bar table by the window to catch the light. Sipping his vermouth and sampling tapas,
these clams aren't what they used to be, I'll let Evarist know,
he killed half an hour. Then he moved to a corner of the game room and passed some more time playing solitaire and smoking a cigar until the grandfather clock struck a quarter to two. As usual, he charged the bill to his father's account, to be promptly paid at the end of the month. Paying at the bar was considered passé.

When he arrived at La Perla d'Orient he pulled his hat—normally tilted at the perfect angle—down to his eyebrows. It was essential not to be recognized by anyone. He stood in front of the window and carefully stuck his head into the lobby to throw a quick glance inside. Behind the counter, the same woman as the last time wrapped a package for two customers who looked like mother and daughter. He couldn't make out whether Jaumet was present.

Moving away from the window, he pressed his back against the façade of the building. It was only a few minutes before closing time. If on their way out the woman and Jaumet headed toward The Ramblas, he'd be safe, but, if they took the opposite
direction, they were certain to see him. It was too risky. A false move now would tie his hands and make it impossible to pursue the matter any further. He moved away from the window and climbed the doorstep of the next building. From there, half hidden by the shadows, he could see and, hopefully, not be seen. For several slow minutes, he stared at the critical spot, hardly blinking. Perhaps no one ever came out of La Perla d'Orient, perhaps everybody in it vanished as Rita had, in which case he'd be sentenced to keep guard at his observation post for an eternity.
Let's not get carried away again into metaphysical dead ends,
he told himself;
let's get down to work
.

As soon as he made his resolution, the two customers came out holding packages and walked past him talking and gesturing animatedly. The younger one threw an appraising glance at the stranger's face, shadowed by the brim of the hat. Ordinarily he'd have reciprocated, but under the circumstances he kept his eyes on the threshold of La Perla d'Orient.

A few minutes went by. Finally, the sight of a small foot on the doorstep of the store announced the woman's exit. She and Jaumet stood on the sidewalk while she dropped the keys inside her purse. Maurici retreated back into the darkness of the lobby from where he saw the woman, with Jaumet hanging on her arm, walk down the sidewalk. Shortly after he stepped out into the light to follow in their footsteps, his eyes fixed on the woman's brown dress and hat in case he became separated from them in a crowd. He adjusted his stride to the couple's rhythm, marked by Jaumet's jerky gait and oscillating motion that reminded him of a foundering boat. The possibility of running into an acquaintance was a constant anxiety, although he was prepared to be rude and ignore them.

They left the main street to enter a maze of side alleys. To Maurici, such places had no name and wove together a strange, labyrinthine world infinitely remote from his own.
He did identify Ferran Street just because he'd gone there once or twice as a customer of the Palais de Cristal. At one point, as the woman and Jaumet crossed to the other side, a cabriolet rode by and momentarily blocked his view, but he caught up with them before they turned into a humid, dark alley that made a slight bend. It was too narrow to have sidewalks or to let carriages through. The only traffic there was a swarm of flies and a stench of stagnant sewers.

He stopped on the corner. The risk of being spotted increased considerably in such a lonely, constricted spot. The odd couple walked a few more yards and disappeared into an apartment building. He waited half a minute and then took a few strides, which resounded on the cobblestones, toward the building, where he hoped to find out something. There was no doorkeeper in the narrow, dingy lobby. Crouching in the nook under the staircase, he heard muffled women's voices coming from a landing. He stuck his head out with extreme caution and caught a glimmer of light two floors above. A door slammed shut and the building became as quiet as a grave. He waited a few more minutes, in case somebody should come down. At last, inferring that the sphinx and her dim-witted escort lived there, he liberated his body from the fetal position it had been forced to assume, stepped outside, and stood in the middle of the alley to look at the façade. Should the woman have a sudden impulse to stick her nose out of the balcony, he'd be done for. Luckily, the doors on the minuscule balconies of the three floors were closed. He made a mental note of the street number and proceeded up the alley, wondering where it would lead.

It hadn't occurred to him that he'd be very late for lunch. Worse yet, it would be necessary to make up some excuse for playing hooky at the factory. As he searched for one in the recesses of his mind, the alley came to an end under an arch that supported a passageway with windows in it. To his surprise, it opened onto no other than Plaça Reial:
the bright, porticoed square lined with fashionable restaurants and elegant buildings. At that time of day, it was full of people and pigeons soaking up the sun. Before he crossed under the arch, he read a sign with the absurd name of “Street of the Three Beds.”

Maurici never showed up at the factory before ten and seldom left after six. Because of his theoretical mastery of French and even more theoretical mastery of import laws, Roderic Aldabò had put him in charge of foreign clientele. The truth is that the factory was a matter of total indifference to him. He lacked his father's entrepreneurial drive and was bored to distraction by maintenance routines and accounting details. Endless hours went into writing, revising, and signing documents—except when he stopped to read the newspapers—or pacing between rows of looms to pretend he was supervising their operation. In reality, he was incapable of disciplining the workers, let alone of firing them. These unsavory tasks were left to the foreman: a man in his forties, surly, ill-tempered, and totally reliable, or, if bad came to worse, to his father, who knew how to be firm without raising his voice. He didn't have to dirty his hands with such mundane matters. For all his limitations, however, he was effective with the clients assigned to him, to the point that they refused to deal with anyone else. Not only did he minimize difficulties, he also listened to each of them as if each alone was entitled to his full attention. The key to his success wasn't so much his polished French, or even less his dubious law credentials, but that unselfconscious magnetism his entire person exuded.

In any case, after his absence that Monday he strove to give the impression of diligence. For a long time now—since the unfortunate fiasco with the indiscreet maid—his father hadn't interfered with his private life. He never asked him where he went or
where he came from; he didn't reprimand him if he spent nights out and sneaked back into the apartment at the wee hours of the morning bumping into the furniture. As far as work was concerned, that was another kettle of fish. His father would tolerate an excuse now and then, but not often. Besides, Maurici didn't want to call attention to himself by behaving erratically. Better be cautious. He had embarked on an enterprise from which no one would be able to rescue him.

That morning his father had gone to a meeting out of town with another manufacturer. Maurici couldn't concentrate on the pile of orders pending on his desk. Even though his incursion into the Street of the Three Beds had revealed nothing of interest, he couldn't wait to go back. Rita might have vanished, but she had an invisible string attached to her; once he picked it up, it pulled him with such irresistible strength he couldn't let go. Who knew where it would take him.

A stroll through the looms might calm his nerves. He walked past each row distractedly, oblivious to the frantic beat that in the long run would leave every single worker deaf. “Never lose track of your employees,” his father often admonished. “If you do, it'll be the end of you.” Suddenly, a scream tore through the hammering clanks. Right behind him, at loom number thirteen, the apprentice Remei Sallent—eight years old and fatherless—held up her left hand as blood dripped from the index finger. The needle had split the flesh of the tip. He recoiled in disgust but the child's unblinking eyes nailed him to the spot. As a female worker came to comfort her, the girl remained mesmerized on the verge of tears—her eyes riveted on Maurici's. The foreman rushed to tend to the victim, but stopped short when he came face to face with his boss. He waited expectantly, with an attitude both of deference and challenge. Maurici's eyes turned to the injured finger, the finger that pointed at nobody but him. The child, with a
demanding rather than imploring expression on her face, rose from the bench, took a step forward, and began to fall as if her legs had been cut off at the knees.