For Gaudí, however, nature consisted of forces
that work beneath the surface,
which was merely
an expression
of those
inner
forces.
Rainier Zerbst, Antoni Gaudí
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Preview: Trouble in Transylvania
Acknowledgments
About the Author
MY NAME IS CASSANDRA REILLY and I don’t live anywhere. At least that’s what I tell people when they ask. I was raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but I left when I was sixteen and I can hardly remember when that was. I have an Irish passport and make a sort of living as a translator, chiefly of Spanish, and chiefly of South American novels, at least at the moment. I rent an upstairs room in a tall Georgian house in Hampstead and another room in Oakland, California from an old friend Lucy Hernandez. These are my most permanent residences, by which I mean I receive mail there. But often as not I’m travelling: a conference here, a book fair there, a yen to see some part of the world I don’t know yet. On my way back from Hong Kong I’ll get an urge to see a friend in Kyoto and end up teaching English in Japan for two months. Or I’ll decide I need to catch up with an old lover in Uruguay, and political events will keep me there longer than I expected.
I’m rarely anywhere more than a few months at a time and that’s the way I like it. Of course my Irish relatives in County Cork believe my real spiritual home is Ballybarnacle, and sometimes I believe it too. Ireland is always green and magical in my mind and sometimes—on a crowded train snaking through India, on a sweltering day in a Columbian jail—I long for its mists and rocky shores. But hardly ever when I’m there.
I had been back in London for almost three months after a challenging six weeks in Iceland visiting a new friend, the volcano expert Ingrid Biritsdóttir. Money was tight and I had been forced to take on a larger translation project than I generally like—a lavishly written, complicated novel by the fourteenth writer to be compared to Garcia Márquez. Actually, it was by a woman, so she was only the fifth author to be dubbed “the new female Garcia Márquez.”
Gloria de los Angeles was her pen name, and her wildly popular novel was entitled La Grande y su hija—literally, The Big One and Her Daughter. Told by a young woman, María, it had jungles and decaying colonial cities, plagues and miracles, a sinister villain called Raoul, a revolutionary named Eduardo and strong women like Cristobel, María’s mother and the Grande of the title, who nevertheless was reduced to quivering guava jelly whenever Eduardo emerged from the jungle. Gloria de los Angeles was a Venezuelan mother of four, I had learned, who had previously translated Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel into Spanish. La Grande y su hija had swept Spain and South America and was poised, so the British publisher believed, to do the same in England and North America. A better title would help, though the English editor hadn’t liked the American agent’s suggestion: Big Mama’s Baby Daughter.
I was up to page two hundred and forty-five and still had about seventy-five pages of the first draft to go. My deadline was June 1, two months away. I had saved time by not reading the book in advance, which had the added advantage of keeping me in a continual state of astonishment at Gloria de los Angeles’s inventive plot line.
In any other country it would have been spring, but England keeps its own counsel about the weather, and had decided that a few more weeks of sleet, hail and freezing winds were good for the English, the one people on earth who think you should feel damp and chilled inside as well as outside. Up in my room it was cozy; a few days ago, in honor of it being the first of April, I had turned off one of my heaters, but tonight I had it back on again. I was surrounded at my desk, in fact, by four heaters. When you get into your forties it’s harder to keep warm on your own anymore.
From downstairs I could hear the faint sounds of a Vivaldi bassoon concerto. Olivia Wulf, who owned the house, was a former first violinist with the English Chamber Orchestra. Now in her seventies, she was wheelchair-bound and cared for by her old friend and mine Nicola Gibbons, an accomplished bassoonist and Vivaldi scholar. In the evening the two of them often liked to arrange small baroque concerts for themselves. Although months and occasionally years went by between my stays here, this house, even more than the one in Oakland, was my post office, clothes closet and information center. I might forget in the deepest Amazon what new cultural and political developments were really significant, but when I came back to London I could count on Nicky, an ardent socialist-feminist as well as a fervent theater- and concert-goer, to help me get caught up.
I had just plunged into Chapter Twelve, which opened:
When I was thirteen a series of flash fires mysteriously combusted all through the river basin, causing no great harm to villages or to the jungle dwellers, animal or human, but great alarm to the parrots which scattered like leaves before a storm, blood-red and shrieking dementedly. I was not to know this for years but the fires coincided with the menopause of my long-lost mother Cristobel, who, lying in a darkened room of her great shabby palace in the city, her ivory forehead covered in cool cloths smelling faintly of rosewater, and remembering the scenes of her youth, was lighting conflagrations of memory along the banks of the fabulous river of silver,
when the phone rang and, shortly after, a gong sounded far below to let me know that I should pick up the line.
The voice on the phone was American; there was a weak buzzing in the background that made it clear the call was coming from across the Atlantic. Across a few dozen states as well.
“Is this Cassandra Reilly?”
“Speaking.”
It was a woman with a pleasantly husky voice, slightly distorted by the long-distance crackling. “You don’t know me but I’m a friend of Lucy’s in Oakland. My name is Frankie Stevens.”
“Yes?” I was hesitant. Lucy might be one of my oldest friends, but I had just gotten rid of one visitor, someone’s Alaskan cousin visiting Europe for the first time, and wasn’t eager to play hostess again for a year or two.
The contralto voice paused. “I’ve got a slight problem and Lucy thought you might be able to help me. Since you speak Spanish.”
“A translation job?” Again, I wasn’t overly enthusiastic. The last friend of a friend who’d called up had wanted me to translate a computer program on managing your own vineyard from Spanish to English. Besides, I was up to my armpits with innocent but wise Cristobel and her diabolical first husband Raoul.
“Well, yes. Look—I wonder if we might talk about this in person? I’m flying to Heathrow this evening and that will put me in London tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be staying at a hotel near Russell Square. Can we meet?”
I hesitated loudly.
Frankie said, “I’ll make it worth your while.”
I doubted that. Still, what was the harm? Even if Frankie were to propose the preposterous it couldn’t be more bizarre than anything in this novel. And I probably needed a break—I was starting to lose my grip on reality.
So I suggested we meet in the Abyssinian rooms at the British Museum. Four p.m. Frankie said she would be wearing red.
The Abyssinians were not people with whom you’d probably enjoy spending a spring day, rainy or sunny. They seemed like the kind of guys who would enslave you as soon as look at you. The friezes were full of long lines of captives in chains, carrying animal, vegetable and mineral tribute and looking glum and apprehensive, no doubt for good reason. I was very fond, however, of the wavy river lines at the bottom of the friezes and the fish that jumped through them.
I was right on time but there was no woman in red in sight. I hadn’t known how to describe myself. My last lover called me “desiccated,” but that, I’m sure, was just pique that I had called things off first. On the other hand, age has made me a bit scrawny and tough, and it’s hard to pamper one’s skin on the road. On my better days I believe I resemble the middle-aged Katherine Hepburn.
Today I was dressed in a warm wool jumpsuit and my black leather bomber jacket. My hair, which one hairstylist had referred to as an Irish Afro, was bundled up under a black beret with an old Troops Out Now button. I wear my beret and my political sentiments whenever I meet prospective clients whom I suspect might be thinking of taking advantage of me.
I waited and waited. I hoped that Frankie hadn’t been stopped at immigration. Maybe she was a drug dealer and I’d be implicated through a traced phone call. The narcotics squad would break into my attic room, take one look at my South American newspaper clippings and peg me for a coca baroness.
The Abyssinian rooms were not crowded, even on this rainy day when tourists flooded the museum. Most of the visitors were huddled around the Egyptian mummies and the Elgin Marbles. Only a few Japanese tourists, multiply-cameraed, peered with me at the long rows of captives and warriors. I fell into a kind of reverie about history, war and violence, and was only roused by the jaunty energy of someone advancing towards me.
A woman in a stretchy bright red tunic, black mini-skirt and black tights came tripping lightly as a gymnast over the stone floor. Her lipstick was a cheerful gash against her pale face and she wore a dozen red and black plastic bangles around her thin white wrists. Something about her face appealed to me right away; it was impish with a triangular chin and widely-spaced hazel eyes. Her hair was auburn and chaotically, delightfully curly, corkscrewed like that of a Shirley Temple doll. She was in her late twenties.
She skidded to a stop in front of me; on her feet were silly pointed black shoes. She wrinkled her nose. “Cassandra?”
“Frankie?”
You could tell she was American: the first thing she did was throw her arms around me and squeeze me tight. “Glad to meet you!”
Frankie reminded me of a young Irish setter, leggy, friendly, frisky. Upstairs, where I took her for tea, she beamed at the waitresses behind the counter and told the woman at the cash register to have a nice day.
“This is my first time in London,” she said dramatically. “And you know what my first thought was? Wow, they really do talk like Masterpiece Theater. You’re lucky to live here.” She polished off a scone with strawberry jam and lit a Camel. “And I just can’t thank you enough for agreeing to help me.”
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” I reminded her pleasantly.
“Oh, I know,” she said quickly and wrinkled her nose, as if we were already complicit. “Agreeing to meet me, I mean… Lucy spoke so highly of you… I felt sure you’d be the right person for this job, and now that I’ve met you I’m positive.”
She looked at me brightly, and repeated, “You just seem right.”
“What exactly is this job?” I asked.
“It’s simple, really,” she said. “I’m looking for someone in Barcelona and I need a translator to go with me.”
“Barcelona!” I said. I loved Barcelona. “I’m in the middle of a big project here,” I said. “I can’t just take off and go to Barcelona.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be for long,” she assured me. “A few days maybe. Not more than a week. I’ll pay your round-trip airfare of course, and a hundred dollars a day for expenses. Whether or not you’re able to find the person I’m looking for I’ll pay you a thousand dollars, but if you do find him, it will be three thousand. Think about it, Cassandra,” she said, in a deeper drawl, “three thousand for just a few days’ work.”
I was thinking. Thinking about the dim shabby streets and pouring rain outside, thinking about Cristobel and Raoul waiting for me in my little upstairs room, thinking about the thin blue letter I’d received a week ago from my friend Ana in Barcelona.
“Who’s ‘him’?” I asked. “And why me?”
“My husband, Ben.” Frankie sighed significantly, tossed her auburn corkscrews and lit another Camel with her silver lighter. “It’s so complicated. You see, we’ve been separated for about five years, but we’re still close. We married in college. I didn’t know then he was gay and I didn’t know he was from a wealthy family. Ben persuaded me to move to San Francisco and that’s where he came out. He didn’t want his family to know, so we agreed to stay married. At first it was hard on me, but eventually I accepted it. I’m an actress, you see, and both my freedom and Ben’s economic support are important to me.”
“You’re an actress?” I said. I’d always had a weakness for girls behind the footlights.
“A stage actress,” she smiled. “Unlike most of my friends, when I’m between roles I don’t have to waitress. I’m so spoiled really!” She wrinkled her nose again, and rounded her bright hazel eyes. I could imagine her playing the gamine on stage, the saucy soubrette with the husky voice.
“What’s the problem then?”
Frankie frowned. “The problem is that Ben is such a free spirit. He’s never had to work and sometimes he just takes off for a month or two without telling me. Which is usually fine, but this time I happened to get a call from the family lawyer saying Ben needed to sign some important papers. I stalled as much as I could while I tried to find Ben, but after a few days I realized he’d simply disappeared.”
Frankie paused and leaned over the table conspiratorially. “The papers are terribly important of course, but it’s far worse if his father gets wind of the fact that I, his wife, don’t live with him anymore and that I have absolutely no idea where to find him. His family is very traditional. They might cut him out of the will or something.”
“What makes you think he’s in Barcelona?”
“I started going through his phone bills,” Frankie said without embarrassment. “I have a key to his apartment of course, so I just went through his desk, found the phone bills and started calling some of the numbers. There were quite a few to a number in Spain, in Barcelona. Whoever it was who answered only spoke Spanish, but when I said, ‘Ben? Is Ben there?’ they panicked and said in English, ‘There’s no Ben here,’ and hung up the phone. So you can see why I think that’s the logical place to start.”
“And money’s no object?” I asked.
“And time is of the essence.” She smiled and placed her bangled hand on mine. “I hope you’ll help me. You see, I ran into your friend Lucy Hernandez—who I knew years ago—as I was leaving Ben’s apartment in the Castro. I told her that I was thinking of going to Barcelona but that I didn’t know any Spanish and it would be a real problem for me. So she suggested you since you’re a translator. I flew to London to persuade you. I plan to leave in a few hours. I’m hoping you’ll follow me as soon as you can.”
I was more than persuaded, but some last remaining shred of caution made me hesitate. “The thousand is up front, then, no strings attached?”
Frankie took out a red leather purse from inside an enormous glossy black shoulder bag. She pulled out an envelope and put it on the table in front of me. I’m sure the rest of the tea room thought we were doing a drug transaction or an IRA arms deal.
“Your airline ticket on Iberia is inside, and ten hundred dollar bills.”
“What made you so sure of me?” I asked, taking the envelope.
Frankie gave the charming smile of a woman who has always gotten what she wanted. “Feminine intuition?”
THERE IS A WINDING STREET here is a winding street in the Barri Gòtic or Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, not far from the cathedral, where you can pass one antique and curio shop after another. Whenever I find myself in Barcelona I invariably end up on Carrer Banys Nous, drifting by plate-glass windows through which you can see heavy wooden chests, rococo paintings in gold leaf frames and opulent tea sets and ceramics. Because I travel so much I rarely buy anything—but I still like to look.
But on one occasion, seven or eight years ago, I found myself with an impossible, irresistible desire to buy a ship’s figurehead in one of the small shops. Long in the torso, with bright gilded hair and slightly parted roseate lips, the figurehead leaned forward through enormous pink- and purple-striped conches and blushing open scallops in the display window as if she could feel the Caribbean air still fresh on her painted cheeks.
Never before had I gone into any of the shops, not even to inquire a price. I’d been content to window shop, not to possess. But that day, almost without thinking, inflamed by desire, I rushed into the dark shop interior.
It was a tiny place, packed neat as a ship’s cabin. On the walls were paintings of ships at sea and worn old maps; from the ceiling hung lanterns and finely detailed model ships. At the back of the shop the owner and a customer were just beginning to negotiate a purchase—of the ship’s figurehead in the window.
I begged, I pleaded, I said that I thought my family had owned the figurehead, that I had been a sailor in a former life, that I would die if I couldn’t have this lovely carved wooden lady. I offered to pay anything the owner wanted. He tried to play us off against each other, obviously seeing a profit whichever way he turned. But the other customer was adamant—and disarming. With great logic and single-mindedness she talked me out of my desire. Then invited me for dinner in one of Barcelona’s best restaurants. We’d been friends ever since.
Now I sat in Ana’s enormous apartment at midnight, drinking tea with her in the kitchen. It hadn’t taken me long to rush home from the British Museum, throw a few things into a bag and scribble a hasty note to Nicky. At the last minute I grabbed La Grande y su hija and threw that in too.
Ana, tall and slender, was wearing her usual: jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt rolled up over her thin wrists, cowboy boots that she had probably picked up in Italy. Her dark chestnut hair was pulled away from her oval face in a heavy braid down her back. She always looked beautiful, and never any different.
“When I wrote you two weeks ago I never dreamed you’d respond so quickly,” she was saying.
I tried to think what her letter had said. Lots about her work, something about being lonely…. I put on a sympathetic look. “It’s been hard for you since Lydia went back to Argentina, hasn’t it?”
“Lydia was a mad woman,” Ana shrugged. “It’s not Lydia so much. But this apartment can sometimes seem very big. It needs more life in it. Cassandra,” she fixed me with her soft brown eyes, “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“So am I,” I said warily. This didn’t sound at all like my independent friend Ana, who mocked Relationships almost as often as I did. “Of course I’ll be busy a lot, but I still hope we can get together for good long chats.”
She winced slightly at the word chats. I hoped she didn’t really think… no… she knew my character, she couldn’t possibly….
I changed the subject. “Why don’t you show me what you’ve been working on?”
When you asked her, Ana said she had always wanted to be an architect, she didn’t know why. But her ideas for buildings had proved so flighty and improbable that no architectural firm would hire her after university, and she had been reduced to creating fantastic houses for the small children of the wealthy. These houses were shaped exactly to the child’s fantasies. After consultation with a child who said, “I want a house like a cat,” for example, Ana would create a house curved like a sleeping Siamese from stuffed almond and brown velvet. If a girl fantasized about trains, Ana would build her a cardboard locomotive and sleeper, with a rear car for her baby sister; if a boy imagined a jungle, Ana’s house for him would be painted with lianas and tiled with orchids and monkeys.
All the rooms and closets of this enormous apartment were filled with construction materials and curios that Ana had picked up from dumpsters as well as antique shops. The living room, because of its huge dimensions, was her workroom, and at the moment it contained three projects in various stages.
The first house under construction was built on a wooden frame, a stuffed chambered nautilus five feet high with large and small compartments and a spiraling corridor. It had appliquéd designs of fish and shells all over its striped fabric exterior.
The second was a giant jewelry box made of wood and covered in blue plush. It had two drawers, the top one for sleeping in and the bottom for playing in. It even had a life-size ballerina on top, made of padded cotton with a stiff net skirt and a blue velvet bodice. If you pushed a button, she spun around to the strains of the Blue Danube waltz.
“I’m still working on the speed,” Ana said absent-mindedly. “If you make it too fast her skirt will rip off the child’s face; but if she goes too slow she looks crippled.”
The third project was in unassembled pieces of gaudy papier-mâché all over the floor. I saw what looked like a painted woman’s thigh and a colorful single breast.
“This is a house for a woman giving birth,” Ana said, picking up the thigh as if that would explain something.
We curled up on some pillows and I told her about Frankie, trying not to make it sound as if that were the only reason I’d come.
Ana said, “I don’t know, it sounds like a wild goose chase. Barcelona is enormous. And even if you find this husband of hers, is it as simple as Frankie is making it out to be? What if she’s out for revenge for some reason and plans to kill him?”
“Frankie seems absolutely harmless. A little dramatic, but after all, she’s an actress. Her real story may be different than the one she’s telling me, but I hardly think she’s a murderer.”
“It’s you I’m worried about,” Ana said with an embarrassment she tried to mask as severity. “Remember the last time you were here. That business with Carmen.”
“Carmen,” I mused, remembering. “I’ll definitely have to get in touch with Carmen.”
“I hope you’ll have time for me.”
“I always have time for you, Ana,” I said. “What’s wrong, anyway?”
She looked at me wistfully. “I want my life to change, that’s all.”
Oh god, next she’d be talking about babies.
“I want a child.”
“I think we should sleep on this, Ana. Let’s talk about it tomorrow, okay?”
She sighed and got up.
“Just don’t plan on spending all your time with Carmen,” she warned.
“Ana, really. I’m here to work.”
But before I went to sleep I looked at the ship’s figurehead that Ana had thoughtfully placed in my guest bedroom, and I remembered the single-minded expression of Ana’s that day in the antique shop. She had something on her mind that had to do with me.
Babies.
Frankie and I had agreed to meet the next morning at ten. I woke early and went down to the Café Zurich across from the Plaça de Catalunya. Even though it was only seven-thirty the streets were lively. Spaniards get up early and go to bed late, and I do the same when I’m in Spain. It must be all that coffee. But it also has a lot to do with the heat. Barcelona on this morning was cool and fresh, the sidewalks newly washed, only a light buzz of car exhaust in the air. I sat down at a table at the Café Zurich and thanked god I was here. Unlike London, where the most you could hope for in the morning on your way to work was a slop of milk in a weak brown stew, snatched in some horrid tea shop with linoleum tables and greasy windows, in Barcelona you could sit outside at your own table and the waiter would appear before you with a cup and two pitchers on his tray. From one pitcher he would pour a shot of black coffee, from the other a stream of hot milk. With a flourish: “Señora.”
And it was spring in Barcelona too, real spring, not drizzly on-and-off spring. England could have its lilacs under gray skies; I was relieved to be here where I could see plane trees overhanging the Ramblas and women going to work dressed like movie stars. I’d exchanged my leather bomber jacket for a printed Japanese wraparound shirt, and on my head I’d wound a purple and black turban.
I read El País and La Vanguardia, watched the bustle around me, had another coffee and two croissants and finally set off down the Ramblas, the long street that is Barcelona’s heart. It’s really made up of five separate streets, but they all flow into each other. The central tree-lined walkway is almost always crowded and the kiosks sell rabbits, canaries and roses as well as postcards and newspapers from all over the world.
I walked midway down to the Plaça Boquería and turned into a side street to reach the three small squares around the church of Santa María del Pi. I had suggested a small hotel off the Plaça del Pi to Frankie and was meeting her at a café outside a nearby bar.
She was waiting for me, more fragile than when we’d parted at the steps of the British Museum, less jaunty and more querulous. My heart sank a little as I approached her table and she turned accusing eyes on me.
“They put me in a room by the elevator shaft, I couldn’t sleep a wink all night for the noise, and the bed was too soft. The man at the desk doesn’t speak a word of English so I couldn’t complain to him. I’m feeling absolutely ragged.”
It was true, she didn’t look her best, even though she had made an effort. She had on her bangles and her red red lipstick and her silly little pointed shoes. But in the bright morning sun her pale skin looked sallow and slightly scarred with acne. Her ashtray was already full and she coughed between her words.
I produced soothing noises and promised to find her another hotel if she wanted. Frankie, stage trooper that she was, struggled to cheer up. “Americans abroad, we’re pathetic, aren’t we?”
And I liked her again.
We ordered more coffee and I decided to have another croissant. The tables outside the Bar del Pi were full this morning: three Germans telling each other travelling stories, a couple of young women in black with art portfolios at their feet, a mother and her grown pregnant daughter, both looking quite pleased with themselves, and a lone scientist with a flight bag on the seat next to him. The flight bag was imprinted with the words EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION.
Frankie took out a scrap of paper from her huge purse. “Well, we might as well get started,” she said briskly. “Here’s the phone number I called. What you need to do is get the address and give it to me.”
“How do you suggest I do that?”
“That’s up to you.” Her tone was curt, then she remembered the charm. “I have so much confidence in you, Cassandra. Don’t mind me, it’s probably jet lag.”
I took the piece of paper and went into the bar to use the phone. I would use the only ruse I could think of—I’d pretend I had a wrong number.
“Hello.” A man’s voice answered the phone. He was speaking Catalan with what sounded like an American accent.
I asked, in Castilian, to speak to Isabella.
No Isabella lived here, he answered, switching to Castilian.
That was impossible. This was 99-67-73 and Isabella must be there.
She wasn’t, he repeated, and made as if to hang up.
I got worked up. That was completely impossible! Isabella had given me this number herself! Was he saying that Isabella would make a mistake about her own number? Then he didn’t know Isabella!
He admitted with some irritation that he didn’t know Isabella.
This was 99-67-73, I accused. Isabella lived there, right on València, number 34. I had been there, I knew.
This wasn’t València, he said triumphantly. It was Provença.
It wasn’t València? I allowed a small hint of doubt to creep into my voice. Not number 34?
“Provença, 261,” he repeated, and put down the phone.
I returned to the table. “It’s on Provença Street, number 261.”
Frankie looked shocked. “They told you, just like that?”
“No, of course not. I used subterfuge.” With real pleasure I surveyed the little square, the sooty church, the leisurely bustle of mid-morning. “You want to go there right now?”
Frankie lit another cigarette and finished her coffee. “Could you order me another one?”
“The man I talked to had an American accent,” I said. “But he spoke both Catalan and Castilian.”
“Ben only speaks Spanish,” Frankie said.
“Castilian is Spanish. Catalan is what they speak in Barcelona.”
“They don’t speak Spanish here? Someone should have told me. No wonder they didn’t understand me at the hotel desk when I tried to use my phrasebook.”
“They do speak Spanish as well,” I explained patiently. “But Catalan is their language and many people refuse to speak Castilian on principle. It goes back to the years when Franco tried to eradicate the Catalan language and culture. The first time I came to Barcelona, over twenty years ago, all the signs were in Castilian, and you could be fined for speaking Catalan on the streets.”
Frankie was uninterested. “Well I’m sure Ben doesn’t know Catalan.”
“Do you have any idea who it might have been? Has Ben ever mentioned a friend in Barcelona?”
“If he had I wouldn’t have had to employ you, would I?” snapped Frankie, then she murmured apologetically. “Sorry, I’m not myself this morning. I just don’t want to be rushed, that’s all. I mean, at least now we know the address, that’s the important thing.”
I restrained myself. Obviously I was in a rush, but whether it was in order to collect my two thousand dollars or to overcome the doubts that were beginning to form, was hard to say.
Frankie smoked and drank another cup of coffee. The lovely spring sun beat down upon us and the German tourists departed to be replaced by a woman with a baby in a stroller.
“Look,” she said finally, “It’s a little more complicated than I let on yesterday in London.”
Somehow I wasn’t that surprised.
“It’s not that Ben and I aren’t good friends,” she said. “But––in actual fact—we’re divorced. Everything else is true,” she hastened to assure me. “About his being gay and his family not knowing and us needing to keep it a secret—”
“If you’re such good friends,” I broke in, “why would he be upset to get a visit from you in Barcelona? Especially if you’re trying to give him something to sign for his family.”
Frankie sighed. “Ben is such an independent person, it’s hard to explain. He’s independent and… irresponsible. He just gets it into his head to do things… sometimes against his best interests….”
“The paper is something he might not want to sign?”
“Oh no,” Frankie dismissed that idea with a rattle of bangles. “Not if he’s approached in the right way,” she amended. “He hates to feel pressured.”
“And he might feel pressured if he thought you had flown halfway around the world to get him to sign it.”
“That’s not it at all,” Frankie pouted. “And there’s no point in you being so antagonistic. After all, it’s not like we know it’s even Ben you talked to. I just want to know what kind of situation I’m walking into. Isn’t that reasonable?”
“Yesss,” I said. “So how do you want to go about this then?”
“I want you to go over to the place he lives and just watch and see who comes in and out the door.”
“Dozens of people probably live in his building,” I protested. “Do you have a photograph of him?”
Once again Frankie seemed inappropriately taken aback. “Oh, ah, no. I should have thought of that.”
“Well, is he tall or short, what color is his hair, what kind of clothes does he wear?”
“He’s… medium-height… regular-looking… short hair… He wears, I don’t know, normal clothes. Jeans.” Frankie was floundering and I had no idea why.
“So I’m supposed to stand outside this building and look for a regular guy with absolutely no identifying marks?” I rebelled. “I think it’s pointless, I really do. How am I going to describe him to you?”
“We’ll get you a camera,” she said. “You can take photographs of everyone who goes in and comes out.”
“That should make me really inconspicuous.”
“A small hidden camera,” Frankie said, taking out a gold American Express card.
That cheered me up somewhat. If she had a gold card she wasn’t hurting for money. But I added one condition:
“I get to keep the camera.”
BARCELONA IS A DIVIDED CITY. Below the Plaça de Catalunya, a vast square enlivened by fountains and marred by stretches of artificial grass, the streets are ancient and narrow, gradually twisting their way from the modish leather and shoe shops, gorgeous patisseries and restaurants of the Barri Gòtic down to the tenements by the port, to the Chinese Quarter or Barri Xines— a warren of seedy hotels and squalid hostales, with bars on every corner and long strands of laundry draped back and forth across streets where sunlight never comes. There are social divisions all the way down the Ramblas to the statue of Christopher Columbus on the sea front—the streets above the Plaça Reial are richer than below, the left side of the Ramblas is much safer than the right—but they are differences of degree, not of scale.
Above the Plaça de Catalunya Barcelona is almost another city, built on a nineteenth-century plan, not a Gothic one. In the Middle Ages grandeur meant the cathedral and later the gloomy palaces along Carrer de Montcada; in the nineteenth century the wealthy industrialists and bankers wanted enormous boulevards for their carriages, and opulent banks and shops where the ceilings were twenty feet high. Thus the Passeig de Gràcia is less like a street than an enormous thoroughfare into the architectural imagination of the previous century. Even the sidewalks are wider than most streets in the old quarter, and tiled with slate blue stones covered with swirling shell and flower patterns.
The address the man had given me, 261 Provença, was in the nineteenth-century part of Barcelona, not far from the apartment that Ana had inherited from her wealthy grandmother. I walked unhurriedly up Gràcia, past bank after bank, shop after shop. There was one of Antoni Gaudí’s buildings, the Casa Batlló, with its shimmering greeny mosaic facade and rippling rooftop, all curves and waves. Its roof has been called the “reptile’s back” for its vertebrae of ceramic pots, joined to make a closed gutter. As I passed it in admiration I realized I wasn’t far from La Pedrera, another famous Gaudí construction on Gràcia. It was on the corner of Provença. Some guidebooks call it Casa Milà, but its official nickname is La Pedrera, the Stone Quarry.
Provença. 261 Provença. Ben was living in La Pedrera.
I sank onto a white-tiled, curved bench across the street and considered how to approach the task Frankie had given me.