“Much less than not much! And the saddest thing is that I’m in love now; yes, me, in love!”
“About time. But it’s not the first time you’ve thought you were in love. This must be like the time you were in love with Glòria, that girl who used to buy you dinner every night at the Cafè Lion d’Or …”
“No, I swear, it’s not like that at all! I am in love with the protagonist of my novel. A woman I’ve only seen four times, and spoken with twice. I never said anything special to her. I don’t believe she would ever take notice of me. She is a very unusual woman, cold, twisted, bizarre … Cerebral in a way I don’t believe anyone else in Barcelona is.”
“You see what a bunch of nonsense this is? Do you hear how pretentious you sound? What do you mean, in love? Rotten romantic dime-store literature, that’s all it is. You’re thirty-one or thirty-two years old and you’re still a kid, a rather sleazy kid, not to put too fine a point on it, but …”
“Maybe so. And maybe sleazier than you think. And I’m not ashamed to say so. I swear, there is a scandalous voluptuosity to my sleaziness — you can’t even begin to imagine it. The first time I did something that seemed beneath contempt, I got a knot in my stomach. Later, I started seeking out that knot like a drug, a stimulant. And finally I no longer feel any knots at all, and I don’t know what I’d have to do to feel one …”
“You’re a damn fool. With all these obsessions with your family, with its atavistic past and its gloomy future, you’re going to go so far around the bend that one day you’ll go mad for real and you’ll start wanting to suck children’s blood …”
“I know I’m a damn fool. But I swear, from time to time I land a sweet piece of work. It’s not that I deserve it, it happens by chance. It’s all a question of having a little nerve and grabbing the opportunity. If people here just had a little more nerve, amazing things could happen! Though, if you think about it, there’s plenty of nerve to go around … Still, Barcelona could look like a tale from the Scheherezade …”
“I can’t imagine what else you want to see happen. Right now it all seems like a perfect mess. Just in the past eight years, we’ve seen more than our share of things, of every variety and color in the rainbow …”
“Not to mention what we haven’t seen yet. And then they say there are no novels to be written here.”
Just as the excitable young man was saying this, a newsboy who was hawking La Vanguardia and El Día Gráfico stuck his head in the door. The young man with the drooping eyelids bought La Vanguardia. On the front page, among the day’s obituaries, the excitable young man saw a name that made him jump up from the bench he was sitting on.
“How can this be? He’s dead?”
“Yes, one of dozens; he’s dead. He was no one to you. The fact that an extremely rich man, and a creep at that, has died, is no reason for you to get all worked up. I don’t imagine he’s left you any spare change …”
“Come on, hand it over, let me see. ‘Has died,’ it says, and nothing more. It doesn’t mention the last rites, the sacraments. The guy must have croaked in an accident, or who knows how. Let me see the local news. Does it say anything about him? Yes, it does! Look here! What? How can this be! This is horrible! Obviously it must be a suicide. They don’t quite come out and say it, of course, out of respect for the position of the deceased. They must have paid them to hush it up. But there can be no doubt … that pig committed suicide! Suicide!”
“All right, so he committed suicide. His business must be failing. What’s eating you? What fault is it of yours if he committed suicide”
“It’s very peculiar, believe me. And very interesting … I wouldn’t have imagined this in a million years … Life is strange, huh? Very strange. Look, do you see what’s going on there, in the other room? There’s my brother, with a tart. And isn’t she gorgeous? I don’t know how Frederic does it … He does the family proud …”
“What? Listen, how many whiskeys have you had?”
“Just this one here in front of me. Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re acting as if you were soused …”
“You know, believe me … No, don’t be silly, I’m not soused. But really, life can sometimes turn out in such a way … When I tell you I’m afraid of myself, it’s the absolute truth, and not just romantic dime-store literature, I swear …”
“Listen, kid, go home to bed. Jenny’s stood you up today. When she’s not here at this time of night … it’s a sign she’s picked up some guy … like your brother … Wait, look, he’s leaving! Are you going to pretend not to see each other?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!..”
Frederic de Lloberola had settled up and was helping the French girl into her coat. On their way out of the restaurant they passed by the table where the two young men were sitting. The excitable one grabbed Frederic by the arm. When Frederic saw him, he was a bit surprised, but he showed no concern at all for their being family. He said,
“What are you doing here? What’s up?”
“Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Look here: the Baró de Falset has committed suicide.”
“What? How is that possible?”
“That’s what I’m wondering.”
“Well, to be frank, I’m not all that surprised. I heard he was going mad … Anyway, that’s how it goes.”
“Hey, what’s that on your forehead?”
“Nothing serious, I got hit with a bottle … nothing to worry about.”
“By the way, the girl is quite a looker.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Do you have a plan in mind?”
“Stop, fool, stop. I’m just taking her home …”
“Okay, don’t get mad. Good night …”
“Good night.”
AS GUILLEM DE LLOBEROLA buttoned up his pajamas, he felt an eerie chill down his spine. His mouth was dry and he had a peculiar headache. In fact, he had a bit of a fever. He took his pulse. It was beating hard and fast. He lay down in bed and tried to read a book. It was impossible, he couldn’t see a single letter. He turned out the light and it seemed as if that repugnant individual were there in bed beside him. He took up all the space. There was barely enough room for Guillem to breathe. It was that very same man, cold and immobile, with a bullet hole through his cranium, and a distinctive little snort, an inhuman snort, still coming out of his mouth, a snort of shameful lust. He couldn’t push him away, couldn’t get him out of the bed. He was pinned there, rigid, in his greasy, white, dead nakedness.
Guillem had murdered him. That little hole in his cranium, that coagulated blood smeared on his face, was all Guillem’s doing. The young man could never have imagined that things would go so far. He had played at depravity, had played at being a scoundrel, and had had the luck to come across a poor bastard who fell into his trap. It is entirely possible that another kind of man might have laughed off his blackmail scheme and tossed him down the stairs. Weak and cowardly as Guillem was, like all the Lloberolas, he had had the great good luck to run into a man who was even weaker and more cowardly than he. And Guillem, a creature without energy, without impetus of any kind, took pleasure in believing that he had taken up an important place in the brotherhood of cynics. Most deplorable of all was that that affair, that misunderstanding, that ridiculous hoax that poor Guillem de Lloberola had pulled on a defenseless man, miserably squeezing his money out of him, injecting the microbe of folly into his head, had all been for such a sad and despicable purpose. Callow and inexperienced as he was, Guillem could not have imagined that his prank would come to such a tragic end. He thought the aftermath of exploiting a pervert who had a very great deal to lose would be little more than the material profit that he extracted, and the gratification of dishing out a bit of humiliation to a person whose economic situation placed him in a position of superiority to Guillem. He had not suspected that the microbe of folly would perform with such grave efficacy and intensity. He had thought it was nothing but base and petty fear, and for that poor man the survival instinct would be stronger than anything else. Guillem — who was also a sad and abnormal man — hadn’t taken into account the reactions that take place in the souls of the abnormal, even if they are millionaires, even if they are the Baró de Falset, and even if they are showered with the respect of their fellow humans. Guillem could also never have suspected that he had so much power. He had felt as if the fear produced by his little chantage contained a bit of condescension on the part of Antoni Mates, and that Antoni Mates had allowed himself to be swindled because he could afford to, as the amounts that Guillem had extracted from him meant very little to him. Guillem could not believe there could be such a great distance between his unscrupulous temperament and the spineless temperament of the Baró de Falset. He could not have believed that a man would take things so much to heart that he would forget everything else, completely lose his bearings, and kill himself. Since he could never have imagined coming to such an end, it filled him with dread. Above all else, he was surprised.