He felt the fear of a child on whom a pistol goes off in the midst of a game with another child, when he realizes he has actually taken his friend’s life. This was not by any means what Guillem had wanted. But on the other hand he was perfectly aware that he had not overlooked a single detail, and that he had behaved with the luck and audacity of a criminal much more astute than he.
In all that affair, Guillem had fallen victim to a self-intoxication, to a drunken binge of literature and depravity. The day he left the house of el Baró de Falset with the promissory note for fifty thousand pessetes in his pocket, Guillem had patted his suit and his cheeks to assure himself that indeed it was he who had carried off that audacious fraud. And when he managed to keep the letter the baron had addressed to his brother, Guillem could hardly believe that the man had reached such an extreme of nullity and lack of foresight. After that, the events themselves had carried the two of them along. Just like Antoni Mates, Guillem was a puppet swept up by destiny. When he had told his friend Agustí Casals about the shameful mess he had protagonized, he did so with the morbid desire of deviants to proclaim their depravity aloud and without compunction, to tell the story with childish delight in such a way that no one can suspect it is their own.
From that day on Guillem had felt the urge to do everything it was in his power to do with a being as insignificant and morally wanting as Antoni Mates. The confidence expressed with impunity and entrusted to his friend spurred him on and convinced him to confront Antoni Mates, in that perfectly-wrought scene, worthy of a professional scoundrel.
Now, feverish and sleepless, he was the actual assassin of a supposed suicide whose monstrous cadaver lay in his bed, emitting the same bestial and lascivious little moan that Guillem recognized from another nightmarish bed in the apartment of Dorotea Palau, the dressmaker. No one would ever know that Guillem was the perpetrator of that crime. He would never have to make a statement, never have to explain a thing. He had shot a bullet from a great distance. There were no fingerprints on the handle of the pistol, nothing that could lead anyone to suspect that the murderer was Guillem. But that night, he possessed a faculty that bore some resemblance to a conscience. Wallowing in these dark thoughts, the green of graveyard nettles, Guillem realized that his pajamas were drenched. He ran his hand over his chest and his skin was dripping wet, too. His copious sweating had broken the fever. The cadaver with the lascivious moan was no longer lying at his side, robbing him of his breath. Guillem felt weak and exhausted. He wanted to take off his pajamas and put dry clothes against his skin, but he couldn’t lift his arms, he was clamped to the bed, his mind in flight. Between dizziness and unconsciousness, he finally fell asleep like a log.
The next day it was quite late and Guillem had still not shown signs of life. Leocàdia went in to wake him up. She heard her son whimper and thrash about in bed as if troubled by an exceedingly distressing dream. Leocàdia rested her hand on his back and Guillem awoke with a terrible start. He had a splitting headache and it took him a few seconds to realize his mother was there.
Leocàdia asked him two or three questions. Guillem didn’t answer. He just smiled, the fresh, open smile of a child who has been naughty and defends himself with the charm of his lips to avoid a scolding.
Leocàdia gazed at her son with ineffable tenderness. She saw his charming, naughty, slightly feminine face, his black eyes, his smoker’s mouth. It was the face of an unregenerate scoundrel, with even, white, sharp, perfectly intact teeth. Leocàdia gazed upon his black hair curling in brash, romantic disorder, and his thin arms inside his red pajamas. That childlike smile was frozen on Guillem’s face. Leocàdia felt her entire person being drawn into her son’s smile, imprisoned in the fascinating net of her son’s lips and teeth. Abruptly, Guillem’s gaze went dark, his mouth contracted and he ground his teeth as if he had felt a stitch in his heart. Leocàdia’s head snapped back, and she drew close enough to touch the border of his sheet. At that point, Guillem wrapped both arms around her neck, and sought comfort for his mouth and cheeks on the poor old woman’s sunken breast. He needed to breathe. He felt as if his lungs were being torn from top to bottom, and he practically vomited an unrelenting hiccup, followed by one of the most vivid, unfettered, carnal crying spells possible, with loud and sonorous sobs much like those that babies let out unselfconsciously.
Leocàdia withstood the sobs of her son without saying a word, and without understanding a thing. And what good would it have done her to try and understand that child who struck fear in her soul?
Guillem quickly came to. He was terribly ashamed of what had just happened to him. He couldn’t understand how he had fallen prey to such weakness, such strange tenderness in his mother’s presence. It had been so many years since his heart had gone out to his mother, or to anyone else!
Guillem let go of Leocàdia, and made a beeline into the bathroom. He soaped himself up from head to toe, and let the cold shower fall with all its force onto his chest. Guillem stretched out his arms, clenched his jaw, and smiled. But this time it was a ruthless smile, with all the glee of a wild animal.
PART II
IT HAD BEEN FIVE years since the Baró de Falset drilled a bullet into his head. In those five years, the public life of the country had undergone quite an evolution. Events of glorious transcendence had taken place in Barcelona. The most brilliant moments were marked by the 1929 Exposició Universal in Montjuïc. The entire parade of souls the reader had occasion to contemplate one night at a party thrown by Hortènsia Portell completed the final lap of its peacock promenade. Firecrackers burst from their eyes and streamers flowed from their mouths. The summer of 1929 was a season of phosphorescence: the most lacquered chassis, the most pearlescent yachts festooned with the most profuse bunting combined to dazzle all the bootblacks from Almeria who bent to their trade at the foot of the Rambla around the monument to Columbus and on the sidewalk cafès of the Plaça de Catalunya. Cabarets once again exuded chilled champagne, as in the good old days of World War I. Barcelona’s hotels were overwhelmed; anyone with an extra cot or a room ordinarily devoted to fleas had a canon from Extremadura or a fishmonger from Portbou as a boarder. Some even went so far as to lay mattresses on the rooftops and use the lightning rods for hangers. Barcelona was bubbling in a stew of grandeur and it was every man for himself. Eyes, cheeks, noses, and sexes found infinite room to play. Nocturnal parties during the exhibition were truly a dream, a prodigious sight that horrified the people of Barcelona. “Where will the millions come from to pay for such extravagance?” said the man on the street, carrying a child in each arm and a little dog sticking out of his vest pocket. And it’s the man on the street who will have to pony up so that all the blue, green, and pink mystery of the colored fountains of the Palau Nacional can rain down ballets russes, St. Lorenzo’s tears and otherworldly foam onto his necktie.