‘And there was light,’ he said, coming in without waiting for an invitation.
Vidal stopped to look at the sitting room that doubled as dining room and meeting place and gave a sigh of disgust.
‘It might be better to go to my room,’ I suggested.
I led the way. The shouts and cheers of my co-residents in honour of Marujita and her venereal acrobatics bored through the walls with jubilation.
‘What a lively place,’ Vidal commented.
‘Please come into the presidential suite, Don Pedro,’ I invited him.
We went in and I closed the door. After a very brief glance around my room he sat on the only chair and looked at me with little enthusiasm. It wasn’t hard to imagine the impression my modest home had made on him.
‘What do you think?’
‘Charming. I’m thinking of moving here myself.’
Pedro Vidal lived in Villa Helius, a huge modernist mansion with three floors and a large tower, perched on the slopes that rose up to Pedralbes, at the crossing between Calle Abadesa Olzet and Calle Panamá. The house had been given to him by his father ten years earlier in the hope that he would settle down and start a family, an undertaking which Vidal had somewhat delayed. Life had blessed Don Pedro Vidal with many talents, chief among them that of disappointing and offending his father with every gesture he made and every step he took. To see him fraternising with undesirables like me did not help. I remember that once, when visiting my mentor to deliver some papers from the office, I bumped into the patriarch of the Vidal clan in one of the hallways of Villa Helius. When he saw me, Vidal’s father told me to go and fetch him a glass of tonic water and a cloth to clean a stain off his lapel.
‘I think you’re confused, sir. I’m not a servant…’
He gave me a smile that clarified the order of things in the world without any need for words.
‘You’re the one who is confused, young lad. You’re a servant, whether you know it or not. What’s your name?’
‘David Martín, sir.’
The patriarch considered my name.
‘Take my advice, David Martín. Leave this house and go back to where you belong. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble, and you’ll save me the trouble too.’
I never confessed this to Vidal, but I immediately went off to the kitchen in search of tonic water and a rag, and spent a quarter of an hour cleaning the great man’s jacket. The shadow of the clan was a long one, and however much Don Pedro liked to affect a Bohemian air, his whole life was an extension of his family network. Villa Helius was conveniently situated five minutes away from the great paternal mansion that dominated the upper stretch of Avenida Pearson, a cathedral-like jumble of balustrades, staircases and dormer windows that looked out over the whole of Barcelona from a distance, like a child looking at the toys he has thrown away. Every day, an expedition of two servants and a cook left the big house, as the paternal home was known among the Vidal entourage, and went to Villa Helius to clean, shine, iron, cook and cosset my wealthy protector in a nest that comforted him and shielded him from the inconveniences of everyday life. Pedro Vidal moved around the city in a resplendent Hispano-Suiza, piloted by the family chauffeur, Manuel Sagnier, and he had probably never set foot in a tram in his life. The creature of an elite environment and good breeding, Vidal could not comprehend the dismal, faded charm of the cheap Barcelona pensiones of the time.
‘Don’t hold back, Don Pedro.’
‘This place looks like a dungeon,’ he finally proclaimed. ‘I don’t know how you can live here.’
‘With my salary, only just.’
‘If necessary, I could pay you whatever you need to live somewhere that doesn’t smell of sulphur and urine.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
Vidal sighed.
‘He died of suffocation and pride. There you are, a free epitaph.’
For a few moments Vidal wandered around the room without saying a word, stopping to inspect my meagre wardrobe, stare out of the window with a look of revulsion, touch the greenish paint that covered the walls and gently tap the naked bulb that hung from the ceiling with his index finger, as if he wanted to verify the wretched quality of each thing.
‘What brings you here, Don Pedro? Too much fresh air in Pedralbes?’
‘I haven’t come from home. I’ve come from the newspaper.’
‘Why?’
‘I was curious to see where you lived and besides, I’ve brought something for you.’
He pulled a white parchment envelope from his jacket and handed it to me.
‘This arrived today at the office, with your name.’
I took the envelope and examined it. It was closed with a wax seal on which I could make out a winged silhouette. An angel. Apart from that, the only other thing visible was my name, neatly written in scarlet ink, in a fine hand.
‘Who sent this?’ I asked, intrigued.
Vidal shrugged his shoulders.
‘An admirer. Or admiress. I don’t know. Open it.’
I opened the envelope with care and pulled out a folded sheet of paper on which, in the same writing, was the following:
Dear friend,
I’m taking the liberty of writing to you to express my admiration and congratulate you on the success you have obtained this season with The Mysteries of Barcelona in the pages of The Voice of Industry. As a reader and lover of good literature, it has given me great pleasure to discover a new voice brimming with talent, youth and promise. Allow me, then, as proof of my gratitude for the hours of pleasure provided by your stories, to invite you to a little surprise which I trust you will enjoy, tonight at midnight in El Ensueño del Raval. You are expected.
Affectionately
A.C.
Vidal, who had been reading over my shoulder, raised his eyebrows, intrigued.
‘Interesting,’ he mumbled.
‘What do you mean, interesting?’ I asked. ‘What sort of a place is this El Ensueño?’
Vidal pulled a cigarette out of his platinum case.
‘Doña Carmen doesn’t allow smoking in the pensión,’ I warned him.
‘Why? Does it ruin the perfume from the sewers?’
Vidal lit the cigarette with twice the enjoyment, as one relishes all forbidden things.
‘Have you ever known a woman, David?’
‘Of course I have. Dozens of them.’
‘I mean in the biblical sense.’
‘As in Mass?’
‘No, as in bed.’
‘Ah.’
‘And?’
The truth is that I had nothing much to tell that would impress someone like Vidal. My adventures and romances had been characterised until then by their modesty and a consistent lack of originality. Nothing in my brief catalogue of pinches, cuddles and kisses stolen in doorways or the back row of the picture house could aspire to deserve the consideration of Pedro Vidal – Barcelona’s acclaimed master of the art and science of bedroom games.
‘What does this have to do with anything?’ I protested.
Vidal adopted a patronising air and launched into one of his speeches.
‘In my younger days the normal thing, at least among my sort, was to be initiated in these matters with the help of a professional. When I was your age my father, who was and still is a regular of the most refined establishments in town, took me to a place called El Ensueño, just a few metres away from that macabre palace that our dear Count Güell insisted Gaudí should build for him near the Ramblas. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the name.’