Giraut stands up, pushing his hands against his knees. On the other side of the door he finds the slightly worried face of Marcia Parini. With one of those hesitant smiles she often uses to try to hide her worry. Marcia raises her hand to one side of her head and tucks her hair behind her ear with her fingers. One of Marcia Parini's characteristic gestures, which evoke in the spectator some kind of helpless charm. Helpless charm, by the way, seems to be Marcia Parini's main type of charm.
“I think we should go out tonight,” says Marcia Parini. She looks at Giraut's dressing gown and then looks over Giraut's shoulder at the living room where Penny DeMink has just lit a second English cigarette. “You and I. Have dinner in a nice restaurant. My psychologist told me I should go out more. Especially now that Valentina isn't at home. That I have to be honest with myself and spend time with people that I really like.” She extends her neck to get a better look at the woman seated in the living room and places a hand on Giraut's chest to push him softly out of her sight line. “People that make me feel loved.”
Giraut nods. Fondling the lapel of his dressing gown thoughtfully. Squinting his eyes in a vague defense against the light coming in from the palace's staircase.
“Someone's here right now,” he says. “An unexpected visit.”
Marcia Parini smiles hesitantly and grabs the sleeve of Giraut's dressing gown in a helplessly charming gesture. In that completely helpless way children grab adults' sleeves when strolling through zoos or other places filled with potentially terrifying experiences. She takes a couple of steps into the apartment's entryway until she has a clearer image of the woman sitting on Lucas Giraut's leather sofa, smoking. Of her incredibly long, slender legs and her perfect body, according to all the canons of physical beauty.
“I don't mind you bringing women home,” she says finally. Without letting go of the sleeve of his dressing gown. “You have the right to do what you want with your life.”
Lucas Giraut doesn't say anything. There is a moment of silence while Penny DeMink uncrosses her legs and leans forward slightly to have a look through her sunglasses at what's going on in the entryway. Her face is wrapped in a vaporous little cloud of cigarette smoke. Marcia Parini's silence has become a solid, enveloping entity. Like one of those shapeless monsters in old horror movies set in the Arctic.
CHAPTER 33. The Prayer of Those Who Have No Father and No Mother
The renowned children's psychiatric center where Valentina Parini has been hospitalized indefinitely is located on one of those blocks in uptown Barcelona that seem to have been built according to a strictly centripetal logic. With its back to everything that isn't located within the block. Surrounded by walls and closed off to the city's traffic. One of those centripetal blocks of uptown Barcelona that have private inner parking garages and barriers of perennial trees and security guards in little huts that keep watch over the entrance to the psychiatric complex.
Lucas Giraut is sitting in the middle of a row of armless institutional seats in the reception area of the renowned children's psychiatric center. Dressed in an ash-colored linen houndstooth Lino Rossi suit. In front of him there is a family composed of a mother with dark circles under her eyes and a shockingly obese boy dressed in a school uniform that looks like it's about to burst at several points. The shockingly obese boy is chewing on a rubber object that looks very much like those rubber objects that dog owners buy for their dogs to chew on. Lucas Giraut has an anthropomorphic-looking package on his knees, wrapped in the gift wrap of a popular comic book store downtown. The Admissions desk of the children's psychiatric center is protected by a reinforced-glass partition decorated with Christmas garlands and shiny balls. With those shiny balls people hang on Christmas trees and with bunches of mistletoe. The shockingly obese boy is furiously chewing his unidentified rubber object when knocks are heard from inside the partition. The nurse in charge of the Admissions desk signals for Giraut to come closer.
“Are you a relative of Valentina Parini?” asks the nurse when Giraut gets to the desk.
Her voice sounds vaguely robotic and inflectionless through the small microphone/speaker that's set into the glass partition.
“I'm a friend.” Lucas Giraut examines the mistletoe branches hanging from the partition. They are plastic branches with plastic berries meant to look like mistletoe. “A friend of the family.”
The nurse looks at the package.
“Is that a gift for the inmate?” She signals for Giraut to place the package in some sort of trap door in the partition, designed for transferring objects from one side to the other. “I must remind you that we have strict rules here.”
The nurse sticks her arms into the trap door, takes the package and starts to remove the wrapping paper. Now some sort of guttural growls are heard behind Giraut's back. From the place where the shockingly obese boy is sitting. The nurse finishes unwrapping the gift and is staring at the figure, about a foot and a half high, inside. It's a clown wearing white face paint and exaggeratedly large shoes, the kind clowns traditionally wear. The white face has a psychotic smile filled with fangs. A rolled-up electrical cord extends from one of his exaggeratedly large shoes.
“It's one of those lamps to leave on when you go to sleep,” says Giraut. “It's Pennywise the Clown. From the novel It by Stephen King.”
“We don't allow the inmates to have electrical devices.” The nurse stands up and carries the figure of Pennywise the Clown to a coat check filled with coats and bags. “You can pick it up on your way out. They sell flowers in the kiosk at the end of the hall.”
“Valentina hates flowers,” says Giraut.
Five minutes later, Giraut is sitting on a folding chair with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. In front of the folding chair where Valentina Parini is sitting. For some reason, Giraut had imagined his visit with Valentina would take place in a sunroom with views of a flower garden. One of those sunrooms where meetings with psychiatric patients and their loved ones take place in Hollywood movies. In the midst of a vaguely melancholy atmosphere. Watching as patients stroll through the garden on their caregivers' arms. Instead, Giraut and Valentina's meeting takes place in the first-floor bathroom of the girls' wing. In the common area between the toilet stalls and the long sink with a horizontal mirror that covers the wall in front of the stalls. Leaning against the back wall, a day nurse serves as chaperone for the meeting.
“Are you sure you wouldn't be more comfortable in another chair?” Giraut fondles his bouquet of flowers absently.
Valentina's eyes are red and her face is swollen, like that of an adult who has just gotten up after a night of little sleep. She isn't wearing her green plastic glasses with one lens covered. Without her glasses and with her eyes swollen, her face takes on an unexpectedly grown-up look.
“I tried that thing where you don't swallow the pills and put them under the mattress,” says Valentina in a low voice. “But they caught me and now they give me shots that make me sleep all night.” She shrugs her shoulders. “I don't care. Their drugs don't work. They don't make me drool or spend all day looking at the wall or anything like that.” She looks around her. “Although sometimes I do it, when I know that they're watching me. This is the only place on the whole floor without cameras. The only safe place to talk.”
Lucas Giraut can't think of any reason why Valentina isn't wearing her green plastic glasses with one lens covered. Nor can he explain exactly why Valentina's face has suddenly taken on some indefinite element that is more appropriate to adults.