filled with what looks like plum jelly. The girl’s heart, marinated in honey and white wine, and a few sprigs of rosemary. He doesn’t know, he can’t even imagine.
“Are we waiting for someone?”
“Yes.”
But no one comes out of the prison, just the car that has left the new inmates and is returning to the police station. An hour passes, the sky grows overcast and they remain sitting, without exchanging a word.
Now another car arrives, but this is a private one, somebody with money, thinks Blackmouth, with a chauffeur in a peaked cap and a metal angel on the hood. It stops in front of them. The driver comes out and opens the back door. Enriqueta gets in and when she sits down the leather crunches, brand new.
“The lad’s not coming,” says the slight man with sunken cheeks and prominent nose.
Enriqueta looks at the man and understands there is no room for negotiation. He closes the door and leaves Blackmouth on the street, alone, watching as the car starts and takes the woman up the street. Her bearing is that of a countess, or a baroness, or somebody with a lot of money. As if she weren’t the same person he would have eagerly strangled that morning.
6
I N HIS ATTEMPTS TO AVOID HIS WIFE, Moisès Corvo got used to spending the evenings in the printing press where his brother Antoni works. First he went there to circumvent conversing with Conxita or listening to her reproaches (I spend nights alone, it’s like I wasn’t married, she tells him bitterly). But one day his brother gave him a freshly bound book:
“Take this, since you’re here, at least don’t snooze in the chair, it gives a bad impression.”
“What is it?”
“Read it, see if you like it.”
Corvo had learnt to read at seventeen, but he had never really taken to it. The occasional dog-eared little novel during the Rif War, criminology manuals in the police academy and not much more. Now in his hands he holds
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,
and he gradually works his way into it. Before his eyes opens up a new, limitless world. After that one, Moisès asked for more.
Carmilla
by Sheridan Le Fanu, Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories,
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley and Stoker’s vampire. Moisès Corvo, secretly, at the press (when have you ever seen a copper reading, Millán Astray often exclaims), became a devoted reader of horror and detective fiction. You read too much, is Malsano’s typical barb, and Corvo has a clever reply prepared. The lastbook Antoni provided him with is
The Phantom of the Opera
, by Gaston Leroux. A mysterious being murders from the shadows… Today Moisès Corvo is unable to read a single line. He needs distraction. And when he is preoccupied, he takes shelter at the Napoleón. Moisès Corvo is sitting beside Sebastián, who is working on the projector.
“Take off this crap.” This crap is a film about a couple arguing in a park, she’s got a pram and he’s got some major-league exasperation.
“What do you want to watch?” replies Sebastián.
“Got anything with sex between vestal virgins with huge breasts?”
“Only with small breasts.”
“Then forget it. What a crap selection the owner of this place has…”
“I have the one about the hotel.”
“If there’s no melons…” And he makes a gesture with his hand as if saying go ahead, set it up. “I’ll pull a few strings to get some decent cinema”—quality here being inversely proportional to the use of clothing—“I know it’s out there.”
“Keep me posted, once we’ve got it we can really pull in the customers,” says Sebastián, a cigarette swinging from his lips as he puts the roll of film into the projector.
“We can pull on something else, too.”
On screen, the lobby of a hotel. The bellboy appears, along with a married couple. He is dressed as a ridiculous harlequin, she with loose clothes. The bellboy starts a machine in motion and all of a sudden the suitcases march on their own over to the elevator, they
“Are we waiting for someone?”
“Yes.”
But no one comes out of the prison, just the car that has left the new inmates and is returning to the police station. An hour passes, the sky grows overcast and they remain sitting, without exchanging a word.
Now another car arrives, but this is a private one, somebody with money, thinks Blackmouth, with a chauffeur in a peaked cap and a metal angel on the hood. It stops in front of them. The driver comes out and opens the back door. Enriqueta gets in and when she sits down the leather crunches, brand new.
“The lad’s not coming,” says the slight man with sunken cheeks and prominent nose.
Enriqueta looks at the man and understands there is no room for negotiation. He closes the door and leaves Blackmouth on the street, alone, watching as the car starts and takes the woman up the street. Her bearing is that of a countess, or a baroness, or somebody with a lot of money. As if she weren’t the same person he would have eagerly strangled that morning.
6
I N HIS ATTEMPTS TO AVOID HIS WIFE, Moisès Corvo got used to spending the evenings in the printing press where his brother Antoni works. First he went there to circumvent conversing with Conxita or listening to her reproaches (I spend nights alone, it’s like I wasn’t married, she tells him bitterly). But one day his brother gave him a freshly bound book:
“Take this, since you’re here, at least don’t snooze in the chair, it gives a bad impression.”
“What is it?”
“Read it, see if you like it.”
Corvo had learnt to read at seventeen, but he had never really taken to it. The occasional dog-eared little novel during the Rif War, criminology manuals in the police academy and not much more. Now in his hands he holds
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,
and he gradually works his way into it. Before his eyes opens up a new, limitless world. After that one, Moisès asked for more.
Carmilla
by Sheridan Le Fanu, Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories,
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley and Stoker’s vampire. Moisès Corvo, secretly, at the press (when have you ever seen a copper reading, Millán Astray often exclaims), became a devoted reader of horror and detective fiction. You read too much, is Malsano’s typical barb, and Corvo has a clever reply prepared. The lastbook Antoni provided him with is
The Phantom of the Opera
, by Gaston Leroux. A mysterious being murders from the shadows… Today Moisès Corvo is unable to read a single line. He needs distraction. And when he is preoccupied, he takes shelter at the Napoleón. Moisès Corvo is sitting beside Sebastián, who is working on the projector.
“Take off this crap.” This crap is a film about a couple arguing in a park, she’s got a pram and he’s got some major-league exasperation.
“What do you want to watch?” replies Sebastián.
“Got anything with sex between vestal virgins with huge breasts?”
“Only with small breasts.”
“Then forget it. What a crap selection the owner of this place has…”
“I have the one about the hotel.”
“If there’s no melons…” And he makes a gesture with his hand as if saying go ahead, set it up. “I’ll pull a few strings to get some decent cinema”—quality here being inversely proportional to the use of clothing—“I know it’s out there.”
“Keep me posted, once we’ve got it we can really pull in the customers,” says Sebastián, a cigarette swinging from his lips as he puts the roll of film into the projector.
“We can pull on something else, too.”
On screen, the lobby of a hotel. The bellboy appears, along with a married couple. He is dressed as a ridiculous harlequin, she with loose clothes. The bellboy starts a machine in motion and all of a sudden the suitcases march on their own over to the elevator, they
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