Barcelona Shadows by Marc Pastor

Author:Marc Pastor [Marc Pastor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782270997
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2014-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

8

KEEPING WATCH over the Xalet del Moro isn’t easy. In fact, it’s not easy keeping watch over any place. It’s a question of waiting and waiting and waiting some more, of not getting discouraged, of giving yourself a goal that you may never reach, always with the idea that you are exposed, that everyone can see you, because it is so obvious that you are watching, that the roles are switched and there you are, like a zoo animal munching on grass as rivers of visitors flow by.

I am Patience itself. I wait, I observe and I only act when intervention is necessary, with surgical precision. I’m not innocent, I don’t need to tell you that. But neither am I guilty. I’m just another person and at the same time I’m everything, because, in the end, everything reverts to me.

Moisès Corvo has spent four afternoons on Escudellers Street, feeling that he was being watched when he was the one spying, alternating between the lamp posts, the doorways and the café in front of the brothel, which is the best spot for vigilance but also where you get identified as police the quickest. And he’s sick of it.

He saw the girls enter punctually at six through a side door, covered in cloaks and protected by a huge man, as wide as he was tall, who was also waiting for them. Here everyone waits, everyone is on the lookout, but nothing happens. Not a trace of the gimp or the monster or their goddamn mother. It seems this is all just something out of the imagination of whores, another one of those rumours that get under the skin of the poor because they want to think somebody gives a fig for them, even if it’s just a made-up creature from hell.

The Xalet del Moro is named for its arabesque architectural style, an exotic combination of mosaics, arches and filigree work on white stone. Even though it’s known that the building serves as a knocking shop, or at least that’s the popular suspicion, few people have entered. You should see how the clients begin to show up, in dribs and drabs, starting at nine in the evening, in carriages with windows hidden by curtains or in cars that stop right in front of the door. Moisès Corvo hasn’t recognized anyone, because they enter too covered up and too quickly. They’ll have plenty of time to shed their layers and take things slowly once they’re inside.

I like you. I wouldn’t want to be one of you, sorry; I didn’t mean it that way. I like you because sometimes, notwithstanding all the years I’ve been with you, you still manage to surprise me. As I said before, I’m the one waiting for you. Occasionally, though, it happens the other way round, and it is one of you who receives me after a wait. Today, 20th December, I met the poet Joan Maragall. I knew you’d come, he told me. And we chatted for a while, since neither of us was in a rush.

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