Сантьяго Ронкальоло: Barcelona Noir

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Puig-Grau.”

“It’s the same old story. The two other companies are in the same situation. If we didn’t pay what was due on time, first as indicated by the father and then by Anna Brawner herself, she had the legal power to take over our properties. In her defense, I must say that she never exceeded her authority.”

“Are you saying she was blackmailing you?”

“No. What I’m saying is that Anna — actually, it was Otto Brawner — gave us three businesses before Franco could nationalize them during World War II.”

“Could you explain that a bit...?”

“I can tell you what my father told me.”

“Please.”

“We’ve been here since 1942, when Otto Brawner arrived to take over an important post at the German consulate on orders from Kart Resenberg, who was the consul in Barcelona then. Highly confidential official documents about businesses in the city working with Nazi capital passed through his hands. Unlike other German officials, who stayed at the Ritz or the Continental, Otto stayed at my grandfather’s house, I suppose, so that young Anna could be raised in a family environment. The postwar period was very hard and many families had to rent rooms to survive. We felt like we’d won the lottery when Brawner moved in. He brought us coffee, butter, and cans of meat — and he always paid his rent on time. My father was about his age and they got along well. He accompanied him to the get togethers in Colón and to private parties organized at the Ritz. One day, Otto Brawner asked my father if he knew trustworthy people who could act as fronts for three enterprises that Johannes Bernhardt wanted to establish in Barcelona. He consulted with his father, who’d been a lawyer at the Generalitat of Catalonia, and my grandfather told him who Bernhardt was, which made him really reluctant to go ahead with it.”

“Who was it?”

“It was the man who helped Franco win the war, the creator of a formidable economic and business empire that the German government established in Spain which included 350 businesses. In ’36, if I remember correctly, that same German businessman, along with the Spanish captain Arranz Monasterio and other rebel soldiers, forced the pilot of a commercial Lufthansa flight to take them to Berlin, where they met with Hitler. It was Bernhartdt who got those military men ten planes, six fighter-bombers, twenty antiaircraft cannons, machine guns, and munitions, as well as the alliance with Franco that got him whatever he wanted.”

“I’m surprised, I heard rumors but I didn’t believe they were true.”

“Now you understand my father and my grandfather’s reluctance to get involved. But survival was more important then than pride or loyalties, so my father and two cousins acted as fronts for the duration of the war.”

“Incredible! But let’s go back to Anna Brawner. Tell me, Mr. Cánovas, did she ever threaten you in any way?”

“No.”

“Do you know if she ever threatened either of the other two businesses?”

“Not that I know of, but I’d be surprised if she had. Whenever we were going through rough periods, she was the first to relieve us of the responsibility to pay until we were back on our feet.”

Teresa Puig-Grau nods her head before addressing Gómez Triadó. “We both went to the German School, inspector. Anna was my friend until she discovered what her father had done. He was dead but she lived with her in-laws. It had been months since the birth of the twins—”

The inspector interrupts to make sure he heard right. “Excuse me, did you say twins?”

“Yes, identical twins. They weren’t even a year old when Anna discovered, amid her father’s papers, a list of the Jews that her father had turned over to the Gestapo and the SD. The real tragedy was that her husband’s four brothers were on that list. That’s when I saw her for the last time, when she asked me to meet her at the Samoa. She was completely destroyed. Her father was not only a traitor to his race but also the man who’d turned in her in-laws. She decided to disappear. I tried to persuade her, convince her she had nothing to do with any of it, but it was useless. Anna had always been a woman with very particular ideas about morality, about religion. She never spoke about her German origins, or about her Jewish heritage. She had created a lifestyle for herself, in her own way, and she followed its rules obsessively. I couldn’t do a thing. And I never saw her again.”

I know that he killed my mother, our mother. It’s still the dead of night and the rain is trying to wash the air. He walks ahead of me, under an umbrella. He isn’t out for a meal and instead heads directly to La Palla Street, where he tries to hide at Zimmerman Antiquities, the store owned by his grandfather, my grandfather. He flees because he feels accosted. He reads my mind and finds a vengeful anxiety just as I read his for rage and pain. I want him to die the way he killed my mother, his mother. When I arrive, he has lowered the store’s metal door and I know it won’t open again until ten. I make my way to a tiny café with only five bar stools. There’s barely any light, which is probably a tactic to hide the stuff on the floor, which sticks to my shoes, and the greasy gumminess of the bar itself, where I only dare to place my elbows. At first, I’m all alone. I order an expresso with a drop of milk, which I drink in small sips as I contemplate, through the glass, a few folks enveloped in shadows walking hurriedly toward their destinations. Slowly, the pedestrians begin to change and now they’re kids on their way to school, alone or with their mothers. A ray of light cuts through the bar’s window and bits of dust, robbed of their privacy, worry their way to the floor, the furniture, my shoes. My stomach demands solid food and I’m amazed I can still be hungry. I think about my mother and the question hits me again: why did she pick me? I could have been that other one, now tormented, filled with anger toward her and the chosen one. How could she do that? Make a choice! Condemn one of us to live in a world of absences, passed over, cornered, secret.

It’s ten o’clock now. I get up, dropping a fifty-peseta coin on the bar. I wait for my change. When I go out to the street, the sun has completely taken over the alleys between the buildings.

I feel stupid with empty bags in my pocket. I bought them at the gas station yesterday. They’re wide, made of thick plastic, and very manageable. I tremble a little and have to remember my hate in order to regain some strength. I’ve never gone inside the store though I’ve passed it without even a glance; it’s still dark, he hasn’t turned on the lights. When I open the door, a sound like a bell goes off and announces my presence. Then there’s silence. I move inside with short steps, cautious; I have to calm down, every shadow cast by the furniture frightens me; I think of my dead mother to firm up my pulse. I grab one of the plastic bags in my fist. Suddenly, the lights come on and the brightness blinds me. I glimpse the figure of the old man who attended the funeral, my grandfather. He walks by some old cretonne curtains and stands in front of me, quietly, impassive, looking at what I can’t see because I’m hypnotized before him.

The pressure of the plastic on my face and a quick jerk to cut my oxygen make my hands fly to my neck to free myself; I lose a few seconds before realizing all I really have to do is pierce the bag, but I don’t have time to do it, my grandfather immobilizes me, circling me under his arms with the kind of strength produced only by hate or love. As he squeezes, he whispers in my ear a lullaby my mother used to sing: “ Mama sings you the loveliest song / you were born at night, like the stars...” I try with all my might to get him off me. “I love you, my son / my sweet light / you’re the prettiest star in the sky. ” When I’m just about loose, my brother kicks me and I drop to the ground. Pain races to my head and is transformed into a violent scream full of impotence and rage.