As I squatted in wait, I conjured a perfect picture of her in my mind’s eye: kissing the amulet she wore around her neck, a piece of black onyx carved hollow to hold a sprig of herb-of-grace. Gràcia. Whispering under her breath in tender communion with her vegetable children, she would coddle and sniff the raven blossoms: mourning bride, queen of night tulips, black pearl lilies. She caught me watching her a few times. Once, already inside the dark space of the boudoir, she leaned back again over the threshold and looked straight up at me; her face half in darkness and half in light, one blue eye holding both of mine hostage. I saw the slightest wrinkle cross her white brow, as if it bore a weight of generations. Then she went back in and closed the door behind her.
Now I was on the inside of her threshold. She brushed by the wicker screen on her way in and I caught the whiff of a delicate perfume. Almost like a divining rod, she held a black calla lily before her, plucked from the garden; a robust blossom with a long black stamen. She set it on the bed, pulled back the curtains that hung from the canopy, and opened the domed skylight in the ceiling above. A flood of light spilled over a white Indian bedspread embroidered with small pieces of mirror and lit the room up with a burst of fiery reflections. She removed the lion brooch that held her chestnut mane in place and a rush of heavy curls tumbled freely down her back. She stood very still for a moment, her blue eyes sparkling and jaw set high, defiant. She seemed to be focusing on some spot deep inside herself; a beautiful automata.
She began to undress. First her blouse and brassiere, then she stepped out of her shoes and sat up on the edge of the high white bed. Her delicate feet dangled over the side like a child’s. Could she not hear the pounding in my chest? It seemed impossible to me and I began to sweat profusely. Her hair glowed in the afternoon sun, the locks teasing the dimpled triangle of her lower back. She moved gracefully across the bed, rousing a flotilla of tiny incandescent motes. I could feel my own self budding in reaction despite the sweat and the heat and the cramps.
Then she lifted her hips and pulled off her skirt, the elastic band cutting into her flesh as it rode down her thighs. She picked up the calla lily and laid her naked body back on the pillows, holding the swarthy blossom and its stamen nestled like an ink stain between her breasts. I felt a strong desire to jump out of my hiding place and stop her right then. Though I had no reason, no claim, I felt protective of her. I wanted to save her from this daily torture of having to lay with an old man.
The clock struck the quarter hour and there was the telltale warning knock at the door. Old Señor Candau walked in right on schedule, three-fifteen, to pleasure himself with his beautiful young wife.
Lydia had saved her father, one of the last direct descendents of an ancient Catalan family, from the embarrassment of bankruptcy by marrying a man his own age. Sr. Candau came from the deep inland countryside and had built a veritable empire in the most astonishing way: traveling from village to village gathering scrap metal on the back of a mule. A resourceful man and very ambitious, he eventually moved into textiles and shipping. But soon money was not enough.
When he showed up in Barcelona word spread quickly. More than one paterfamilias begged him to take over their failing businesses. Times were changing and privilege was not enough to keep a family rich anymore, as it had during the Franco years. And so Sr. Candau paid Lydia’s father twice the value of his textile factory as a sort of dowry. He also bought this crumbling old palace in Gràcia to house his executive offices and keep his young wife close by at all times. It was the noise and grit of Gràcia that had attracted him, the cocktail of bohemians, anarchists, and gypsies. “Better than sharing the sidewalks with all those penniless, inbred old snots in Pedralbes,” he had said once with characteristic candor. So Lydia refurbished the interior quarters for their residence and her workshop, and the courtyard for repose.
I have never known how willingly Lydia went along with the arrangement, but nevertheless she held herself with the dignity of her breeding. She was ostensibly compliant, distant without being entirely cold, and certainly too proud to play the part of sacrificial lamb. After all, she was now a very rich woman and he doted on her as long as she remained quiet and submissive. As time went by, though, Sr. Candau became more and more obsessed with her icy beauty, her graceful detachment. There was something in her carriage, in the way her blue eyes sparkled under that mat of chestnut lashes; it hinted of a rich inner world that could never be conquered by a peasant king.
As for me, Sr. Candau had been a part of my life since birth, but only as a character in my father’s stories. They had been inseparable during their childhood years of penury after the civil war, and Father used to tell tall stories of their trips into the woods together, hunting and fishing. How Sr. Candau had strangled a hungry dog with his bare hands when it attacked one of their sheep, how tough he had been, full of spit and vinegar; a bully to most, but always very protective of him. How he would remember him whenever he smelled mushrooms and wet leaves. But I never found out what had happened between them, what had estranged them for the rest of their lives. Why one day my father ran away from the village and never went back.
So when Sr. Candau called one day, I found it strange to be confronted with the fact that he was for real. He told my father that he was now a wealthy man, but could trust no one and so he wanted his childhood friend at his side. Yet my father was in fragile health by then, and suggested that I go to Barcelona instead. I was reluctant, since I had studied to become a teacher, not a businessman, but my father urged me in no uncertain terms to drop my romantic ideas and take advantage of the opportunity. He had always known that Sr. Candau would call one day, and that day had come.
I arrived in Barcelona a few years ago and Sr. Candau treated me well in his own gruff way. Like the son he didn’t have, the son whose absence was by now a source of growing tension. His wife was his reward, but she was also expected to give him an heir; the more besotted he became with her, the more impatient he grew. Hence the daily ars amatoria in her afternoon boudoir; Sr. Candau was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted. What good could possibly come from a man so obsessed with his own wife?
One afternoon Sr. Candau walked into my office just as I happened to make an offhand comment about one of the secretaries. He asked to speak with me privately and I followed him to his rooms thinking he would berate my indiscretion, or reprimand me for being so chummy with colleagues below my rank. No, that was not the case at all. He obliged me to admit that his Lydia was more beautiful than the secretary. He wanted to hear me say it. Out loud.
“Lydia is the fairest of them all, sir. ” I smiled, at first thinking it was some sort of a joke.
“Yes, she is, Guillem. But how do you really know that? You haven’t seen her finest qualities, son. You haven’t seen her, you know, naked.”
He sat behind his desk rubbing his forehead, sizing me up from beneath bushy white eyebrows, studying me to see how I would respond. I wasn’t really sure how to respond. The conversation didn’t only seem outrageous. It seemed dangerous.