Lydia and the hermanas Furest waited for the shadows to swallow the rest of the courtyard. The snaps of children’s firecrackers outside gave way to an orgy of pyrotechnics — Roman candles and cracking girandoles — announcing the adult veneration had begun. The night air burst with whips and whistles and thunderous explosions, sending clouds of acrid smoke into the atmosphere. Lydia called her dog into the courtyard so it wouldn’t be spooked by the tumult and it ran straight to Sr. Candau, lying inert upon the garden floor. It sniffed at his fingers and nipped at his crotch.
“It’s time. First the left hand, like I told you,” Lydia said as she handed me a silver stiletto.
From above, I watched myself slice his wrist open in one clean stroke as I had been shown by the hermanas. It was so very easy. They bled him and poured the liquid into the fountain, which gurgled and tinted the water with a deep ruby cloud. I sliced the other wrist and repeated the ritual as instructed.
The night was hot and my scalp tingled with the agitation of our deeds. And yet I was deeply at peace, as if my life had always been leading me right here. I cleaned my hands in the fountain and didn’t recognize my own reflection; it seemed as if some other man was looking back at me. I smiled at this shade of me and took a deep breath to prepare myself. Then I turned right around, picked up the axe, and chopped Marcelo’s left hand off in a single blow.
I have yet in my life to see a bonfire like the one we set ablaze that night. Its lips snapped hungrily all the way to the second floor of the palace. The five of us kept to our task throughout the evening, cutting Marcelo up and feeding the pieces to the flames, perfuming the night air with sprigs of herbs, until there was nothing left of him but ashes. A little past midnight I began to feel the weight of myself once again, the blood rushing into every extremity, engorging my fingers, my toes, my lips. My groin tingled and came to life. Lydia had been watching me and waiting. When she saw my expression she sent the hermanas away and initiated me into the ways of her garden.
Now, when I am called by the treble chimes of Rius i Taulet to lie with my wife, I make it a point to stop and linger for a moment near the fountain. I stand in contemplation of the black lily that grows ever stronger, nourished by the ashes of that midsummer’s fire. I water it with excessive care and remove any weeds that threaten the health of the dusky token. And bow my head in a moment of silence to thank him for all that he has given me.
The Slender Charm of Chinese Women
by Raúl ArgemÍ
Montjuic
The secret of any great city — let’s say, Barcelona — is that it comprises many cities juxtaposed one over the other, breathing side by side but with few actual points of contact.
You can be yourself in any of those parallel worlds and then cross the street and become someone else, completely different and free of your previous identity.
But there are people who are born distinct and so the residents of each of these worlds recognize them with the same name, alias, or nickname, without realizing that at other times, with other people, they’re the same, but different.
That’s what happened with Delgado. He had an inadvertent talent, almost animal-like, to transform himself so that in each city he was perceived as one of the locals.
Delgado’s story only took up about a week’s worth of police bulletins, each time more brief, until it got lost in the whirl of those humid and suffocating summer days. But I wasn’t the only one who thought that the Barcelona of brothels, of Japanese tourists, South American waiters, and junkies from all over the place — to name a few Barcelonas — could be stalking grounds in which hunter and prey would kill each other without impediment.
Naturally, there are three professions that facilitate jumping from city to city: cop, musician, and journalist. My excuse is that I’m a reporter. “Freelance” — in other words, like a pirate searching for the treasure that will save me; most of the time I just have to be satisfied with leftovers from the lions.
I first found out about Delgado, or El Delgado, on a Monday.
It was early, or late, a relativity that’s typical of juxtaposed realities, and I’d arrived alone at Clavié, because Paty, my longtime girlfriend, had left me at some point, perhaps tempted by a better offer. She also has the excuse of being a journalist.
I had to wait awhile. Like everywhere else, Clavié, an afterhours joint, pretends to be closed, so they took their time in responding to my rapping on the door. Patience. When all the bars are closed, your last resort to get away from a bed filled with failed dreams is an afterhours place, and this piano bar didn’t smell bad and wasn’t full of drunks.
Inside, time seemed to stand still. The fresh air from the AC, the low lights, and the sound of the piano accompanying the movement of the waiters made the world seem far away. The customers were the same as always, or looked the same as always. They were the appropriate mix for an afterhours spot, dressed uniformly, with drinks in hand, chatting or singing along with popular classics, anything to avoid going home.
And, well, because fate can be this way, that Monday was the first time I ever saw Delgado. It was impossible not to see him, since he was almost as big as the piano on which he rested an elbow; he was wearing a yellow shirt. He smiled and bopped along to the music.
Cavalcanti, who’s there every night with the religiosity of a sinner, was singing a schmaltzy tango in the company of two older, and perhaps temporary, gal pals. Cavalcanti saw me as I came in and, just as he was letting his throat warble to produce a sheep-like “vibrato,” he winked my way and nodded toward the tables that were a couple of steps down from the piano and the singers.
He’d taken a liking to me since he’d found out I’m a reporter and had begun to gather material, characters from Barcelona nights, for a future book. To be honest, he didn’t have a job and mostly got by on his utopian disposition.
The old tango singer landed at the table and ordered whiskey. With a wave, he brought Delgado over and let his two gal pals join us as well. They looked me over, we looked each other over, and then we all ruled each other out.
The man extended his hand, as big as an oar, but didn’t break my fingers, and then sat down in a crimson armchair, muttering a greeting I didn’t quite understand.
As usual, Cavalcanti was high on coke. That was his biggest charm with women: he always had a lot of coke, and he was generous with it. But his gal pals had decided to switch gears, now that they were at a table, and to light up a hashish joint.
Cavalcanti gave me a lopsided smile, like Gardel. “We have to forgive them,” he said. “They still allow themselves childish things, hippie things.”
I had enough time to nod and sip the whiskey before Cavalcanti spoke up again in his Argentine and Iberian — fused Spanish: “This guy here, just look at him — he has quite the past, my friend.”
I glanced at Delgado and couldn’t imagine anything but Wrestlemania. Of course, I understood that Delgado was his surname.
Later, when I saw him pop up in the papers, one of the messier points was, in fact, his name. What’s important now, what matters, is that everyone called him Delgado, and when he wasn’t around, El Delgado, the Slender Man.
As so often happens, his nickname had nothing to do with his physical presence. He was a huge mound of a man, tall and wide, with as much muscle as fat. A mound with slow, deliberate movements that framed his constant smile, no matter what was going on, and dry hair like hay that stuck up and crowned his head. Between the smile and hair there were two tiny eyes, blue pinpoints that looked like they belonged to someone else — someone who was spying from inside his body, waiting to figure out who knew what.