“What a lively place,” Vidal commented.
“Please come into the presidential suite, Don Pedro,” I invited him.
We went in and I closed the door. After a very brief glance around my room he sat on the only chair and looked at me with little enthusiasm. It wasn’t hard to imagine the impression my modest home had made on him.
“What do you think?”
“Charming. I’m thinking of moving here myself.”
Pedro Vidal lived in Villa Helius, a huge Modernist mansion with three floors and a large tower perched on the slopes that rose up to Pedralbes, at the intersection of Calle Abadesa Olzet and Calle Panamá. The house had been given to him by his father ten years earlier in hope of his settling down and starting a family, an undertaking that Vidal had somewhat delayed. Life had blessed Don Pedro Vidal with many talents, chief among them that of disappointing and offending his father with every gesture he made and every step he took. To see him fraternizing with undesirables like me did not help. I remember that once, when visiting my mentor to deliver some papers from the office, I bumped into the patriarch of the Vidal clan in one of the hallways of Villa Helius. When he saw me, Vidal’s father told me to go and fetch him a glass of soda water and a cloth to clean a stain off his lapel.
“I think you’re confused, sir. I’m not a servant …”
He gave me a smile that clarified the order of things in the world without any need for words.
“You’re the one who is confused, young lad. You’re a servant, whether you know it or not. What’s your name?”
“David Martín, sir.”
The patriarch considered my name.
“Take my advice, David Martín. Leave this house and go back to where you belong. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble, and you’ll save me the trouble too.”
I never confessed this to Vidal, but I immediately went off to the kitchen in search of soda water and a rag and spent a quarter of an hour cleaning the great man’s jacket. The shadow of the clan was a long one, and however much Don Pedro liked to affect a bohemian air, his whole life was an extension of his family network. Villa Helius was conveniently situated five minutes from the great paternal mansion that dominated the upper stretch of Avenida Pearson, a cathedral-like jumble of balustrades, staircases, and dormer windows that looked out over the whole of Barcelona from a distance, like a child gazing at the toys he has thrown
away. Every day, an expedition of two servants and a cook left the big house, as the paternal home was known among the Vidal entourage, and went to Villa Helius to clean, shine, iron, cook, and cosset my wealthy protector in a nest that comforted him and shielded him from the inconveniences of everyday life. Pedro Vidal got around the city in a resplendent Hispano-Suiza piloted by the family chauffeur, Manuel Sagnier, and he had probably never set foot in a tram in his life. A creature of the palace and good breeding, Vidal could not comprehend the dismal, faded charm of the cheap Barcelona pensions of the time.
“Don’t hold back, Don Pedro.”
“This place looks like a dungeon,” he finally proclaimed. “I don’t know how you can live here.”
“With my salary, only just.”
“If necessary, I could pay you whatever you need to live somewhere that doesn’t smell of sulfur and urine.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Vidal sighed.
“‘He died of suffocation and pride.’ There you are, a free epitaph.”
For a few moments Vidal wandered around the room without saying a word, stopping to inspect my meager wardrobe, stare out of the window with a look of revulsion, touch the greenish paint that covered the walls, and gently tap with his index finger the naked bulb that hung from the ceiling, as if he wanted to verify the wretched quality of each thing.
“What brings you here, Don Pedro? Too much fresh air in Pedralbes?”
“I haven’t come from home. I’ve come from the newspaper.”
“Why?”
“I was curious to see where you lived and, besides, I’ve brought something for you.”
He pulled a white parchment envelope from his jacket and handed it to me.
“This arrived at the office today.”
I took the envelope and examined it. It was closed with a wax seal on which I could make out a winged silhouette. An angel. Apart from that, the only other thing visible was my name, neatly written in scarlet ink in a fine hand.
“Who sent this?” I asked, intrigued.