The Seville Communion (32 page)

"Pencho Gavira. Father Lorenzo Quart."

They continued to stand. Penelope was still sitting, forgotten for the moment, on the margins. Gavira shook Quart's hand, gripping it hard, and the priest responded with equal strength. The priest's eyes were calm, and the banker told himself that there was no reason to think the priest was involved. But when Gavira turned to look at his wife, Macarena's eyes were like daggers. His anger was starting to get the better of him. He sensed that everyone was staring at him. They'd be talking about this for a week.

"You go out with priests now, do you?"

He hadn't wanted it to come out like that. He hadn't wanted to say it at all, but it was too late. There was the hint of a triumphant smile on Macarena's lips and he knew he'd fallen into the trap. It made him even more furious.

"That's extremely rude, Pencho," she said.

It was clear how she felt, and anything he said or did would be noted and used against him. And on that terrace all Seville was a witness. She might even present the priest as her father confessor. Meanwhile, the tall priest was waiting, watching them both without a word. He obviously wanted to avoid trouble, but he didn't look uneasy. He even seemed rather friendly, standing there silently, with his sporty look, like a basketball player in mourning clothes by Armani.

"How's the celibacy going, Father?"

It was as if another Pencho Gavira was taking charge, and the banker had no choice but to go along with it. Resigned to his fate, he smiled after he'd said it. A broad smile. Damn all women, the smile implied. It's their fault that we're standing here, you and I, face to face.

"Fine, thanks." The priest sounded calm, in control, but Gavira noticed that he'd turned slightly to one side. He'd also taken his left hand out of his pocket. This priest's been in a fight before, thought the banker.

"I've been trying to speak to you for days," Gavira said, turning to Macarena but without taking his eye off the priest. "You never answer the phone."

She shrugged contemptuously. "There's nothing for us to talk about." She said it very slowly and clearly. "Anyway, I've been busy." "So I see."

In her chair, La Heidegger was crossing and uncrossing her legs for the benefit of passers-by, customers and waiters. Accustomed to being the centre of attention, she was rather put out. "Aren't you going to introduce me?" she asked Gavira.

"Shut up." The banker faced the priest again. "As for you . . ." Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Peregil had moved nearer the door, in case he needed him. Just then, a man in a checked jacket and with his arm in a sling passed by. He had a squashed nose, like a boxer's, and he glanced briefly at Peregil, as if expecting a signal from him. When he got none, he continued on down the street and disappeared around the corner.

"As for me," said the priest. He was infuriatingly tranquil, and Gavira wondered how he was going to get out of this without either losing face or causing a scandal. Macarena stood between them, enjoying the situation.

"Seville is very misleading, Father," said Gavira. "You'd be surprised how dangerous she can be when you don't know the rules."

"The rules?" The priest looked at him coolly. "You surprise me, Moncho."

"Pencho."

"Ah."

The banker felt he was losing his composure: "I don't like priests who aren't in cassocks," he said, setting his jaw. "Seems like they're ashamed of being priests."

The cleric stared at Gavira impassively: "You don't like them," he repeated, as if mulling it over.

"Not one bit." The banker shook his head. "And here, married women are sacred."

"Don't be an idiot," said Macarena.

The priest looked at La Heidegger's thighs and then back at Gavira. "I see," he said.

Gavira pointed a finger at the priest's chest. "No," he said, his voice slow, thick, menacing. He regretted every word almost as soon as it was out of his mouth, but he couldn't help himself. It was like a nightmare. "You don't see."

The priest considered Gavira's finger. The red veil before Gavira's eyes was getting thicker. He sensed rather than saw Peregil move closer still, a good subordinate ready to protect his boss. Macarena now looked worried, as if things had gone further than she'd expected. Gavira felt a strong urge to slap both her and the priest, venting all the rage accumulated during the last few weeks over the break-up of his marriage, the church, Puerto Targa, the board of directors that in a few days would decide his future at the Cartujano. His whole life passed before his eyes - the battle to get ahead, the complicated manoeuvring with Don Octavio, his marriage to Macarena, the countless times he'd risked his neck and won. And now that he'd almost made it, Our Lady of the Tears stood there in the middle of Santa Cruz like some dangerous reef. It was all or nothing: you either sail round it or sink. The day you stop pedalling, you'll fall off, as the old banker told him.

Gavira made a tremendous effort not to punch the priest, who'd picked up a glass from the table. It was Gavira's glass. The priest held it casually but like a weapon. Gavira realised that Quart wasn't the kind of priest who turned the other cheek. That calmed him suddenly, and made him look at the man with curiosity. Even with a kind of perverse respect.

"That's my glass, Father," he said.

The priest apologised with a quiet smile. He put the glass back on the table, where Penelope was impatiently drumming her lacquered nails, and then, nodding briefly, he and Macarena went on their way without another word. Gavira took a long gulp of whisky. He watched them thoughtfully, while Peregil, behind him, breathed a sigh of relief.

"Take me home," pouted Penelope.

Gavira, watching his wife and the priest disappear around the corner, didn't even turn. He emptied his glass and only just stopped himself from smashing it on the ground. "Fuck you," he said.

He handed the glass to Peregil, with a look that was as good as an order. Peregil, with another resigned sigh, shattered the glass on the ground as discreetly as he could. As he did so, he startled an eccentric-looking couple just then passing the bar: a fat man dressed in white, with a hat and walking stick, and, on his arm, a woman in a polka-dot dress, with a kiss-curl like Estrellita Castro's, carrying a camera.

The three of them met up just around the corner, beneath the Arab portico of the mosque, on the steps that smelled of horse manure and old Seville. Don Ibrahim seated himself with difficulty, ash from his cigar dropping onto his paunch.

"We were lucky," he said. "There was enough light to take the photos."

They deserved a few minutes' rest. He was in a good mood, feeling satisfied with a job well done.
Audaces fortuna llevat
,
and all that; although he wasn't too sure that
llevat
was
the right verb.

La Nina sat down next to him with a jangling of bracelets and earrings, the camera in her lap. ‘I’ll say," she agreed in her husky voice. She put her shoes down and rubbed her bony legs, which were covered with varicose veins. ‘Peregil can't complain this time. By God he can't."

Don Ibrahim fanned himself with his panama and stroked his singed moustache. In this moment of success, his cigar smelled glorious. "No," he said festively. "He can't. He saw himself how it was all carried out with impeccable, almost military precision. Isn't that right, Potro? Like commandos in the movies."

Since no one had told him to sit down, El Potro stood, as if on duty, and nodded. "Exactly," he said.

"Which way did the lovebirds go?" asked Don Ibrahim, placing the panama on his head.

El Potro glanced down the street and said they were heading toward the Arenal; plenty of time to catch up with them.

Don Ibrahim took the camera from La Nina's lap and handed it to him. "Go on, take out the film before it spoils."

Obediently, manoeuvring with both "his good arm and the one in the sling, El Potro opened the camera while Don Ibrahim searched for the other roll of film. At last he found it, took it out of its box, and handed it to his associate. "You did rewind it, didn't you?" he asked casually. "Before opening the camera?"

El Potro, very still, stared at Don Ibrahim. Suddenly he snapped shut the camera. "What was it I was supposed to rewind?"" he asked suspiciously, arching an eyebrow.

Holding the new film in one hand and his cigar in the other, Don Ibrahim looked at him for some time. "Shit," he said.

They walked in silence to the Arenal. Macarena turned to look at Quart from time to time, but neither of them spoke. There wasn’t much to say and he couldn't ask whether the encounter with her husband had been an accident or planned by her. He would probably never know, he thought.

"This is the way he went," Macarena said at last, when they came to the river.

They descended wide steps that led to the quays of the Guadalquivir, at the foot of the ancient Arab tower named Torre del Oro. There wasn't the slightest breeze, and the shadows of the palms, jacarandas, and bougainvilleas were motionless in the moonlight.

"Who?" he asked.

"Captain Xaloc."

Dark and still, tourist boats were moored to pontoons along the deserted bank. The black water reflected the lights of Triana on the opposite side, bounded by strings of car headlights on the Isabel II and San Telmo bridges.

"This was Seville's old port," said Macarena. She wore her jacket round her shoulders and still clutched her leather bag to her chest. "Only a century ago, there would have been ships docking here . . . The remains of the great trade with America. Ships sailed down the river to Sanlucar, then Cadiz, before crossing the Atlantic." She walked forward and stopped by a flight of steps leading down to the dark water. "Old photographs show all kinds of vessels - brigantines, schooners, skiffs - moored on both banks . . . Over there were the fishermen's boats, and boats with white awnings that brought the cigarette girls over from Triana to the tobacco factory. All the cranes and the warehouses were here on this quay."

She fell silent, turning towards the Paseo del Arenal, the dome of the Maestranza Theatre, the modern buildings that stood between them and the tower of La Giralda, lit up in the distance, and Santa Cruz, hidden from view.

"It was a forest of masts and sails," she added. "That was what Carlota saw from the pigeon loft."

They walked along the quay in the shadows cast by the trees in the moonlight. A young couple was kissing in the light of a street-lamp, and Quart saw Macarena watching them with a thoughtful smile.

"You are nostalgic," he said, "for a Seville you've never known."

Her smile widened, then her face was again in shadow. "That's not true," she said. "I knew it well, and still do. I've read and dreamed a lot about this city. Some things my grandfather and mother told me. Others I simply knew instinctively." She touched her wrist, where her pulse beat. "I feel them here."

"Why did you choose Carlota Bruner?"

Macarena took a moment to answer. "She chose me." She turned to Quart. "Do priests believe in ghosts?"

"Not really. Ghosts don't stand up to electric light or nuclear power ... Or to computers."

"Maybe that's their charm. I believe in them, or at least in a certain type of ghost. Carlota was a romantic young woman who read novels. She lived wrapped in cotton wool in an artificial world, protected from everything. One day she met a man. A real man. It was as if she'd been struck by lightning. Unfortunately, Manuel Xaloc fell in love with her too."

Occasionally they passed the motionless shadow of someone fishing from the quay, the ember of a cigarette, a glint of light at the end of a rod and line, a splash in the calm waters. A fish flapped on the paving stones of the quay, gleaming in the moonlight until a hand returned it to the bucket.

"Tell me about Xaloc," said Quart.

"He was thirty years old and poor, a second officer on one of the steamers that sailed between Seville and Sanlucar. They met when Carlota took a journey downriver with her parents. They say that he was also handsome, and I imagine that his uniform added to his looks. You know that's often true of sailors, soldiers ..."

She seemed about to add something but left the sentence unfinished. They passed a tourist boat moored to the quay, black and silent. Quart managed to make out its name in the moonlight:
LOVELY.

Macarena went on. "Xaloc was caught lurking by the railings of the Casa del Postigo, and my great-grandfather Luis had him fired. He also used all his influence, and it was considerable, to make sure that the man didn't get a job anywhere else. Desperate, Xaloc decided to go to America to seek his fortune. Carlota promised she would wait for him. It's the perfect plot for a romantic novel, don't you think?"

They walked side by side, and once again their steps occasionally brought them so close together that they almost touched. Suddenly Macarena stepped around an iron bollard in the darkness, and she was right next to Quart, brushing his side for the first time. She seemed to take an age to move away.

"Xaloc boarded his ship here," she said. "A schooner called the
Nausica
.
Carlota wasn't even allowed to come and say goodbye. From the pigeon loft she watched the ship sail down the river; it wouldn't have been possible for her to see him from so far away, but she claimed he was on deck, waving a handkerchief until the boat was out of sight."

"How did things go for Xaloc?"

"Well. After a time he was given command of a ship and smuggled goods between Mexico, Florida and Cuba." There was a hint of admiration in her voice. Quart could picture Manuel Xaloc on the bridge of a ship, a column of smoke on the horizon. "They say he wasn't exactly a saint, that he also did some pirating. Some of the ships that crossed his path sank without trace, or were found mysteriously adrift, plundered. I suppose he was in a hurry to make his fortune and return . . . For six years he sailed the Caribbean and he acquired quite a reputation. The Americans put a price on his head. One day, out of the blue, he landed in Seville with a fortune in banknotes and gold coins and a velvet bag that contained twenty wonderful pearls for their wedding."