Marina

TWO

For the next few days that damned watch and I became inseparable companions. I took it everywhere with me; I even slept with it under my pillow, fearful that someone might find it and ask me where I'd got it. I wouldn't have known what to answer. That's because you didn't find it; you stole it, whispered the accusing voice in my head. The technical term is "breaking and entering leading to grand larceny"—and goodness knows what other malfeasance you may be liable for, the voice added. For some odd reason, it sounded suspiciously like the voice of Perry Mason on the old TV series.

Each night I waited patiently for my friends to fall asleep so that I could examine my forbidden treasure. When silence reigned, I studied the watch with my flashlight. All the remorse in the world could not have diminished the fascination produced by the booty of my first adventure in "disorganized crime." It was a heavy watch and appeared to be made of solid gold. The crack in the glass was probably the result of a knock or a fall. The same impact must have ended the life of its mechanism, I imagined, freezing the hands at six twenty-three for all eternity. On the back was an inscription:

It occurred to me that the watch must be worth a fortune, and soon I was assailed by pangs of guilt. Those engraved words made me feel that I'd become not just a thief of other people's valuables, but one who also stole their most precious memories.

One rainy Thursday I decided to unload my guilty conscience and share my secret. My best friend at school was a boy with penetrating eyes and a nervous temperament who insisted on being called JF, though those initials had little or nothing to do with his real name. JF had the soul of an avant-garde poet and such a sharp wit he often cut his own tongue on it. He suffered from a weak constitution and had only to hear the word germ mentioned within a one-kilometer radius to think he was coming down with some deadly infection. Once I looked up hypochondriac and copied out the definition for him.

"You might be interested to know you've been mentioned in the Dictionary of the Royal Academy," I'd announced.

JF glanced at the note and threw me a scathing look.

"Try looking under i for idiot and you'll see I'm not the only famous one," he replied.

That Thursday, during our lunch break, JF and I sneaked into the gloomy assembly hall. Our footsteps down the central aisle conjured up the echo of tiptoeing shadows. Two harsh shafts of light fell on the dusty stage. We sat in a pool of light, facing rows of empty seats that melted away into the darkness. Rain scratched at the first-floor windows.

"Well," JF spat out, "what's all the mystery about?"

Without saying a word, I pulled out the watch and showed it to him. JF raised his eyebrows and appraised the object carefully for a few moments before handing it back to me with a questioning look.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I think it's a gold watch," replied JF. "Who is this fellow Germán?"

"I haven't the foggiest."

"How typical of you. Spill the beans."

I went on to recount in detail my adventure of a few days earlier in the old dilapidated mansion. JF listened to my story with his characteristic patience and quasi-scientific attention. When I finished, he seemed to weigh the matter before offering his first impressions.

"In other words, you've stolen it," he concluded.

"That's not the point," I objected.

"I'd like to know what this Germán person thinks the point may be," JF replied.

"This Germán person probably died years ago," I suggested without much conviction.

JF rubbed his chin.

"I wonder what the penal code has in store for those juvenile miscreants inclined to the premeditated theft of personal objects and watches engraved with a dedication…."

"There was no premeditation, or anything of the sort," I protested. "It all happened suddenly—I had no time to think. By the time I realized I had the watch, it was too late. You would have done the same in my place."

"In your place I would have had a heart attack," remarked JF, who was more a man of words than a man of action. "Supposing I'd been crazy enough to go into that old house, following a feral cat with a bleeding bird in its jaws. God knows what germs you could catch from that kind of animal."

For a while we just sat there without saying a word, listening to the faraway sound of the rain.

"Well," JF finally concluded, "what's done is done. You're not thinking of returning to the scene of the crime, are you?"

I smiled meekly. "Not on my own."

My friend's eyes opened wide. "Don't even think about it."

That afternoon, once classes were over, JF and I slipped out through the kitchen door and headed for the mysterious street leading to the mansion. The cobblestones were spattered with puddles and dead leaves, and a threatening metallic sky hung over the city. JF, who wasn't at all sold on the merits of our outing, looked paler than usual. The sight of that remote corner trapped in the past must have made his stomach shrink to the size of a marble. The silence was eerie.

"I've seen enough. Let's call it a day—let's turn around and return to our boring but safe lives at school," he mumbled, taking a few steps back.

"Don't be a chicken."

"I won't even respond to that…."

Just then the tinkle of a bell drifted on the wind. JF went quiet. The cat's yellow eyes were watching us. All of a sudden the cat hissed like a serpent and showed us its claws. The fur on its back stood on end and it opened its jaws to reveal the fangs that had taken the life of the sparrow a few days earlier. A distant flash of lightning illuminated the sky like a cauldron of light. JF and I exchanged glances.

Fifteen minutes later we were sitting on a bench next to the pond in the boarding school cloister. The watch was still in my jacket pocket, feeling heavier than ever.

There it remained for the rest of that week, until the early hours of Saturday morning. Shortly before dawn I awoke with the vague feeling of having dreamed about the voice captured in that old gramophone. Outside my window Barcelona was coming alive in a canvas of scarlet shadows. I jumped out of bed and looked for the wretched watch that had been cursing my existence for the past few days. We stared at each other. Finally, arming myself with a determination one can summon only when having to face some ridiculous task, I decided to put an end to the matter: I was going to return it.

I dressed quietly and tiptoed along the dark fourth-floor corridor. Nobody would notice my absence until ten or eleven o'clock. By then I hoped to be back. Or else.

Outdoors, the streets still lay beneath that mantle of purplish brightness tingeing the dawn skies of Barcelona. I walked down to Calle Margenat. Sarriá was waking up around me as low clouds swept through the district, capturing the first light in a golden halo. Here and there the front of a house was just visible through gaps in the haze and the swirling dry leaves.

It didn't take me long to find the street. I paused for a while to take in the silence and the strange peace that filled that lost corner of the city. I was beginning to feel that the world had stopped, like the watch in my pocket, when I heard a sound behind me.

I turned around and beheld a vision straight out of a dream.

THREE

A bicycle was slowly emerging out of the mist. A young girl clad in a vaporous white dress was pedaling up the hill toward me. In the early sunlight I could almost make out her silhouette through the cotton. Her long, straw-colored hair waved about, concealing her face. I stood there, immobile, watching her as she approached, rooted to the ground like a fool. The bicycle stopped a couple of meters away. My eyes, or my imagination, spied the shape of slim legs as she stepped down. Slowly, I took in every part of that dress—which looked like something out of a Sorolla painting—until my eyes came to rest on the girl's deep gray eyes, so deep you could fall straight into them. They were riveted on mine with a sarcastic look. I gaped at her, smiling stupidly.

"You must be the watch thief," said the girl in a tone that matched the strength of her expression.

I reckoned she must be about my age, perhaps a year or two older. Guessing a woman's age was, for me, an art or a science, never a pastime. Her skin was as pale as her dress.

"Do you live here?" I stammered, pointing to the gate.

She didn't even blink. Those eyes drilled into me with such intensity that it took me a long while to realize she was the most stunning creature I had ever seen, or hoped to see, in my entire life. Full stop.

"And who are you to ask?"

"I suppose I'm the watch thief," I improvised. "My name is Oscar. Oscar Drai. I've come to return it."

Without waiting for a reply, I pulled the watch out of my pocket and handed it to her. She held my gaze for a few seconds before taking it. When she did, I noticed that her hand was strikingly pallid and that she wore a plain gold band on her ring finger.

"It was already broken when I took it," I explained.

"It's been broken for fifteen years," she murmured without looking at me.

When at last she raised her eyes, she did so to examine me from head to toe, like someone sizing up an old piece of furniture or a bit of junk. Something in the way she looked at me made me realize she didn't really believe I was a thief; she was probably categorizing me as your run-of-the-mill imbecile. My beguiled expression surely didn't help. The girl arched an eyebrow and smiled mysteriously as she handed the watch back to me.

"You took it; you return it to its owner."

"But—"

"It isn't my watch," she explained. "It belongs to Germán."

The mere mention of that name conjured up the image of the towering figure with white hair that had surprised me in the conservatory a few days earlier.

"Germán?"

"My father."

"And you are?" I asked.

"His daughter."

"I meant, what's your name?"

"I know exactly what you meant," replied the girl.

She climbed back onto her bike and rode through the entrance gate, looking back briefly before disappearing into the garden. Those eyes seemed to be ridiculing me with their laughter. I sighed and followed her. An old acquaintance welcomed me in: the cat, staring at me with its usual disdain. I wished I were a Doberman.

The cat escorted me as I negotiated my way through the tangled garden. By the time I reached the fountain with the mermaid, the bicycle was leaning against it while its owner unloaded a bag from the basket fixed over the handlebars. There was a smell of freshly baked bread. The girl pulled a bottle of milk out of the bag and kneeled down to fill a bowl that was lying on the ground. The animal rushed to its breakfast. It looked like a daily ritual.

"I think he prefers to kill his food before he eats it," I said.

"He only hunts for fun. He doesn't eat what he catches," she explained as if she were talking to a child. "It's a territorial thing."

"What an adorable little beast," I remarked.

"What he likes is milk. Don't you, Kafka? You love milk, don't you?"

The Kafkaesque cat licked her fingers in agreement. The girl smiled warmly and stroked his back. Through the folds of her dress, I could see the muscles flex on the side of her body. Just then she looked up and caught me watching her and licking my lips.

"How about you? Have you had breakfast?" she asked.

I shook my head.