Marina Read online

  ‘Those figures in the greenhouse,’ she added without looking at me. ‘They were looking for the photograph album. We shouldn’t have taken it . . .’

  I felt her breath on my skin as she applied a clean piece of gauze.

  ‘About what happened the other day, on the beach . . .’ I began.

  Marina stopped and looked up.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  She fixed the last piece of plaster and stared blankly at me. I thought she was going to say something, but she just stood up and walked out of the bathroom.

  I was left alone with the candles and a pair of useless trousers.

  CHAPTER 13

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE BOARDING SCHOOL, WELL after midnight, all my classmates were already in bed. Needles of yellowish light pierced through their keyholes cutting across the corridor. I tiptoed to my room, closing the door carefully behind me, then checked the alarm clock on the bedside table: almost one in the morning. I switched on the lamp, picked up my rucksack and pulled out the photograph album we had taken from the glasshouse.

  I opened it and delved once again into the gallery of characters that thronged its pages. One image showed a hand with fingers joined together by membranes, like an amphibian. Next to that a girl with blonde ringlets, dressed in white, offered the camera an almost demonic smile, with long eye-teeth jutting over her lips like fangs. Page after page, cruel whims of nature filed past. Two albino siblings whose paper-white skin looked as if it might burst into flame if you held a candle to it. Twins joined at the head, facing one another for life. The naked body of a woman whose spinal column was twisted like a dead branch . . . Many of them were children or young people. Many seemed younger than me. There were hardly any adults or elderly people. I realised that the life expectancy for those unfortunate souls was bound to be short.

  I recalled Marina saying that the album was not ours and we should never have taken it. Now that the adrenalin had stopped pumping through my veins, her words acquired a new significance. As I examined it, I finally realised I was violating a collection of memories that didn’t belong to me. I could see that those images of sadness and ill fortune were, in a way, a family album. Filled with remorse, I closed the scrapbook and put it back in my rucksack. I turned off the light and closed my eyes. The image of Marina walking along her deserted beach filled my mind. I saw her wander off along the shore until sleep muffled the sound of the waves.

  For a day the rain grew tired of Barcelona and headed north. Like a fugitive, I skipped my last class of the afternoon to meet up with Marina. The clouds had been drawn apart like a curtain, revealing a strip of blue, and a soft dusty sunlight brushed the streets. She was waiting for me in the garden, engrossed in her secret notebook. The moment she saw me she closed it hurriedly. I wondered whether she was writing about me or about what had happened to us in the greenhouse.

  ‘How’s your leg?’ she asked, hugging the notebook.

  ‘I’ll survive. Come, I have something I want to show you.’

  I pulled out the album and sat next to her by the fountain. I opened it and turned a few pages. Marina sighed quietly, disturbed by the pictures.

  ‘Here it is,’ I said, stopping at a photograph on one of the last pages. ‘This morning, when I got up, it suddenly came to me. I hadn’t noticed it until now, but today . . .’

  Marina stared at the photograph I was showing her. A black and white image, with that rare poignant sharpness that only old studio portraits possess. It was the image of a man whose skull was severely deformed and whose spine barely allowed him to stand upright. He was leaning on a young man dressed in a white coat, with round spectacles and a bow tie matching his neatly trimmed moustache. A doctor. The doctor looked at the camera. The patient covered his eyes with his hand, as if he were ashamed of his condition. Behind, just visible, was a panelled screen in what looked like a surgery. There was a half-open door in one corner, and standing in the doorway a very young girl looked shyly at the scene, holding a doll. The photograph seemed more of a medical record than anything else.

  ‘Have a good look,’ I insisted.

  ‘All I can see is a wretched man . . .’

  ‘Don’t look at him. Look behind him.’

  ‘A window . . .’

  ‘What can you see through the window?’

  Marina frowned.

  ‘Do you recognise it?’ I asked, pointing at the figure of a dragon decorating the façade of a building on the opposite side of the street from where the photograph had been taken.

  ‘I’ve seen it somewhere . . .’

  ‘That’s just what I thought,’ I agreed. ‘Here, in Barcelona. In the Ramblas, opposite the Liceo Opera House. I went through each photograph in the album and this is the only one that was taken in Barcelona.’

  I pulled the photograph out of the album and handed it to Marina. On the back, in faded letters, it read,

  Marina handed back the photograph, shrugging her shoulders.

  ‘The picture was taken almost thirty years ago, Oscar. It doesn’t mean anything . . .’

  ‘This morning I looked the name up in the telephone book. A Dr Shelley is still listed as living at 46–48 Rambla de los Estudiantes, first floor. I knew the name rang a bell. Then I remembered Sentís mentioning that Dr Shelley had been Mijail Kolvenik’s first friend when he came to Barcelona . . .’

  Marina studied me.

  ‘And you, to celebrate, have done more than just check the telephone directory. Silly of me to even ask, I imagine.’

  ‘I called,’ I admitted. ‘Dr Shelley’s daughter, María, answered. I told her it was of the utmost importance that we speak to her father.’

  ‘And did she consent to that?’

  ‘Not at first, but when I mentioned Mijail Kolvenik’s name, her voice changed. Her father has agreed to see us.’

  ‘When?’

  I checked my watch.

  ‘In about forty minutes.’

  We took the metro all the way down to Plaza Cataluña. It was beginning to get dark when we climbed the steps of the Ramblas exit. Christmas was approaching and the city was decked with garlands of light. The street lamps cast multicoloured spectres over the boulevard. Flocks of pigeons fluttered about between flower stalls and cafés, street musicians and showgirls, tourists and locals, policemen and crooks, citizens and ghosts from bygone eras. Germán was right: there wasn’t another street in the whole world like it.

  The outline of the Liceo rose before us. It was an opera night and a tiara of lights sparkled above the canopies. On the other side of the boulevard we recognised the green dragon in the photograph, protruding from the corner of a façade and holding a lantern in its claws as it gazed down at the crowds. When I saw it I thought that history might have reserved the altars and chapels for St George, but the dragon had been granted the entire city of Barcelona in perpetuity.

  Dr Shelley’s former surgery occupied the first floor of a stately turn-of-the-century building that gave off a vaguely funereal air. We ventured into its cavernous lobby to find a grand marble staircase that ascended in a spiral. On our way up I noticed that each of the door knockers was shaped like an angel’s face. The skylight at the top of the stairwell, made up of stained-glass panes like those in a cathedral rose window, gave the visitor the impression of being inside the largest kaleidoscope in the world. As in most buildings of that time, the first floor turned out to be the third. We walked past the mezzanine, then the so-called main floor, before we reached the door on which an old bronze nameplate announced: Dr Joan Shelley. I looked at my watch. There were two minutes to go before the agreed time when Marina rang the doorbell.

  The woman who opened the door looked as if she’d walked straight out of a religious painting. Wraith-like and virginal, her skin was so pale it was almost transparent, her eyes so light they were practically colourless.

  ‘Señora Shelley?’ I asked politely.

  She nodded, her unblinking eyes suddenly alight with something akin to curiosity.r />
  ‘Good afternoon,’ I began. ‘My name is Oscar. I spoke to you this morning . . .’

  ‘I remember. Come in. Come in.’

  She ushered us in. María Shelley seemed to move about like a ballerina leaping over clouds in slow motion. She had a fragile constitution and smelled of rose water. I estimated she was probably in her early thirties, but she looked younger. One of her wrists was bandaged and she wore a handkerchief tied round her swan-like neck. The entrance hall was lined with velvet and smoky mirrors. The house smelled like a museum, as if the air floating in it had been trapped there for decades.

  ‘Thank you very much for receiving us. This is my friend Marina.’

  María’s eyes rested on Marina. I’ve always found it fascinating to see how women examine one another. That occasion was no exception.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ María Shelley said at last, dragging out each word. ‘My father is an elderly man. His temper is rather volatile. I beg you not to tire him.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Marina.

  María Shelley asked us to follow her inside, walking ahead of us with an ethereal agility.

  ‘And you say you have something that belonged to the late Señor Kolvenik?’ she asked.

  ‘Did you know him?’ I asked in turn.

  Her face lit up as she remembered past times.

  ‘Not really . . . I heard a lot about him, though. As a child,’ she said, almost to herself.

  The walls, clad in black velvet, were filled with images of saints, Madonnas and martyrs in agony. Dark carpets absorbed what little light crept in through the cracks in the closed shutters. As we followed our host down that corridor I wondered how long she’d been living there, alone with her father. Had she married, had she lived, loved or felt anything outside the oppressive world within those walls?

  María Shelley stopped in front of a sliding door and rapped with her knuckles.

  ‘Father?’

  Dr Shelley, or what remained of him, sat in an armchair facing the fireplace under layers of blankets. His daughter left us alone with him. I tried not to look at her tiny waist as she withdrew. The elderly doctor, in whom it was hard to recognise the man in the photograph I had in my pocket, examined us in silence. His eyes oozed suspicion. One of his hands shook slightly on the arm of the chair. His body smelled of illness under a mask of eau de cologne. His sarcastic smile didn’t hide the displeasure he felt at the world and at his own predicament.

  ‘Time does to the body what stupidity does to the soul,’ he said, pointing at himself. ‘It rots it. What is it you two want?’

  ‘We were wondering whether you could talk to us about Mijail Kolvenik.’

  ‘I could, but I don’t see why I should,’ snapped the doctor. ‘Too much was said at the time and it was all lies. If people stopped to consider even a quarter of what they say, this world would be paradise.’

  ‘Yes, but we are interested in the truth,’ I said.

  The old man grimaced mockingly.

  ‘Truth cannot be found, son. It finds you.’

  I tried to smile meekly, but I was beginning to suspect that Dr Shelley wasn’t going to say a word. Guessing at my thoughts, Marina took the initiative.

  ‘Dr Shelley,’ she said sweetly. ‘A collection of photographs that may have belonged to Mijail Kolvenik has accidentally come into our hands. You’re in one of these pictures, standing next to one of your patients. That’s why we’ve dared to bother you, in the hope that we’ll be able to return the collection to its rightful owner or to whoever it may concern.’

  This time there was no scathing reply. The doctor looked at Marina without concealing his surprise. I wondered why that trick hadn’t occurred to me. I decided that the more I let Marina take the lead in the conversation, the better.

  ‘I don’t know what photographs you’re talking about, young lady.’

  ‘It’s a medical file showing patients affected by malformations,’ Marina explained.

  The doctor’s eyes lit up. We’d touched a nerve. There was life beneath those blankets after all.

  ‘What makes you think that the collection belongs to Mijail Kolvenik?’ he asked, trying to sound indifferent. ‘Or that I have anything to do with it?’

  ‘Your daughter told us you two were friends,’ said Marina, moving away from the subject.

  ‘One of María’s virtues is to be somewhat naive,’ Shelley snapped.

  Marina nodded, stood up and signalled to me to do the same.

  ‘I understand,’ she said politely. ‘I see we were mistaken. We’re sorry to have bothered you, Dr Shelley. Come on, Oscar. I’m sure we’ll find someone we can give the collection—’

  ‘Just a moment,’ Shelley interrupted.

  After clearing his throat he asked us to sit down again.

  ‘Do you still have it?’

  Marina nodded, holding the old man’s gaze. Suddenly Shelley let out what I thought was a laugh. It sounded like the pages of an old newspaper being crumpled.

  ‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’

  Marina gave me a knowing look. I pulled the photograph out of my pocket and handed it to Dr Shelley. He picked it up with a trembling hand and examined it for a long time. Finally, turning his eyes away towards the open fire, he began to talk.

  Dr Shelley told us he was the son of a British father and a Catalan mother. He’d specialised as an orthopaedic surgeon in a Bournemouth hospital. When he settled in Barcelona, he soon realised that the fact that he was a foreigner and had no connections excluded him from the social circles where promising careers were forged. Despite being more qualified, better trained and more willing to work than any of his competitors, the best he could get was a post in the prison’s medical unit. That is where he met and treated Mijail Kolvenik after his brutal beating in jail. At that time Kolvenik didn’t speak any Spanish or Catalan, but luckily Shelley spoke a little Germán. The fact that the two were outsiders learning the cold truth about the inner workings of the city helped to establish a bond between them. Shelley lent Kolvenik some money to buy new clothes, put him up in his house and helped him find a job at Velo-Granell Industries. Kolvenik grew immensely fond of him and never forgot his kindness. A deep friendship was born between them.

  Later on, that friendship would also develop into a professional relationship. Many of Dr Shelley’s patients required complex orthopaedic contraptions and custom-designed prostheses. Velo-Granell was the leading firm in the field and among its designers none was more talented that Mijail Kolvenik. In time, Shelley became Kolvenik’s personal doctor. Once fortune smiled on him, Kolvenik helped his friend by funding a medical centre specialising in the study and treatment of degenerative diseases and congenital deformities.

  Kolvenik’s interest in the subject went back to his childhood in Prague. Shelley told us that Mijail Kolvenik’s mother had given birth to twins. One of them, Mijail, was born strong and healthy. The other, Andrej, came into the world with an incurable malformation of his bones and muscles that would end his life before he reached his seventh birthday. This episode marked young Mijail Kolvenik’s early life and, in a way, determined his vocation. Kolvenik always believed that with proper medical attention and access to the technical advances that would have provided what nature had refused him, his brother could have reached adulthood and lived a full life. That belief is what led him to devote his efforts to the creation of mechanisms which, as he liked to say, could ‘complete’ the bodies that fate had swept aside.

  ‘Nature is like a careless child playing with our lives. When it tires of its broken toys, it abandons them and replaces them with others,’ Kolvenik said. ‘It’s our responsibility to pick up the pieces and rebuild them.’

  Some people thought these words denoted arrogance, even blasphemy; others, less fortunate in the cards life had dealt them, saw only hope in them. The tragic memory of his brother never left Mijail Kolvenik. The way he saw it, only cruel whimsical chance had decided he should live whereas his b
rother should be born with death written all over his body. Shelley explained that Kolvenik felt guilty about it and that at the bottom of his heart he felt he owed a debt towards Andrej and towards all those who, like his brother, were branded with the stigma of imperfection. It was at around this time that Kolvenik began to collect photographs from all over the world of patients afflicted with terrible deformities and crippling disabilities. For him, those beings who had been abandoned by fate, God’s forgotten children, were Andrej’s invisible brothers. His family.

  ‘Mijail Kolvenik was a brilliant man,’ Dr Shelley continued. ‘People tend to become wary of individuals like him because their brilliance reminds them of their own mediocrity. Envy is a blind man who wants to pull out your eyes. What was said about Mijail in his later years and after his death was nothing but slander . . . It was most unfortunate. That accursed Inspector . . . Florián. He didn’t understand that he was being used as an instrument to bring about Mijail’s downfall—’

  ‘Florián?’ Marina interrupted him.

  ‘Florián was the chief inspector of the fraud squad,’ said Shelley, with as much scorn as his vocal cords permitted. ‘A social climber, a worm who tried to make a name for himself at the expense of Velo-Granell Industries and Mijail Kolvenik. My only consolation is knowing that he was never able to prove anything. His obstinacy ended his career. He was the one who came up with all that scandal about the bodies . . .’

  ‘Bodies?’

  Shelley sank into a long silence. He looked at both of us and the cynical grin emerged again.

  ‘This Inspector Florián . . .’ Marina asked. ‘Do you know where we might find him?’

  ‘Probably in a circus, with the rest of the clowns,’ Shelley replied.

  ‘Did you know Benjamín Sentís, Dr Shelley?’ I asked, trying to redirect the conversation.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Shelley. ‘I used to see him regularly. As Kolvenik’s partner, Sentís was in charge of the administrative side of Velo-Granell. A greedy man who didn’t know his place in the world, in my opinion. Rotten with envy.’