The Prisoner of Heaven: A Novel Read Free Page B

he reached the entrance to Calle Hospital, where the peculiar arrangement of Barcelona’s streets had conspired to place one of the great opera houses of the old world next to one of the most squalid red-light districts of the northern hemisphere.

5
    At that time of the day the crews of a number of military and merchant ships docked in the port happened to be venturing up the Ramblas to satisfy cravings of various sorts. In view of the demand, the supply had already appeared on the corner: a rota of ladies for rent who looked as if they had clocked up quite a few miles and were ready to offer a very affordable minimum fare. I winced at the sight of tight skirts over varicose veins and purple patches that hurt just to look at them, at wrinkled faces and a general air of last-fare-before-retiring that inspired anything but lust. A sailor must have had to spend many months on the high seas to rise to the bait, I thought, but to my surprise the stranger stopped to flirt with a couple of those ladies of the long-gone springtime, as if he were bantering with the fresh beauties of the finest cabarets.
    ‘Here, ma’ love, let me take twenty years off you with my speciality rubdown,’ I heard one of them say. She could easily have passed for the grandmother of Oswaldo the scribe.
    You’ll kill him with a rubdown, I thought. The stranger, with a prudent gesture, declined the invitation.
    ‘Some other day, my darling,’ he replied, stepping further into the Raval quarter.
    I followed him for a hundred more metres or so, until I saw him stop in front of a narrow, dark doorway, nearly opposite the Hotel Europa. He disappeared into the building and I waited half a minute before going in after him.
    Inside, a dark staircase seemed to trail off into the bowels of the building. The building itself looked as if it were listing to port, or perhaps were even on the point of sinking into the catacombs of the Raval district, judging from the stench of damp and a faulty sewerage system. On one side of the hallway stood some sort of porter’s lodge where a greasy-looking individual in a sleeveless vest, with a toothpick between his lips and a transistor radio, cast me a look somewhere between inquisitive and plainly hostile.
    ‘You’re on your own?’ he asked, vaguely intrigued.
    It didn’t take a genius to realise I was in the lobby of an establishment that rented out rooms by the hour and that the only discordant note about my visit was the fact that I wasn’t holding the hand of one of the cut-price Venuses on patrol round the corner.
    ‘If you like, I’ll get a nice girl for you,’ he offered, preparing a parcel with a towel, a bar of soap and what I guessed must be a rubber or some other prophylactic device to be used as a last resort.
    ‘Actually, I just wanted to ask you a question,’ I began.
    The porter rolled his eyes.
    ‘It’s twenty pesetas for half an hour and you provide the filly.’
    ‘Tempting. Perhaps some other day. What I wanted to ask you was whether a gentleman has just gone upstairs, a couple of minutes ago. An older man. Not in the best shape. On his own. Filly-less.’
    The porter frowned. I realised from his expression that he was instantly downgrading me from potential client to pesky fly.
    ‘I haven’t seen anyone. Go on, beat it before I call Tonet.’
    I gathered Tonet could not be a very endearing character. I placed my few remaining coins on the counter and gave the porter a conciliatory smile. In a flash, the money vanished as if it were an insect and the porter’s hands – with their plastic thimbles – the darting tongue of a chameleon.
    ‘What do you want to know?’
    ‘Does the man I described to you live here?’
    ‘He’s been renting a room for a week.’
    ‘Do you know his name?’
    ‘He paid a month in advance, so I didn’t ask.’
    ‘Do you know where he comes from, what he does for a living …?’
    ‘This isn’t a phone-in programme. People come here to fornicate and I