It was just getting dark as they walked out to the car and Javier was still groggy. Paco had his arm round his shoulders. They stood around saying a prolonged goodbye.
‘Did either of you know that Papa was in the Legion?’ asked Javier.
‘What Legion?’ said Paco.
‘El Tercio de Extranjeros in Morocco in the thirties.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Paco.
‘Hah!’ said Manuela. ‘You’ve been clearing out the studio. I wondered when you’d get round to that, little brother.’
‘I’m just reading some journals he left, that’s all.’
‘He never talked about any of that … the Civil War,’ said Paco. ‘I don’t remember him ever talking about a life before Tangier.’
‘He mentioned an incident, too …’ said Javier, ‘something that happened when he was sixteen that made him leave home.’
His brother and sister shook their heads.
‘You
‘There’s hundreds of them. Take your pick.’
‘Hundreds?’
‘Hundreds of each one.’
‘I’m not talking about copies,’ said Manuela.
‘Nor am I … they’re all “originals”, all painted by him.’
‘Explain yourself, little brother.’
‘He painted them over and over again, trying to get back to … I don’t know, the secrets of the original work. They’re all worthless, and he knew it, which was why he wanted them destroyed.’
‘If Papa painted them, they can’t be worthless,’ said Manuela.
‘They’re not even signed.’
‘We can fix that,’ said Manuela. ‘What was the name of that dreadful person he used …? some heroin addict. He lived near the Alameda.’
The two brothers stared at her, Javier remembering his father’s words from the letter. Manuela glared back.
‘Heh!
Javier didn’t bother to ask them why they were all calling themselves Falcon, which would have been his father’s mother’s maiden name, rather than Gonzalez, which should have been the family name. The diaries would clear that up. Paco and Manuela knew nothing.
Manuela drove back to Seville, Javier wedged in the corner by the door. As the unseen city drew closer the tension coiled inside him, dread leaked into his guts. The orange glow appeared in the sky and he retreated into his head, the narrow alleys of his thinking, the dark dead ends of unfinished thoughts, the crowded avenidas of half- remembered things.
Back at the house on Calle Bailen he went straight to the kitchen and drank from a bottle of chilled water in the fridge. The doorbell rang. It was 9.30 p.m. Nobody ever came to see him at this time.
He opened the front door to find Sra Jimenez standing two metres back from it, as if about to change her mind.
‘I was just picking up my luggage from the Hotel Colon,’ she said. ‘I remembered the house wasn’t far. I thought I’d see if you were in.’
A remarkable coincidence, given his recent arrival.
He let her in. Her hair was different, less structured than before. She was wearing a black linen jacket, a black skirt and some red satin mules with kitten heels, which took the grieving edge off the mourning widow. She led the way to the patio. He followed her bare heels and legs whose muscles sprang with each step.
‘You know the house,’ said Falcon.
‘I only ever saw the patio and the room where he showed his work,’ she said. ‘You don’t seem to have changed anything.’
‘Even the paintings are still there,’ he said, ‘hanging as they were when he last showed. Encarnacion keeps them dusted. I should take them down … get things organized.’
‘I’m surprised your wife didn’t do all that.’
‘She tried,’ said Falcon. ‘I wasn’t quite ready at the time, you know, to strip the house completely of his presence.’
‘He did have a formidable presence.’
‘Yes, some people found him intimidating, but I wouldn’t have thought you would, Sra Jimenez.’
‘Your wife though, perhaps she was a little overawed … or overwhelmed. You know, a woman likes to make a house her own and feels thwarted if … ‘
