15 THE SOUND OF TEMPTATION
15
T HE S OUND OF T EMPTATION
The first thing Barbara did when she woke up, before washing her face, was look out the window. First, the monotone sky. The lead-gray of Paris had come to stay, and there was no way it would dissipate. The wind was no longer as strong as it had been days before, when the snowstorm looked like it would carry everything away. That Tuesday of confinement, however, had the air of a peaceful day without rain. The chimneys of the flat roofs of Montmartre, unaffected by meteorological predictions, blew smoke in all directions, defying the stillness of the urban landscape. Then, she looked down at the street. The snow continued to blanket it, and just looking at it made her feel cold. Without showering, she put on her blue onesie, which stretched from the hood to her feet, zipped it up all the way, and went out to make herself an avocado toast.
Roger had already made coffee for the two of them.
“You really woke up early today,” Barbara remarked.
“Good morning, Barbara.”
“I have a lot to do.”
“Oh, really?”
“But I won’t get any of it done. This weather is a drag.”
“Be patient, kid. The bad mood won’t help either of us out if we have to stay shut in here.”
“I’ll hand it to you on that for once.”
“Last night, I put on the radio,” she said, her mouth full. “They say it’ll snow for days. You can take some interior shots. The apartment lends itself to that, don’t you think? The giant cactus, the old radio. Who wouldn’t want to photograph the attic apartments of Paris from the inside? The kitchen still has my grandmother’s charm. I’m sure you’ve never photographed tiles like that.”
“I think it’s a big joke on my end. Not everyone is so lucky as to work remotely like you do.”
Roger touched Barbara’s waist with both hands to prevent himself from bumping against her as he passed behind. Having achieved this feat, he opened the fridge. The burst of cold on his face, he scanned the shelves, as if searching for inspiration.
“How many days do you think we’ll last with what we have?” Roger asked.
“I’d say four or five, if no one takes it from us.”
“That many? I’ll make you lunch today. You’ll be licking your fingers.” Roger let the fridge door go and it closed by itself, airtight. “What time do you want food on the table?”
“What’re you making me?”
“It’s a surprise. You continue to work, and you’ll smell it soon.”
Once she finished her toast, Barbara headed for her desk, a mug of coffee in hand. She didn’t have to turn on the computer because she always left it in sleep mode. Giresse what if the remains from the wheel hadn’t made one of the motor tanks explode? The plane would have taken off, and if ... Tragedies are full of conditionals that have no turning back. And if ... and if ... Nothing. Everything goes to hell in one second.”
“That’s hard. Really hard for you.”
“And for my mamie. My grandmother had my mother right after the war and had to bury her ... Come on, it’s the worst thing that can happen to you in your life.”
“And a death like that. You don’t see it.”
She shot him a confused glance.
He didn’t know how to continue. He tried the only way he knew how.
“What were their names?”
“My father’s name was Clément. My mother’s was édith. Both good people. I can’t think of a better summary of them.”
“The parents of a daughter who, once she opens up, makes it worthwhile.”
“Thank you.”
Roger found himself indebted to Barbara. The time had come for him to share something about himself. About him and Marcel.
But he had to wait for the moment. That silence and retreat belonged only to Barbara and the memory of her angels.
He waited for nightfall to create the perfect conditions. He knew Barbara’s habits before bed were the same every night. She’d sit on the red couch in the dim light of the living room and read from her tablet or e-reader or whatever the hell it was called, until her yawns got the best of her. Then she’d turn off the screen, say good night, and head straight to sleep. Before Roger detected the first signs of her sleepiness, he steeped two green teas and placed them atop the small table at the foot of the sofa.
“Wow. What’s this?”
“I thought you’d like it.”
He sat on the other side of the three-seater couch in the darkest part of the living room. He’d thought about how to begin his story. But in the hour of truth, it wouldn’t come out. Barbara hadn’t lifted her gaze from her book, and he felt sorry to interrupt her. But the words burned him more than the tea, and it was time to tell someone for the first time.
“This afternoon’s conversation, while we were eating lunch ... It’s made me think of something.”
He said it like it wasn’t important. But Barbara knew Roger needed to speak based on his air, on his tone, on something—she didn’t quite know what.
Roger had once thought it was a shame when the story of your father’s death embarrassed you. It was even worse if what bothered you most was talking about his life. But he needed to do it.
“What’d you think about?” Barbara asked, turning her body to more directly face him.
The calm of the night and the tenuous light from the desk invited a slow confession in whispers, like someone who’s not in a hurry to reveal a secret they’ve carried for a long time. Roger sighed and burned his lips with a sip of tea. When it all felt overwhelming, he moved the cushion behind his back and began to tell his father’s story.
“Everything we now know about him I didn’t discover myself. Marcel told me as he patiently and curiously put the pieces together. My mother preferred to keep herself in the dark once we buried my father in the Fontanilles Cemetery on a hot June day that felt more like early August. She didn’t want to know anything more about that episode. She could guess how the story must’ve unfolded, but she put up a shield of ignorance to keep the memory of my father intact. I don’t blame her. I can even understand where she came from. The local police advised me to let go of the case. Even though I worked at the newspaper at the time, they suggested I stay out of it. ‘Let it go,’ they told me, the way someone speaks about collusion. Maybe they talked like that because they knew there was something hidden behind that unfortunate end or because they saw me in a state of shock or because I’d so unexpectedly come across his body. Whatever it was, I listened. I didn’t want to involve myself in a familial disappointment that could drag us all down. Only Marcel, because he’s a lawyer and it’s a part of his character, wanted to know the truth. Due to his job, he has contacts with judges, he has coffee with prosecutors, and he’s talked to the police and with everyone in the underbelly of those neighborhoods. He says that in the Empordà, which is a place where nothing like this ever happens, if you snoop around in every furrow of the plowed land and in every bale of hay, there hides a story no one dares even guess.
“My father’s is one of those stories.
“Josep Narbona, the youngest of seven siblings, was a farmer his whole life. Day after day, year after year, everything appeared to be absolutely normal. He always looked like he was comfortable in his routine—which is notorious for seeming boring because it’s repetitive and seasonal despite also providing security. ‘When you have a routine, you always know what shoes you have to wear,’ he used to say. Throughout his life, Father didn’t do much more than look at the sky, wear his mountain boots, and live according to the apple trees and their fruit. As a child during Franco’s reign, he’d gone to school, to the one assigned to him, the one close to home. He went to Torroella, to the same grade schools his six siblings had attended, and he barely passed his lessons, without taking much of a liking to any subject. Maybe he was more into numbers than letters, but he wasn’t more or less of anything, and it never crossed his mind to go to college. Or to go very far from home. His piece of land was his life. Again, he’d been prepared for that routine, and he never looked farther than that. If this is what life planned for him, a conformist by nature, then that’s what he did. He was the type of person whose life had seemed to be determined for them at birth. Committed to work and to the land, he promised on more than one occasion that he’d never get married. The more you make these kinds of affirmations, the more likely people will remind you of them for the rest of your life. Everything changed the moment the French family came to the village. Their arrival shook Fontclara. First, there was a distrust of the Bazin family. What are they doing here? Had they lost something in this armpit of the world? Then, there was some spying on the family. What’d they buy? What’d they eat? How’d they dress? What was their daily schedule like? Did they go to church, or had they stopped? The cold and hardly cordial reception of the Bazin family lasted until the youth of the area met Fabienne, whose curls could be spotted from a mile away, and everyone wanted her to join their friend group. There weren’t many girls in those parts, and the boys from Fontanilles to Palau-sator tripped over themselves to act cool in front of her. My father had always been pleasant, the kind to crack a joke. And they say he was more like that when he was young. At that time, he didn’t speak French, but he would communicate in gestures to make Fabienne laugh. We always had a good sense of humor at home. My father was either telling a joke, or explaining a pun, or it was enough for him to fashion a towel into the shape of Napoleon’s hat. It was always like that until the end, when everything went by the wayside. At that point, when my father stopped smiling, we should have noticed something was happening. And I’m sure my mom saw it; we guessed it, but no one dared ask if he needed help. None of us knew enough. We all know that fear is like a door with cracks in it.”
Barbara reached for her mug. It had cooled down enough for her first sip. In the building across the street, a girl kissed her father good night and switched off the light.
“I like watching nighttime rituals.”
In the swamp of his memory, Roger hadn’t noticed. He didn’t even hear her.
“Don’t for a second think he was a careless father. Quite the opposite. When it came to education and discipline, there were always a lot of tickles and laughs, but when it was lunchtime, we ate. We ate dinner, after being called only once, our hands on the table and our backs straight, napkin on our lap, and we cleaned our plates without complaining, whether we liked it or not. It was the same with our grades at school. He’d sit in the armchair, the one in front of the fireplace. We’d bring him our report card, and he would look at it from top to bottom, reviewing the grades, subject by subject. Marcel’s grades were usually better than mine. If we’d passed everything, he’d tell us he felt we could have done a little better. He’d return the report card, and that was it until the next grading period. That’s how the trimesters went until final grades arrived, and then he’d limit himself to saying, clever as he was, ‘It looks like we won’t be repeating the grade.’ It was another way of expressing his satisfaction with normality. School was a process. Every year, it had to be taken care of without much consideration. Once, in the first trimester of junior year, I got sidetracked and failed three classes. My father looked at my report card, saw the failing grades, breathed in deeply, and just when I thought lightning and thunder and hail would fall on me, he looked at me, returned my report card, and told me to talk to my mother, because she could help me more than he could.
“But we weren’t able to help him when he needed it. His tragedy didn’t arrive from one day to the next. It began simmering, little by little, throughout the years. From what Marcel has deduced, it all started on a Thursday, the day when, come rain or shine, he’d play cards. The whole gang—all men, sometimes eight of them, sometimes ten, but my father always joined—had dinner and then started the game. They played botifarra, a game that’s well-known there. I’m talking about the time around when my parents had just gotten married. My brother had probably not even been born yet when they started the Thursday meetups. You can just picture it. They smoked, they drank, they laughed, and they played for a couple of bucks. From what they’ve told us, their bets were always small. By the time Pep got home—because his friends always called him Pep Narbona—my mother had already been sleeping for hours.
“One Thursday, in the middle of a game of cards, one of them asked, ‘Did you read about the casino they opened in Peralada? We should go there one day.’ It must have been four or five years after the death of Franco, and with the arrival of democracy came gambling as a business. People no longer needed to travel to France to go to a casino. Of all the friends in the Fontclara Thursday gang, only one man among them had gone to a casino, and only once. ‘To Monte Carlo?’ the group asked him. No. He didn’t remember where he’d gone exactly, but he told them about roulette, rien ne va plus , and the blackjack table with the enthusiasm of a kid at a theme park. Suddenly, all of them were curious to check it out. If they hurried, Peralada was thirty minutes from the house by highway. They’d have to drive onto the national highway and, once there, drive straight down in two cars. The funny thing about the casino, which is still there, is that they built it in a castle. The fortification, which has a medieval air to it, clashes with the colorful slot machines ringing at all hours of the day. That jingle of money, after a short while, becomes the sound of temptation. The entrance to the castle, with its two towers, gave the casino an enchanting air. For them, it was like a red carpet welcoming them to a new world, a country of wonderments. The luxury, green carpets, the turn of the roulettes, the chandeliers, the dealers in tuxedos, the men in ties, the women in evening gowns. That place, which was far from his own, provoked a growing fascination in my father with his mountain boots. He returned home and recounted his experience. He looked like a kid who had seen his first skyscraper. He brought Marcel and me each a token as a souvenir. And he explained that things inside the casino didn’t function with money but rather with those round and flat chips ornamented with a border that created addiction. As you might imagine, the ones he brought us weren’t worth much. Twenty-five cents at the most.
“After that summer, the Fontclara friend group decided that, without telling anyone, they’d hold off on their game of botifarra once a month and head down to the casino instead. By the time Christmas came around, they were driving the two cars to Peralada two Thursdays a month. They almost never returned home before dawn. There were days my father would get into bed and, after an hour, get up to shower and go to the fields like nothing had happened.
“But things did happen.
“From what Marcel was able to piece together—the friend group had started talking in dribs and drabs, but eventually everybody speaks a little more than they would like—my father became a big fan of roulette. He ending up playing a lot of money every night. And every night, the chips became more and more valuable. He stopped exchanging money for tokens so he could let the bills rain directly onto the table. He became obsessed with a number, and he’d bet on fifteen, for example. And for seven, eight, or nine straight rounds, he’d bet it all on fifteen. He’d leave a five-thousand peseta bill on the table, and the dealer would know it was a bet on fifteen, odd, black. The ball would spin, and after several turns, it would stop on a number that wasn’t his. One day, someone who was lurking near the roulette table and who had my father’s number invited him to a game of cards. ‘You like poker? You can win big,’ he told him. And my father believed him. They took him to a back room, offered him a glass of wine, introduced him to some harmless-looking players, and began to play. From what his friends have explained to Marcel, they warned him not to do it. But the casino stopped the friends from entering the room just to observe. Nicely, but forcefully. What happened to my father, all alone, in there? No one knows. All the versions of the story agree that he was so happy at the end of the night that he asked to drive, and in an out-of-the-ordinary action, he didn’t stop humming the caramelles he’d learned as a kid. They said that when they stopped for a piss on the side of the highway, the friends who’d stayed in the car went through the pockets of his blazer. The wads of bills he was carrying were so thick there was no way to button the pockets.
“That first day, he won the poker game. But it wasn’t like that every time. Marcel is convinced they’d hoodwinked him from top to bottom that Thursday. They gave him a guppy as an appetizer, and he bit the ham. They’d nailed his palate. But that story, dear Barbara, I’ll tell you tomorrow. Just like in your grandparents’ book. Now we go to bed.”