The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura Read Free Book Online Page A

that he said:
    “Yes, tell him yes.”
    Caridad smiled. She took her son’s face and, with treacherous precision, planted a long kiss on the corner of his mouth. Ramón felt the woman’s saliva mix with his, but he couldn’t find the taste of aniseed now, not even of the gin that she’d drunk the last time she kissed him; he only received the sickening sweetness of tobacco and the fermented acidity of her heartburn.
    “In a few days, you’ll be called to Barcelona. We’ll be waiting for you. Your life is going to change, Ramón. A lot,” she said, and shook the dirt off of herself. “I’m leaving now. The sun is rising.”
    As if it were nothing, Ramón spit, turning his head, and lit a cigarette. He walked behind Caridad toward the car, from which Luis emerged with Churro in his arms.
    “Let go of the dog and say goodbye to Ramón.”
    Luis obeyed her and again hugged his brother.
    “We’ll see each other soon in Barcelona. I’ll take you to sign up for the Youth Brigades. You’ve already turned fourteen, right?”
    Luis smiled.
    “And will you sign me up for the army? All the Communists have gone to the People’s Army . . .”
    “Don’t rush, Luisillo.” Ramón smiled and hugged him tight. Over the kid’s head he noticed Caridad’s gaze, lost once again. He avoided the unease caused by his mother’s eyes and, in the day’s first light, made out El Escorial’s stony and hostile silhouette.
    “Look, Luisito, El Escorial. I’m on the other side, up that slope.”
    “And is it always this cold?”
    “Cold enough to freeze your skin off.”
    “We’re leaving. Get in, Luis,” Caridad interrupted her sons, and Luis, after saying goodbye to Ramón with the militiamen’s salute, went around the car to get in the passenger seat.
    “If you see África, tell her I’ll be there soon,” Ramón almost whispered.
    Caridad opened the car door but stopped and closed it again.
    “Ramón, it goes without saying that this conversation should remaina secret. From this moment on, get it into your head that being willing to give up everything is not a slogan, it’s a way of life.” The young man saw his mother open her military cloak and take out a gleaming Browning. Caridad took a few steps and, without looking at her son, asked, “Are you sure you can do it?”
    “Yes,” Ramón said just as a bomb explosion illuminated the distant mountainside, and as Caridad, with weapon in hand, placed Churro in her sights and, not giving her son any time to react, shot him in the head. The animal rolled, pushed by the force of the bullet, and its corpse began to freeze in the cold dawn of the Sierra de Guadarrama.
    Winters in Sant Feliu de Guíxols had always been misty, prone to storms that came down from the Pyrenees. Summers, by contrast, are a gift of nature. The rock that rises from the sea forms a mountain that opens up there in a cove of coarse sand, and the water tends to be clearer than anywhere else on the coast of Empordà. In the 1920s, only fishermen and some faithless hermits lived in Sant Feliu, the first fugitives from urban life and modernity. But in summer Barcelona’s wealthy families, the owners of beach houses and mountain cabins, appeared. The Mercader clan was one of the fortunate ones, thanks to the textile business that had received a second wind during the Great War.
    His father’s family, related to the local nobility, had accumulated wealth through several generations; like good Catalans, they had been devoted to commerce and industry; Caridad’s family were the owners of a castle in San Miguel de Aras, near Santander, and were colonists who returned from Cuba before the disaster of 1898; they had returned with their fortune in ruins, since part of it had been lost with the blacks they had to free when the end of slavery was declared on the island. Although Pau, Ramón’s father, was several years older than Caridad, in the boy’s eyes they were an enviable couple who shared a passion