The Street of the Three Beds Read Online Free PDF Page A

with a passion she concealed under the serene exterior her son would inherit.
    Lídia wanted a villa with a garden in Sant Gervasi but her husband was opposed to it.
    â€œToo expensive, too ostentatious, and too far from work.”
    â€œDaddy would put some money down, I’m sure.”
    â€œI’d rather buy a house I can pay for with my own income.”
    Lídia sighed. “All right, but nowhere near Príncep de Viana.”
    Thus they moved to a spacious second floor with a north and a south side on the fashionable Passeig de Sant Joan by the Arc de Triomf.
    Ten months later, when the baby was due, his father took for granted that it would be a boy and that he, too, would be named Roderic. To Lídia, Roderic sounded too warlike, too feudal. Besides, she felt an unspoken animosity toward her father-in-law and didn’t want to evoke his harsh figure every time she addressed her child. Maurici, on the other hand, was a sweet name of nuanced musicality that suited a sensitive spirit. Given the fact that Lídia’s father was the child’s godfather, her preference prevailed.
    When Maurici was a boy, every Saturday he would have dinner at his maternal grandparents’ home, while Sunday mornings were devoted to the Aldabòs. The three generations attended mass together at Betlem Church, whose ornate baroque style attracted both the petit bourgeois and the working class. The Palaus, for their part, had always favored Santa Anna. Maurici remembered that after church they’d go to the fair at the top of The Ramblas. Even from Betlem Church he could hear music and voices blaring from megaphones that promised all sorts of wonders. On Sundays they set up the stand that attracted most visitors and was the children’s favorite. It featured Amphitrite, a siren of mythical proportions, revolving inside a glass column full of water. Her hair was green like algae and she had the gift of reading the future. He ran to spread the palms of his hands on the glass, calling her “Amfitite, Amfitite,” and for a minute fell under the spell of the blue and green iridescence of her fish tail. There was always a big crowd surrounding the column. She flipped over in the water a few timesand, as she swam close to him, the rounded glass made her appear even more gigantic. Then she stopped with a big-toothed smile to read his tiny palms. After a few seconds that seemed to last forever she turned upward and suddenly her head shot out of the water, shaking her hair that lashed her back like a cat-o’-nine-tails. In a clear voice, the siren predicted that that child would be much loved; that the lifeline of his hand bore the mark of those graced by the gods, who had assigned him his own protective fairy and would never forsake him. He didn’t understand what the business about the gods meant, but he rather liked the part about the fairy, which always put a smile on his face. The audience threw coins into the fishbowl. He watched in awe how the siren’s profits twinkled a moment in the water and then sank slowly to join the treasure at the bottom.
    After they built Plaça Catalunya at the top of The Ramblas there was no more Amphitrite and he broke into the loudest, longest crying fit of his otherwise sunny childhood.
    The memories of the siren, the sibyl that seemed to have accurately prophesized his future, often came hand in hand with a darker moment of his past that he’d never managed to leave entirely behind. When he was considered old enough to exercise what’s known as good judgment, Grandpa Aldabò announced he’d take him to a public execution. Grandma, a mild, unassuming country woman who died a year later, made it clear that she was against it, as was her daughter-in-law, who balked at the prospect of having her son witness such a cruel act. Their arguments and protests were useless.
    â€œThe child’s a growing tree and it better grow up straight,” the