Excerpt of The Perils of Paella by Nancy Fairbanks

Chapter 3

In Which Life Imitates Art

Carolyn

I was very relieved that the Angel of Death had disappeared and hoped that it would not return during my remaining time in the exhibit. Having noticed the hospital charts at the foot of the beds, I went back to check them out. There was a victim of an anti-church riot during Gaudi’s time, a retired Roman foot soldier stabbed by his native wife, the mistress of a courtier to King Marti I the Humane, a Jewish scholar from Girona who fell ill during the fifteenth century Catholic-Jewish debates in Barcelona, an opera singer burned in the fire that destroyed the Liceu, and a Spanish Civil War soldier who had been kicked by a mule. The other patients wouldn’t speak to him because he was in Franco’s army, not the Republican forces supported in Barcelona.

A late arrival was a female student who had been attacked by an elderly priest when caught passionately embracing her boyfriend in the subway. He hit her with a cane because she giggled at his admonitions. A new creature arrived through a door at the end of the aisle and tucked the bruised female student into Wilfred the Hairy’s vacated bed.

"That’s the Angel of Mercy," said the Englishman.

"Not in my view," said his wife.

I had to agree with her. This figure wore a white habit but had the face of a Miro female monster, a huge black head with splashes of primary colors at the edges and on top a bird’s beak and eye with several hairs sticking out. A nun’s white winged headdress perched behind the hairs on the lopsided head. Miro’s depiction of women is singularly peculiar.

I ducked into the alcove of the burn victim to get away from the Angel of Mercy, and we chatted about opera. The girl, who was supposed to be a Wagnerian soprano, claimed that Wagner was always sung in Italian or Catalan at the Liceu. She spoke English, and, in answer to my question, said that the opera house had been rebuilt and reopened after many years of squabbling by various committees. As our conversation trickled into longer pauses, the Angel of Life and Joy came back with more tapas, and my patient urged me to get some. I helped myself to five when the Miro bird offered them and fed two meatballs and one shrimp to the pseudo-soprano, whose arms and hands were heavily bandaged with stains of yellow salve rising to the surface of the gauze. The other two tapas, one meatball and one marinated shrimp, I ate myself, and very tasty they were.

After glancing at my watch, I excused myself and moved on, planning to glance into the last of the alcoves on the left and then leave for my appointment with Robbie. Since the winged dragon hadn’t returned, I was quite enjoying myself and stopped to say hello to two more patients, neither of whom spoke English. The last patient, in the alcove nearest the entrance to the exhibit, was identified as Rosario Segimon Artells. She appeared to be asleep, but more surprising she appeared to be Robbie. The lush auburn hair, the dark eyebrows, the outline of a voluptuous body.

Standing at the foot of the bed, I stared and blinked and stared again. How like Robbie to play such a trick on me. I said, "All right, Robbie, wake up. Is this what you meant when you said you’d be busy until one?" I plopped myself down on the white chair. The patient didn’t stir, so I gave her a shake. Her head lolled to the side, revealing a bit of what looked like dried blood on the pillow.

"This is really too much!" I muttered, feeling unsettled and, consequently, irritated. Planning to shout in her ear, I leaned forward. Robbie’s face was now in profile and— that wasn’t Robbie’s nose. In fact, the skin, although it had a strange, pallid cast, was not Robbie’s skin. It was younger and darker than hers. "Hello—ah—buenos dias." The not- Robbie figure didn’t stir. In fact—I shivered—the chest didn’t appear to be rising and falling. Gathering my courage, I touched an exposed arm. It was cold. Not that mine wasn’t, too. The room was cold! All right, Carolyn, I told myself, you’re being silly. Just see if there’s a pulse.

But I didn’t really want to do that. This was too macabre. They wouldn’t have an actual dead body in an art exhibit, would they? Although Wilfred the Hairy may have looked limp when the Angel of Death hauled him away, he was certainly alive--probably on his way to class even as I sat here entertaining lunatic fancies. I grabbed the patient’s wrist and felt for a pulse. Then I tried the neck. Then I screamed.

The Angel of Life and Joy clacked in my direction. When that large red beak poked around the arch, I said, "Th- this woman is—is dead."

The English couple entered right behind the bird, which snapped its beak and flapped its many-colored wings. "Silenci," it croaked.

"I guessed right!" exclaimed the Englishman. "This one hasn’t had any tapas. Of course, the Franquista hasn’t either."

"You don’t understand," I cried. "This person is dead! Not acting dead. Dead dead."

"No es morta," croaked the Miro bird, sounding angry.

Other art lovers were crowding around. Then I heard the rattling that had announced the previous appearance of the Angel of Death. Was that supposed to be a death rattle? I shuddered as the visitors made way for the awful winged dragon. Surely it wouldn’t just carry off a real corpse without—without—what? Maybe someone died every day here in some—some dreadful artistic ritual. I peeked fearfully at the dead woman and noticed for the first time that she wasn’t wearing the usual white makeup or the black lipstick common to the rest of the patients. She just looked horrible in a sort of—more natural way.

"I peeck the dead ones, idiota," shrieked the Angel of Death, who hadn’t spoken on its last visit. "Make theese stupeed Amereecan woman leave the exhibeetion!" The order was issued to the Angel of Joy, who wheeled around and shouted, presumably in Catalan, at the black dragon- bird.

A patient joined the argument, evidently a fellow American, saying, "What the hell’s going on? I’m supposed to die next. I’ve got a sculpture class at two."

"Thees ees Catalan art. Speak Catalan," the Angel of Death said to the Civil War patient.

"I say, this is very peculiar indeed," the Englishman chimed in. "Not at all like the previous two cycles."

"Screw you, Josep," the next-to-die patient snapped at the Angel of Death.

"I want to leave, Cecil," said the Englishman’s wife. "And if you won’t, I’m going myself."

"Please," I said to the American patient, "please tell these people that this woman is really dead. She’s not breathing. She has no pulse. And no patient makeup," I added falteringly because everyone, tourists and actors alike, was staring at me with expressions ranging from disbelief to amusement at the silly American woman who couldn’t tell art from reality. "That’s real blood on her pillow. Can’t you see that it’s turned brown? Fake blood wouldn’t do that."

"That’s not Leila," the American patient agreed, staring at the corpse. "Isn’t Leila supposed to be in this bed?" he asked the Angel of Death combatively.

The Angel lifted his dragon head off and peered at the corpse impersonating Rosario Segimon Artells, who, now that I thought about it, was the wife of the man who commissioned Gaudi to renovate a plain apartment building on Passeig de Gracia into La Pedrera. The woman had changed a lot of Gaudi’s innovations and decorations in later years. So people here at Esperit might have reason to wish her ill, but this woman wasn’t the real Rosario. Or evidently the real Leila. And I was sure that she wasn’t the real Robbie, as I had thought originally, although in many ways she looked a lot like her. So who was this woman?

"What’s going on here?"

I whirled and saw, to my relief, my friend.

"You were supposed to be in my office fifteen minutes ago, Caro."

Robbie strode through the tourists and patients, most of whom were shorter than she was. That was another thing about the corpse. She wasn’t as tall as Robbie, now that I noticed, not that height is easy to estimate in a reclining figure. I collapsed with relief against my friend when she hugged me and sniffled about the corpse I’d discovered. Robbie looked over my shoulder and laughed boisterously.

"Isabel, get out of that bed! What’s the idea of scaring my friend half to death?"

Of course, Isabel didn’t respond. She really was dead. She was also, according to Robbie, a fellow Miro researcher who hadn’t shown up for the monthly conference with the patron that morning.