A seagull landed on Bebéi’s balcony.Across the park, Lieutenant Pirilo was playing dominoes on the terrace of the Asturian Tavern, a sign that everything was quiet in Santa Clara. The word “quiet” has a faulty meaning in town — sometimes calm and serene preceded massive storms — but even so, people were enjoying a peaceful afternoon, and the only one complaining was Grená, the lottery ticket seller; with everything so restful, there was no gossip to share.
Pirilo was teaming up with the Asturian, the tavern’s owner, to challenge the city’s champion duo: Moses and Habib. The two, a Jew and a Lebanese, owned competing clothing stores, one across from the other on Main Street. They fought all day long over clients but were second to none when they joined forces for a dominoes game. They could read each other’s thoughts.
According to Pirilo — probably trying to justify his frequent losses — the two did not win by the excellence of their game, but rather by the jokes they told to distract their opponents. For every story Moses told about a Jewish patrician, Habib responded with one about his Arab compatriots. But the truth is that Pirilo had no right to complain, since whenever the two of them were silent, his partner, the Asturian, would quickly come up with a new story, teasing his Galician countrymen.
That afternoon, Pirilo and the Asturian had great luck and managed to win one of the matches. The noise of their laughter, the screams, and the hard strike of the dominoes hitting the table could be heard all over the park, where guayacans were in whole blossoms of yellow flowers.
***
A few steps away at the hill leading to Our Lady of Mercy Church, Bebéi, the archivist of the French embassy, was ready to hit the streets with his dog Zoubir, and a thousand thoughts echoing in his mind.
He was born in Paris and raised by his uncle as an immigrant, always trying to conceal his Algerian origins and his Muslim religion. He struggled to understand his teachers at school — he was considered naive. His curiosity, however, was endless and he was often a step ahead of the last answer. Thanks to an exceptional memory, he got a job as an archivist at the French Foreign Office where, for years, he dedicated full attention to “keeping safe what cannot be missed and quickly finding what seemed lost.”
He was all but forgotten at the very end of the fourth-floor corridor when he heard his boss, Madame Roisson, mention that there was a vacancy for an archivist at the embassy of Santa Clara. His life was dreary, and he decided to risk an adventure before retiring. He applied and landed the job. That was why, on a sad and cold Parisian day, he boarded a plane to cross the ocean and live in the tropics in Santa Clara by the Sea.
Bebéi quickly adopted his new town and felt embraced by his neighbors. The sun was always shining and people were friendly, patient enough to chat on the sidewalks and answer his questions. The work was unwinding at the embassy, and his commitment was highly praised, so he felt comfortable asking to leave the office a little early that afternoon. The reason, he kept to himself — it was personal: during the night, a seagull had landed on the balcony of his apartment. The bird seemed to have a wound on its wing and remained still, keeping its gaze fixed on the sea.
***
Santa Clara by the Sea is a peninsula surrounded by the sea near Panama City. The city harbors old churches, a few embassies, and ancient colonial manors, such as the one where Bebéi lived. Despite being a few minutes’ drive from the country’s capital, the city has a small-village atmosphere, where people greet each other with friendliness and chat while sitting on chairs placed on the sidewalks.
Bebéi lived in an amber manor built a century ago by one of the founders of the Republic. The manor was later split into small residential units, and his apartment was on the third floor, with two small balconies: one off his bedroom, where the seagull had landed, and another off the living room. From his balconies he could see the fish market, the pier, the bay full of seagulls, and catch a glimpse of Paris Street, bursting every night with women, nightclubs, and joyful sinners; a privileged view that Bebéi relished, but that had become entirely irrelevant since the seagull settled at his apartment.
Bebéi was shy and dressed every day in the same brown suit, but despite his few words, he quickly became known in Santa Clara for his outdated habit of greeting everyone by tipping his hat.
That afternoon, he closed the large wooden door of the manor behind him and looked across the park to the tavern where his friend, the Pirilo, was playing dominoes. He chose not to bother him; it would be useless to interrupt the lieutenant while he was playing. Bebéi decided to look elsewhere for help. His problem was not the bird’s presence — he was happy with the new guest — the question was how to feed it appropriately.
As soon as he began climbing the hill following his dog, Bebéi heard the music of a barrel organ. It was Mimi, the ice cream seller, pedaling a colorful tricycle and carrying a little monkey on his back. Bebéi waited for him; he wanted to enjoy the music filling the street.
Bebéi greeted him with a tip of his hat and the ice cream seller, who was also a magician, stopped pedaling, bowed his head respectfully, and, after murmuring incomprehensible words, pulled a small bouquet from under the monkey and gave it to Bebéi. Bebéi’s dog didn’t bark; he was used to wizardry. Then, happy as a child, the ice cream seller smiled and pedaled off uphill. On his back, the little monkey stared at Bebéi and his dog with what looked like a laughing expression.
Bebéi followed them, holding the dog’s leash in one hand and carrying the small bouquet in the other. For him, the music of the barrel organ was a perfect match for the narrow cobblestone streets walled in by the colonial manors of Santa Clara.
***
At the top, when he reached the church, Bebéi greeted Grená, passing the flowers to the other hand and tipping his hat respectfully. That corner was his favorite spot in town. Around Our Lady of Mercy Church, locals gathered to chat and share gossip away from the tourist crowds on the boardwalk. Next to the church, Rasta Bong had his barbershop and the Chinaman his small grocery. It was also at the stairs of the church, right in front of the yellow umbrella where Grená gossiped all day selling lottery tickets, that a group of homeless boozers, self-titled the Useless Brethren, liked to drink, curse, and sleep.
Bebéi watched while Robespierre, probably the weirdest member of the Brethren, was yelling at a Finnish tourist that, thank goodness, could not understand a word of what the bum was saying.
Bebéi only stayed there for a few minutes — he didn’t want to waste time with distractions — and walked straight toward the barbershop where Jordi, the young waiter who usually served him at Ilona’s Café, was having a haircut.
Jordi had just finished the exams to become a high school teacher and wanted to give an excellent impression to the selection committee at the interview scheduled for the next morning. He listened to Bebéi’s problem, and offered to go with Bebéi to the Chinese grocery after his haircut was finished to buy a few sardine cans to feed the seagull.
Jordi was excessively talkative that afternoon. He was convinced he had passed the written exams, and not even the interview scared him. What was causing him some anxiety was longing for Cristine, his girlfriend. She had traveled to Boston with a scholarship offered by the Mayor, and as her return approached, Jordi’s chest seemed to be tightening.
For him, life without Cristine was bizarre. They lived on the same street, studied in the same school and most of the time in the same classroom. They had only split up at the university, when he decided to study history and Cristine psychology.
When Cristine was at his side, everything seemed so smooth. Jordi always invented new ideas, and Cristine knew how to turn them into reality. He never did anything without first asking her, but how to feed a seagull did not seem to be a transcendental problem, and he volunteered to help Bebéi.
“After all, what could happen when someone feeds a seagull on the balcony of a friend’s apartment?”
