The Angel's Game (12 page)

I still had at least a hundred pages to go for my umpteenth delivery of those comic book adventures that had provided both Barrido and Escobillas with such bulging pockets, but in that moment I knew I was never going to finish it. Ignatius B. Samson had been left lying on the rails in front of that tram, exhausted, his soul bled dry, poured into too many pages that should never have seen the light of day. But before departing he had conveyed to me his last wishes: that I should bury him without any fuss and that, for once in my life, I should have the courage to use my own voice. His legacy to me was his considerable repertoire of smoke and mirrors. And he asked me to let him go, because he had been born to be forgotten.

I took the finished pages of his last novel and set fire to them, sensing
that a tombstone was being lifted off me with every page I threw into the flames. A moist, warm breeze blew that night over the rooftops and as it came in through my windows it took with it the ashes of Ignatius B. Samson, scattering them through the streets of the old city, where they would always remain—even if his words were lost forever and his name slipped from the memory of even his most devoted readers.

The following day I turned up at the offices of Barrido & Escobillas. The receptionist was new, almost a child, and didn’t recognize me.

“Your name?”

“Hugo, Victor.”

The receptionist smiled and connected to the switchboard to let Herminia know.

“Doña Herminia, Señor Hugo Victor is here to see Señor Barrido.”

I saw her nod and disconnect the switchboard.

“She says she’ll be right out.”

“Have you been working here long?”

“A week,” the girl replied earnestly.

Unless I was mistaken, she was the eighth receptionist Barrido & Escobillas had employed since the start of the year. The firm’s employees who reported directly to the artful Herminia didn’t last long because as soon as Lady Venom discovered that they had one ounce of common sense more than she had—which happened nine times out of ten—fearing she might be overshadowed, she would accuse them of theft or some other absurd transgression and make a scene until Escobillas kicked them out, threatening them with a hired assassin if they let the cat out of the bag.

“How good to see you, David,” said Lady Venom. “You’re looking very handsome. You seem well.”

“That’s because I was run over by a tram. Is Barrido in?”

“The things you come out with! He’s always in for you. He’s going to be very pleased when I tell him you’ve come to pay us a visit.”

“You can’t imagine how pleased.”

Lady Venom took me to Barrido’s office, which was decorated like a chancellor’s palatial rooms in a comic opera, with a profusion of carpets,
busts of emperors, still lifes, and leather-bound volumes bought in bulk that I imagined were probably blank inside. Barrido gave me the oiliest of smiles and shook my hand.

“We’re all waiting impatiently for the next installment. I must tell you, we’ve been reprinting the last two and they’re flying out the window. Another five thousand copies, how about that?”

I thought it was more likely at least fifty thousand, but I just nodded enthusiastically. Barrido & Escobillas had perfected what was known among Barcelona publishers as the double print run, and theirs was as neatly arranged as a bunch of flowers. Every title had an official print run of a few thousand copies that was declared and on which a ridiculously small margin was paid to the author. Then, if the book took off, they would print a covert edition—or several—of tens of thousands of copies that were never declared and for which the author never saw a penny. This edition could be distinguished from the official one because Barrido had the books printed on the sly in an old sausage plant in Santa Perpètua de Mogoda and if you leafed through the pages they gave off the unmistakable smell of vintage pork.

“I’m afraid I have bad news.”

Barrido and Lady Venom exchanged looks but kept on grinning. Just then, Escobillas materialized through the door and looked at me with that dry, disdainful air he had, as if he were measuring you for a coffin.

“Look who has come to see us. Isn’t this a nice surprise?” Barrido asked his partner, who replied with a nod.

“What bad news?” asked Escobillas.

“Is there a bit of a delay, Martín, my friend?” Barrido added in a friendly tone. “I’m sure we can accommodate—”

“No. There’s no delay. Quite simply, there’s not going to be another book.”

Escobillas took a step forward and raised his eyebrows. Barrido giggled.

“What do you mean, there’s not going to be another book?” asked Escobillas.

“I mean that yesterday I burned it and there’s not a single page of the manuscript left.”

A heavy silence fell. Barrido made a conciliatory gesture and pointed to what was known as the visitors’ armchair, a black, sunken throne in which authors and suppliers were cornered so that they could meet Barrido’s eyes from the appropriate height.

“Martín, sit down and tell me what this is about. There’s something worrying you, I can see. You can be open with us, we’re like family.”

Lady Venom and Escobillas nodded with conviction, showing the measure of their esteem in a look of spellbound devotion. I decided to remain standing. They all did the same, staring at me as if I were a pillar of salt that was about to start talking. Barrido’s face hurt from so much smiling.

“And?”

“Ignatius B. Samson has committed suicide. He left a twenty-page unpublished story in which he dies together with Chloé Permanyer, locked in an embrace after swallowing poison.”

“The author dies in one of his own novels?” asked Herminia, confused.

“It’s his avant-garde farewell to the world of writing installments. A detail I was sure you would love.”

“And could there not be an antidote, or …” Lady Venom asked.

“Martín, I don’t need to remind you that it is you, and not the allegedly deceased Ignatius, who has a contract,” said Escobillas.

Barrido raised his hands to silence his colleague.

“I think I know what’s wrong, Martín. You’re exhausted. You’ve been overloading your brain for years without a break—something this house values and is grateful for—you just need a breather. I can understand. We do understand, don’t we?”

Barrido glanced at Escobillas and at Lady Venom, who nodded and tried to look serious.

“You’re an artist and you want to make art, high literature, something that springs from your heart and will engrave your name in golden letters on the steps of history.”

“The way you put it makes it sound ridiculous,” I said.

“Because it is,” said Escobillas.

“No, it isn’t,” Barrido cut in. “It’s human. And we’re human. I, my partner, and Herminia, who, being a woman and a creature of delicate sensitivity, is the humanest of all, isn’t that right, Herminia?”

“Indeed,” Lady Venom agreed.

“And as we’re human, we understand you and want to support you. Because we’re proud of you and convinced that your success will be our success and because in this firm, when all’s said and done, what matters is the people, not the numbers.”

At the end of his speech, Barrido paused theatrically. Perhaps he expected me to break into applause, but when he saw that I wasn’t moved he charged on, unimpeded, with his exposition.

“That is why I’m going to propose the following. Take six months, nine if need be, because, after all, this is like a birth. Lock yourself up in your study to write the great novel of your life. When you’ve finished it, bring it to us and we’ll publish it under your name, putting all our irons in the fire and all our resources behind you. Because we’re on your side.”

I looked at Barrido and then at Escobillas. Lady Venom was about to burst into tears from the emotion.

“With no advance, needless to say.”

Barrido clapped his hands euphorically in the air.

“What do you say?”

…

I began work that very day. My plan was as simple as it was crazy. During the day I would rewrite Vidal’s book and at night I’d work on mine. I would polish all the dark arts Ignatius B. Samson had taught me and place them at the service of what little decency and dignity were left in my heart. I would write out of gratitude, despair, and vanity. I would write especially for Cristina, to prove to her that I too was able to pay the debt I had with Vidal and that, even if he was about to drop dead, David Martín had earned himself the right to look her in the eye without feeling ashamed of his ridiculous hopes.

…

I didn’t return to Dr. Trías’s surgery. I didn’t see the point. The day I could no longer write another word, or imagine one, I would be the first to know. My trustworthy and unscrupulous chemist supplied me with as many codeine treats as I requested, without asking any questions, as well as the occasional delicacy that set my veins alight, obliterating both pain and consciousness. I didn’t tell anyone about my visit to the doctor or about the test results.

My basic needs were covered by a weekly delivery that I ordered from Can Gispert, a wonderful grocer’s emporium on Calle Mirallers, behind the cathedral of Santa María del Mar. The order was always the same. It was usually brought to me by the owner’s daughter, a girl who stared at me like a frightened fawn when I told her to wait in the entrance hall while I fetched the money to pay her.

“This is for your father, and this is for you.”

I always gave her a ten céntimos tip, which she accepted without saying a word. Every week the girl rang my doorbell with the delivery, and every week I paid her and gave her a ten céntimos tip. For nine months and a day, the time it took me to write the only book that would bear my name, that young girl whose name I didn’t know and whose face I forgot every week until I saw her standing in the doorway again was the person I saw the most.

Without warning, Cristina had stopped coming to our afternoon meetings. I was beginning to fear that Vidal might have got wind of our ploy. Then one afternoon when I was waiting for her after about a week’s absence, I opened the door thinking it was her, and instead there was Pep, one of the servants at Villa Helius. He brought me a parcel sent by Cristina. It was carefully sealed and contained the whole of Vidal’s manuscript. Pep explained that Cristina’s father had suffered an aneurysm that had left him practically disabled and she’d taken him to a sanatorium in Puigcerdà, in the Pyrenees, where apparently there was a young doctor who was an expert in the treatment of such ailments.

“Señor Vidal has taken care of everything,” Pep explained. “No expense spared.”

Vidal never forgot his servants, I thought, not without some bitterness.

“She asked me to deliver this to you by hand. And not to tell anyone about it.”

The young man handed me the parcel, relieved to be free of the mysterious item.

“Did she leave an address where I could find her if I needed to?”

“No, Señor Martín. All I know is that Señorita Cristina’s father has been admitted to a place called Villa San Antonio.”

A few days later, Vidal paid me one of his surprise visits and spent the whole afternoon in my house, drinking my anisette, smoking my cigarettes, and talking to me about his chauffeur’s misfortune.

“It’s hard to believe. A man who was as strong as an ox, and suddenly he’s struck down, just like that. He doesn’t even know who he is anymore.”

“How is Cristina?”

“You can imagine. Her mother died years ago and Manuel is the only family she has left. She took a family album with her and shows him photographs every day to see whether the poor fellow can remember anything.”

While Vidal spoke, his novel—or should I say my novel—rested facedown on the table in the gallery, a pile of papers only half a meter from his hands. He told me that in Manuel’s absence he had urged Pep—apparently a good horseman—to take up the art of driving, but so far the young man was proving hopeless.

“Give him time. A motorcar isn’t a horse. The secret is practice.”

“Now that you mention it, Manuel taught you how to drive, didn’t he?”

“A little,” I admitted. “And it’s not as easy as it seems.”

“If the novel you’re writing doesn’t sell, you can always become my chauffeur.”

“Let’s not bury poor Manuel yet, Don Pedro.”

“That comment was in bad taste,” Vidal admitted. “I’m sorry.”

“How’s your novel going, Don Pedro?”

“It’s going well. Cristina has taken the final manuscript with her to Puigcerdà so that she can type up a clean copy and get it all shipshape while she’s there with her father.”

“I’m glad to see you looking happy.”

Vidal gave me a triumphant smile.

“I think it’s going to be something big,” he said. “After all those months I thought I’d wasted, I reread the first fifty pages Cristina typed out for me and I was quite surprised at myself. I think it will surprise you too. I may still have some tricks to teach you.”

“I’ve never doubted that, Don Pedro.”

That afternoon Vidal was drinking more than usual. Over the years I’d got to know the full range of his anxieties and reservations, and I guessed that this visit was not a simple courtesy call. When he had polished off my supply of anisette, I served him a generous glass of brandy and waited.

“David, there are things about which you and I have never spoken …”

“About football, for example.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’m listening, Don Pedro.”

He looked at me for a while, hesitating.

“I’ve always tried to be a good friend to you, David. You know that, don’t you?”

“You’ve been much more than that, Don Pedro. I know and you know.”

“Sometimes I ask myself whether I shouldn’t have been more honest with you.”

“About what?”

Vidal stared into his glass of brandy.

“There are some things I’ve never told you, David. Things that perhaps I should have told you years ago …”

I let a moment or two go by. It seemed an eternity. Whatever Vidal wanted to tell me, it was clear that all the brandy in the world wasn’t going to get it out of him.

“Don’t worry, Don Pedro. If these things have waited for years, I’m sure they can wait until tomorrow.”