The Angel's Game (23 page)

…

Two policemen woke me, tapping my leg with their truncheons. Night had fallen and it took me a while to work out whether these were normal policemen on the beat or agents of the Fates on a special mission.

“Now, sir, go and sleep it off at home, understood?”

“Yes, Colonel!”

“Hurry up or you’ll spend the night in jail. Let’s see if you find that funny.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I got up as best I could and set off toward my house, hoping to get there before my feet led me off into some other seedy dive. The walk, which would normally have taken me ten or fifteen minutes, took three times as long. Finally, by some miracle, I arrived at my front door only to find Isabella sitting there, like a curse, this time inside the main entrance of the building, in the courtyard.

“You’re drunk,” said Isabella.

“I must be, because in mid delirium tremens I thought I discovered you sleeping in my doorway at midnight.”

“I had nowhere else to go. My father and I quarreled and he’s thrown me out.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. My brain, dulled by alcohol and bitterness, was unable to release its torrent of denials and curses.

“You can’t stay here, Isabella.”

“Please, just for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll look for a pension. I beg you, Señor Martín.”

“Don’t give me that doe-eyed look,” I threatened.

“Besides, it’s your fault that I’ve been thrown out,” she added.

“My fault. I like that! I don’t know whether you have any talent for writing, but you certainly have plenty of imagination. For what ill-fated reason, pray tell me, is it my fault that your dear father has chucked you out?”

“When you’re drunk you have an odd way of speaking.”

“I’m not drunk. I’ve never been drunk in my life. Now answer my question.”

“I told my father you’d taken me on as your assistant and that from now on I was going to devote my life to literature and couldn’t work in the shop.”

“What?”

“Can we go in? I’m cold and my bum’s turned to stone from sitting on the steps.”

My head was going round in circles and I felt nauseated. I looked up at the faint glimmer that seeped through the skylight at the top of the stairs.

“Is this a punishment from above to make me repent my rakish ways?”

Isabella followed my eyes upwards, looking puzzled.

“Who are you talking to?”

“I’m not talking to anyone, I’m delivering a monologue. It’s the inebriated man’s prerogative. But tomorrow morning first thing I’m going to talk to your father and put an end to this absurdity.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. He’s sworn to kill you if he sees you. He’s got a double-barrel shotgun hidden under the counter. He’s like that. He once killed a mule with it. It was in the summer, near Argentona—”

“Shut up. Not another word. Silence.”

Isabella nodded and looked at me expectantly. I began searching for my key. At that point I couldn’t cope with this garrulous adolescent’s drama. I needed to collapse onto my bed and lose consciousness, preferably in that order. I continued looking for a couple of minutes, in vain. Finally, without saying a word, Isabella came over to me and rummaged through the pocket of my jacket, which my hands had already explored a hundred times, and found the key. She showed it to me, and I nodded, defeated.

Isabella opened the door to the apartment, keeping me upright, then guided me to my bedroom as if I were an invalid, and helped me
onto my bed. After settling my head on the pillows, she removed my shoes. I looked at her in confusion.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to take your trousers off.”

She loosened my collar, sat down beside me, and smiled with a melancholy expression that belied her youth.

“I’ve never seen you so sad, Señor Martín. It’s because of that woman, isn’t it? The one in the photograph.”

She held my hand and stroked it, calming me.

“Everything passes, believe me. Everything.”

Despite myself, I could feel my eyes filling with tears and I turned my head so that she couldn’t see my face. Isabella turned off the light on the bedside table and stayed there, sitting close to me in the dark, listening to the weeping of a miserable drunk, asking no questions, offering no opinion, offering nothing other than her company and her kindness, until I fell asleep.

I
was woken by the agony of the hangover—a press clamping down on my temples—and the scent of Colombian coffee. Isabella had set a table by my bed with a pot of freshly brewed coffee and a plate with bread, cheese, ham, and an apple. The sight of the food made me nauseated, but I stretched out my hand to reach for the coffeepot. Isabella, who had been watching from the doorway, rushed forward, all smiles, and poured a cup for me.

“Drink it like this, good and strong. It will work wonders.”

I accepted the cup and drank.

“What’s the time?”

“One o’clock in the afternoon.”

I snorted.

“How long have you been awake?”

“About seven hours.

“Doing what?”

“Cleaning, tidying up, but there’s enough work here for a few months,” Isabella replied.

I took another long sip of coffee.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “For the coffee. And for cleaning up, although you don’t have to do it.”

“I’m not doing it for you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m
doing it for myself. If I’m going to live here, I’d rather not have to worry about getting stuck to something if I lean on it accidentally.”

“Live here? I thought we’d said that—”

As I raised my voice, a stab of pain sliced through my brain.

“Shhhh,” whispered Isabella.

I nodded, agreeing to a truce. I couldn’t quarrel with Isabella now, and I didn’t want to. There would be time enough to take her back to her family once the hangover had beaten a retreat. I finished my coffee in one long gulp and got up. Five or six thorns pierced my head. I groaned. Isabella caught hold of my arm.

“I’m not an invalid. I can manage on my own.”

She let go of me tentatively. I took a few steps toward the corridor, with Isabella following close behind, as if she feared I was about to topple over at any moment. I stopped in front of the bathroom.

“May I pee on my own?”

“Mind how you aim,” the girl murmured. “I’ll leave your breakfast in the gallery.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You have to eat something.”

“Are you my apprentice or my mother?”

“It’s for your own good.”

I closed the bathroom door and sought refuge inside. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to what I was seeing. The bathroom was unrecognizable. Clean and sparkling. Everything in its place. A new bar of soap on the sink. Clean towels that I didn’t even know I owned. A smell of bleach.

“Good God,” I mumbled.

I put my head under the tap and let the cold water run for a couple of minutes, then went out into the corridor and slowly made my way to the gallery. If the bathroom was unrecognizable, the gallery now belonged to another world. Isabella had washed the windowpanes and the floor and tidied the furniture and armchairs. A diaphanous light filtered through the tall windows and the smell of dust had disappeared. My breakfast awaited on the table opposite the sofa, over which the girl had
spread a clean throw. The books on the shelves seemed to have been reorganized and the glass cabinets had recovered their transparency. Isabella served me a second cup of coffee.

“I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work.”

“Pouring you a coffee?”

She had tidied up the books that lay scattered around in piles on tables and in corners. She had emptied magazine racks that had been overflowing for ages. In just seven hours she had swept away years of darkness, and still she had the time and energy to smile.

“I preferred it as it was,” I said.

“Of course you did, and so did the hundred thousand cockroaches you had as lodgers. I’ve sent them packing with the help of some ammonia.”

“So that’s the stink I smell?”

“This ‘stink’ is the smell of cleanliness,” Isabella protested. “You could be a little bit grateful.”

“I am.”

“It doesn’t show. Tomorrow I’ll go up to the study and—”

“Don’t even think about it.”

Isabella shrugged but she still looked determined, and I knew that in twenty-four hours the study in the tower was going to suffer an irreparable transformation.

“By the way, this morning I found an envelope in the corridor. Somebody must have slipped it under the door last night.”

I looked at her over my cup.

“The main door downstairs is locked,” I said.

“That’s what I thought. Frankly, I did find it rather odd and, although it had your name on it—”

“You opened it.”

“I’m afraid so. I didn’t mean to.”

“Isabella, opening other people’s letters is not a sign of good manners. In some places it’s even considered a crime that can be punished with a prison sentence.”

“That’s what I tell my mother. She always opens my letters. And she’s still free.”

“Where’s the letter?”

Isabella pulled an envelope out of the pocket of the apron she had donned and handed it to me, averting her eyes. The envelope had serrated edges and the paper was thick, porous, and ivory-colored, with an angel stamped on the red wax—now broken—and my name written in red perfumed ink. I opened it and pulled out a folded sheet.

I folded the sheet of paper and put it back in the envelope. Isabella looked at me with curiosity.

“Good news?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“Who is this Señor Corelli? He has nice handwriting, not like yours.”

I looked at her severely.

“If I’m going to be your assistant, it’s only logical that I should know who your contacts are. In case I have to send them packing, that is.”

I grunted.

“He’s a publisher.”

“He must be a good one—just look at the writing paper and envelope he uses. What book are you writing for him?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“How can I help you if you won’t tell me what you’re working on? No, don’t answer. I’ll shut up.”

For ten miraculous seconds, Isabella was silent.

“What’s this Señor Corelli like, then?”

I looked at her coldly.

“Peculiar,” I ventured.

“Takes one to know one …”

Watching that girl with a noble heart I felt, if anything, more miserable and understood that the sooner I got her away from me, even at the risk of hurting her, the better it would be for both of us.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m going out tonight, Isabella.”

“Shall I leave some supper for you? Will you be back very late?”

“I’ll be having dinner out and I don’t know when I’ll be back, but by the time I return, whenever it is, I want you to have left. I want you to collect your things and go. I don’t care where to. There’s no place for you here. Do you understand?”

Her face grew pale, and her eyes began to water. She bit her lip and smiled at me, her cheeks lined with falling tears.

“I’m not needed here. Understood.”

“And don’t do any more cleaning.”

I got up and left her alone in the gallery. I hid in the study, up in the tower, and opened the windows. From down in the gallery I could hear Isabella sobbing. I gazed at the city stretching out under the midday sun, then turned my head to look in the other direction, where I thought I could almost see the shining tiles covering Villa Helius. I imagined Cristina, Señora de Vidal, standing by the windows of her tower, looking down at the Ribera quarter. Something dark and murky filled my heart. I forgot Isabella’s weeping and wished only for the moment when I would meet Corelli, so that we could discuss his accursed book.

…

I stayed in the study as the afternoon spread over the city like blood floating in water. It was hot, hotter than it had been all summer, and the rooftops of the Ribera quarter seemed to shimmer like a mirage. I went down to the lower floor and changed my clothes. The house was silent, and in the gallery the shutters were half closed and the windows tinted with an amber light that seeped down the corridor.

“Isabella?” I called.

There was no reply. I went to the gallery and saw that the girl had left. First, though, she had cleaned off and put in order a collection of the complete works of Ignatius B. Samson. For years they had collected dust and sunk into oblivion in a glass cabinet that now shone immaculately. She had taken one of the books and left it open on a lectern. I read a line at random and felt as if I were traveling back to a time when everything seemed simple and inevitable.

The studied naïveté of those lines made me smile and brought back a suspicion that had never really left me: perhaps it would have been better for everyone, especially for me, if Ignatius B. Samson had never committed suicide and David Martín had never taken his place.

I
t was getting dark when I went out. The heat and humidity had encouraged many of my neighbors to bring their chairs out into the street, hoping for a breeze that never came. I dodged the improvised rings of people sitting around front doors and on street corners and made my way to the railway station, where there was always a queue of taxis waiting for customers. I got into the first cab in line. It took us about twenty minutes to cross the city and climb the hill on whose slopes lay Gaudí’s ghostly forest. The lights in Corelli’s house could be seen from afar.

“I didn’t know anyone lived here,” the driver remarked.