The Angel's Game (27 page)

“Are you abandoning me so soon?” she said when she saw me. “Who is going to flirt with me now?”

“Who isn’t?”

She came with me to the exit and shook my hand at the top of the flight of stairs that led to the courtyard of the old hospital. Halfway down I stopped and turned round. She was still there, watching me.

“Good luck, Ignatius B. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

W
hile was having dinner with Isabella at the gallery table, I noticed my new assistant was casting me a sidelong glance.

“Don’t you like the soup? You haven’t touched it,” the girl ventured.

I looked at the plate I had allowed to grow cold, took a spoonful, and pretended I was tasting the most exquisite delicacy.

“Delicious,” I remarked.

“And you haven’t said a word since you returned from the library,” Isabella added.

“Any other complaints?”

Isabella looked away, upset. Although I had little appetite, I ate some of the cold soup so as to have an excuse for not speaking.

“Why are you so sad? Is it because of that woman?”

I went on stirring my spoon around in the soup. Isabella didn’t take her eyes off me.

“Her name is Cristina,” I said eventually. “And I’m not sad. I’m pleased for her because she’s married my best friend and she’s going to be very happy.”

“And I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

“You’re a busybody. That’s what you are.”

“I prefer you like this, when you’re in a foul mood, because you tell the truth.”

“Then let’s see how you like this: clear off to your room and leave me in peace, for Christ’s sake!”

She tried to smile, but by the time I stretched out my hand to her, her eyes had filled with tears. She took my plate and hers and fled to the kitchen. I heard the plates falling into the sink and then, a few moments later, the door of her bedroom slamming shut. I savored the glass of red wine left on the table, an exquisite vintage from Isabella’s parents’ shop. After a while I went along to her bedroom door and knocked gently. She didn’t reply, but I could hear her crying. I tried to open the door, but the girl had locked herself in.

I went up to the study, which after Isabella’s visit smelled of fresh flowers and looked like the cabin of a luxury cruiser. She had tidied up all the books, dusted and left everything shiny and unrecognizable. The old Underwood looked like a piece of sculpture and the letters on the keys were clearly visible again. A neat pile of paper, containing summaries of religious textbooks and catechisms, lay on the desk next to the day’s mail. A couple of cigars on a saucer emitted a delicious scent: Macanudos, one of the Caribbean delicacies supplied to Isabella’s father on the quiet by a contact in the state tobacco industry. I took one of them and lit it. It had an intense flavor that seemed to embody all the aromas and poisons a man could wish for in order to die in peace.

I sat at the desk and went through the day’s letters, ignoring them all except one: ocher parchment embellished with the writing I would have recognized anywhere. The missive from my new publisher and patron, Andreas Corelli, summoned me to meet him on Sunday, midafternoon, at the top of the main tower of the new cable railway that had been launched to coincide with the International Exhibition.

…

The tower of San Sebastián stood one hundred meters high amid a jumble of cables and steel that induced vertigo if one merely looked at them. The cable railway crossed the docks from that first tower to a huge central structure reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower that served as the junction. From there the cable cars departed, suspended in midair, for the
second part of the journey up to Montjuïc, where the heart of the exhibition was located. This technological marvel promised views of the city that until then had been the preserve only of airships, birds with a large wingspan, and hailstones. From my point of view, men and seagulls were not supposed to share the same air space and as soon as I set foot in the lift that went up the tower I felt my stomach shrink to the size of a marble. The journey up seemed endless, the jolting of that brass capsule an exercise in pure nausea.

I found Corelli gazing through one of the large windows that looked out over the docks, his eyes lost among watercolors of sails and masts as they slid across the water. He wore a white silk suit and was toying with a sugar lump, which he proceeded to swallow with an animal voracity. I cleared my throat and the boss turned round, smiling with pleasure.

“A marvelous view, don’t you think?”

I nodded tentatively.

“You don’t like heights?”

“I like to keep my feet on the ground as much as possible,” I replied, maintaining a prudent distance from the window.

“I’ve gone ahead and bought return tickets,” he informed me.

“What a kind thought.”

I followed him to the footbridge from which one stepped into the cars that departed from the tower and traveled, suspended a sickening height above the ground, for what looked like a horribly long time.

“How did you spend the week, Martín?”

“Reading.”

He glanced at me briefly.

“By your bored expression I suspect it was not Alexandre Dumas.”

“A collection of dandruffy academics and their leaden prose.”

“Ah, intellectuals. And you wanted me to sign one up. Why is it that the less one has to say the more one says it in the most pompous and pedantic way possible?” Corelli asked. “Is it to fool the world or just to fool themselves?”

“Probably both.”

The boss handed me the tickets and signaled to me to go first. I showed the tickets to the person holding the cable car door open and entered unenthusiastically. I decided to stand in the center, as far as possible from the windows. Corelli smiled like an excited child.

“Perhaps part of your problem is that you’ve been reading the commentators and not the people they were commenting on. A common mistake but fatal when you’re trying to learn something,” Corelli observed.

The doors closed and a sudden jerk sent us into orbit. I held on to a metal pole and took a deep breath.

“I sense that scholars and theoreticians are no heroes of yours,” I said.

“I have no heroes, my friend, still less those who cover themselves or one another in glory. Theory is the practice of the impotent. I suggest that you put aside the encyclopedists’ accounts and go straight to the sources. Tell me, have you read the Bible?”

I hesitated for a moment. The cable car lurched on into the void. I looked at the floor.

“Fragments here and there, I suppose,” I mumbled.

“You suppose. Like almost everyone. A serious mistake. Everyone should read the Bible. And reread it. Believers or nonbelievers, it doesn’t matter. I read it at least once a year. It’s my favorite book.”

“And are you a believer or a skeptic?” I asked.

“I’m a professional. And so are you. What we believe or don’t believe is irrelevant as far as our work is concerned. To believe or to disbelieve is a pointless act. Either one knows or one doesn’t. And that’s all there is to it.”

“Then I confess that I don’t know anything.”

“Follow that path and you’ll find the footsteps of the great philosophers. And along the way read the Bible from start to finish. It’s one of the greatest stories ever told. Don’t make the mistake of confusing the word of God with the missal industry that lives off it.”

The longer I spent in the company of the publisher the less I understood him.

“I’m quite lost. We were talking about legends and fables and now you’re telling me that I must think of the Bible as the word of God?”

A shadow of impatience and irritation clouded his eyes.

“I’m speaking figuratively. God isn’t a charlatan. The word is human currency.”

He smiled at me the way one smiles at a child who cannot understand the most elemental things. As I observed him, I realized that I found it impossible to know when he was talking seriously and when he was joking. As impossible as guessing at the purpose of the extravagant undertaking for which he was paying me such a princely sum. In the meantime the cable car was bobbing about like an apple on a tree lashed by a gale. Never had I thought so much about Isaac Newton.

“You’re a coward, Martín. This machine is completely safe.”

“I’ll believe it when I’m back on firm ground.”

We were nearing the midpoint of the journey, the tower of San Jaime, which rose up from the docks near the large Customs Building.

“Do you mind if we get off here?” I asked.

Corelli shrugged. I didn’t feel at ease until I was inside the tower’s lift and felt it touch the ground. When we walked out into the port we found a bench facing the sea and the slopes of Montjuïc. We sat down to watch the cable car flying high above us, me with a sense of relief, Corelli with longing.

“Tell me about your first impressions. What have these days of intensive study and reading suggested to you?”

I proceeded to summarize what I thought I’d learned, or unlearned, during those days. The publisher listened attentively, nodding and occasionally gesticulating with his hands. At the end of my report about the myths and beliefs of human beings, Corelli gave a satisfactory verdict.

“I think you’ve done an excellent work of synthesis. You haven’t found the proverbial needle in the haystack, but you’ve understood that the only thing that really matters in the whole pile of hay is the damned needle—the rest is just fodder for asses. Speaking of donkeys, tell me, are you interested in fables?”

“When I was small, for about two months I wanted to be Aesop.”

“We all give up great expectations along the way.”

“What did you want to be as a child, Señor Corelli?”

“God.”

He leered like a jackal, wiping the smile off my face.

“Martín, fables are possibly one of the most interesting literary forms ever invented. Do you know what they teach us?”

“Moral lessons?”

“No. They teach us that human beings learn and absorb ideas and concepts through narrative, through stories, not through lessons or theoretical speeches. This is what any of the great religious texts teach us. They’re all tales about characters who must confront life and overcome obstacles, figures setting off on a journey of spiritual enrichment through exploits and revelations. All holy books are, above all, great stories whose plots deal with the basic aspects of human nature, setting them within a particular moral context and a particular framework of supernatural dogmas. I was content for you to spend a dismal week reading theses, speeches, opinions, and comments so that you could discover for yourself that there is nothing to learn from them, because they’re nothing more than exercises in good or bad faith—usually unsuccessful—by people who are trying, in turn, to understand. The professorial conversations are over. From now on I’ll ask you to start reading the stories of the Brothers Grimm, the tragedies of Aeschylus, the Ramayana, or the Celtic legends. Please yourself. I want you to analyze how these texts work. I want you to distill their essence and find out why they provoke an emotional reaction. I want you to learn the grammar, not the moral. And I want you to bring me something of your own in two or three weeks’ time, the beginning of a story. I want you to make me believe.”

“I thought we were professionals and couldn’t commit the sin of believing in anything.”

Corelli smiled, baring his teeth.

“One can convert only a sinner, never a saint.”

T
he days passed. Accustomed as I was to years of living alone and to that state of methodical and undervalued anarchy common to bachelors, the continued presence of a woman in the house, even though she was an unruly adolescent with a volatile temper, was beginning to play havoc with my daily routine. I believed in controlled disorder; Isabella didn’t. I believed that objects find their own place in the chaos of a household; Isabella didn’t. I believed in solitude and silence; Isabella didn’t. In just a couple of days I discovered that I was no longer able to find anything in my own home. If I was looking for a paper knife or a glass or a pair of shoes, I had to ask Isabella where Providence had kindly inspired her to hide them.

“I don’t hide anything. I put things in their place. Which is different.”

Not a day went by when I didn’t feel the urge to strangle her half a dozen times. When I took refuge in my study, searching for peace and quiet in which to think, Isabella would appear after a few minutes, a smile on her face, bringing me a cup of tea or some biscuits. She would wander around the study, look out the window, tidy everything I had on my desk, and then would ask me what I was doing there, so quiet and mysterious. I discovered that seventeen-year-old girls have such huge verbal energy that their brains drive them to expend it every twenty seconds.
On the third day I decided I had to find her a boyfriend—if possible a deaf one.

“Isabella, how is it that a girl as attractive as you has no suitors?”

“Who says I don’t?”

“Isn’t there any boy you like?”

“Boys my age are boring. They have nothing to say and half of them seem like complete idiots.”

I was going to say that they didn’t improve with age but didn’t want to spoil her illusions.

“So what age do you like them?”

“Old. Like you.”

“Do I seem old to you?”

“Well, you’re not exactly a spring chicken.”

It was preferable to think she was pulling my leg than to accept the blow to my vanity. I decided to respond with a few drops of sarcasm.

“The good news is that young girls like old men, and the bad news is that old men, especially decrepit, slobbering old men, like young girls.”

“I know. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

Isabella observed me. She was scheming and smiled with a hint of malice.

“Do you like young girls too?”

The answer was on my lips before she had asked the question. I adopted a masterful, impartial tone, like a professor of geography.

“I liked them when I was your age. Now I generally like girls of my own age.”

“At your age they’re no longer girls. They’re young women or, to be precise, ladies.”