The Angel's Game (6 page)

…

Doña Mariana was razor sharp and could figure out what was going on, but despite her insistence I didn’t mention the subject of my education to my father again. When my teacher realized there was no hope she told me that every day, when lessons were over, she would devote an hour just to me, to talk to me about books, history, and all the things that scared my father so much.

“It will be our secret,” said the teacher.

I had begun to understand that my father was ashamed that others might think him ignorant, a residue from a war which, like all wars, was fought in the name of God and country to make a few men who were already far too powerful when they started it even more powerful. Around that time I started occasionally to accompany my father on his night shift. We’d take a tram in Calle Trafalgar that left us by the entrance to the Pueblo Nuevo cemetery. I would stay in his cubicle reading old copies of the newspaper and now and then trying to chat with him, a difficult task. By then, my father hardly ever spoke at all, either about the war in the colonies or about the woman who had abandoned him. Once I asked him why my mother left us. I suspected it had been my fault, something I’d done, perhaps just being born.

“Your mother had already left me before I was sent to the front. I was the idiot, I didn’t realize until I returned. Life’s like that, David. Sooner or later, everything and everybody abandons you.”

“I’m never going to abandon you, Father.”

I thought he was about to cry and I hugged him so as not to see his face.

The following day, unannounced, my father took me to El Indio, a large store that sold fabrics on Calle del Carmen. We didn’t actually go in, but from the windows at the shop entrance my father pointed at a smiling young woman who was serving some customers, showing them expensive flannels and other textiles. “That’s your mother,” he said. “One of these days I’ll come back here and kill her.”

“Don’t say that, Father.”

He looked at me with reddened eyes, and I knew then that he still loved her and that I would never forgive her for it. I remember that I watched her secretly, without her knowing we were there, and that I recognized her only because of a photograph my father kept in a drawer, next to his army pistol. Every night, when he thought I was asleep, he would take it out and look at it as if it held all the answers, or at least enough of them.

For years I would return to the doors of that store to spy on her. I never had the courage to go in or to approach her when I saw her coming
out and walking away down the Ramblas, toward a life that I had imagined for her, with a family that made her happy and a son who deserved her affection and the touch of her skin more than I did. My father never knew that sometimes I would sneak round there to see her or that some days I even followed close behind, always ready to take her hand and walk by her side, always fleeing at the last moment. In my world, great expectations existed only in the pages of a book.

…

The good luck my father yearned for never arrived. The only courtesy life showed him was not to make him wait too long. One night when we reached the doors of the newspaper building to start the shift, three men came out of the shadows and gunned him down before my eyes. I remember the smell of sulfur and the halo of smoke that rose from the holes the bullets burned through his coat. One of the gunmen was about to finish him off with a shot to the head when I threw myself on top of my father and another of the murderers stopped him. I remember the eyes of the gunman fixing on mine as he debated whether to kill me too. Then, all of a sudden, the men hurried off and disappeared into the narrow streets between the factories of Pueblo Nuevo.

That night my father’s murderers left him bleeding to death in my arms and me alone in the world. I spent almost two weeks sleeping in the workshops of the newspaper press, hidden among Linotype machines that looked like giant steel spiders, trying to silence the excruciating whistling sound that perforated my eardrums when night fell. When I was discovered, my hands and clothes were still stained with dry blood. At first nobody knew who I was, because I didn’t speak for about a week and when I did it was only to yell my father’s name until I was hoarse. When they asked me about my mother I told them she had died and I had nobody else in the world. My story reached the ears of Pedro Vidal, the star writer at the paper and a close friend of the editor, who, at his request, arranged for me to be given a runner’s job and to live in the caretaker’s modest rooms in the basement until further notice.

Those were years in which bloodshed and violence were beginning
to be everyday occurrences in Barcelona. Days of pamphlets and bombs that left strewn bodies shaking and smoking in the streets of the Raval quarter, of gangs of black figures who prowled about at night maiming and killing, of processions and parades of saints and generals who reeked of death and deceit, of inflammatory speeches in which everyone lied and everyone was right. The anger and hatred that years later would lead such people to murder one another in the name of grandiose slogans and colored rags could already be smelled in the poisoned air. The continual haze from the factories slithered over the city and masked its cobbled avenues, furrowed by trams and carriages. The night belonged to gaslight, to the shadows of narrow side streets shattered by the flash of gunshots and the blue trace of burned gunpowder. Those were years when one grew up fast, and with childhood slipping out of their hands, many children already had the look of old men.

With no other family to my name but the dark city of Barcelona, the newspaper became my shelter and my universe until, when I was fourteen, my salary permitted me to rent that room in Doña Carmen’s pension. I had lived there barely a week when the landlady came to my room and told me that a gentleman was asking for me. On the landing stood a man dressed in gray, with a gray expression and a gray voice, who asked me whether I was David Martín. When I nodded, he handed me a parcel wrapped in coarse brown paper, then vanished down the stairs, the trace of his gray absence contaminating my world of poverty. I took the parcel to my room and closed the door. Nobody, except two or three people at the newspaper, knew that I lived there. Intrigued, I removed the wrapping. It was the first package I had ever received. Inside was a wooden case that looked vaguely familiar. I placed it on the narrow bed and opened it. It contained my father’s old pistol, given to him by the army, which he had brought with him when he returned from the Philippines to earn himself an early and miserable death. Next to the pistol was a small cardboard box with bullets. I held the gun and felt its weight. It smelled of gunpowder and oil. I wondered how many men my father had killed with that weapon with which he had probably hoped to end his own life, until someone got there first. I put it back and closed the case. My first impulse was
to throw it in the rubbish bin, but then I realized that it was all I had left of my father. I imagined it had come from the moneylender who, when my father died, had tried to recoup his debts by confiscating what little we had in the old apartment overlooking the Palau de la Música: he had now decided to send me this gruesome souvenir to welcome me to adulthood. I hid the case on top of my cupboard, against the wall, where filth accumulated and where Doña Carmen would not be able to reach it, even with stilts, and I didn’t touch it again for years.

That afternoon I went back to Sempere & Sons and, feeling I was now a man of the world as well as a man of means, I made it known to the bookseller that I intended to buy that old copy of
Great Expectations
I had been forced to return to him years before.

“Name your price,” I said. “Charge me for all the books I haven’t paid you for all these years.”

Sempere, I remember, gave me a wistful smile and put a hand on my shoulder.

“I sold it this morning,” he confessed.

T
hree hundred and sixty-five days after I had written my first story for
The Voice of Industry
I arrived as usual at the newspaper offices but found the place almost deserted. There were just a handful of journalists, colleagues who, months ago, had given me affectionate nicknames and even words of encouragement but who now ignored my greeting and gathered in a circle to whisper among themselves. In less than a minute they had picked up their coats and disappeared as if they feared they would catch something from me. I sat alone in that cavernous room staring at the strange sight of dozens of empty desks. Slow, heavy footsteps behind me announced the approach of Don Basilio.

“Good evening, Don Basilio. What’s going on here today? Why has everyone left?”

Don Basilio looked at me sadly and sat at the desk next to mine.

“There’s a Christmas dinner for the staff. At the Set Portes restaurant,” he said quietly. “I don’t suppose they mentioned anything to you.”

I feigned a carefree smile and shook my head.

“Aren’t you going?” I asked.

Don Basilio shook his head.

“I’m no longer in the mood.”

We looked at each other in silence.

“What if I take you somewhere?” I suggested. “Wherever you
fancy. Can Solé, if you like. Just you and me, to celebrate the success of
The Mysteries of Barcelona.”

Don Basilio smiled, slowly nodding.

“Martín,” he said at last. “I don’t know how to say this to you.”

“Say what to me?”

Don Basilio cleared his throat.

“I’m not going to be able to publish any more installments of
The Mysteries of Barcelona.”

I gave him a puzzled look. Don Basilio looked away.

“Would you like me to write something else? Something more like Galdós?”

“Martín, you know what people are like. There have been complaints. I’ve tried to put a stop to this, but the editor is a weak man and doesn’t like unnecessary conflicts.”

“I don’t understand, Don Basilio.”

“Martín, I’ve been asked to be the one to tell you.”

Finally, he shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m fired,” I mumbled.

Don Basilio nodded.

Despite myself, I felt my eyes filling with tears.

“It might feel like the end of the world to you now, but believe me when I say that it’s the best thing that could have happened to you. This place isn’t for you.”

“And what place is for me?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, Martín. Believe me, I’m very sorry.”

Don Basilio stood up and put a hand affectionately on my shoulder.

“Happy Christmas, Martín.”

…

That same evening I emptied my desk and left for good the place that had been my home, disappearing into the dark, lonely streets of the city. On my way to the pension I stopped by the Set Portes restaurant under the arches of Casa Xifré. I stayed outside watching my colleagues laughing and raising their glasses through the windowpane. I hoped my
absence made them happy or at least made them forget that they weren’t happy and never would be.

I spent the rest of that week pacing the streets, taking shelter every day in the Ateneo library and imagining that when I returned to the pension I would discover a note from the newspaper editor asking me to rejoin the team. Hiding in one of the reading rooms, I would pull out the business card I had found in my hand when I woke up in El Ensueño and start to compose a letter to my unknown benefactor, Andreas Corelli, but I always tore it up and tried rewriting it the following day. On the seventh day, tired of feeling sorry for myself, I decided to make the inevitable pilgrimage to my maker’s house.

I took the train to Sarriá in Calle Pelayo—in those days it still operated aboveground—and sat at the front of the carriage to gaze at the city and watch the streets become wider and grander the farther we drew away from the center. I got off at the Sarriá stop and from there took a tram that dropped me by the entrance to the monastery of Pedralbes. It was an unusually hot day for the time of year and I could smell the scent of the pines and broom that peppered the hillside. I set off up Avenida Pearson, which at that time was already being developed. Soon I glimpsed the unmistakable profile of Villa Helius. As I climbed the hill and got nearer, I could see Vidal sitting in the window of his tower in his shirtsleeves, enjoying a cigarette. Music floated on the air and I remembered that Vidal was one of the privileged few who owned a radio receiver. How good life must have looked from up there, and how insignificant I must have seemed.

I waved at him and he returned my greeting. When I reached the villa I met the driver, Manuel, who was on his way to the coach house carrying a handful of rags and a bucket of steaming hot water.

“Good to see you here, David,” he said. “How’s life? Keeping up the good work?”

“We do our best,” I replied.

“Don’t be modest. Even my daughter reads those adventures you publish in the newspaper.”

I was amazed that the chauffeur’s daughter not only knew of my existence but had even read some of the nonsense I wrote.

“Cristina?”

“I have no other,” replied Don Manuel. “Don Pedro is upstairs in his study, in case you want to go up.”

I nodded gratefully, slipped into the mansion, and went up to the third floor, where the tower rose above the undulating rooftop of polychrome tiles. There I found Vidal installed in his study with its view of the city and the sea in the distance. He turned off the radio, a contraption the size of a small meteorite that he’d bought a few months earlier when the first Radio Barcelona broadcast had been announced from the studios concealed under the dome of Hotel Colón.

“It cost me almost two hundred pesetas, and it broadcasts a load of rubbish.”

We sat facing each other, with all the windows wide open and a breeze that to me, an inhabitant of the dark old town, smelled of a different world. The silence was exquisite, like a miracle. You could hear insects fluttering in the garden and the leaves on the trees rustling in the wind.

“It feels like summer,” I ventured.

“Don’t pretend everything is OK by talking about the weather. I’ve already been told what happened,” Vidal said.