The Angel's Game

“Can I clarify anything else?”

  “Just one small detail. Now that Señor Barrido has passed away, and supposing that, God forbid, Señor Escobillas does not recover from his injuries and also dies, the publishing house would be dissolved and so would your contract. Am I wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t really know how the company was set up.”

  “But would you say that it was likely?”

  “Possibly. You’d have to ask the publishers’ lawyer.”

  “In fact, I already have. And he has confirmed that, if what nobody wants to happen does happen and Señor Escobillas passes away, that is exactly how things will stand.”

  “Then you already have the answer.”

  “And you would have complete freedom to accept the offer of Señor …”

  “Corelli.”

  “Tell me, have you accepted it already?”

  “May I ask what this has to do with the cause of the fire?” I snapped.

  “Nothing. Simple curiosity.”

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  Grandes looked at his colleagues and then at me.

  “As far as I’m concerned, yes.”

  I made as if to stand up, but the three policemen remained in their seats.

  “Señor Martín, before I forget,” said Grandes. “Can you confirm whether you remember that a week ago Señor Barrido and Señor Escobillas paid you a visit at your home, at number 30 Calle Flassaders, in the company of the aforementioned lawyer?”

  “They did.”

  “Was it a social or a courtesy call?”

  “The publishers came to express their wish that I return to my work on a series of books I’d put aside for a few months while I devoted myself to another project.”

  “Would you describe the conversation as friendly and relaxed?”

  “I don’t remember anyone raising his voice.”

  “And do you remember replying to them, and I quote, ‘In a week you’ll both be dead’? Without raising your voice, of course.”

  I sighed.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “What were you referring to?”

  “I was angry and said the first thing that came into my head, Inspector. That doesn’t mean that I was serious. Sometimes one says things one doesn’t mean.”

  “Thank you for your candor, Señor Martín. You have been very helpful. Good afternoon.”

  I walked away from that place with all three sets of eyes fixed like daggers on my back, and with the firm belief that if I’d replied to every one of the inspector’s questions with a lie I wouldn’t have felt as guilty.

  2

  The meeting with Víctor Grandes and the couple of basilisks he used as escorts left a nasty taste in my mouth, but it had gone by the time I’d walked in the sun for a hundred meters or so, in a body I hardly recognized: strong, free of pain and nausea, with no ringing in my ears or agonizing pinpricks in my skull, no weariness or cold sweats. No recollection of that certainty of death that had suffocated me only twenty-four hours ago. The tragedy of the previous night, including the death of Barrido and the very likely demise of Escobillas, should have filled me with grief and anguish, but neither I nor my conscience was able to feel anything other than a pleasant indifference. That July morning, the Ramblas were in a party mood and I was their prince.

  I took a stroll as far as Calle Santa Ana, with the idea of paying a surprise visit to Señor Sempere. When I walked into the bookshop, Sempere senior was behind the counter settling accounts; his son had climbed a ladder and was rearranging the bookshelves. The bookseller gave me a friendly smile and I realized that for a moment he hadn’t recognized me. A second later his smile disappeared, his mouth dropped, and he came round the counter to embrace me.

  “Martín? Is it really you? Holy Mother of God, you look completely different! I was so worried. We went round to your house a few times, but you didn’t answer the door. I’ve even been to the hospitals and police stations.”

  His son stared at me in disbelief from the top of the ladder. I had to remind myself that only a week before they had seen me looking like one of the corpses in the local morgue.

  “I’m sorry I gave you a fright. I was away for a few days on a work-related matter.”

  “But you did listen to me and go to the doctor, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “It turned out to be something very minor, to do with my blood pressure. I took a tonic for a few days and now I’m as good as new.”

  “Give me the name of the tonic—I might take a shower with it. What a joy it is, and a relief, to see you looking so well!”

  These high spirits were soon punctured when he turned to the news of the day.

  “Did you hear about Barrido and Escobillas?” he asked.

  “I’ve just come from there. It’s hard to believe.”

  “Who would have imagined it? It’s not as if they aroused any warm feelings in me, but this … And tell me, from a legal point of view, how does it all leave you? I don’t mean to sound crude.”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I think the two partners owned the company. There must be heirs, I suppose, but it’s conceivable that if they both die the company as such will cease to exist. And, with it, any agreement I had with them. Or at least that’s what I think.”

  “In other words, if Escobillas, may God forgive me, kicks the bucket too, then you’re a free man.”

  I nodded.

  “What a dilemma,” mumbled the bookseller.

  “What will be will be,” I said.

  Sempere nodded, but I noticed that something was bothering him and he wanted to change the subject.

  “Anyway. The thing is, it’s wonderful that you’ve dropped by because I wanted to ask you a favor.”

  “Say no more, it’s already done.”

  “I warn you, you’re not going to like it.”

  “If I liked it, it wouldn’t be a favor, it would be a pleasure. And if the favor is for you, it will be.”

  “It’s not really for me. I’ll explain and you decide. No obligation, all right?”

  Sempere leaned on the counter and adopted his confidential manner, bringing back childhood memories of times I had spent in that shop.

  “There’s this young girl, Isabella. She must be seventeen. Bright as a button. She’s always coming round here and I lend her books. She tells me she wants to be a writer.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “The thing is, a week ago she left one of her stories with me—just twenty or thirty pages, that’s all—and asked for my opinion.”

  “And?”

  Sempere lowered his tone, as if he were revealing a secret from an official inquiry.

  “Masterly. Better than 99 percent of what I’ve seen published in the last twenty years.”

  “I hope you are including me in the remaining 1 percent or I’ll consider my self-esteem well and truly trodden on.”

  “That’s just what I was coming to. Isabella adores you.”

  “She adores me?”

  “Yes, as if you were the Virgin of Montserrat and Infant Jesus all in one. She’s read the whole of the City of the Damned series ten times over and when I loaned her The Steps of Heaven she told me that if she could write a book like that she’d die a peaceful death.”

  “You were right. I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “I knew you’d try to wiggle out of it.”

  “I’m not wiggling out. You haven’t told me what the favor is.”

  “You can imagine.”

  I sighed.

  “I warned you.”

  “Ask me something else.”

  “All you have to do is talk to her. Give her some encouragement, some advice. Listen to her, read some of her stuff, and give her a little guidance. The girl has a mind as quick as a bullet. You’re really going to like her. You’ll become friends. She could even work as your assistant.”

  “I don’t need an assistant. Still less someone I don’t k
now.”

  “Nonsense. Besides, you do know her. Or at least that’s what she says. She says she’s known you for years but you probably don’t remember her. It seems that the couple of simple souls she has for parents are convinced that this literature business will consign her to eternal damnation, or at least to a secular spinsterhood. They’re wavering between locking her up in a convent or marrying her off to some fool who will give her eight children and bury her forever among pots and pans. If you do nothing to save her, it’s tantamount to murder.”

  “Don’t pull a Jane Eyre on me, Señor Sempere.”

  “Look. I wouldn’t ask you, because I know that you like this altruism stuff about as much as you like dancing the sardana, but every time I see her come in here and look at me with those little eyes that seem to be popping with intelligence and enthusiasm, I think of the future that awaits her and it breaks my heart. I’ve already taught her all I can. The girl learns fast, Martín. She reminds me of you when you were a young lad.”

  I sighed again.

  “Isabella what?”

  “Gispert. Isabella Gispert.”

  “I don’t know her. I’ve never heard that name in my life. Someone’s been telling you a tall story.”

  The bookseller shook his head and mumbled under his breath.

  “That’s exactly what Isabella said you’d say.”

  “So, she’s talented and she’s psychic. What else did she say?”

  “She suspects you’re a much better writer than a person.”

  “What an angel, this Isabelita.”

  “Can I tell her to come see you? No obligation?”

  I gave in. Sempere smiled triumphantly and wanted to seal the pact with an embrace, but I escaped before the old bookseller was able to complete his mission of trying to make me feel like a good Samaritan.

  “You won’t be sorry, Martín,” I heard him say as I walked out the door.

  3

  When I got home, Inspector Víctor Grandes was sitting on the front step, calmly smoking a cigarette. With the poise of a matinee star he smiled when he saw me, as if he were an old friend making a courtesy call. I sat down next to him and he pulled out his cigarette case. Gitanes, I noticed. I accepted.

  “Where are Hansel and Gretel?”

  “Marcos and Castelo were unable to come. We received a tip, so they’ve gone to find an old acquaintance in Pueblo Seco who is probably in need of a little persuasion to jog his memory.”

  “Poor devil.”

  “If I’d told them I was coming here, they would probably have joined me. They think the world of you.”

  “Love at first sight, I noticed. What can I do for you, Inspector? May I invite you upstairs for a cup of coffee?”

  “I wouldn’t dare invade your privacy, Señor Martín. In fact, I simply wanted to give you the news personally before you found out from other sources.”

  “What news?”

  “Escobillas passed away early this afternoon in the Clínico hospital.”

  “God. I didn’t know,” I said.

  Grandes continued smoking in silence.

  “I could see it coming. Nothing anyone could do about it.”

  “Have you discovered anything about the cause of the fire?” I asked.

  The inspector looked at me, then nodded.

  “Everything seems to indicate that somebody spilled petrol over Señor Barrido and then set fire to him. The flames spread when he panicked and tried to get out of his office. His partner and the employee who rushed over to help him were trapped.”

  I swallowed hard. Grandes smiled reassuringly.

  “The publishers’ lawyer was saying this afternoon that, given the personal nature of your agreement, it becomes null and void with the death of the publishers, although their heirs will retain the rights on all the works published until now. I suppose he’ll write to you, but I thought you might like to know in advance, in case you need to take any decision concerning the offer from the other publisher you mentioned.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Grandes took a last puff of his cigarette and threw the butt on the ground. He smiled affably and stood up. Then he patted me on the shoulder and walked off toward Calle Princesa.

  “Inspector?” I called.

  Grandes stopped and turned round.

  “You don’t think that …”

  Grandes gave a weary smile.

  “Take care, Martín.”

  …

  I went to bed early and woke all of a sudden thinking it was the following day, only to discover that it was just after midnight.

  In my dreams I had seen Barrido and Escobillas trapped in their office. The flames crept up their clothes until every inch of their bodies was covered. First their clothes, then their skin began to fall off in strips, and their panic-stricken eyes cracked under the heat. Their bodies shook in spasms of agony until they collapsed among the rubble. Flesh peeled off their bones like melted wax, forming a smoking puddle at my feet, in which I could see my own smiling reflection as I blew out the match I held in my fingers.

  I got up to fetch a glass of water and, assuming I’d missed the train to sleep, I went up to the study, opened the drawer in my desk and pulled out the book I had rescued from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. I turned on the reading lamp and twisted its flexible arm so that it focused directly on the book. I opened to the first page and began to read:

  Lux Aeterna

  D.M.

  At first glance, the book was a collection of texts and prayers that seemed to make no sense. It was a manuscript, a handful of typed pages bound rather carelessly in leather. I went on reading and after a while I thought I sensed some sort of method in the sequence of events, songs, and meditations that punctuated the main body of the text. The language possessed its own cadence, and what had at first seemed like a complete absence of form or style gradually turned into a hypnotic chant that permeated the reader’s mind, plunging him into a state somewhere between drowsiness and forgetfulness. The same thing was true of the content, whose central theme did not become apparent until well into the first section, or chant, for the work seemed to be structured in the manner of ancient poems written in an age when time proceeded at its own pace and was unending. I realized then that Lux Aeterna was, for want of a better description, a sort of book of the dead.

  After reading the first thirty or forty pages of circumlocutions and riddles, I found myself caught up in a precise, extravagant, and increasingly disturbing puzzle of prayers and entreaties in which death, referred to at times—in awkwardly constructed verses—as a white angel with reptilian eyes and at other times as a luminous boy, was presented as a sole and omnipresent deity made manifest in nature, desire, and the fragility of existence.

  Whoever the mysterious D.M. was, death hovered over his verses like an all-consuming and eternal force. A byzantine tangle of references to various mythologies of heaven and hell were knotted together here into a single plane. According to D.M., there was only one beginning and one end, only one creator and one destroyer who presented himself under different names to confuse men and tempt them in their weakness, a sole God whose true face was divided into two halves: one sweet and pious, the other cruel and demonic.

  That much I was able to deduce, but no more, because beyond those principles the author seemed to have lost the course of his narrative and it was almost impossible to decipher the prophetic references and images that peppered the text. Storms of blood and fire pouring over cities and peoples. Armies of corpses in uniform running across endless plains, destroying all life as they passed. Babies strung up with torn flags at the gates of fortresses. Black seas where thousands of souls in torment were suspended for all eternity beneath icy, poisoned waters. Clouds of ashes and oceans of bones and rotten flesh infested with insects and snakes. The succession of hellish, nauseating images went on unabated.

  As I turned the pages I had the feeling that, step by step, I was followin
g the map of a sick and broken mind. Line after line, the author of those pages had, without being aware of it, been documenting his own descent into a chasm of madness. The last third of the book seemed to suggest an attempt at retracing his steps, a desperate cry from the prison of his insanity to escape the labyrinth of tunnels that had formed in his mind. The text ended suddenly, midway through an imploring sentence, offering no explanation.

  By this time my eyelids were beginning to close. A light breeze wafted through the window. It came from the sea, sweeping the mist off the rooftops. I was about to close the book when I realized that something was trapped in my mind’s filter, something connected to the type on those pages. I returned to the beginning and started to go over the text. I found the first example on the fifth line. From then on the same mark appeared every two or three lines. One of the characters, the capital S, was always slightly tilted to the right. I took a blank page from the drawer, slipped it in the roller of the Underwood typewriter on my desk, and wrote a sentence at random:

  Sometimes I hear the bells of Santa María del Mar.

  I pulled out the paper and examined it under the lamp:

  Sometimes … of Santa María

  I sighed. Lux Aeterna had been written on that very same typewriter and probably, I imagined, at that same desk.

  4

  The following morning I went out to have my breakfast in a café opposite Santa María del Mar. The Borne neighborhood was heaving with carts and people going to the market, with shopkeepers and wholesalers opening their stores. I sat at one of the outdoor tables, asked for a café con leche, and adopted an orphaned copy of La Vanguardia that was lying on the next table. While my eyes slid over the headlines and leads, I noticed a figure walking up the steps to the church door and sitting down at the top to observe me on the sly. The girl must have been about sixteen or seventeen and was pretending to jot things down in a notebook while she stole glances at me. I sipped my coffee calmly. After a while I beckoned to the waiter.