“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.”
13
The 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.”
“End of argument. Have you nothing to do downstairs?”
“No.”
“Then start writing. You’re not here to wash the dishes and hide my things. You’re here because you said you wanted to learn to write and I’m the only idiot you know who can help you.”
“There’s no need to get angry. It’s just that I lack inspiration.”
“Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table and your bottom on the chair and start sweating. Choose a theme, an idea, and sque
eze your brain until it hurts. That’s called inspiration.”
“I have a topic.”
“Hallelujah.”
“I’m going to write about you.”
We exchanged glances, like opponents across a game board.
“Why?”
“Because I find you interesting. And strange.”
“And old.”
“And touchy. Almost like a boy my age.”
Despite myself I was beginning to get used to Isabella’s company, to her jibes and to the light she had brought into that house. If things continued this way, my worst fears were going to come true and we’d end up being friends.
“What about you? Have you found a subject with all those whopping great tomes you’re consulting?”
I decided that the less I told Isabella about my commission, the better.
“I’m still at the research stage.”
“Research? And how does that work?”
“Basically, you read thousands of pages to learn what you need to know and to get to the heart of a subject, to its emotional truth, and then you shed all that knowledge and start again at square one.”
Isabella sighed.
“What is emotional truth?”
“It’s sincerity within fiction.”
“So, does one have to be an honest, good person to write fiction?”
“No. One has to be skilled. Emotional truth is not a moral quality. It’s a technique.”
“You sound like a scientist,” protested Isabella.
“Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. Like architecture or music.”
“I thought it was something that sprang from the artist, just like that, spontaneously.”
“The only things that spring spontaneously are unwanted body hair and warts.”
Isabella considered these revelations without much enthusiasm.
“You’re saying all this to discourage me and make me go home.”
“I should be so lucky.”
“You’re the worst teacher in the world.”
“It’s the student who makes the teacher, not the other way round.”
“It’s impossible to argue with you because you know all the rhetorical tricks. It’s not fair.”
“Nothing is fair. The most one can hope is for things to be logical. Justice is a rare illness in a world that is otherwise a picture of health.”
“Amen. Is that what happens as you grow older? Do people stop believing in things, as you have?”
“No. Most people, as they grow old, continue to believe in nonsense, usually even greater nonsense. I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.”
“Tell me something I don’t know! Well, when I’m older I’ll go on believing in things,” Isabella threatened.
“Good luck.”
“And what’s more, I believe in you.”
She didn’t look away as I fixed my eyes on hers.
“Because you don’t know me.”
“That’s what you think. You’re not as mysterious as you imagine.”
“I don’t pretend to be mysterious.”
“That was a kind substitute for unpleasant. I also know a few rhetorical tricks.”
“That isn’t rhetoric. It’s irony. They’re two different things.”
“Do you always have to win every argument?”
“When it’s as easy as this, yes.”
“And that man …”
“Corelli?”
“Corelli. Does he make it easy for you?”
“No. Corelli knows even more tricks than I do.”
“That’s what I thought. Do you trust him?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. Do you trust him?”
“Why shouldn’t I trust him?”
Isabella shrugged.
“What exactly has he commissioned you to write? Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“I told you. He wants me to write a book for his publishing company.”
“A novel?”
“Not exactly. More like a fable. A legend.”
“A book for children?”
“Something like that.”
“And you’re going to do it?”
“He pays very well.”
Isabella frowned.
“Is that why you write? Because they pay you well?”
“Sometimes.”
“And this time?”
“This time I’m going to write the book because I have to.”
“Are you in debt to him?”
“You could put it that way, I suppose.”
Isabella weighed the matter. She was about to say something but thought twice about it and bit her lip. Instead, she gave me an innocent smile and one of her angelic looks with which she was capable of changing the subject with a simple batting of her eyelids.
“I’d also like to be paid to write,” she said.
“Anyone who writes would like the same, but it doesn’t mean that he or she will achieve it.”
“And how do you achieve it?”
“You begin by going down to the gallery, taking pen and paper—”
“Digging your elbows in and squeezing your brain until it hurts. I know.”
She looked into my eyes, hesitating. She’d been staying in my house for a week and a half and I still showed no signs of sending her home. I imagined she was asking herself when I was going to do it or why I hadn’t done it yet. I also asked myself that very question and could find no answer.
“I like being your assistant, even if you are the way you are,” she said at last.
The girl was staring at me as if her life depended on a kind word. I yielded to temptation. Good words are a vain benevolence that demands no sacrifice and is more appreciated than real acts of kindness.
“I also like you being my assistant, Isabella, even if I am the way I am. And I will like it even more when there is no longer any need for you to be my assistant as you will have nothing more to learn from me.”
“Do you think I have potential?”
“I have no doubt whatsoever. In ten years you’ll be the teacher and I’ll be the apprentice,” I said, repeating words that still tasted of treason.
“You liar,” she said, kissing me sweetly on the cheek before running off down the stairs.
14
That afternoon I left Isabella sitting at the desk we had set up for her in the gallery, facing her blank pages, while I went over to Gustavo Barceló’s bookshop on Calle Fernando hoping to find a good, readable edition of the Bible. All the sets of New and Old Testaments I had in the house were printed in microscopic type on thin, almost translucent onionskin paper, and reading them induced not so much fervor and divine inspiration as migraines. Barceló, who among many other things was an avid collector of holy books and apocryphal Christian texts, had a private room at the back of his shop filled with a formidable assortment of Gospels, lives of saints and holy people, and all kinds of other religious texts.
When I walked into the bookshop, one of the assistants rushed into the backroom office to alert the boss. Barceló emerged looking euphoric.
“Bless my eyes! Sempere told me you’d been reborn, but this is quite something. Next to you, Valentino looks like someone just back from the salt mines. Where have you been hiding, you rogue?”
“Oh, here and there,” I said.
“Everywhere except at Vidal’s wedding party. You were sorely missed, my friend.”
“I doubt that.”
The bookseller nodded, implying that he understood my wish not to discuss the matter.
“Will you accept a cup of tea?”
“Or two. And a Bible. If possible, one that is easy to read.”
“That won’t be a problem,” said the bookseller. “Dalmau?”
The shop assistant called Dalmau came over obligingly.
“Dalmau, our friend Martín here needs a Bible that is legible, not decorative. I’m thinking of Torres Amat, 1825
. What do you think?”
One of the peculiarities of Barceló’s bookshop was that books were spoken of as if they were exquisite wines, cataloged by bouquet, aroma, consistency, and vintage.
“An excellent choice, Señor Barceló, although I’d be more inclined toward the updated and revised edition.”
“Eighteen sixty?”
“Eighteen ninety-three.”
“Of course. That’s it! Wrap it up for our friend Martín and put it on the house.”
“Certainly not,” I objected.
“The day I charge an unbeliever like you for the word of God will be the day I’m struck dead by lightning, and with good reason.”
Dalmau rushed off in search of my Bible and I followed Barceló into his office, where the bookseller poured two cups of tea and offered me a cigar from his humidor. I accepted it and lit it with the flame of the candle he handed me.
“Macanudo?”
“I see you’re educating your palate. A man must have vices, expensive ones if possible. Otherwise when he reaches old age he will have nothing to be redeemed from. In fact, I’m going to have one with you, what the hell!”
A cloud of exquisite cigar smoke covered us like high tide.
“I was in Paris a few months ago and took the opportunity to make some inquiries on the subject you talked about with our friend Sempere some time ago,” Barceló said.
“Éditions de la Lumière.”
“Exactly. I wish I’d been able to scratch a little deeper, but unfortunately, after the publishing house closed down, nobody, it seems, bought its inventory, so it was difficult to gather much information.”
“You say it closed? When?”
“In 1914, I believe.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“Not if we’re talking about the same Éditions de la Lumière, in Boulevard St.-Germain.”
“That’s the one.”
“In fact, I made a note of everything so I wouldn’t forget it when I saw you.”
Barceló looked in the drawer of his desk and pulled out a small notebook.
“Here it is: ‘Éditions de la Lumière, publishing house specializing in religious texts with offices in Rome, Paris, London, and Berlin. Founder and publisher, Andreas Corelli. Date of opening of first office in Paris, 1881—’”