“Rather steep, Don Anacleto.”
With the teacher’s help I managed to reach the first floor with Sempere practically hanging from my neck.
“If you will forgive me, I must retire to rest after a long day spent fighting that pack of primates I have for pupils,” the teacher announced. “I’m telling you, this country is going to disintegrate within one generation. They’ll tear one another to pieces like rats.”
Sempere made a gesture to indicate that I shouldn’t pay too much attention to Don Anacleto.
“He’s a good man,” he whispered, “but he drowns in a glass of water.”
When I stepped into the apartment I was suddenly reminded of that distant morning when I had arrived there covered in blood, holding a copy of Great Expectations. I recalled how Sempere had carried me up to his home and given me a cup of hot cocoa after the doctor left and how he’d whispered soothing words, cleaning the blood off my body with a warm towel and a gentleness that nobody had ever shown me before. At that time Sempere was a strong man and to me he seemed like a giant in every way; without him I don’t think I would have survived those years of scant hope. Little or nothing remained of that strength as I held him in my arms to help him into bed and covered him with a couple of blankets. I sat down next to him and took his hand, not knowing what to do.
“Listen, if we’re both going to start crying our eyes out you’d better leave,” he said.
“Take care, you hear me?”
“I’ll wrap myself in cotton wool, don’t worry.”
I nodded and started toward the door.
“Martín?”
At the doorway I turned round. Sempere was looking at me with the same anxiety he had shown that morning long ago, when I’d lost a few teeth and much of my innocence. I left before he could ask me what was wrong.
31
One of the first expedients of the professional writer that Isabella had learned from me was the art of procrastination. Every veteran in the trade knows that any activity, from sharpening a pencil to cataloging daydreams, takes precedence over sitting down at one’s desk and squeezing one’s brain. Isabella had absorbed this fundamental lesson by osmosis and when I got home, instead of finding her at her desk, I surprised her in the kitchen as she was giving the last touches to a dinner that smelled and looked as if its preparation had been a question of a few hours.
“Are we celebrating something?” I asked.
“With that face of yours, I don’t think so.”
“What’s the smell?”
“Caramelized duck with baked pears and chocolate sauce. I found the recipe in one of your cookbooks.”
“I don’t own any cookbooks.”
Isabella got up and brought over a leather-bound volume, which she placed on the table: The 101 Best Recipes of French Cuisine, by Michel Aragon.
“That’s what you think. On the second row of the library bookshelves, I’ve found all sorts of things, including a handbook on marital hygiene by Dr. Pérez-Aguado with some very suggestive illustrations and gems such as ‘Woman, in accordance with the divine plan, has no knowledge of carnal desire and her spiritual and sentimental fulfillment is sublimated in the natural exercise of motherhood and household chores.’ You’ve got a veritable King Solomon’s mine there.”
“Can you tell me what you were looking for on the second row of the shelves?”
“Inspiration. Which I found.”
“But of a culinary persuasion. We’d agreed that you were going to write every day, with or without inspiration.”
“I’m stuck. And it’s your fault, because you’ve got me working two jobs and mixed up in your schemes with the immaculate son of Sempere.”
“Do you think it’s right to make fun of the man who’s madly in love with you?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Sempere’s son confessed to me that you’ve robbed him of sleep. Literally. He can’t sleep, he can’t eat, and he can’t even pee, poor guy, for thinking so much about you all day.”
“You’re delirious.”
“The one who is delirious is poor Sempere. You should have seen him. I came very close to shooting him, to put an end to his pain and misery.”
“But he pays no attention to me whatsoever,” Isabella protested.
“Because he doesn’t know how to open his heart and find the words with which to express his feelings. We men are like that. Brutish and primitive.”
“He had no trouble finding words to tell me off for not putting a collection of the National Episodes in the right order!”
“That’s not the same. Administrative procedure is one thing, the language of passion another.”
“Nonsense.”
“There’s no nonsense in love, my dear assistant. Changing the subject, are we having dinner or aren’t we?”
Isabella had set a table to match her banquet, using a whole arsenal of dishes, cutlery, and glasses I’d never seen before.
“I don’t know why, if you have all these beautiful things, you don’t use them. They were all in boxes, in the room next to the laundry,” said Isabella. “Typical man!”
I picked up one of the knives and examined it in the light of the candles that Isabella had placed on the table. I realized these household utensils belonged to Diego Marlasca and it made me lose my appetite altogether.
“Is anything the matter?” asked Isabella.
I shook my head. My assistant served the food and stood there looking at me expectantly. I tasted a mouthful and smiled.
“Very good,” I said.
“It’s a bit leathery, I think. The recipe said you had to cook it over a low flame for goodness knows how long, but on your stove the heat is either nonexistent or scorching, with nothing in between.”
“It’s good,” I repeated, eating without appetite.
Isabella kept giving me furtive looks. We continued to eat in silence, the tinkling of the cutlery and plates our only company.
“Were you serious about Sempere’s son?”
I nodded, without glancing up from my plate.
“And what else did he say about me?”
“He said you have a classical beauty, you’re intelligent, intensely feminine—that’s how old-fashioned he is—and he feels there’s a spiritual connection between you.”
“Swear you’re not making this up,” she said.
I put my right hand on the cookbook and raised my left hand.
“I swear on The 101 Best Recipes of French Cuisine,” I declared.
“One usually swears with the other hand.”
I changed hands and repeated the performance with a solemn expression. Isabella puffed.
“What am I going to do?”
“I don’t know. What do people do when they’re in love? Go for a stroll, go dancing …”
“But I’m not in love with this man.”
I went on sampling the caramelized duck, ignoring her insistent stare. After a while, Isabella banged her hand on the table.
“Will you please look at me? This is all your fault.”
I calmly put down my knife and fork, wiped my mouth with the napkin, and looked at her.
“What am I going to do?” she asked again.
“That depends. Do you like Sempere or don’t you?”
A cloud of doubt crossed her face.
“I don’t know. To begin with, he’s a bit old for me.”
“He’s practically my age,” I pointed out. “One or two years older, at the most. Maybe three.”
“Or four or five.”
I sighed.
“He’s in the prime of life. Hadn’t we decided that you like them to be mature?”
“Don’t tease me.”
“Isabella, who am I to tell you what to do?”
“That’s a good one!”
“Let me finish. What I mean is that this is something between Sempere’s son and you. I’d say give him a chance. Nothing else. If one of these days he decides to take the first step and
asks you, let’s say, to have tea, accept the invitation. Perhaps you’ll get talking and you’ll end up being friends, or maybe you won’t. But I think Sempere is a good man, his interest in you is genuine, and I dare say, if you think about it, you feel something for him too.”
“You’re mad.”
“But Sempere isn’t. And I think that not to respect the affection and admiration he feels for you would be mean. And you’re not mean.”
“This is blackmail.”
“No, it’s life.”
Isabella looked daggers at me. I smiled.
“Will you at least finish your dinner?” she asked.
I bolted down the food on my plate, mopped it up with bread, and let out a sigh of satisfaction.
“What’s for dessert?”
…
After dinner I left a pensive Isabella mulling over her doubts and anxieties in the reading room and went up to the study in the tower. I pulled out the photograph of Diego Marlasca lent to me by Salvador and left it by the base of the table lamp. Then I looked through the small citadel of writing pads, notes, and sheets of paper I had been accumulating for the boss. Still feeling the chill of Diego Marlasca’s cutlery in my hands, I did not find it hard to imagine him sitting there gazing at the same view over the rooftops of the Ribera quarter. I took one of my pages at random and began to read. I recognized the words and sentences because I’d composed them, but the troubled spirit that fed them felt more remote than ever. I let the sheet of paper fall to the floor and looked up only to meet my own reflection in the windowpane, a stranger in the blue darkness burying the city. I knew I was not going to be able to work that night, that I would be incapable of putting together a single paragraph for the boss. I turned off the lamp and stayed there in the dark, listening to the wind scratching at the windows and imagining Diego Marlasca in flames, throwing himself into the water of the reservoir, while the last bubbles of air left his lips and the freezing liquid filled his lungs.
I awoke at dawn, my body aching from being encased in the armchair. As I got up I heard the grinding of two or three cogs in my anatomy. I dragged myself to the window and opened it wide. The flat rooftops in the old town shone with frost and a purple sky wreathed itself around Barcelona. At the sound of the bells of Santa María del Mar, a cloud of black wings took to the air from a dovecote. The smell of the docks and the coal ash issuing from neighboring chimneys was borne on a biting, cold wind.
I went down to the kitchen to make some coffee. I glanced at the larder and was astonished. Since Isabella’s arrival in the house, it looked more like the Quílez grocer’s in Rambla de Cataluña. Among the parade of exotic delicacies imported by Isabella’s father, I found a tin of English chocolate biscuits and decided to have some. Half an hour later, my veins pumping with sugar and caffeine, my brain started to work and I had the brilliant idea of beginning the day by complicating my existence even further, if that was possible. As soon as the shops opened, I’d pay a visit to the one selling items for conjurers and magicians in Calle Princesa.
“What are you doing up so early?”
Isabella, the voice of my conscience, was observing me from the doorway.
“Eating biscuits.”
Isabella sat at the table and poured herself a cup of coffee. She looked as if she hadn’t slept all night.
“My father says this was the Queen Mother’s favorite brand.”
“No wonder she looked so strapping.”
Isabella took one of the biscuits and bit into it distractedly.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do? About Sempere, I mean.”
She threw me a venomous look.
“And what are you going to do today? Nothing good, I’m sure.”
“A couple of errands.”
“Right.”
“Right, right? Or ‘Right, I don’t believe you’?”
Isabella set the cup on the table.
“Why do you never talk about whatever it is you’re involved in with that man, the boss?”
“Among other things, for your own good.”
“For my own good. Of course. How stupid could I be? By the way, I forgot to mention that your friend the inspector came by yesterday.”
“Grandes? Was he on his own?”
“No. He came with two thugs as large as wardrobes with faces like pointers.”
The thought of Marcos and Castelo at my door tied my stomach in knots.
“And what did Grandes want?”
“He didn’t say.”
“What did he say, then?”
“He asked me who I was.” “And what did you reply?” “I said I was your lover.” “Outstanding.”
“Well, one of the large ones seemed to find it very amusing.” Isabella took another biscuit and devoured it in two bites. She noticed me looking at her and immediately stopped chewing.
“What did I say?” she asked, projecting a shower of biscuit crumbs.
32
A sliver of light fell through the blanket of clouds, illuminating the red paintwork of the shop front in Calle Princesa. The establishment selling conjuring tricks stood behind a carved wooden canopy. Its glass doors revealed only the bare outlines of the gloomy interior. Black velvet curtains were draped across showcases displaying masks and Victorian-style apparatus: marked packs of cards, weighted daggers, books on magic, and bottles of polished glass containing a rainbow of liquids labeled in Latin and probably bottled in Albacete. The bell tinkled as I came through the door. An empty counter stood at the far end of the shop. I waited a few seconds, examining the collection of curiosities. I was searching for my face in a mirror that reflected everything in the shop except me, when I glimpsed, out of the corner of my eye, a small figure peeping round the curtain of the back room.
“An interesting trick, don’t you think?” said the little man.
I nodded.
“How does it work?”
“I don’t yet know. It arrived a few days ago from a manufacturer of trick mirrors in Constantinople. The creator calls it refractory inversion.”
“It reminds one that nothing is as it seems,” I said.
“Except for magic. How can I help you, sir?”
“Am I speaking to Señor Damián Roures?”
The little man nodded slowly. I noticed that his lips were set in a bright smile that, like the mirror, was not what it seemed. Beneath it, his expression was cold and cautious.
“Your shop was recommended to me.”
“May I ask by whom?”
“Ricardo Salvador.”
Any pretense of a smile disappeared from his face.
“I didn’t know he was still alive. I haven’t seen him for twenty-five years.”
“What about Irene Sabino?”
Roures sighed. He came round the counter and went over to the door. After hanging up the Closed sign he turned the key.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Martín. I’m trying to clarify the circumstances surrounding the death of Señor Diego Marlasca, whom I understand you knew.”
“As far as I know, they were clarified many years ago. Señor Marlasca committed suicide.”
“That was not my understanding.”
“I don’t know what that policeman has told you. Resentment affects one’s memory, Señor … Martín. At the time, Salvador tried to peddle a conspiracy for which he had no proof. Everyone knew he was warming the widow Marlasca’s bed and trying to set himself up as the hero of the hour. As expected, his superiors made him toe the line, and when he didn’t they threw him out of the police force.”
“He thinks there was an attempt to hide the truth.”
Roures scoffed.
“The truth … don’t make me laugh. What they tried to hide was a scandal. Valera and Marlasca’s law firm had its fingers stuck in almost every pie that was being baked in this town. Nobody wanted a story like that to be uncovered. Marlasca had abandoned his position, his work, and his marriage to lock himself up in th
at rambling old house doing God knows what. Anyone with a half a brain could see that it wouldn’t end well.”
“That didn’t stop you and your partner, Jaco, from profiting from his madness by promising him he’d be able to make contact with the hereafter during your séances …”
“I never promised him a thing. Those sessions were a simple amusement. Everyone knew. Don’t try to saddle me with the man’s death—because all I was doing was earning an honest living.”
“And Jaco?”
“I answer only for myself. What Jaco might have done is not my responsibility.”
“Then he did do something.”
“What do you want me to say? That he went off with the money Salvador insisted Marlasca had in a secret account? That he killed Marlasca and fooled us all?”
“And that’s not what happened?”
Roures stared at me.
“I don’t know, I haven’t seen him since the day Marlasca died. I told Salvador and the rest of the police everything I knew. I never lied. If Jaco did do something, I never knew about it or got anything out of it.”
“What can you tell me about Irene Sabino?”
“Irene loved Marlasca. She would never have plotted anything that might hurt him.”
“Do you know what happened to her? Is she still alive?”
“I think so. I was told she was working in a laundry in the Raval quarter. Irene was a good woman. Too good. That’s why she’s ended up the way she has. She believed in those things. She believed in them with all her heart.”
“And Marlasca? What was he looking for in that world?”
“Marlasca was involved in something, but don’t ask me what. Something that neither Jaco nor I had sold him. All I know is that I once heard Irene say that apparently Marlasca had found someone, someone I didn’t know—and, believe me, I knew everyone in the profession—who had promised him that if he did something, I don’t know what, he would recover his son, Ismael, from the dead.”
“Did Irene say who that someone was?”
“She’d never seen him. Marlasca didn’t let her. But she knew that he was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
Roures clicked his tongue.