“For God’s sake, Martín …” said Barceló.
The bookseller knelt down next to Vidal, who was gasping as blood streamed from his mouth. Barceló cradled his head and threw me a furious look. I fled, passing some of the people who had been present at the graveside and who had stopped to watch the altercation. I didn’t have the courage to look them in the eye.
3
I didn’t leave the house for several days, sleeping at odd times and barely eating. At night I would sit in the gallery by the open fire and listen to the silence, hoping to hear footsteps outside the door, thinking that Cristina would return, that as soon as she heard about the death of Señor Sempere she’d come back to me, if only out of compassion, which by now would have been enough for me. When almost a week had gone by since the death of the bookseller and I realized that Cristina was not going to return, I began to visit the study again. I rescued the boss’s manuscript from the trunk and started to reread it, savoring every phrase, every paragraph. Reading it produced in me both nausea and a dark satisfaction. When I thought of the hundred thousand francs that at first had seemed so much, I smiled and reflected that I’d sold myself to that son of a bitch too cheaply. Vanity papered over my bitterness, and pain closed the door of my conscience. In an act of pure arrogance, I reread my predecessor Diego Marlasca’s Lux Aeterna and then threw it into the fire. Where he had failed, I would triumph. Where he had lost his way, I would find the path out of the labyrinth.
I went back to work on the seventh day. I waited until midnight and sat down at my desk. A clean sheet in the old Underwood typewriter and the city black behind the windowpanes. The words and images sprang forth from my hands as if they’d been waiting angrily in the prison of my soul. The pages flowed from me without thought or measure, with nothing more than the desire to bewitch, or poison, hearts and minds. I stopped thinking about the boss, about his reward or his demands. For the first time in my life I was writing for myself and nobody else. I was writing to set the world on fire and be consumed along with it. I worked every night until I collapsed from exhaustion. I banged the typewriter keys until my fingers bled and fever clouded my vision.
One morning in January, when I’d lost all notion of time, I heard someone knocking on the door. I was lying on my bed, my eyes lost in the old photograph of Cristina as a small child, walking hand in hand with a stranger along a jetty that reached out into a sea of light. That image seemed to be the only good thing I had left, the key to all mysteries. I ignored the knocking for a few minutes, until I heard her voice and knew she was not going to give up.
“Open the door, damn you! I know you’re there and I’m not leaving until you open it or I knock it down.”
When she saw me Isabella stepped back and looked horrified.
“It’s only me, Isabella.”
She pushed me aside and made straight for the gallery, where she flung open the windows. Then she went to the bathroom and started filling the tub. She took my arm and dragged me there, then made me sit on the edge of the bath and examined my eyes, lifting my eyelids with her fingertips and muttering to herself. Without saying a word she began to remove my shirt.
“Isabella, I’m not in the mood.”
“What are all these cuts? But … what have you done to yourself?”
“They’re just scratches.”
“I want a doctor to see you.”
“No.”
“Don’t you dare say no to me,” she replied harshly. “You’re getting into this bathtub right now; you’re going to wash yourself with soap and water and you’re going to have a shave. You have two options: either you do it or I will. And don’t imagine for one second that I won’t.”
I smiled.
“I know.”
“Do as I say. In the meantime I’m going to find a doctor.”
I was about to reply, but she raised her hand to silence me.
“Don’t say another word. If you think you’re the only person for whom life is painful, you’re wrong. And if you don’t mind letting yourself die like a dog, at least have the decency to remember that there are those of us who do care—although, to tell the truth, I don’t see why.”
“Isabella—”
“Into the water. And please remove your trousers and underpants.”
“I know how to take a bath.”
“I’d never have guessed.”
While Isabella went off in search of a doctor, I submitted to her orders and subjected myself to a baptism of cold water and soap. I hadn’t shaved since the funeral and when I looked in the mirror I was greeted by the face of a wolf. My eyes were bloodshot and my skin had an unhealthy pallor. I put on clean clothes and went to wait in the gallery. Isabella returned twenty minutes later with a physician I thought I’d seen in the area once or twice.
“This is the patient. Pay no attention whatsoever to anything he says to you. He’s a liar,” Isabella announced.
The doctor glanced at me, calibrating the extent of my hostility.
“It’s over to you, doctor,” I said. “Just imagine I’m not here.”
We went to my bedroom and he began the subtle rituals that form the basis of medical science: he took my blood pressure, listened to my chest, examined my pupils and my mouth, and asked me questions of a mysterious nature. When he inspected the razor cuts Irene Sabino had made on my chest, he raised an eyebrow.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a long story, doctor.”
“Did you do it to yourself?”
I shook my head.
“I’m going to give you an ointment for the cuts, but I’m afraid you’ll be left with some scars.”
“I think that was the idea.”
He continued with his examination and I submitted to everything obediently, my eye on Isabella, who was watching anxiously from the doorway. I understood then how much I had missed her and how much I appreciated her company.
“What a fright you gave me,” she mumbled with disapproval.
The doctor frowned when he saw the raw wounds on the tips of my fingers. He proceeded to bandage them one by one.
“When did you last eat?”
I didn’t reply. The doctor exchanged glances with Isabella.
“There is no cause for alarm, but I’d like to see him in my office tomorrow at the latest.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, doctor,” I said.
“He’ll be there,” Isabella assured him.
“In the meantime I recommend that he begins by eating something warm, first broth and then solids. A lot of water but no coffee or other stimulants, and above all he must get lots of rest. Let him go out for a little fresh air and sunshine, but he mustn’t overexert himself. He is showing the classic symptoms of exhaustion and dehydration and the beginnings of anemia.”
Isabella sighed.
“It’s nothing,” I remarked.
The doctor looked at me, unconvinced, and stood up.
“Tomorrow afternoon in my office, at four o’clock. I don’t have the correct instruments or environment for a proper examination here.”
He closed his bag and politely said good-bye. Isabella accompanied him to the door and I heard them murmuring on the landing for a few minutes. I got dressed again and waited, like a good patient, sitting on the bed. I heard the front door close and the doctor’s steps as he descended the stairs. I knew that Isabella was in the entrance hall, pausing before she came into the bedroom. When at last she did, I greeted her with a smile.
“I’m going to prepare something for you to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I couldn’t care less. You’re going to eat and then we’re going to go out so that you get some fresh air.”
Isabella prepared some broth for me, to which I added morsels of bread. I then forced myself to swallow it with a cheerful face, although to me it tasted like grit. Eventually I cleaned my bowl and showed it to Isabella, who had been standing on guard duty while I ate. Next she took me to the
bedroom, searched for a coat in the wardrobe, equipped me with gloves and a scarf, and pushed me toward the front door. When we stepped outside a cold wind was blowing, but the sky shone with an evening sun that turned the streets the color of amber. She put her arm in mine and we set off.
“As if we were engaged,” I said.
“Very funny.”
We walked to Ciudadela Park and into the gardens surrounding the Shade House. When we reached the pond by the large fountain we sat down on a bench.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Isabella didn’t reply.
“I haven’t asked you how you are,” I volunteered.
“That’s nothing new.”
“So how are you?”
Isabella paused.
“My parents are delighted that I’ve returned. They say you’ve been a good influence. If only they knew … The truth is, we do get on better than before. Not that I see that much of them. I spend most of my time in the bookshop.”
“How’s Sempere? How is he taking his father’s death?”
“Not very well.”
“And how are you taking him?”
“He’s a good man,” she said.
Isabella fell silent and lowered her eyes.
“He proposed to me,” she said after a while. “A couple of days ago, in Els Quatre Gats.”
I contemplated her profile, serene and robbed of the youthful innocence that I had wanted to see in her and that had probably never been there.
“And?” I finally asked.
“I’ve told him I’ll think about it.”
“And will you?”
Isabella’s gaze was lost in the fountain.
“He told me he wanted to have a family, children. He said we’d live in the apartment above the bookshop, that somehow we’d make a go of it, despite Señor Sempere’s debts.”
“Well, you’re still young …”
She tilted her head and looked me in the eye.
“Do you love him?” I asked.
She gave a smile that seemed endlessly sad.
“How do I know? I think so, although not as much as he thinks he loves me.”
“Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, one can confuse compassion with love,” I said.
“Don’t you worry about me.”
“All I ask is that you give yourself some time.”
We looked at each other, bound by an infinite complicity that needed no words, and I hugged her.
“Friends?”
“Till death do us part.”
4
On our way home we stopped at a grocer’s in Calle Comercio to buy some milk and bread. Isabella told me she was going to ask her father to deliver an order of fine foods and I’d better eat everything up.
“How are things in the bookshop?” I asked.
“Sales have gone right down. I think people feel sad about coming to the shop, because they remember poor Señor Sempere. As things stand, it’s not looking good.”
“How are the accounts?”
“Below the waterline. In the weeks I’ve been working there I’ve gone through the ledgers and realized that Señor Sempere, God rest his soul, was a disaster. He’d simply give books to people who couldn’t afford them. Or he’d lend them out and never get them back. He’d buy collections he knew he wouldn’t be able to sell just because the owners had threatened to burn them or throw them away. He supported a whole host of second-rate bards who didn’t have a penny to their name by giving them small sums of money. You can imagine the rest.”
“Any creditors in sight?”
“Two a day, not counting letters and final demands from the bank. The good news is that we’re not short of offers.”
“To buy the place?”
“A couple of sausage merchants from Vic are very interested in the premises.”
“And what does Sempere’s son say?”
“He just says that pork can be mightier than the sword. Realism isn’t his strong point. He says we’ll stay afloat and I should have faith.”
“And do you?”
“I have faith in arithmetic, and when I do the sums they tell me that in two months’ time the bookshop window will be full of chorizo and slabs of bacon.”
“We’ll find a solution.”
Isabella smiled.
“I was hoping you’d say that. And speaking of unfinished business, please tell me you’re no longer working for the boss.”
I showed her my hands were clean.
“I’m a free agent once more.”
She accompanied me up the stairs and was about to say good-bye when she appeared to hesitate.
“What?” I asked her.
“I’d decided not to tell you, but … I’d rather you heard it from me than from someone else. It’s about Señor Sempere.”
We went into the house and sat down in the gallery by the open fire, which Isabella revived by throwing on a couple of logs. The ashes of Marlasca’s Lux Aeterna were still visible and my former assistant threw me a glance I could have framed.
“What were you going to tell me about Sempere?”
“It’s something I heard from Don Anacleto, one of the neighbors in the building. He told me that on the afternoon Señor Sempere died he saw him arguing with someone in the shop. Don Anacleto was on his way back home and he said that their voices could be heard from the street.”
“Whom was he arguing with?”
“It was a woman. Quite old. Don Anacleto didn’t think he’d ever seen her around there, though he did say she looked vaguely familiar. But you never know with Don Anacleto. He likes to chatter on more than he likes sugared almonds.”
“Did he hear what they were arguing about?”
“He thought they were talking about you.”
“About me?”
Isabella nodded.
“Sempere’s son had gone out for a moment to deliver an order in Calle Canuda. He wasn’t away for more than ten or fifteen minutes. When he got back he found his father lying on the floor, behind the counter. Señor Sempere was still breathing but he was cold. By the time the doctor arrived, it was too late …”
I felt the whole world collapsing on top of me.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” whispered Isabella.
“No. You did the right thing. Did Don Anacleto say anything else about the woman?”
“Only that he heard them arguing. He thought it was about a book. Something she wanted to buy and Señor Sempere didn’t want to sell her.”
“And why did he mention me? I don’t understand.”
“Because it was your book. The Steps of Heaven. It was Señor Sempere’s only copy, in his personal collection, and not for sale.”
I was filled with a dark certainty.
“And the book … ?” I began.
“It’s no longer there. It disappeared,” Isabella explained. “I checked the sales ledger, because Señor Sempere always made a note of every book he sold, with the date and the price, and this one wasn’t there.”
“Does his son know?”
“No. I haven’t told anybody except you. I’m still trying to understand what happened that afternoon in the bookshop. And why. I thought perhaps you might know …”
“I suspect the woman tried to take the book by force, and in the quarrel Señor Sempere suffered a heart attack. That’s what happened,” I said. “And all over a damned book of mine.”
I could feel my stomach churning.
“There’s something else,” said Isabella.
“What?”
“A few days later I bumped into Don Anacleto on the stairs and he told me he’d remembered how he knew that woman. He said that at first he couldn’t put his finger on it, but now he was sure he’d seen her, many years ago, in the theater.”
“In the theater?”
Isabella nodded.
I was silent for a long while. Isabella watched me anxiously.
“Now I’m not happy about leaving you here. I shouldn’t have t
old you.”
“No, you did the right thing. I’m fine. Honestly.”
Isabella shook her head.
“I’m staying with you tonight.”
“What about your reputation?”
“It’s your reputation that’s in danger. I’ll just go to my parents’ store to phone the bookshop and let him know.”
“There’s no need, Isabella.”
“There would be no need if you’d accepted that we live in the twentieth century and had installed a telephone in this mausoleum. I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour. No arguments.”
…
During Isabella’s absence, the death of my friend Sempere began to weigh on my conscience. I recalled how the old bookseller had always told me that books have a soul, the soul of the person who wrote them and of those who read them and dream about them. I realized that until the very last moment he had fought to protect me, giving his own life for a bundle of paper and ink in which, he felt, my soul had been inscribed. When Isabella returned, carrying a bag of delicacies from her parents’ shop, she only needed to take one look at me.
“You know that woman,” she said. “The woman who killed Sempere.”
“I think so. Irene Sabino.”
“Isn’t she the one in the old photographs we found? The actress?”
I nodded.
“Why would she want your book?”
“I don’t know.”
Later, after sampling one or two treats from Can Gispert, we sat together in the large armchair in front of the hearth. We were both able to fit on it, and Isabella leaned her head on my shoulder while we stared at the flames.
“The other night I dreamed that I had a son,” she said. “I dreamed that he was calling to me but I couldn’t reach him because I was trapped in a place that was very cold and I couldn’t move. He kept calling me and I couldn’t go to him.”
“It was only a dream.”
“It seemed real.”
“Maybe you should write it as a story,” I suggested.
Isabella shook her head.
“I’ve been thinking about that. And I’ve decided that I’d rather live my life than write about it. Please don’t take it badly.”