The Angel's Game

  “I’m sorry about the books.”

  “It was nothing. A bit of exercise lifts the spirit,” I volunteered, ignoring the tangle of knots I could feel in my back. “My regards to Don Pedro.”

  I watched them drive off toward Plaza de Cataluña and when I turned I noticed Sempere at the door of the bookshop, looking at me with a catlike smile and gesturing to me to wipe the drool off my chin. I went over to him and couldn’t help laughing at myself.

  “I know your secret now, Martín. I thought you had a steadier nerve in these matters.”

  “Everything gets a bit rusty.”

  “I should know! Can I keep the book for a few days?”

  I nodded.

  “Take good care of it.”

  10

  A few months later I saw her again, in the company of Pedro Vidal, at the table that was always reserved for him at La Maison Dorée. Vidal invited me to join them, but a quick look from her was enough to tell me that I should refuse the offer.

  “How is the novel going, Don Pedro?”

  “Swimmingly.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it. Bon appétit.”

  My meetings with Cristina were always by chance. Sometimes I would bump into her in the Sempere & Sons bookshop, where she often went to collect books for Vidal. If the opportunity arose, Sempere would leave me alone with her, but soon Cristina grew wise to the trick and would send one of the young boys from Villa Helius to pick up the orders.

  “I know it’s none of my business,” Sempere would say. “But perhaps you should stop thinking about her.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Señor Sempere.”

  “Come on, Martín, we’ve known each other for a long time …”

  The months seemed to slip by in a blur. I lived at night, writing from evening to dawn and sleeping all day. Barrido and Escobillas couldn’t stop congratulating themselves on the success of City of the Damned and when they saw me on the verge of collapse they assured me that after a couple more novels they would grant me a sabbatical so that I could rest or devote my time to writing a personal work that they would publish with much fanfare and with my real name printed in large letters on the cover. It was always just a couple of novels away. The sharp pains, the headaches, and the dizzy spells became more frequent and intense, but I attributed them to exhaustion and treated them with more injections of caffeine, cigarettes, and some tablets tasting of gunpowder that contained codeine and God knows what else, supplied on the quiet by a chemist in Calle Argenteria. Don Basilio, with whom I had lunch on alternate Thursdays in an outdoor café in La Barceloneta, urged me to go to the doctor. I always said yes, I had an appointment that very week.

  Apart from my old boss and the Semperes, I didn’t have much time to see anybody else except Vidal, and when I did see him it was more because he came to see me than through any effort on my part. He didn’t like my tower house and always insisted that we go out for a stroll, to the Bar Almirall on Calle Joaquín Costa, where he had an account and held literary gatherings on Friday evenings. I was never invited to them because he knew that those who attended, frustrated poetasters and ass kissers who laughed at his jokes in the hope of some charity—a recommendation to a publisher or a compliment to soothe their wounded pride—hated me with unswerving vigor and determination that were quite absent from their more artistic endeavors, which were persistently ignored by the fickle public. At the Bar Almirall, knocking back absinthe and puffing on Caribbean cigars, he spoke to me about his novel, which was never finished, about his plans for retiring from his life of retirement, and about his romances; the older he got, the younger and more nubile his conquests became.

  “You don’t ask after Cristina,” he would sometimes say, maliciously.

  “What do you want me to ask?”

  “Whether she asks after you.”

  “Does she ask after me, Don Pedro?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there you are.”

  “The fact is, she did mention you the other day.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Go on.”

  “She didn’t say it in so many words, but she seemed to imply that she couldn’t understand how you could prostitute yourself by writing second-rate serials for that pair of thieves, that you were throwing away your talent and your youth.”

  I felt as if Vidal had just plunged a frozen dagger into my stomach.

  “Is that what she thinks?”

  Vidal shrugged his shoulders.

  “Well, as far as I’m concerned she can go to hell.”

  …

  I worked every day except Sundays, which I spent wandering the streets, always ending up in some bar on the Paralelo where it wasn’t hard to find company and passing affection in the arms of another solitary soul like myself. It wasn’t until the following morning, when I woke up lying next to a stranger, that I realized they all looked like her: the color of their hair, the way they walked, a gesture or a glance. Sooner or later, to fill the painful silence of farewells, those one-night stands would ask me how I earned my living, and when, surrendering to my vanity, I explained that I was a writer, they would take me for a liar, because nobody had ever heard of David Martín, although some of them did know of Ignatius B. Samson and had heard people talk about City of the Damned. After a while I began to say that I worked at the Customs Offices in the port or that I was a clerk in a solicitors’ office called Sayrach, Muntaner, and Cruells.

  One afternoon I was sitting in the Café de la Ópera with a music teacher called Alicia, helping her get over—or so I imagined—someone who was hard to forget. I was about to kiss her when I saw Cristina’s face on the other side of the glass pane. When I reached the street, she had already vanished among the crowds in the Ramblas. Two weeks later Vidal insisted on inviting me to the premiere of Madama Butterfly at the Liceo. The Vidal family owned a box in the dress circle and Vidal liked to attend once a week during the opera season. When I met him in the foyer I discovered that he had also brought Cristina. She greeted me with an icy smile and didn’t speak to me again, or even glance at me until, halfway through the second act, Vidal decided to go down to the adjoining Círculo club to say hello to one of his cousins. We were left alone together in the box, with no other shield than Puccini and the hundreds of faces in the semidarkness of the theater. I held back for about ten minutes before turning to look her in the eye.

  “Have I done something to offend you?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Can we pretend to be friends then, at least on occasions like this?”

  “I don’t want to be your friend, David.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t want to be my friend either.”

  She was right, I didn’t want to be her friend.

  “Is it true that you think I prostitute myself?”

  “Whatever I think doesn’t matter. What matters is what you think.”

  I sat there for another five minutes, then left. By the time I reached the wide Liceo staircase I’d already promised myself that I would never give her a second thought or look or a kind word.

  The following afternoon I saw her in front of the cathedral and when I tried to avoid her she waved at me and smiled. I stood there, glued to the spot, watching her approach.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me for a snack?”

  “I’m a streetwalker and I’m not free for another two hours.”

  “Well then, let me invite you. How much do you charge for accompanying a lady for an hour?”

  I followed her reluctantly to a chocolate shop on Calle Petritxol. We ordered two cups of hot chocolate and sat facing each other, seeing who would break the silence first. For once, I won.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you yesterday, David, I don’t know what Don Pedro told you, but I’ve never said such a thing.”

  “Maybe you only thought it, which is why he would have told me.” br />
  “You have no idea what I think,” she replied harshly. “Nor does Don Pedro.”

  I shrugged.

  “Fine.”

  “What I said was very different. I said that I didn’t think you were doing what you felt inside.”

  I smiled and nodded. The only thing I felt at that moment was the need to kiss her. Cristina held my gaze defiantly. She didn’t turn her face when I stretched out my hand and touched her lips, sliding my fingers down her chin and neck.

  “Not like this,” she said at last.

  By the time the waiter brought the steaming cups of cocoa she had left. Months went by before I even heard her name again.

  …

  One day toward the end of September when I had just finished a new installment of City of the Damned, I decided to take a night off. I could feel the approach of one of those storms of nausea and burning stabs in my brain. I gulped down a handful of codeine pills and lay on my bed in the darkness waiting for the cold sweat and the trembling of my hands to stop. I was on the point of falling asleep when I heard the doorbell. I dragged myself to the hall and opened the door. Vidal, in one of his impeccable Italian silk suits, was lighting a cigarette under a beam of light that seemed painted for him by Vermeer himself.

  “Are you alive, or am I speaking to an apparition?” he asked.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve come all the way from Villa Helius just to throw that at me.”

  “No. I’ve come because I haven’t heard from you in two months and I’m worried about you. Why don’t you get a telephone installed in this mausoleum, like normal people would?”

  “I don’t like telephones. I like to see people’s faces when they speak and for them to see mine.”

  “In your case I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror recently?”

  “That’s your department.”

  “There are bodies in the mortuary at the Clínico hospital with a rosier face than yours. Go on, get dressed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I say so. We’re going out for a stroll.”

  Vidal would not take no for an answer. He dragged me to the car that was waiting in Paseo del Borne and told Manuel to start the engine.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Surprise.”

  We crossed the whole of Barcelona until we reached Avenida Pedralbes and started to climb up the hillside. A few minutes later we glimpsed Villa Helius, with all its windows lit up, projecting a bubble of bright gold across the twilight. Giving nothing away, Vidal smiled mysteriously at me. When we reached the mansion he told me to follow him and led me to the large sitting room. A group of people were waiting for me there and as soon as they saw me, they started to clap. I recognized Don Basilio, Cristina, Sempere—both father and son—my old schoolteacher Doña Mariana, some of the authors who, like me, published their work with Barrido & Escobillas and with whom I had established a friendship, Manuel, who had joined the group, and a few of Vidal’s conquests. Vidal offered me a glass of champagne and smiled.

  “Happy twenty-eighth birthday, David.”

  I’d forgotten.

  After the meal I excused myself for a moment and went out into the garden for some fresh air. A starry night cast a silver veil over the trees. I’d been there for only a minute or so when I heard footsteps approaching and turned to find the last person I was expecting to see: Cristina Sagnier. She smiled at me, as if apologizing for the intrusion.

  “Pedro doesn’t know I’ve come out to speak to you,” she said.

  She had dropped the “Don,” but I pretended not to notice.

  “I’d like to talk to you, David,” she said, “but not here, not now.”

  Even in the shadows of the garden I was unable to hide my bewilderment.

  “Can we meet tomorrow somewhere?” she asked. “I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”

  “On one condition,” I said. “That you stop addressing me with the formal usted. Birthdays are quite enough to make one feel older.”

  Cristina smiled.

  “All right. I’ll use the tu form if you do the same with me.”

  “The tu form is one of my specialities. Where shall we meet?”

  “Could it be at your house? I don’t want anyone to see us, and I don’t want Pedro to know I’ve spoken with you.”

  “As you wish …”

  Cristina smiled with relief.

  “Thanks. Will tomorrow be all right? In the afternoon?”

  “Whenever you like. Do you know where I live?”

  “My father knows.”

  She leaned over a little and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Happy birthday, David.”

  Before I could say anything, she had vanished across the garden. When I went back to the sitting room she had already left. Vidal glanced at me coldly from one end of the room and smiled only when he realized that I’d seen him.

  An hour later Manuel, with Vidal’s approval, insisted on driving me home in the Hispano-Suiza. I sat next to him, as I did whenever we were alone in the car: the chauffeur would take the opportunity to give me driving tips, and, unbeknownst to Vidal, would even let me sit at the steering wheel for a while. That night Manuel was quieter than usual and did not say a word until we reached the town center. He looked thinner than the last time I’d seen him and I had the feeling that age was beginning to take its toll.

  “Is anything wrong, Manuel?” I asked.

  “Nothing important, Señor Martín.”

  “If there’s anything worrying you …”

  “Just a few health problems. When you get to my age, everything is a worry, as you know. But I don’t matter anymore. The one who matters is my daughter.”

  I wasn’t sure how to reply, so I simply nodded.

  “I’m aware that you have a certain affection for her, Señor Martín. For my Cristina. A father can see these things.”

  Again I just nodded. We didn’t exchange any more words until Manuel stopped the car at the entrance to Calle Flassaders, held out his hand to me, and once more wished me a happy birthday.

  “If anything should happen to me,” he said then, “you would help her, wouldn’t you, Señor Martín? You would do that for me?”

  “Of course, Manuel. But nothing is going to happen to you!”

  The chauffeur bade me farewell. I saw him get into the car and drive away slowly. I wasn’t absolutely sure, but I could have sworn that, after a journey in which he had hardly opened his mouth, he was now talking to himself.

  11

  I spent the whole morning running about the house, straightening things and tidying up, airing the rooms, cleaning objects and corners I didn’t even know existed. I rushed down to a florist in the market and when I returned, laden with bunches of flowers, I realized I had forgotten where I’d hidden the vases in which to put them. I dressed as if I were going out to look for work. I practiced words and greetings that sounded ridiculous. I glanced at myself in the mirror and saw that Vidal was right; I looked like a vampire. Finally I sat down in an armchair in the gallery to wait, with a book in my hands. In two hours I hadn’t turned the first page. At last, at exactly four o’clock in the afternoon, I heard Cristina’s footsteps on the stairs and jumped up. By the time she rang the front doorbell I’d been at the door for an eternity.

  “Hello, David. Is this a bad moment?”

  “No, no, on the contrary. Please come in.”

  Cristina smiled politely and stepped into the corridor. I led her to the reading room in the gallery and offered her a seat. She was examining everything carefully.

  “It’s a very special place,” she said. “Pedro did tell me you had an elegant home.”

  “He prefers the term gloomy, but I suppose it’s just a question of degree.”

  “May I ask why you came to live here? It’s a rather large house for someone who lives alone.”

  Someone who lives alone, I thought. You end up becoming what you see in th
e eyes of those you love.

  “The truth?” I asked. “The truth is that I came to live here because for years I had seen this house almost every day on my way to and from the newspaper. It was always closed up, and I began to think it was waiting for me. In the end I dreamed, literally, that one day I would live in it. And that’s what happened.”

  “Do all your dreams come true, David?”

  The ironic tone reminded me too much of Vidal.

  “No,” I replied. “This is the only one. But you wanted to talk to me about something and I’m distracting you with stories that probably don’t interest you.”

  I sounded more defensive than I would have wished. The same thing that had happened with the flowers was happening with my longing: once I held it in my hands, I didn’t know where to put it.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Pedro,” Cristina began.

  “Ah.”

  “You’re his best friend. You know him. He talks about you as if you were his son. He loves you more than anyone. You know that.”

  “Don Pedro has been like a father to me,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for him and for Señor Sempere, I don’t know what would have become of me.”

  “The reason I wanted to talk to you is that I’m very worried about him.”

  “Why are you worried?”

  “You know that some years ago I started work as his secretary. The truth is that Pedro is a very generous man and we’ve ended up being good friends. He has behaved very well toward my father, and toward me. That’s why it hurts me to see him like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “It’s that wretched book, the novel he wants to write.”

  “He’s been at it for years.”

  “He’s been destroying it for years. I correct and type all his pages. Over the years I’ve been working as his secretary he’s destroyed at least two thousand pages. He says he has no talent. He says he’s a fraud. He’s constantly at the bottle. Sometimes I find him upstairs in his study, drunk, crying like a child.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “He says he envies you, he wants to be like you, he says people lie and praise him because they want something from him—money, help—but he knows that his book is worthless. He keeps up appearances with everyone else, his smart suits and all that, but I see him every day and I know he’s losing hope. Sometimes I’m afraid he’ll do something stupid. It’s been going on for some time now. I haven’t said anything because I didn’t know who to speak to. If he knew I’d come to see you he’d be furious. He always says: Don’t bother David with my worries. He’s got his whole life ahead of him and I’m nothing now. He’s always saying things like that. Forgive me for telling you all this, but I didn’t know who to turn to.”