‘“Goodnight,”’ he said.
‘He walked over to the door and paused before leaving.
‘“If you’re not here tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll understand.”
‘Two weeks later we were married in Barcelona Cathedral.’
CHAPTER 23
‘MIJAIL HAD WANTED THAT DAY TO BE SPECIAL FOR me. He went out of his way to deck out the entire city so that it looked like the backdrop for a fairy tale. But my reign as queen of that dreamworld was to come to a sudden end on the steps of the cathedral. I didn’t even hear the screams of the crowd. Like a feral beast leaping out of the undergrowth, Sergei emerged from the multitude and before we could react or even realise what was happening he threw the bottle of acid on my face. The acid devoured my skin, my eyelids and burned deeply into my hands. It ripped my throat and severed my vocal cords. I didn’t speak again for two years, until Mijail started to rebuild me as if I were a broken doll. It was the start of the horror.
‘Construction on the house was discontinued and we moved into an unfinished palace on the top of a hill, which was to become our prison. It was a dark, cold place with a jumble of towers and arches, vaults and spiral staircases leading nowhere. I hated it. The attack had left me severely impaired and I was confined in a room at the top of the main tower to live like a recluse. Nobody had access to it except for Mijail and, sometimes, Dr Shelley. I spent the first year under the drowsy effects of morphine, barely able to tell reality from the terrible nightmares plaguing me. I would dream that Mijail was experimenting on me just as he had been doing with the unclaimed bodies he purchased from hospitals and morgues. Reconstructing me and outsmarting nature. I just wanted to die or to have the strength to end my own life before it was too late. When I finally recovered consciousness, I realised that my nightmares had been real. He had given me back my voice. He had rebuilt my face, my lips and my throat so that I could feed myself and speak. He had altered my nerve endings so that I didn’t feel the pain of the extensive damage caused by the acid – I had lost my sense of touch and couldn’t feel anything any more, neither heat nor cold. I was a ghost in my own body. Yes, in a way I had mocked death, but I ended up becoming one more of Mijail’s accursed creatures.
‘By then, of course, Mijail had lost his influence and position in society. Nobody supported him any more. His old allies, all of them a load of hypocrites, had turned their backs on him and abandoned him to the wolves. The police and the local authorities began to hound him. His partner, Sentís, who had never been more than an envious mediocrity, volunteered false information to implicate Mijail in matters that had nothing to do with him. He was trying to remove him from control of the firm. Sentís was just another of the pack. Everyone wanted to see Mijail fall so they could devour his remains. As is usually the case, the army of sycophants now changed into a horde of hungry hyenas. None of this surprised Mijail. He’d seen it coming. From the very start he had only relied on his friend Shelley and on Lluís Claret. “Man’s meanness,” he used to say, “is a fuse in search of a flame.” But, much as Mijail had anticipated all of this, I believe this betrayal finally broke the fragile link he had with the outside world. He took refuge in his own labyrinth of solitude. His behaviour became increasingly bizarre. Down in the cellars he started breeding dozens of specimens of an insect that obsessed him, a black butterfly known as a teufel. Soon the black butterflies were flying around the house. They alighted on mirrors, pictures and furniture like silent sentries. Mijail forbade the servants to kill them, ward them off or get close to them. A swarm of black-winged insects flew through the halls and corridors. Sometimes they would land on Mijail and cover him while he stood there without moving. When I saw him like that I thought I was going to lose him for ever.
‘Around that time I befriended Lluís Claret, and our friendship has lasted until today. It was Lluís who kept me informed of what was going on beyond the walls of that fortress. Mijail had been feeding me fantasies about the Teatro Real and my return to the stage. He spoke about repairing the damage the acid had caused, about singing with a voice that no longer belonged to me . . . Dreams. Lluís explained that the works at the Teatro Real had also stopped. The funds had run out months earlier. The building was now an immense carcass falling apart . . . Mijail’s outer calm was just a front. He would spend weeks, even months, without leaving the house. Entire days locked up in his studio, barely eating or sleeping. Joan Shelley, as the doctor admitted to me later, worried about his health but even more about his sanity. He probably knew him better than anyone else and had helped him with his experiments from the start. It was he who spoke openly to me about Mijail’s obsession with degenerative diseases and his desperate attempts to discover the mechanisms by which nature allowed the human body to atrophy and decay. To him, nature was a merciless beast that fed on its young without caring about the fate of the beings it harboured. He collected photographs of strange cases of degeneration and medical freaks. What Mijail searched for in the misfortunes of those poor souls was an answer to his question: how to outwit his inner demons.
‘It was then that the first symptoms of his own illness became apparent. Mijail knew that he carried it inside him, like a ticking time bomb. He had always known it, ever since he watched his brother die in Prague. It all happened very fast. His body began to destroy itself. His bones were crumbling. Mijail covered his hands with gloves. He hid his face and his body. He avoided my company. I pretended not to notice, but it was obvious: his shape was changing. One winter’s day, at dawn, I was woken by his cries. Mijail was shouting at the servants, sending them away. Nobody challenged him; in the last few months they had all grown afraid of him. Only Lluís refused to abandon us. Weeping with anger, Mijail broke all the mirrors in the house and ran to lock himself in his studio.
‘One night I asked Lluís to fetch Dr Shelley. For two weeks Mijail hadn’t come out of his room or replied to my calls. I could hear him sobbing on the other side of the wall of his studio, talking to himself . . . I no longer knew what to do. I was losing him. With Shelley and Lluís’s help, I broke the door down and we managed to get him out of there. We discovered to our horror that Mijail had been operating on his own body, trying to rebuild his left hand, which was turning into a grotesque useless claw. Shelley gave him a sedative and we spent the night at his bedside while he slept. During that long night, as he watched his old friend in the throes of death, Shelley vented his despair and broke his promise never to reveal the story Mijail had confided in him years earlier. As I listened to his words, I realised that neither the police nor Inspector Florián ever suspected they were pursuing a ghost. Mijail was never a criminal or a fraudster. Mijail was simply a man who thought his destiny was to cheat death before death cheated him.’
‘Mijail Kolvenik was born in the tunnels of Prague’s sewage system on the last day of the nineteenth century.
‘His mother was a seventeen-year-old maid who served a family of the high aristocracy. Her beauty and naivety had turned her into her master’s plaything, one among many. When she revealed she was pregnant, she was thrown out like a mangy dog into the dirty snow-covered streets, branded for life. In those days, when winter draped the streets in a mantle of death, they say the destitute would take shelter in the tunnels of the old sewers. Legend had it that an entire city of darkness spread beneath the streets of Prague and that thousands of dispossessed spent their lives there without ever seeing the sun again. Beggars, sick people, orphans and fugitives. These people followed the cult of an enigmatic character they called the Prince of Beggars, who was said to be ageless, with the face of an angel and blazing eyes. It was also said that his body was cloaked in black butterflies and that he welcomed into his kingdom all those whom the cruel world had denied a possibility of survival above ground. Searching for that world of shadows, the young girl entered the underground network hoping to survive. Soon she discovered that the local legend was true. The people in the tunnels lived in the dark and created their own world. They
had their own laws. And their own god: the Prince of Beggars. Nobody had ever seen him, but they all believed in him and left offerings in his honour. Using red-hot irons, they all branded their skin with the emblem of the butterfly. It was prophesied that a messiah sent by the Prince of Beggars would come to the tunnels one day and give his life to deliver its inhabitants from their suffering. The messiah’s downfall would come from his own hands.
‘That is where the young mother gave birth to twins: Andrej and Mijail. Andrej was born with a cruel, terrible illness. His bones would not solidify and his body grew with no shape or structure. One of the inhabitants of the tunnels, a doctor who was being pursued by the law, told her that Andrej’s condition was incurable. The end was just a question of time. But his brother Mijail was a bright boy who, though timid by nature, dreamed of leaving the tunnels one day and emerging into the world above ground. He often fantasised that he was the long-awaited messiah. He never knew who his father was, so in his mind he awarded that role to the Prince of Beggars, whom he thought he could hear in his dreams. Mijail seemed to have none of the signs of the terrible disease that would end his brother’s life. Sure enough, Andrej died when he was seven without ever having left the sewers, and his body was laid to rest in the underground currents, following the rituals of the sewer world. Mijail asked his mother why this had happened.
‘“It’s God’s will, Mijail,” his mother replied.
‘Mijail would never forget those words. But the blow of little Andrej’s death was too much for his mother to bear. The following winter she caught pneumonia. Mijail remained by her side until the last moment, holding her trembling hand. She was twenty-six but had the face of an old woman.
‘“Is this God’s will, Mother?” he asked her lifeless body.
‘He was never given an answer. A few days later young Mijail emerged into the streets. Nothing tied him any longer to the underground world. Starving and frozen, he took shelter in a doorway. By chance, a doctor called Antonin Kolvenik, who was returning from a home visit, discovered him there. The doctor took him to a nearby tavern, where he bought him a warm meal.
‘“What’s your name, son?”
‘“Mijail, sir.”
‘Antonin Kolvenik paled.
‘“I once had a son with your name. He died. Where is your family?”
‘“I have no family.”
‘“Where’s your mother?”
‘“God has taken her.”
‘The doctor nodded gravely. He picked up his bag and pulled out a contraption that left Mijail speechless. Mijail glimpsed other instruments inside the bag. Shining, wondrous instruments.
‘The doctor placed the strange object on the boy’s chest and put the two ends in his ears.
‘“What’s that?”
‘“It’s for listening to what your lungs are saying . . . Take a deep breath.”
‘“Are you a magician?” asked Mijail in astonishment.
‘The doctor smiled.
‘“No, I’m not a magician. I’m only a doctor.”
‘“What’s the difference?”
‘Antonin Kolvenik had lost his wife and son during an outbreak of cholera some years earlier. Now he lived alone, had a modest surgery and a passion for the works of Dvorak. He looked at the ragged boy with curiosity and pity. He reminded him of his own lost son. Mijail brandished a winning smile.
‘Dr Kolvenik decided to take the boy home with him. Mijail spent the next ten years there. The kind doctor gave him an education, a home and a name. Mijail was only a teenager when he began to assist his adoptive father in his surgery and learn about the mysteries of the human body. God’s mysterious will was revealed through that complex framework of flesh and bone, driven by a mysterious spark of magic. Mijail soaked up the lessons avidly, convinced that in all that science there was a message waiting to be deciphered.
‘He wasn’t even twenty when death paid him another visit. The old doctor’s health had been deteriorating for some time. A cardiac arrest destroyed half his heart one Christmas Eve while they were planning a trip to show Mijail southern Europe. Antonin Kolvenik was dying. Mijail swore to himself that this time death would not snatch anyone away from him.
‘“My heart is weary, Mijail,” said the old doctor. “It’s time for me to go and rejoin my Frida and my other Mijail . . .”
‘“I’ll give you another heart, Father.”
‘The doctor smiled. That strange youngster and his bizarre ideas . . . The only reason he feared abandoning this wretched world was that he was going to leave the boy alone and helpless. Mijail’s only friends were books. What would become of him?
‘“You’ve already given me ten years of your company, Mijail,” he said. “Now you must think of yourself. Of your future.”
‘“I’m not going to let you die, Father.”
‘“Mijail, do you remember that day when you asked me what was the difference between a doctor and a magician? Well, Mijail, there is no magic. Our body begins to destroy itself from the moment it is born. We are fragile. We’re creatures of passage. All that is left of us are our actions, the good or the evil we do to our fellow humans. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Mijail?”
‘Ten days later the police found Mijail covered in blood, crying next to the body of the man he had learned to call father. The neighbours had alerted the authorities when they smelled a strange odour and heard the young man’s howls. The police report concluded that Mijail, disturbed by the doctor’s death, had dissected him and had tried to rebuild his heart using a mechanism of valves and cogs. Mijail was admitted to the Prague mental hospital, from where he escaped two years later by pretending to be dead. When the authorities went to the morgue to fetch his body, all they found was a white sheet and black butterflies flying around it.
‘Mijail reached Barcelona carrying the seeds of madness that would manifest themselves years later. He showed little interest in material things and in people’s company and was never proud of the fortune he amassed. He used to say that nobody deserves to have a penny more than he’s ready to offer those who need it more than he does. The night I met him Mijail told me that, for some reason, life usually grants us what we are not looking for. He was given wealth, fame and power, yet his soul yearned only for spiritual peace so that he could silence the shadows in his heart . . .’
‘During the months following the incident in his studio, Shelley, Lluís and I worked together to keep Mijail away from his obsessions and distract him. It was no easy task. Mijail always knew when we were lying to him, even if he didn’t say so. He’d play along, pretending to be docile and resigned to his condition. When I looked into his eyes, however, I could see the darkness flooding his soul. He had stopped trusting us. The miserable conditions we lived in worsened. Creditors had seized our accounts and the Velo-Granell assets had been confiscated by the government. Sentís, who thought his scheming was going to turn him into the sole owner of the firm, discovered that he was actually bankrupt. All he managed to salvage was Mijail’s worthless old flat on Calle Princesa. We were only able to hold on to the properties Mijail had put in my name: the Gran Teatro Real – a tomb in which I finally took shelter – and a greenhouse next to the Sarriá railway which Mijail had used in the past as a workshop for his experiments.
‘Lluís took care of selling my jewellery and my dresses to the highest bidder so that we could buy food. My bridal trousseau, which I had never used, became our means of survival. Mijail and I barely spoke. He wandered around the mansion like a ghost while his body became increasingly deformed. Soon he wasn’t able to hold a book in his hands. He had trouble reading. I no longer heard him cry. Now he just laughed. His bitter laughter in the middle of the night froze my blood. With his deformed hands he wrote in a notebook – pages and pages of illegible writing whose content we were unable to decipher. When Dr Shelley came to visit him, Mijail would lock himself in his room and refuse to come out until his friend had left. I told Dr Shelley about my fear
that Mijail might be thinking of taking his own life. Shelley told me that he feared something even worse. I didn’t know, or I didn’t want to know, what he was referring to.
‘It was then that I had a crazy, desperate idea. I thought it might be a way of saving Mijail and our marriage. I decided to have a child. I was convinced that if I managed to give him a child, Mijail would find a reason to go on living and return to my side. I got carried away with that yearning. My entire body burned with longing to conceive the infant that would bring us salvation and hope. My dream was to raise a small Mijail, pure and innocent. In my heart I longed to have a new version of his father, but one free of all madness and evil. I couldn’t let Mijail suspect what I was scheming or he would refuse outright. It would be difficult enough to find the opportunity to be alone with him. As I said, for a long time Mijail had been avoiding me. His deformity made him feel uncomfortable in my presence. The disease was beginning to affect his speech. He stammered, full of anger and shame. He could only swallow liquids. My efforts to show that he didn’t repel me, that nobody could understand and share his suffering better than me, only seemed to make matters worse. But I was patient and for once in my life I thought I’d fooled Mijail. I only fooled myself. That was my worst mistake.
‘When I told Mijail we were going to have a baby, his reaction scared me to death. He disappeared for almost a month. Lluís found him in the old greenhouse in Sarriá weeks later, unconscious. He’d been working tirelessly. He’d reconstructed his throat and his mouth. His appearance was monstrous. He’d given himself a deep voice, metallic and malevolent. His jaws had rows of metal eye-teeth. His face was unrecognisable except for his eyes. Beneath that horror the soul of the Mijail I loved was still burning in its own inferno. Next to him Lluís found a pile of contraptions and hundreds of plans. I asked Shelley to have a look at them while Mijail was recovering with a sleep from which he didn’t wake in three days. The doctor’s conclusions were horrifying. Mijail had completely lost his mind. He was planning to rebuild his entire body before the disease consumed him altogether. We shut him away in a room at the top of the main tower, an impregnable cell. I gave birth to our daughter listening to my husband’s wild screams while he was locked up like a beast. I didn’t share a single day with the baby. Dr Shelley took care of her and swore he would bring her up as if she were his own daughter. She would be called María and, like me, she would never know her real mother. What little life remained in my heart left with her, but I knew I had no choice. I sensed an imminent tragedy in the air. I could feel it like poison working its way through my veins. It was just a matter of time. As usual, the final blow came from where we least expected it.’