The Angel's Game (34 page)

Act Three

The Angel’s Game

1

Night had fallen by the time we reached the bookshop. A golden glow broke through the blue of the night outside Sempere & Sons, where about a hundred people had gathered holding candles. Some cried quietly, others looked at each other, not knowing what to do. I recognised some of the faces - friends and customers of Sempere, people to whom the old bookseller had given books as presents, readers who had been initiated into the art of reading through him. As the news spread through the area, more readers and friends arrived, all finding it hard to believe that Señor Sempere had died.

The shop lights were on and I could see Don Gustavo Barceló inside, embracing a young man who could hardly stand. I didn’t realise it was Sempere’s son until Isabella pressed my hand and led me into the bookshop. When he saw me come in, Barceló looked up and smiled dolefully. The bookseller’s son was weeping in his arms and I didn’t have the courage to go and greet him. It was Isabella who went over and put her hand on his back. Sempere’s son turned round and I saw his distraught face. Isabella led him to a chair and helped him sit down; he collapsed like a rag doll and Isabella knelt down beside him and hugged him. I had never felt as proud of anyone as I was that day of Isabella. She no longer seemed a girl but a woman, stronger and wiser than any of the rest us.

Barceló came over and held out a trembling hand. I shook it.

‘It happened a couple of hours ago,’ he explained in a hoarse voice. ‘He’d been left alone in the bookshop for a moment and when his son returned . . . They say he was arguing with someone . . . I don’t know. The doctor said it was his heart.’

I swallowed hard.

‘Where is he?’

Barceló nodded towards the door of the back room. I walked over, but before going in I took a deep breath and clenched my fists. Then I walked through the doorway and saw him: he was lying on a table, his hands crossed over his belly. His skin was as white as paper and his features seemed to have sunk in on themselves. His eyes were still open. I found it hard to breathe and felt as if I’d been dealt a strong blow to the stomach. I leaned on the table and tried to steady myself. Then I bent over him and closed his eyelids. I stroked his cheek, which was cold, and looked around me at that world of pages and dreams he had created. I wanted to believe that Sempere was still there, among his books and his friends. I heard steps behind me and turned. Barceló was accompanied by two sombre-looking men, both dressed in black.

‘These gentlemen are from the undertaker’s,’ said Barceló.

They nodded with professional gravitas and went over to examine the body. One of them, who was tall and gaunt, took a brief measurement and said something to his colleague, who wrote down his instructions in a little notebook.

‘Unless there is any change, the funeral will be tomorrow afternoon, in the Pueblo Nuevo Cemetery,’ said Barceló. ‘I thought it best to take charge of the arrangements because his son is devastated, as you can see. And with these things, the sooner . . .’

‘Thank you, Don Gustavo.’

The bookseller glanced at his old friend and smiled tearfully.

‘What are we going to do now that the old man has left us?’ he said.

‘I don’t know . . .’

One of the undertakers discreetly cleared his throat.

‘If it’s all right with you, in a moment my colleague and I will go and fetch the coffin and—’

‘Do whatever you have to do,’ I cut in.

‘Any preferences regarding the ceremony?’

I stared at him, not understanding.

‘Was the deceased a believer?’

‘Señor Sempere believed in books,’ I said.

‘I see,’ he replied as he left the room.

I looked at Barceló, who shrugged his shoulders.

‘Let me ask his son,’ I added.

I went back to the front of the bookshop. Isabella glanced at me inquisitively and stood up. She left Sempere’s son and came over to me and I whispered the problem to her.

‘Señor Sempere was a good friend of the local parish priest - from the church of Santa Ana right next door. People say the bigwigs in the diocese have been wanting to get rid of the priest for years, because they consider him a rebel in the ranks, but he’s so old they decided to wait for him to die instead. He’s too tough a nut for them to crack.’

‘Then he’s the man we need,’ I said.

‘I’ll speak to him,’ said Isabella.

I pointed towards Sempere’s son.

‘How is he?’

Isabella met my gaze.

‘And how are you?’ she replied.

‘I’m fine,’ I lied. ‘Who’s going to stay with him tonight?’

‘I am,’ she said, without a moment’s hesitation.

I kissed her on the cheek and returned to the back room. Barceló was sitting in front of his old friend, and while the two undertakers took further measurements and debated about suits and shoes, he poured two glasses of brandy and offered one to me. I sat down next to him.

‘To the health of our friend Sempere, who taught us all how to read, and even how to live,’ he said.

We toasted and drank in silence. We remained there until the undertakers returned with the coffin and the clothes in which Sempere was going to be buried.

‘If it’s all right with you, we’ll take care of this,’ the one who seemed to be the brighter of the two suggested. I agreed. Before leaving the room and going back to the front of the shop I picked up the old copy of
Great Expectations,
which I’d never come back to collect, and put it in Sempere’s hands.

‘For the journey,’ I said.

A quarter of an hour later, the undertakers brought out the coffin and placed it on a large table that had been set up in the middle of the bookshop. A multitude had been gathering in the street, waiting in silence. I went over to the door and opened it. One by one, the friends of Sempere & Sons filed through. Some were unable to hold back the tears, and such were the scenes of grief that Isabella took the bookseller’s son by the hand and led him up to the apartment above the bookshop, where he had lived all his life with his father. Barceló and I stayed in the shop, keeping old Sempere company while people came in to say their farewells. Those closest to him stayed on.

The wake lasted the entire night. Barceló remained until five in the morning and I didn’t leave until Isabella came down to the shop shortly after dawn and ordered me to go home, if only to change my clothes and freshen up.

I looked at poor Sempere and smiled. I couldn’t believe I’d never see him again, standing behind the counter, when I came in through that door. I remembered the first time I’d visited the bookshop, when I was just a child, and the bookseller had seemed tall and strong. Indestructible. The wisest man in the world.

‘Go home, please,’ murmured Isabella.

‘What for?’

‘Please . . .’

She came out into the street with me and hugged me.

‘I know how fond you were of him and what he meant to you,’ she said.

Nobody knew, I thought. Nobody. But I nodded and, after kissing her on the cheek, I wandered off, walking through streets that seemed emptier than ever, thinking that if I didn’t stop, if I kept on walking, I wouldn’t notice that the world I thought I knew was no longer there.

2

The crowd had gathered by the cemetery gates to await the arrival of the hearse. Nobody dared speak. We could hear the murmur of the sea in the distance and the echo of a freight train rumbling towards the city of factories that spread out beyond the graveyard. It was cold and snowflakes drifted in the wind. Shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon, the hearse, pulled by a team of black horses, turned into Avenida de Icaria, which was lined with rows of cypress trees and old storehouses. Sempere’s son and Isabella travelled with it. Six colleagues from the Barcelona booksellers’ guild, Don Gustavo among them, lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and carried it into the cemetery. The crowd followed, forming a silent cortège that advanced through the streets and mausoleums of the cemetery beneath a blanket of low clouds that rippled like a sheet of mercury. I heard someone say that the bookseller’s son looked as if he’d aged fifteen years in one night. They referred to him as Señor Sempere, because he was now the person in charge of the bookshop; for four generations that enchanted bazaar in Calle Santa Ana had never changed its name and had always been managed by a Señor Sempere. Isabella held his arm - without her support he looked as if he might have collapsed like a puppet with no strings.

The parish priest of Santa Ana, a veteran the same age as the deceased, waited at the foot of the tomb, a sober slab of marble without decorative elements that could almost have gone unnoticed. The six booksellers who had carried the coffin left it resting beside the grave. Barceló noticed me and greeted me with a nod. I preferred to stay towards the rear of the crowd, I’m not sure whether out of cowardice or respect. From there I could see my father’s grave, some thirty metres away.

Once the congregation had spread out, the parish priest looked up and smiled.

‘Señor Sempere and I were friends for almost forty years, and in all that time we spoke about God and the mysteries of life on only one occasion. Almost nobody knows this, but Sempere had not set foot in a church since the funeral of his wife Diana, to whose side we bring him today so that they might lie next to one another forever. Perhaps for that reason people assumed he was an atheist, but he was truly a man of faith. He believed in his friends, in the truth of things and in something to which he didn’t dare put a name or a face because he said as priests that was our job. Señor Sempere believed we are all a part of something, and that when we leave this world our memories and our desires are not lost, but go on to become the memories and desires of those who take our place. He didn’t know whether we created God in our own image or whether God created us without quite knowing what he was doing. He believed that God, or whatever brought us here, lives in each of our deeds, in each of our words, and manifests himself in all those things that show us to be more than mere figures of clay. Señor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life to sharing them, to protecting them and to making sure their pages, like our memories and our desires, are never lost. He believed, and he made me believe it too, that as long as there is one person left in the world who is capable of reading them and experiencing them, a small piece of God, or of life, will remain. I know that my friend would not have liked us to say our farewells to him with prayers and hymns. I know that it would have been enough for him to realise that his friends, many of whom have come here today to say goodbye, will never forget him. I have no doubt that the Lord, even though old Sempere was not expecting it, will receive our dear friend at his side, and I know that he will live forever in the hearts of all those who are here today, all those who have discovered the magic of books thanks to him, and all those who, without even knowing him, will one day go through the door of his little bookshop where, as he liked to say, the story has only just begun. May you rest in peace, Sempere, dear friend, and may God give us all the opportunity to honour your memory and feel grateful for the privilege of having known you.’

An endless silence fell over the graveyard when the priest finished speaking. He retreated a few steps, blessing the coffin, his eyes downcast. At a sign from the chief undertaker, the gravediggers moved forward and slowly lowered the coffin with ropes. I remember the sound as it touched the bottom and the stifled sobs among the crowd. I remember that I stood there, unable to move, watching the gravediggers cover the tomb with the large slab of marble on which a single word was written, ‘Sempere’, the tomb in which his wife Diana had lain buried for twenty-six years.

The congregation shuffled away towards the cemetery gates, where they separated into groups, not quite knowing where to go, because nobody wanted to leave the place and abandon poor Señor Sempere. Barceló and Isabella led the bookseller’s son away, one on each side of him. I stayed on until I thought everyone else had left; only then did I dare go up to Sempere’s grave. I knelt and put my hand on the marble.

‘See you soon,’ I murmured.

I heard him approaching and knew who it was before I saw him. I got up and turned round. Pedro Vidal offered me his hand and the saddest smile I have ever seen.

‘Aren’t you going to shake my hand?’ he asked.

I didn’t and a few seconds later Vidal nodded to himself and pulled his hand away.

‘What are you doing here?’ I spat out.

‘Sempere was my friend too,’ replied Vidal.

‘I see. And are you here alone?’

Vidal looked puzzled.

‘Where is she?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

I let out a bitter laugh. Barceló, who had noticed us, was coming over, looking concerned.

‘What did you promise her, to buy her back?’

Vidal’s eyes hardened.

‘You don’t know what you’re saying, David.’

I drew closer, until I could feel his breath on my face.

‘Where is she?’ I insisted.

‘I don’t know,’ said Vidal.

‘Of course,’ I said, looking away.

I was about to walk towards the exit when Vidal grabbed my arm and stopped me.

‘David, wait—’

Before I realised what I was doing, I turned and hit him as hard as I could. My fist crashed against his face and he fell backwards. I noticed that there was blood on my hand and heard steps hurrying towards me. Two arms caught hold of me and pulled me away from Vidal.

‘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 realised 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, savouring 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 surgery 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 anaemia.’

Isabella sighed.

‘It’s nothing,’ I remarked.

The doctor looked at me, unconvinced, and stood up.

‘Tomorrow afternoon in my surgery, 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 goodbye. 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 coming 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. End of story.’

Isabella prepared a 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 towards 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 colour 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 that youthful innocence I had wanted to see in her and which 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 us do part.’