The Angel's Game (17 page)

At that point I could barely stand and needed to lie down in the dark. I salvaged one of the bottles of codeine pills from the drawer and swallowed two or three. I kept the bottle in my pocket and made my way down the stairs, not quite sure whether I would be able to get to my room in one piece. When I reached the corridor I thought I noticed a flickering along the line of light coming from beneath the main door. I walked slowly to the entrance, leaning on the walls.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

There was no reply, no sound at all. I hesitated for a moment, then opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. I leaned over to look down the stairs that descended in a spiral, merging into darkness. There was nobody there. When I turned back to face the door I noticed that the small lamp on the landing was blinking. I went back into the house and turned the key to lock the door, something I often forgot to do. Then I saw it. A cream-colored envelope with a serrated edge. Someone had slipped it under the door. I knelt down to pick it up. The paper was thick, porous. The envelope was sealed and had my name on it. The emblem on the wax was in the shape of the angel with its wings outspread.

I opened it.

I let the note fall to the floor and dragged myself to the gallery. There I lay on the sofa, sheltering in the half-light. There were seven days to go before that meeting. I smiled to myself. I didn’t think I was going to live seven more days. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. The constant ringing in my ears seemed more deafening than ever and stabs of white light lit up my mind with every beat of my heart.

You won’t even be able to think about writing.

I opened my eyes again and scanned the bluish shadow that veiled the gallery. Next to me, on the table, lay the old photograph album that
Cristina had left behind. I hadn’t found the courage to throw it away, or even touch it. I reached for the album and opened it, turning the pages until I found the image I was looking for. I pulled it off the paper and examined it. Cristina, as a child, walking hand in hand with a stranger along the jetty that stretched out into the sea. I pressed the photograph to my chest and let exhaustion overcome me. Slowly, the bitterness and the anger of that day, of those years, faded and a warm darkness wrapped itself around me, full of voices and hands that were waiting for me. I had an overwhelming desire to surrender to it, but something held me back and a spear of light and pain wrenched me from that pleasant sleep that promised to have no end.

Not yet
, the voice whispered,
not yet.

…

I sensed the days were passing because there were times when I awoke and thought I could see sunlight coming through the slats of the shutters. Once or twice I was sure I heard someone knocking on the door and voices calling my name, but after a while they stopped. Hours or days later I got up and put my hands to my face and found blood on my lips. I don’t know whether I went outside or whether I dreamed that I did, but without knowing how I had got there I found myself making my way up Paseo del Borne, toward the basilica of Santa María del Mar. The streets were deserted beneath a mercury moon. I looked up and thought I saw the ghost of a huge black storm spreading its wings over the city. A gust of white light split the skies and a mantle woven with raindrops cascaded down like a shower of glass daggers. A moment before the first drop touched the ground, time came to a standstill and hundreds of thousands of tears of light were suspended in the air like specks of dust. I knew that someone or something was walking behind me and could feel its breath on the nape of my neck, cold and filled with the stench of rotting flesh and fire. I could feel its fingers, long and pointed, hovering over my skin, and at that moment the young girl who lived only in the picture I held against my chest seemed to approach
through the curtain of rain. She took me by the hand and pulled me, leading me back to the tower house, away from that icy presence that had crept along behind me. When I recovered consciousness, the seven days had passed.

Day was breaking on Friday, 13 July.

P
edro Vidal and Cristina Sagnier were married that afternoon. The ceremony took place at five o’clock in the chapel of the monastery of Pedralbes, attended by only a small section of the Vidal clan; the most select members of the family, including the father of the groom, were ominously absent. Had there been any gossip, people would have said that the youngest son’s idea of marrying the chauffeur’s daughter had fallen on the hosts of the dynasty like a jug of cold water. But there was none. Thanks to a discreet pact of silence, the chroniclers of society had better things to do that afternoon and not a single publication mentioned the ceremony. There was nobody there to relate how a bevy of Vidal’s ex-lovers had clustered together by the church door, crying in silence like a sisterhood of faded widows still clinging to their last hope. Nobody was there to describe how Cristina held a bunch of white roses in her hand and wore an ivory-colored dress that matched her skin, making it seem as if the bride were walking naked up to the altar, with no other adornment than the white veil covering her face and an amber sky that appeared to be retreating into an eddy of clouds above the tall bell tower.

There was nobody there to recall how she stepped out of the car and how, for an instant, she stopped to look up at the square opposite the church door, until her eyes found the dying man whose hands shook and
who was muttering words nobody could hear, words he would take with him to the grave.

“Damn you. Damn you both.”

…

Two hours later, sitting in the armchair of my study, I opened the case that had come to me years before and that contained the only thing I had left of my father. I pulled out the pistol that was wrapped in a cloth and opened the barrel. I inserted six bullets and closed the weapon. I placed the barrel against my temple, drew back the hammer and shut my eyes. At that moment I felt a gust of wind whipping against the tower and the study windows burst open, hitting the wall with great force. An icy breeze touched my face, bringing with it the lost breath of great expectations.

T
he taxi slowly made its way up to the outskirts of the Gracia neighborhood, toward the solitary, somber grounds of Güell Park. The large houses that dotted the hill, peering through a grove that swayed in the wind like black water, had seen better days. I spied the large door of the estate high up on the hillside. Three years earlier, when Gaudí died, the heirs of Count Güell had sold the deserted grounds—whose sole inhabitant had been the estate’s architect—to the town hall for one peseta. Now forgotten and neglected, the garden of columns and towers looked more like a cursed paradise. I told the driver to stop by the gates and paid my fare.

“Are you sure you wish to get out here, sir?” the driver asked, looking uncertain. “If you like, I can wait for you for a few minutes …”

“It won’t be necessary.”

The murmur of the taxi disappeared down the hill and I was left alone with the echo of the wind among the trees. Dead leaves trailed about the entrance to the park and swirled round my feet. I went up to the gates, which were closed with rusty chains, and scanned the grounds on the other side. Moonlight licked the outline of the dragon that presided over the staircase. A dark shape came slowly down the steps, watching me with eyes that shone like pearls under water. It was a black dog. The animal stopped at the foot of the steps and only then did I realize it was not alone. Two more animals were watching me. One of
them had crept through the shadow cast by the guard’s house, which stood at one side of the entrance. The other, the largest of the three, had climbed onto the wall and was looking down at me from barely two meters away, steaming breath pouring out between its bared fangs. I drew away very slowly, without taking my eyes off it and without turning round. Step by step I reached the pavement opposite the entrance. Another of the dogs had scrambled up the wall and was following me with its eyes. I quickly surveyed the ground in search of a stick or a stone to use in self-defense if they decided to attack, but all I could see were dry leaves. I knew that if I looked away and started to run, the animals would chase me and I wouldn’t have gone more than twenty meters before they caught me and tore me to pieces. The largest dog advanced a few steps along the wall and I was sure it was going to pounce on me. The third one, the only one I had seen at first, which had probably acted as a decoy, was beginning to climb the lower part of the wall to join the other two. I’m done for, I thought.

At that moment, a flash lit up the wolfish faces of the three animals, and they stopped in their tracks. I looked over my shoulder and saw the mound that rose about fifty meters from the entrance to the park. The lights in the house had been turned on, the only lights on the entire hill. One of the animals gave a muffled groan and disappeared back into the park. The others followed it a few moments later.

Without thinking twice, I began to walk toward the house. It was a slender, angular three-story structure, shaped like a tower, its roof crowned with sharp gables, that looked down, like a sentinel, on the city with the ghostly park at its feet.

The house was at the end of a steep slope, with steps leading up to the front door. The large windows exhaled golden haloes of light. As I climbed the stone steps I thought I noticed the outline of a figure leaning on one of the balustrades on the second floor, as still as a spider waiting in its web. I climbed the last step and stopped to catch my breath. The main door was ajar and a sheet of light stretched out toward my feet. I approached slowly and stopped in the threshold. A smell of dead flowers emanated from within. I knocked gently on the door and it opened
slightly. Before me was an entrance hall and a long corridor leading into the house. I heard a dry, repetitive sound, like that of a shutter banging against the window in the wind; it came from inside the house and reminded me of a heart beating. Advancing a few steps into the hall I saw a staircase on my left that led to the upper floors. I thought I heard light footsteps, a child’s footsteps, climbing somewhere high above.

“Good evening?” I called out.

Before the echo of my voice had lost itself down the corridor, the percussive sound that was beating somewhere in the house stopped. Total silence now fell all around me and an icy draft kissed my cheek.

“Señor Corelli? It’s Martín. David Martín.”

I got no reply, so I ventured forward. The walls were covered with framed photographs of different sizes. From the poses and the clothes worn by the subjects I assumed they were all at least twenty or thirty years old. At the bottom of each frame was a small silver plaque with the name of the person in the photograph and the year it was taken. I studied those faces that were observing me from another time. Children and old people, ladies and gentlemen. They all bore the same shadow of sadness in their eyes, the same silent cry. They stared at the camera with a longing that chilled my blood.

“Does photography interest you, Martín, my friend?” said a voice next to me.

Startled, I turned round. Andreas Corelli was gazing at the photographs next to me with a smile tinged with melancholy. I hadn’t seen or heard him approach and when he smiled at me I felt a shiver down my spine.

“I thought you wouldn’t come.”

“So did I.”

“Then let me offer you a glass of wine and we’ll drink a toast to our errors.”

I followed him to a large room with wide French windows overlooking the city. Corelli pointed to an armchair and then filled two glasses from a decanter on a table. He handed me a glass and sat on the armchair opposite mine.

I tasted the wine. It was excellent. I almost downed it in one and soon felt the warmth sliding down my throat, calming my nerves. Corelli sniffed at his and watched me with a friendly, relaxed smile.

“You were right,” I said.

“I usually am,” Corelli replied. “It’s a habit that rarely gives me any satisfaction. Sometimes I think that few things would give me more pleasure than being sure I had made a mistake.”

“That’s easy to resolve. Ask me. I’m always wrong.”

“No, you’re not wrong. I think you see things as clearly as I do and it doesn’t give you any satisfaction either.”

Listening to him it occurred to me that the only thing that could give me some satisfaction at that precise moment was to set fire to the whole world and burn along with it. As if he’d read my thoughts, Corelli smiled and nodded, baring his teeth.

“I can help you, my friend.”

To my surprise, I found myself avoiding his eyes, concentrating instead on that small brooch with the silver angel on his lapel.

“Pretty brooch,” I said, pointing at it.

“A family heirloom,” Corelli replied.

I thought we’d exchanged enough pleasantries to last the whole evening.

“Señor Corelli, what am I doing here?”

Corelli’s eyes shone the same color as the wine he was gently swilling in his glass.

“It’s very simple. You’re here because at last you’ve realized that this is the place you should be. You’re here because I made you an offer a year ago. An offer that at the time you were not ready to accept but that you have not forgotten. And I’m here because I still think that you’re the person I’m looking for and that is why I preferred to wait twelve months rather than let you go.”

“An offer you never got round to explaining in detail.”