The Angel's Game (28 page)

“End of argument. Have you nothing to do downstairs?”

“No.”

“Then start writing. You’re not here to wash the dishes and hide my things. You’re here because you said you wanted to learn to write and I’m the only idiot you know who can help you.”

“There’s no need to get angry. It’s just that I lack inspiration.”

“Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table and
your bottom on the chair and start sweating. Choose a theme, an idea, and squeeze your brain until it hurts. That’s called inspiration.”

“I have a topic.”

“Hallelujah.”

“I’m going to write about you.”

We exchanged glances, like opponents across a game board.

“Why?”

“Because I find you interesting. And strange.”

“And old.”

“And touchy. Almost like a boy my age.”

Despite myself I was beginning to get used to Isabella’s company, to her jibes and to the light she had brought into that house. If things continued this way, my worst fears were going to come true and we’d end up being friends.

“What about you? Have you found a subject with all those whopping great tomes you’re consulting?”

I decided that the less I told Isabella about my commission, the better.

“I’m still at the research stage.”

“Research? And how does that work?”

“Basically, you read thousands of pages to learn what you need to know and to get to the heart of a subject, to its emotional truth, and then you shed all that knowledge and start again at square one.”

Isabella sighed.

“What is emotional truth?”

“It’s sincerity within fiction.”

“So, does one have to be an honest, good person to write fiction?”

“No. One has to be skilled. Emotional truth is not a moral quality. It’s a technique.”

“You sound like a scientist,” protested Isabella.

“Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. Like architecture or music.”

“I thought it was something that sprang from the artist, just like that, spontaneously.”

“The only things that spring spontaneously are unwanted body hair and warts.”

Isabella considered these revelations without much enthusiasm.

“You’re saying all this to discourage me and make me go home.”

“I should be so lucky.”

“You’re the worst teacher in the world.”

“It’s the student who makes the teacher, not the other way round.”

“It’s impossible to argue with you because you know all the rhetorical tricks. It’s not fair.”

“Nothing is fair. The most one can hope is for things to be logical. Justice is a rare illness in a world that is otherwise a picture of health.”

“Amen. Is that what happens as you grow older? Do people stop believing in things, as you have?”

“No. Most people, as they grow old, continue to believe in nonsense, usually even greater nonsense. I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.”

“Tell me something I don’t know! Well, when I’m older I’ll go on believing in things,” Isabella threatened.

“Good luck.”

“And what’s more, I believe in you.”

She didn’t look away as I fixed my eyes on hers.

“Because you don’t know me.”

“That’s what you think. You’re not as mysterious as you imagine.”

“I don’t pretend to be mysterious.”

“That was a kind substitute for unpleasant. I also know a few rhetorical tricks.”

“That isn’t rhetoric. It’s irony. They’re two different things.”

“Do you always have to win every argument?”

“When it’s as easy as this, yes.”

“And that man …”

“Corelli?”

“Corelli. Does he make it easy for you?”

“No. Corelli knows even more tricks than I do.”

“That’s what I thought. Do you trust him?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. Do you trust him?”

“Why shouldn’t I trust him?”

Isabella shrugged.

“What exactly has he commissioned you to write? Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“I told you. He wants me to write a book for his publishing company.”

“A novel?”

“Not exactly. More like a fable. A legend.”

“A book for children?”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re going to do it?”

“He pays very well.”

Isabella frowned.

“Is that why you write? Because they pay you well?”

“Sometimes.”

“And this time?”

“This time I’m going to write the book because I have to.”

“Are you in debt to him?”

“You could put it that way, I suppose.”

Isabella weighed the matter. She was about to say something but thought twice about it and bit her lip. Instead, she gave me an innocent smile and one of her angelic looks with which she was capable of changing the subject with a simple batting of her eyelids.

“I’d also like to be paid to write,” she said.

“Anyone who writes would like the same, but it doesn’t mean that he or she will achieve it.”

“And how do you achieve it?”

“You begin by going down to the gallery, taking pen and paper—”

“Digging your elbows in and squeezing your brain until it hurts. I know.”

She looked into my eyes, hesitating. She’d been staying in my house for a week and a half and I still showed no signs of sending her
home. I imagined she was asking herself when I was going to do it or why I hadn’t done it yet. I also asked myself that very question and could find no answer.

“I like being your assistant, even if you are the way you are,” she said at last.

The girl was staring at me as if her life depended on a kind word. I yielded to temptation. Good words are a vain benevolence that demands no sacrifice and is more appreciated than real acts of kindness.

“I also like you being my assistant, Isabella, even if I am the way I am. And I will like it even more when there is no longer any need for you to be my assistant as you will have nothing more to learn from me.”

“Do you think I have potential?”

“I have no doubt whatsoever. In ten years you’ll be the teacher and I’ll be the apprentice,” I said, repeating words that still tasted of treason.

“You liar,” she said, kissing me sweetly on the cheek before running off down the stairs.

T
hat afternoon I left Isabella sitting at the desk we had set up for her in the gallery, facing her blank pages, while I went over to Gustavo Barceló’s bookshop on Calle Fernando hoping to find a good, readable edition of the Bible. All the sets of New and Old Testaments I had in the house were printed in microscopic type on thin, almost translucent onionskin paper, and reading them induced not so much fervor and divine inspiration as migraines. Barceló, who among many other things was an avid collector of holy books and apocryphal Christian texts, had a private room at the back of his shop filled with a formidable assortment of Gospels, lives of saints and holy people, and all kinds of other religious texts.

When I walked into the bookshop, one of the assistants rushed into the backroom office to alert the boss. Barceló emerged looking euphoric.

“Bless my eyes! Sempere told me you’d been reborn, but this is quite something. Next to you, Valentino looks like someone just back from the salt mines. Where have you been hiding, you rogue?”

“Oh, here and there,” I said.

“Everywhere except at Vidal’s wedding party. You were sorely missed, my friend.”

“I doubt that.”

The bookseller nodded, implying that he understood my wish not to discuss the matter.

“Will you accept a cup of tea?”

“Or two. And a Bible. If possible, one that is easy to read.”

“That won’t be a problem,” said the bookseller. “Dalmau?”

The shop assistant called Dalmau came over obligingly.

“Dalmau, our friend Martín here needs a Bible that is legible, not decorative. I’m thinking of Torres Amat, 1825. What do you think?”

One of the peculiarities of Barceló’s bookshop was that books were spoken of as if they were exquisite wines, cataloged by bouquet, aroma, consistency, and vintage.

“An excellent choice, Señor Barceló, although I’d be more inclined toward the updated and revised edition.”

“Eighteen sixty?”

“Eighteen ninety-three.”

“Of course. That’s it! Wrap it up for our friend Martín and put it on the house.”

“Certainly not,” I objected.

“The day I charge an unbeliever like you for the word of God will be the day I’m struck dead by lightning, and with good reason.”

Dalmau rushed off in search of my Bible and I followed Barceló into his office, where the bookseller poured two cups of tea and offered me a cigar from his humidor. I accepted it and lit it with the flame of the candle he handed me.

“Macanudo?”

“I see you’re educating your palate. A man must have vices, expensive ones if possible. Otherwise when he reaches old age he will have nothing to be redeemed from. In fact, I’m going to have one with you, what the hell!”

A cloud of exquisite cigar smoke covered us like high tide.

“I was in Paris a few months ago and took the opportunity to make some inquiries on the subject you talked about with our friend Sempere some time ago,” Barceló said.

“Éditions de la Lumière.”

“Exactly. I wish I’d been able to scratch a little deeper, but unfortunately,
after the publishing house closed down, nobody, it seems, bought its inventory, so it was difficult to gather much information.”

“You say it closed? When?”

“In 1914, I believe.”

“There must be some mistake.”

“Not if we’re talking about the same Éditions de la Lumière, in Boulevard St.-Germain.”

“That’s the one.”

“In fact, I made a note of everything so I wouldn’t forget it when I saw you.”

Barceló looked in the drawer of his desk and pulled out a small notebook.

“Here it is: ‘Éditions de la Lumière, publishing house specializing in religious texts with offices in Rome, Paris, London, and Berlin. Founder and publisher, Andreas Corelli. Date of opening of first office in Paris, 1881—’”

“Impossible,” I muttered.

“Of course, I could have got it wrong, but …”

“Did you get a chance to visit the offices?”

“As a matter of fact, I did try, because my hotel was opposite the Pantheon, very close by, and the former offices of the publishing house were on the southern side of the boulevard, between Rue St.-Jacques and Boulevard St.-Michel.”

“And?”

“The building was empty, bricked up, and it looked as if there’d been a fire or something similar. The only thing remaining was the door knocker, an exquisite object in the shape of an angel. Bronze, I think. I would have taken it if a gendarme hadn’t been watching me disapprovingly. I didn’t have the courage to provoke a diplomatic incident—heaven forbid France should decide to invade us again!”

“The way things are going, they might be doing us a favor.”

“Now that you mention it … But going back to the subject, when I saw what a state the place was in, I went to the café next door to make
some inquiries and they told me the building had been like that for twenty years.”

“Were you able to discover anything about the publisher?”

“Corelli? From what I gathered, the publishing house closed when he decided to retire, although he can’t even have been fifty years old. I think he moved to a villa in the south of France, in the Lubéron, and died shortly afterwards. They say a snake bit him. A viper. That’s what you get for retiring to Provence.”

“Are you sure he died?”

“Père Coligny, an old competitor of Corelli’s, showed me his death notice—he had it framed and treasures it like a trophy. He said he looks at it every day to remind himself that the damned bastard is dead and buried. His exact words, although in French they sounded much prettier and more musical.”

“Did Coligny mention whether the publisher had any children?”

“I got the impression that Corelli was not his favorite topic, because as soon as he could he slipped away from me. It seems there was some scandal—Corelli stole one of his authors from him, someone called Lambert.”

“What happened?”

“The funniest thing about all this is that Coligny had never actually set eyes on Corelli. His only contact with him was by correspondence. The root of the problem, I think, was that Monsieur Lambert signed an agreement to write a book for Éditions de la Lumière behind Coligny’s back, when Coligny had sole rights to his work. Lambert was an opium addict and had accumulated enough debts to pave the Rue de Rivoli from end to end. Coligny suspected that Corelli had offered Lambert an astronomical sum and that the poor man, who was dying, had accepted it because he wanted to leave his children well provided for.”

“What sort of book was it?”

“Something with a religious theme. Coligny mentioned the title, some fancy Latin expression that was fashionable at the time, but I can’t remember it now. As you know, the titles of missals are all pretty much the same.
Pax Gloria Mundi
or something like that.”

“And what happened to the book and Lambert?”

“That’s where matters become complicated. It seems that poor Lambert, in a fit of madness, wanted to burn his manuscript, so he set fire to it, and to himself, in the offices of the publishing house. A lot of people thought the opium had frazzled his brain, but Coligny suspected that it was Corelli who pushed him toward suicide.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“Who knows? Perhaps he didn’t want to pay him the sum he had promised. Perhaps it was all just Coligny’s fantasy—he seemed to be a great fan of young Beaujolais twelve months a year. He told me that Corelli had tried to kill him in order to release Lambert from his contract and that Corelli left him in peace only when he decided to terminate the agreement and let Lambert go.”

“Didn’t you say he’d never seen him?”

“Exactly. I think Coligny must have been raving. When I visited him in his apartment I saw more crucifixes, Madonnas, and figures of saints than you’d find in a shop selling Christmas mangers. I got the impression that he wasn’t all that well in the head. When I left he told me to stay away from Corelli.”