The Angel's Game (22 page)

15

On my way home I stopped by a stationer’s in Calle Argenteria to look at the shop window. On a sheet of fabric was a case containing a set of nibs, an ivory pen and a matching ink pot engraved with what looked like fairies or muses. There was something melodramatic about the whole set, as if it had been stolen from the writing desk of some Russian novelist, the sort who would bleed to death over thousands of pages. Isabella had beautiful handwriting that I envied, as pure and clear as her conscience, and the set seemed to have been made for her. I went in and asked the shop assistant to show it to me. The nibs were gold-plated and the whole business cost a small fortune, but I decided that it would be a good idea to repay my young assistant’s kindness and patience with this little gift. I asked the man to wrap it in bright purple paper with a ribbon the size of a carriage.

When I got home I was looking forward to the selfish satisfaction that comes from arriving with a gift in one’s hand. I was about to call Isabella as if she were a faithful pet with nothing better to do than wait devotedly for her master’s return, but what I saw when I opened the door left me speechless. The corridor was as dark as a tunnel. The door of the room at the other end was open, casting a square of flickering yellow light across the floor.

‘Isabella?’ I called out. My mouth was dry.

‘I’m here.’

The voice came from inside the room. I left the parcel on the hall table and walked down the corridor. I stopped in the doorway and looked inside. Isabella was sitting on the floor. She had placed a candle inside a tall glass and was earnestly devoting herself to her second vocation after literature: tidying up other people’s belongings.

‘How did you get in here?’

She smiled at me and shrugged her shoulders.

‘I was in the gallery and I heard a noise. I thought it was you coming back, but when I went into the corridor I saw that this door was open. I thought you’d told me it was locked.’

‘Get out of here. I don’t want you coming into this room. It’s very damp.’

‘Don’t be silly. With all the work there is to do here? Come on. Look at all the things I’ve found.’

I hesitated.

‘Here, come in.’

I stepped into the room and knelt down beside her. Isabella had separated all the items and boxes into categories: books, toys, photographs, clothes, shoes, spectacles. I looked at all the objects with a certain apprehension. Isabella seemed to be delighted, as if she’d discovered King Solomon’s mines.

‘Is all of this yours?’

I shook my head.

‘It belonged to the previous owner.’

‘Did you know him?’

‘No. It had all been here for years when I moved in.’

Isabella was holding a packet of letters and held it out to me as if it were evidence in a magistrate’s court.

‘Well, I think I’ve discovered his name.’

‘You don’t say.’

Isabella smiled, clearly delighted with her detective work.

‘Marlasca,’ she announced. ‘His name was Diego Marlasca. Don’t you think it’s odd?’

‘What?’

‘That his initials are the same as yours: D. M.’

‘It’s just a coincidence; tens of thousands of people in this town have the same initials.’

Isabella winked at me. She was really enjoying herself.

‘Look what else I’ve found.’

Isabella had salvaged a tin box full of old photographs. They were images from another age, postcards of old Barcelona, of pavilions that had been demolished in Ciudadela Park after the 1888 Universal Exhibition, of large crumbling houses and avenues full of people dressed in the ceremonious style of the time, of carriages and memories the colour of my childhood. Faces with absent expressions stared at me from thirty years back. In some of those photographs I thought I recognised the face of an actress who had been popular when I was a young boy and who had long since disappeared into obscurity. Isabella watched me in silence.

‘Do you remember her?’ she asked, after a time.

‘I think her name was Irene Sabino. She was quite a famous actress in the Paralelo theatres. This was a long time ago. Before you were born.’

‘Just look at this, then.’

Isabella handed me a photograph in which Irene Sabino appeared leaning against a window. It didn’t take me long to identify that window as the one in my study at the top of the tower.

‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ Isabella asked. ‘Do you think she lived here?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Maybe she was Diego Marlasca’s lover . . .’

‘I don’t think that’s any of our business.’

‘Sometimes you’re so boring.’

Isabella put the photographs back in the box. As she did so, one of them slipped from her hands. The picture fell at my feet. I picked it up and examined it: Irene Sabino, wearing a dazzling black gown, posed with a group of people dressed for a party in what seemed to be the grand hall of the Equestrian Club. It was just a picture of a social gathering that wouldn’t have caught my eye had I not noticed in the background, almost blurred, a gentleman with white hair standing at the top of a staircase. Andreas Corelli.

‘You’ve gone pale,’ said Isabella.

She took the photograph from my hand and perused it silently. I stood up and made a sign to Isabella to leave the room.

‘I don’t want you to come in here again,’ I said weakly.

‘Why?’

I waited for her to leave the room and closed the door behind us. Isabella looked at me as if I wasn’t altogether sane.

‘Tomorrow you’ll call the Sisters of Charity and tell them to come and collect all this. They’re to take everything. What they don’t want, they can throw away.’

‘But—’

‘Don’t argue with me.’

I didn’t want to face her and went straight to the stairs that led up to the study. Isabella watched me from the corridor.

‘Who is that man, Señor Martín?’

‘Nobody,’ I murmured. ‘Nobody.’

16

I went up to the study. Night had fallen, but there was no moon or stars in the sky. I opened the windows and gazed at the city in shadows. Only a light breeze was blowing and the sweat tingled on my skin. I sat on the windowsill and lit the second of the cigars Isabella had left on my desk a few days before, waiting for a breath of fresh air or a more presentable idea than the collection of clichés with which I was supposed to begin work on the boss’s commission. I heard the shutters in Isabella’s bedroom open on the floor below. A rectangle of light fell across the courtyard, punctured by the profile of her silhouette. Isabella went up to her window and gazed into the darkness without noticing my presence. I watched her slowly undress. I saw her walk over to the mirror and examine her body, stroking her belly with the tips of her fingers and going over the cuts she had made on the inside of her arms and thighs. She looked at herself for a long time, wearing nothing but a defeated air, then turned off the light.

I went back to my desk and sat in front of the pile of notes. I went over sketches of stories full of mystic revelations and prophets who survived extraordinary trials and who returned bearing the revealed truth; of messianic infants abandoned at the doors of humble families with pure souls who were persecuted by evil, godless empires; of promised paradises for those who would accept their destiny and the rules of the game with a sporting spirit; and of idle, anthropomorphic deities with nothing better to do than keep a telepathic watch on the conscience of millions of fragile primates - primates who learned to think just in time to discover that they had been abandoned to their lot in a remote corner of the universe and whose vanity, or despair, made them slavishly believe that heaven and hell were eager to know about their paltry little sins.

I asked myself if this was what the boss had seen in me, a mercenary mind with no qualms about hatching a narcotic story fit for sending small children to sleep, or for convincing some poor hopeless devil to murder his neighbour in exchange for the eternal gratitude of some god who subscribed to the rule of the gun. Some days earlier another letter had arrived, requesting that I meet up with the boss to discuss the progress of my work. Setting aside my scruples, I realised that I had barely twenty-four hours before the meeting, and at the rate I was going I’d arrive with my hands empty but with my head full of doubts and suspicions. Since there was no alternative, I did what I’d done for so many years in similar circumstances. I placed a sheet of paper in the Underwood and, with my hands poised on the keyboard like a pianist waiting for the beat, I began to squeeze my brain to see what would come out.

17

‘Interesting,’ the boss pronounced when he’d finished the tenth and last page. ‘Strange, but interesting.’

We were sitting on a bench in the gilded haze of the Shade House in Ciudadela Park. A vault of wooden strips filtered the sun until it was reduced to a golden shimmer, and all around us a garden of plants shaped the play of light and dark in the peculiar, luminous gloom. I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise from my fingers in blue spirals.

‘Coming from you, strange is a disturbing adjective,’ I noted.

‘I meant strange as opposed to vulgar,’ Corelli specified.

‘But?’

‘There are no buts, Martín. I think you’ve found an interesting route with a lot of potential.’

For a novelist, when someone comments that their pages are interesting and have potential, it is a sign that things aren’t going well. Corelli seemed to read my anxiety.

‘You’ve turned the question round. Instead of going straight for the mythological references you’ve started with the more prosaic. May I ask where you got the idea of a warrior messiah instead of a peaceful one?’

‘You mentioned biology.’

‘Everything we need to know is written in the great book of nature,’ Corelli agreed. ‘We only need the courage and the mental and spiritual clarity with which to read it.’

‘One of the books I consulted explained that among humans the male attains the plenitude of his fertility at the age of seventeen. The female attains it later and preserves it, and somehow acts as selector and judge of the genes she agrees to reproduce. The male, on the other hand, simply offers himself and wastes away much faster. The age at which he reaches his maximum reproductive strength is also when his combative spirit is at its peak. A young man is the perfect soldier. He has great potential for aggression and a limited critical capacity - or none at all - with which to analyse it and judge how to channel it. Throughout history, societies have found ways of using this store of aggression, turning their adolescents into soldiers, cannon fodder with which to conquer their neighbours or defend themselves against their aggressors. Something told me that our protagonist was an envoy from heaven, but an envoy who, in the first flush of youth, took arms and liberated truth with blows of iron.’

‘Have you decided to mix history with biology, Martín?’

‘From what you said, I understood them to be one and the same thing.’

Corelli smiled. I don’t know whether he was aware of it, but when he smiled he looked like a hungry wolf. I swallowed hard and tried to ignore the goose pimples.

‘I’ve given this some thought,’ I said, ‘and I realised that most of the great religions were either born or reached their apogee at a time when the societies that adopted them had a younger and poorer demographic base. Societies in which 70 per cent of the population was under the age of eighteen - half of them men with their veins bursting with violence and the urge to procreate - were perfect breeding grounds for an acceptance and explosion of faith.’

‘That’s an oversimplification, but I see where you’re going, Martín.’

‘I know. But with these general ideas in mind, I asked myself: why not get straight to the point and establish a mythology around this warrior messiah? A messiah full of blood and anger, who saves his people, his genes, his womenfolk and his patriarchs from the political and racial dogma of his enemies, that is to say, from anyone who does not subject himself to his doctrine.’

‘What about the adults?’

‘We’ll get to the adult by having recourse to his frustration. As life advances and we have to give up the hopes, dreams and desires of our youth, we acquire a growing sense of being a victim of the world and of other people. There is always someone else to blame for our misfortunes or failures, someone we wish to exclude. Embracing a doctrine that will turn this grudge and this victim mentality into something positive provides comfort and strength. The adult then feels part of the group and sublimates his lost desires and hopes through the community.’

‘Perhaps,’ Corelli granted. ‘What about all this iconography of death and the flags and shields? Don’t you find it counterproductive? ’

‘No. I think it’s essential. Clothes maketh the man, but above all, they maketh the churchgoer.’

‘And what do you say about women, the other half? I’m sorry, but I find it hard to imagine a substantial number of women in a society believing in pennants and shields. Boy Scout psychology is for children.’

‘The main pillar of every organised religion, with few exceptions, is the subjugation, repression, even the annulment of women in the group. Woman must accept the role of an ethereal, passive and maternal presence, never of authority or independence, or she will have to take the consequences. She might have a place of honour in the symbolism, but not in the hierarchy. Religion and war are male pursuits. And anyhow, woman sometimes ends up becoming the accomplice in her own subjugation.’

‘And the aged?’

‘Old age is the lubricant of belief. When death knocks at the door, scepticism flies out of the window. A serious cardiovascular fright and a person will even believe in Little Red Riding Hood.’

Corelli laughed.

‘Careful, Martín, I think you’re becoming more cynical than I am.’

I looked at him as if I were an obedient pupil anxious for the approval of a demanding teacher. Corelli patted me on the knee, nodding with satisfaction.

‘I like it. I like the flair of it. I want you to go on turning things round and finding a shape. I’m going to give you more time. We’ll meet in two or three weeks. I’ll let you know a few days beforehand.’

‘Do you have to leave the city?’

‘Business matters concerning the publishing house. I’m afraid I have a few days of travel ahead of me, but I’m going away contented. You’ve done a good job. I knew I’d found my ideal candidate.’

The boss stood up and put out his hand. I dried the sweat from my palm on my trouser leg and we shook hands.

‘You’ll be missed,’ I began.

‘Don’t exaggerate, Martín; you were doing very well.’

I watched him leave in the haze of the Shade House, the echo of his steps fading away into the shadows. I remained there a good while, wondering whether the boss had risen to the bait and swallowed the pile of tall stories I’d given him. I was sure that I’d told him exactly what he wanted to hear. I hoped so, and I also hoped that the string of nonsense would keep him satisfied for the time being, convinced that his servant, the poor failed novelist, had become a convert. I told myself that anything that could buy me more time in which to discover what I had got myself into was worth a try. When I stood up and left the Shade House, my hands were still shaking.