The Angel's Game (25 page)

23

When I stepped outside I was greeted by an icy breeze sweeping up the streets, and I knew that autumn was tiptoeing its way into Barcelona. In Plaza Palacio I got on a tram that was waiting there, empty, like a large wrought-iron rat trap. I sat by the window and paid the conductor for my ticket.

‘Do you go as far as Sarriá?’ I asked.

‘As far as the square.’

I leaned my head against the window and soon the tram set off with a jerk. I closed my eyes and succumbed to one of those naps that can only be enjoyed on board some mechanical monstrosity, the sleep of modern man. I dreamed that I was travelling in a train made of black bones, its coaches shaped like coffins, crossing a deserted Barcelona that was strewn with discarded clothes, as if the bodies that had occupied them had simply evaporated. A wasteland of abandoned hats and dresses, suits and shoes that covered the silent streets. The engine gave off a trail of scarlet smoke that spread across the sky like spilt paint. A smiling boss travelled next to me. He was dressed in white and wore gloves. Something dark and glutinous dripped from the tips of his fingers.

‘What has happened to all the people?’

‘Have faith, Martín. Have faith.’

As I awoke, the tram was gliding slowly into Plaza de Sarriá. I jumped off before it reached the stop and made my way up Calle Mayor de Sarriá. Fifteen minutes later I arrived at my destination.

Carretera de Vallvidrera started in a shady grove behind the red-brick castle of San Ignacio’s school. The street climbed uphill, bordered by solitary mansions, and was covered with a carpet of fallen leaves. Low clouds slid down the mountainside, dissolving into puffs of mist. I walked along the pavement and tried to work out the street numbers as I passed garden walls and wrought-iron gates. Behind them, barely visible, stood houses of darkened stone and dried-up fountains beached between paths that were thick with weeds. I walked along a stretch of road beneath a long row of cypress trees and discovered that the numbers jumped from 11 to 15. Confused, I retraced my steps in search of number 13. I was beginning to suspect that Señor Valera’s secretary was, in fact, cleverer than she had seemed and had given me a false address, when I noticed an alleyway leading off the pavement. It ran for about fifty metres towards some dark iron railings that formed a crest of spears atop a stone wall.

I turned into the narrow cobbled lane and walked down to the railings. A thick, unkempt garden had crept towards the other side and the branches of a eucalyptus tree passed through the spearheads like the arms of prisoners pleading through the bars of a cell. I pushed aside the leaves that covered part of the wall and found the letters and numbers carved in the stone.

CASA MARLASCA
1 3

As I followed the railings that ran round the edge of the garden, I tried to catch a glimpse of the interior. Some twenty metres along I discovered a metal door fitted into the stone wall. A large door knocker rested on the iron sheet that was welded together with tears of rust. The door was ajar. I pushed with my shoulder and managed to open it just enough to pass through without tearing my clothes on the sharp bits of stone that jutted out from the wall. The air was infused with the intense stench of wet earth.

A path of marble tiles led through the trees to an open area covered with white stones. On one side stood a garage, its doors open, revealing the remains of what had once been a Mercedes-Benz and now looked like a hearse abandoned to its fate. The house was a three-storey building in the modernist style, with curved lines and a crown of dormer windows coming together in a swirl beneath turrets and arches. Narrow windows, sharp as daggers, opened in its facade, which was peppered with reliefs and gargoyles. The glass panes reflected the silent passing of the clouds. I thought I could see the outline of a face behind one of the first-floor windows.

Without quite knowing why, I raised my arm and smiled faintly. I didn’t want to be taken for a thief. The figure remained there watching me, as still as a spider. I looked down for a moment and, when I looked up again, it had disappeared.

‘Good morning!’ I called out.

I waited for a few seconds and when no reply came I proceeded slowly towards the house. An oval-shaped swimming pool flanked the eastern side, beyond which stood a glass conservatory. Frayed deckchairs surrounded the swimming pool. A diving board, overgrown with ivy, was poised over the sheet of murky water. I walked towards the edge and saw that it was littered with dead leaves and algae rippling over the surface. I was looking at my own reflection in the water when I noticed a dark figure hovering behind me.

I spun round and met a pointed, sombre face, examining me nervously.

‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’

‘My name is David Martín and Señor Valera, the lawyer, sent me.’

Alicia Marlasca pressed her lips together.

‘You’re Señora de Marlasca? Doña Alicia?’

‘What’s happened to the one who usually comes?’ she asked.

I realised that Señora Marlasca had taken me for one of the articled clerks from Valera’s office and had assumed I was bringing papers to sign or some message from the lawyers. For a moment I considered adopting that identity, but something in the woman’s face told me that she’d heard enough lies to last her a lifetime.

‘I don’t work for the firm, Señora Marlasca. The reason for my visit is a personal matter. I wonder whether you would have a few minutes to speak about one of the old properties belonging to your deceased husband, Don Diego.’

The widow turned pale and looked away. She was leaning on a stick and I noticed a wheelchair in the doorway of the conservatory: I assumed she spent more time in it than she would care to admit.

‘None of the properties belonging to my husband remain, Señor . . .’

‘Martín.’

‘The banks kept everything, Señor Martín. Everything except for this house, which, thanks to the advice of Señor Valera’s father, was put in my name. The rest was taken by the scavengers . . .’

‘I’m referring to the tower house, in Calle Flassaders.’

The widow sighed. I reckoned she was around sixty to sixty-five years old. The echo of what must once have been a dazzling beauty had scarcely faded.

‘Forget that house. It’s cursed.’

‘Unfortunately I can’t. I live there.’

Señora Marlasca frowned.

‘I thought nobody wanted to live there. It stood empty for years.’

‘I’ve been renting it for some time. The reason for my visit is that, while I was doing some renovations, I came across a few personal items which I think belonged to your deceased husband and, I suppose, to you.’

‘There’s nothing of mine in that house. Whatever you’ve found must belong to that woman . . .’

‘Irene Sabino?’

Alicia Marlasca smiled bitterly.

‘What do you really want to know, Señor Martín? Tell me the truth. You haven’t come all this way to return some old things belonging to my husband.’

We gazed at each other in silence and I knew that I couldn’t and didn’t want to lie to this woman, whatever the cost.

‘I’m trying to find out what happened to your husband, Señora Marlasca.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I think the same thing may be happening to me.’

Casa Marlasca had the feel of an abandoned mausoleum that characterises large houses sustained on absence and neglect. Far from its days of fortune and glory, when an army of servants kept it pristine and full of splendour, the house was now a ruin. Paint was peeling off the walls; the floor tiles were loose; the furniture was rotten and damp; the ceilings sagged and the large carpets were threadbare and discoloured. I helped the widow sit on her wheelchair and, following her instructions, pushed her to a reading room that contained hardly any books or pictures.

‘I had to sell almost everything to survive,’ she explained. ‘If it hadn’t been for Señor Valera, who still sends me a small pension every month on behalf of the firm, I wouldn’t have known what to do.’

‘Do you live here alone?’

The widow nodded.

‘This is my home. The only place where I’ve been happy, even though that was many years ago. I’ve always lived here and I’ll die here. I’m sorry I haven’t offered you anything. It’s been so long since I last had visitors that I’ve forgotten how to treat a guest. Would you like coffee or a tea?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

Señora Marlasca smiled and pointed to the armchair in which I was sitting.

‘That was my husband’s favourite. He used to sit by the fire and read until late. I sometimes sat here, next to him, and listened. He liked telling me things, at least he did back then. We were very happy in this house . . .’

‘What happened?’

The widow stared at the ashes in the hearth.

‘Are you sure you want to hear this story?’

‘Please.’

24

‘To be honest, I’m not quite certain when my husband, Diego, met her. I just remember that one day he began to mention her in passing, and that soon not a day went by without him saying her name: Irene Sabino. He told me he’d been introduced to her by a man called Damián Roures who organised seances somewhere on Calle Elisabets. Diego was an expert on religions and had gone to a number of seances as an observer. In those days Irene Sabino was one of the most popular actresses in the Paralelo. She was beautiful, I will not deny it. Apart from that, I think she was just about able to count up to ten. People said she’d been born in the shacks of Bogatell beach, that her mother had abandoned her in the Somorrostro shanty town and she’d grown up among beggars and fugitives. At fourteen she started to dance in cabarets and nightclubs in the Raval and the Paralelo. Dancing is one way of putting it. I suppose she began to prostitute herself before she learned to read and write, if she ever did learn, that is . . . For a while she was the main star at La Criolla, or that’s what people said. Then she went on to more upmarket venues. I think it was at the Apolo that she met a man called Juan Corbera, whom everyone called Jaco. Jaco was her manager and probably her lover. It was Jaco who invented the name Irene Sabino and the legend that she was the secret offspring of a famous Parisian cabaret star and a prince of the European nobility. I don’t know what her real name was, or whether she ever had one. Jaco introduced her to the seances, at Roures’s suggestion, I believe, and they shared the benefits of selling her supposed virginity to wealthy, bored men who went along to those shams to kill the monotony. Her speciality was couples, they say.

‘What Jaco and his partner Roures didn’t suspect was that Irene was obsessed with the sessions and really believed she could make contact with the world of spirits. She was convinced that her mother sent her messages from the other side, and even when she became famous she continued attending the seances to try to establish contact with her. That is where she met my husband Diego. I suppose we were going through a bad patch, like all marriages do. Diego had been wanting to leave the legal profession for some time to devote himself to writing. I admit that he didn’t find the support he needed from me. I thought that if he did it, he would be throwing his life away, although probably what I really feared losing was all this, the house, the servants . . . I lost everything anyhow, and my husband too. What ended up separating us was the loss of Ismael. Ismael was our son. Diego was crazy about him. I’ve never seen a father so dedicated to his son. Ismael was his life, not I. We were arguing in the bedroom on the first floor. I began to reproach him for the time he spent writing, and for the fact that his partner, Valera, tired of having to shoulder Diego’s work as well as his own, had sent him an ultimatum and was thinking about dissolving their partnership and setting himself up independently. Diego said he didn’t care: he was ready to sell his part in the business so that he could dedicate himself to his vocation. That afternoon we couldn’t find Ismael. He wasn’t in his room or in the garden. I thought that when he’d heard us arguing he must have been frightened and had left the house. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that. Some months earlier he’d been found on a bench in Plaza de Sarriá, crying. We went out to look for him as it was getting dark, but there was no sign of him anywhere. We went to our neighbours’ houses, to hospitals . . . When we returned at dawn, after spending all night looking for him, we found his body at the bottom of the pool. He’d drowned the previous afternoon and we hadn’t heard his cries for help because we were too busy shouting at each other. He was seven years old. Diego never forgave me, nor himself. Soon we were unable to bear each other’s presence. Every time we looked at one another, every time we touched, we saw our dead son’s body at the bottom of that damned pool. One day I woke up and knew that Diego had abandoned me. He left the law firm and went to live in a rambling old house in the Ribera quarter which he had been obsessed with for years. He said he was writing and he’d received a very important commission from a publisher in Paris, so I didn’t need to worry about money. I knew he was with Irene, even if he didn’t admit it. He was a broken man and was convinced that he only had a short time to live. He thought he’d caught some illness, a sort of parasite, that was eating him up. All he ever spoke about was death. He wouldn’t listen to anyone. Not to me, not to Valera . . . only to Irene and Roures, who poisoned his mind with stories about spirits and extracted money from him by promising to put him in touch with Ismael. On one occasion I went to the tower house and begged him to open the door. He wouldn’t let me in. He told me he was busy, said he was working on something that was going to enable him to save Ismael. I realised then that he was beginning to lose his mind. He believed that if he wrote that wretched book for the Parisian publisher our son would return from the dead. I think that between the three of them - Irene, Roures and Jaco - they managed to get their hands on what little money he had left, we had left . . . He no longer saw anybody and spent his time locked up in that horrible place. Months later they found him dead. The police said it had been an accident, but I never believed it. Jaco had disappeared and there was no trace of the money. Roures maintained he didn’t know anything. He declared that he hadn’t had any contact with Diego for months because Diego had gone mad, and he scared him. He said that in his last appearances at the seances Diego had frightened his customers with stories of accursed souls so Roures had not allowed him to return. Diego said there was a huge lake of blood under the city; that his son spoke to him in his dreams; that Ismael was trapped by a shadow with a serpent’s skin who pretended to be another boy and played with him . . . Nobody was surprised when they found him dead. Irene said Diego had taken his own life because of me; she said that his cold and calculating wife, who had allowed his son to die because she didn’t want to give up her life of luxury, had pushed him to his death. She said she was the only one who had truly loved him and that she’d never accepted a penny from him. And I think, at least in that respect, she was telling the truth. I’m sure Jaco used her to seduce Diego in order to rob him of everything. Later, when matters came to a head, Jaco left her behind and fled without sharing a single thing. That’s what the police said, or at least some of them. I always felt that they didn’t want to stir things up and the suicide version of events turned out to be very convenient. But I don’t believe Diego took his own life. I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now. I think Irene and Jaco murdered him. And not just for the money. There was something else. I remember that one of the policemen assigned to the case, a young man called Salvador, Ricardo Salvador, thought the same. He said there was something that didn’t add up in the official version of events and that somebody was covering up the real cause of Diego’s death. Salvador tried very hard to establish the facts but he was removed from the case and was eventually thrown out of the police force. Even then he continued to investigate on his own. He came to see me sometimes and we became good friends . . . I was a woman on my own, ruined and desperate. Valera kept telling me I should remarry. He also blamed me for what had happened to my husband and even insinuated that there were plenty of unmarried shopkeepers around who wouldn’t mind having a pleasant-looking widow with aristocratic airs warm their beds in their golden years. Eventually even Salvador stopped visiting me. I don’t blame him. By trying to help me he had ruined his own life. Sometimes I think that the only thing I’ve ever managed to do for others is destroy their lives . . . I hadn’t told anybody this story until today, Señor Martín. If you want some advice, forget that house; forget me, my husband and this whole story. Go away, far away. This city is damned. Damned.’