The Angel's Game (7 page)

I shrugged my shoulders and glanced over at his writing desk. I was aware that my mentor had spent months, or even years, trying to write what he called a “serious” novel, entirely unlike his crime fiction, so that his name would be inscribed in the more distinguished sections of libraries. I didn’t see many sheets of paper.

“How’s the masterpiece going?”

Vidal threw his cigarette butt out the window and stared into the distance.

“I don’t have anything left to say, David.”

“Nonsense.”

“Everything in life is nonsense. It’s just a question of perspective.”

“You should put that in your book.
The Nihilist on the Hill.
Bound to be a success.”

“You’re the one who is going to need success. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ll soon be short of cash.”

“I could always accept your charity.”

“It might feel like the end of the world to you now, but—”

“I’ll soon realize that this is the best thing that could have happened to me,” I said, completing the sentence. “Don’t tell me Don Basilio is writing your speeches now. Or is it the other way round?”

Vidal laughed.

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t you need a secretary?”

“I’ve already got the best secretary I could have. She’s more intelligent than me, infinitely more hardworking, and when she smiles I even feel that this lousy world still has some future.”

“And who is this marvel?”

“Manuel’s daughter.”

“Cristina.”

“At last I hear you utter her name.”

“You’ve chosen a bad week to make fun of me, Don Pedro.”

“Don’t look at me all doe-eyed. Did you think Pedro Vidal was going to allow that mediocre, constipated, envious bunch to sack you without doing anything about it?”

“A word from you to the editor could have changed things.”

“I know. That’s why I was the one who suggested he fire you,” said Vidal.

I felt as if he’d just slapped me in the face.

“Thanks for the push,” I improvised.

“I told him to fire you because I have something much better for you.”

“Begging?”

“Have you no faith? Only yesterday I was talking about you to a couple of partners who have just opened a publishing house and are looking for fresh blood to exploit. You can’t trust them, of course.”

“Sounds marvelous.”

“They know all about
The Mysteries of Barcelona
and are prepared to tender an offer that will make your name.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. They want you to write a series in installments
in the most baroque, bloody, and delirious Grand Guignol tradition—a series that will tear
The Mysteries of Barcelona
to shreds. I think that this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. I told them you’d go talk to them and that you’d be able to start work immediately.” I heaved a deep sigh. Vidal winked and then embraced me.

T
hat was how, only a few months after my twentieth birthday, I received and accepted an offer to write penny dreadfuls under the name of Ignatius B. Samson. My contract committed me to hand in two hundred pages of typed manuscript a month packed with intrigue, high society murders, countless underworld horrors, illicit love affairs featuring cruel, lantern-jawed landowners and damsels with unmentionable desires, and all sorts of twisted family sagas with plots as thick and murky as the water in the port. The series, which I decided to call
City of the Damned
, was to appear in monthly hardback installments with a full-color illustrated cover. In exchange I would be paid more money than I had ever imagined could be made doing something that I cared about, and the only censorship imposed on me would be dictated by the loyalty of my readers. The terms of the offer obliged me to write anonymously under an extravagant pseudonym, but it seemed a small price to pay for being able to make a living from the profession I had always dreamed of practicing. I would put aside any vanity about seeing my name on my work, while remaining true to myself, to what I was.

My publishers were a pair of colorful characters called Barrido and Escobillas. Barrido, who was small and squat and always affected an oily, sibylline smile, was the brains of the operation. He sprang from the sausage industry and although he hadn’t read more than three books in his life—and those included the catechism and the telephone directory—he
was possessed of a proverbial audacity for cooking the books, which he falsified for his investors, displaying a talent for fiction that any of his authors might have envied. These, as Vidal had predicted, the firm swindled, exploited, and, in the end, kicked into the gutter when the winds were unfavorable—something that always happened sooner or later.

Escobillas played a complementary role. Tall, gaunt, with a vaguely threatening appearance, he had gained his experience in the undertaker business and beneath the pungent eau de cologne with which he bathed his private parts there always seemed to be a faint, disturbing whiff of formaldehyde. His role was essentially that of the sinister foreman, whip in hand, always ready to do the dirty work that Barrido, with his more cheerful nature and less athletic disposition, wasn’t naturally inclined to. The ménage à trois was completed by their secretary, Herminia, who followed them around like a loyal dog wherever they went and whom we all nicknamed Lady Venom because, although she looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, she was as trustworthy as a rattlesnake in heat.

Social niceties aside, I tried to see them as little as possible. Ours was a strictly commercial relationship and none of the parties felt any great desire to alter the established protocol. I had resolved to make the most of the opportunity and work hard: I wanted to prove to Vidal, and to myself, that I was worthy of his help and his trust. With fresh money in my hands, I decided to abandon Doña Carmen’s pension for more comfortable quarters. For some time now I’d had my eye on a huge pile of a house at 30 Calle Flassaders, a stone’s throw from Paseo del Borne, which for years I had passed as I went between the newspaper and the pension. Topped by a tower that rose from a façade carved with reliefs and gargoyles, the building had been closed for years, its front door sealed with chains and rusty padlocks. Despite its gloomy and somewhat melodramatic appearance, or perhaps for that very reason, the idea of inhabiting it awoke in me that desire that comes only with ill-advised ideas. In other circumstances I would have accepted that such a place was far beyond my meager budget, but the long years of abandonment and oblivion to which the dwelling seemed condemned made me hope that, if nobody else wanted it, perhaps its owners might accept my offer.

Asking around in the area, I discovered that the house had been empty for years and was handled by a property manager called Vicenç Clavé, who had an office in Calle Comercio, opposite the market. Clavé was a gentleman of the old school who liked to dress in a fashion similar to that of the statues of mayors or national heroes that greeted you at the various entrances of Ciudadela Park, and if you weren’t careful he would take off on rhetorical flights that encompassed every subject under the sun.

“So you’re a writer. Well, I could tell you stories that would make good books.”

“I don’t doubt it. Why don’t you begin by telling me the story of the house in Flassaders, number 30?”

Clavé adopted the look of a Greek mask.

“The tower house?”

“That’s the one.”

“Believe me, young man, you don’t want to live there.”

“Why not?”

Clavé lowered his voice. Whispering as if he feared the walls might hear us, he delivered his verdict in a funereal tone.

“That house is jinxed. I visited the place when I went along with the notary to seal it up and I can assure you that the oldest part of Montjuïc cemetery is more cheerful. It’s been empty since then. That place has bad memories. Nobody wants it.”

“Its memories can’t be any worse than mine. Anyhow, I’m sure they’ll help bring down the asking price.”

“Some prices cannot be paid with money.”

“Can I see it?”

…

My first visit to the tower house was one morning in March, in the company of the property manager, his secretary, and an auditor from the bank who held the title deeds. Apparently, the building had been trapped for years in a labyrinth of legal disputes until it finally reverted to the lending institution that had guaranteed its last owner. If Clavé was telling the truth, nobody had set foot in it for at least twenty years.

Y
ears later, when I read an account about British explorers penetrating the dark passages of an ancient Egyptian burial place—mazes and curses included—I would recall that first visit to the tower house in Calle Flassaders. The secretary came equipped with an oil lamp because the building had never had electricity installed. The auditor turned up with a set of fifteen keys with which to liberate the countless padlocks that fastened the chains. When the front door was opened, the house exhaled a putrid smell, like a damp tomb. The auditor started to cough and the manager, who was making an effort not to look too skeptical or disapproving, covered his mouth with a handkerchief.

“You first,” he offered.

The entrance resembled one of those interior courtyards in the old palaces of the area, with flagstone paving and a stone staircase that led to the front door of the living quarters. Daylight filtered in through a glass skylight, completely covered in pigeon and seagull excrement, that was set on high.

“There aren’t any rats,” I announced once I was inside the building.

“A sign of good taste and common sense,” said the property manager, behind me.

We proceeded up the stairs until we reached the landing on the main floor, where the auditor spent ten minutes trying to find the right
key for the lock. The mechanism yielded with an unwelcoming groan and the heavy door opened, revealing an endless corridor strewn with cobwebs that undulated in the gloom.

“Holy Mother of God,” mumbled the manager.

No one else dared take the first step, so once more I had to lead the expedition. The secretary held the lamp up high, looking at everything with a baleful air.

The manager and the auditor exchanged a knowing look. When they noticed that I was observing them, the auditor smiled calmly.

“A good bit of dusting and some patching up and the place will look like a palace,” he said.

“Bluebeard’s palace,” the manager added.

“Let’s be positive,” the auditor corrected him. “The house has been empty for some time: there’s bound to be some minor damage.”

I was barely paying attention to them. I had dreamed about that place so often as I walked past its front door that now I hardly noticed the dark, gloomy aura that possessed it. I walked up the main corridor, exploring rooms of all shapes and sizes in which old furniture lay abandoned under a thick layer of dust and shadow. One table was still covered with a frayed tablecloth on which sat a dinner service and a tray of petrified fruit and flowers. The glasses and cutlery were still there, as if the inhabitants of the house had fled in the middle of dinner.

The wardrobes were crammed with threadbare, faded clothes and shoes. There were whole drawers filled with photographs, spectacles, fountain pens, and watches. Dust-covered portraits observed us from every surface. The beds were made and covered with a white veil that shone in the half-light. A gramophone rested on a mahogany table. It had a record on it and the needle had slid to the end. I blew on the film of dust that covered it and the title of the recording came into view: Mozart’s
Lacrimosa.

“The symphony orchestra performing in your own home,” said the auditor. “What more could one ask for? You’ll live like a lord here.”

The manager shot him a murderous look, clearly in disagreement.
We went through the apartment until we reached the gallery at the back where a coffee service lay on a table and an open book on an armchair was still waiting for someone to turn the page.

“It looks like whoever lived here left suddenly, with no time to take anything with them,” I said.

The auditor cleared his throat.

“Perhaps the gentleman would like to see the study?”

The study was at the top of a tall tower, a peculiar structure at the heart of which was a spiral staircase that led off the main corridor, while its outside walls bore the traces of as many generations as the city could remember. There it stood, like a watchtower suspended over the roofs of the Ribera quarter, crowned by a narrow dome of metal and tinted glass that served as a lantern and topped by a weather vane in the shape of a dragon. We climbed the stairs and when we reached the room at the top, the auditor quickly opened the windows to let in air and light. It was a rectangular room with high ceilings and dark wooden flooring. Its four large arched windows looked out on all four sides, giving me a view of the cathedral of Santa María del Mar to the south, the large Borne Market to the north, the railway station to the east, and to the west the endless maze of streets and avenues tumbling over one another toward Mount Tibidabo.

“What do you say? Marvelous!” proposed the auditor enthusiastically.

The property manager examined everything with a certain reserve and displeasure. His secretary held the lamp up high, even though it was no longer needed. I went over to one of the windows and leaned out, spellbound.

The whole of Barcelona stretched out at my feet and I wanted to believe that when I opened those windows—my new windows—each evening its streets would whisper stories to me, secrets in my ear, that I could catch on paper and narrate to whomever cared to listen. Vidal had his exuberant and stately ivory tower in the most elegant and elevated part of Pedralbes, surrounded by hills, trees, and fairy-tale skies. I would have my sinister tower rising above the oldest, darkest streets of the city,
surrounded by the miasmas and shadows of that necropolis which poets and murderers had once called the “Rose of Fire.”

What finally decided the matter was the desk that dominated the center of the study. On it, like a great sculpture of metal and light, stood an impressive Underwood typewriter for which, alone, I would have paid the price of the rent. I sat in the plush armchair facing the desk, stroked the typewriter keys, and smiled.