The Angel's Game Read online

  Those were years in which bloodshed and violence were beginning to be everyday occurrences in Barcelona. Days of pamphlets and bombs that left strewn bodies shaking and smoking in the streets of the Raval quarter, of gangs of black figures who prowled about at night maiming and killing, of processions and parades of saints and generals who reeked of death and deceit, of inflammatory speeches in which everyone lied and everyone was right. The anger and hatred that years later would lead such people to murder one another in the name of grandiose slogans and colored rags could already be smelled in the poisoned air. The continual haze from the factories slithered over the city and masked its cobbled avenues, furrowed by trams and carriages. The night belonged to gaslight, to the shadows of narrow side streets shattered by the flash of gunshots and the blue trace of burned gunpowder. Those were years when one grew up fast, and with childhood slipping out of their hands, many children already had the look of old men.

  With no other family to my name but the dark city of Barcelona, the newspaper became my shelter and my universe until, when I was fourteen, my salary permitted me to rent that room in Doña Carmen’s pension. I had lived there barely a week when the landlady came to my room and told me that a gentleman was asking for me. On the landing stood a man dressed in gray, with a gray expression and a gray voice, who asked me whether I was David Martín. When I nodded, he handed me a parcel wrapped in coarse brown paper, then vanished down the stairs, the trace of his gray absence contaminating my world of poverty. I took the parcel to my room and closed the door. Nobody, except two or three people at the newspaper, knew that I lived there. Intrigued, I removed the wrapping. It was the first package I had ever received. Inside was a wooden case that looked vaguely familiar. I placed it on the narrow bed and opened it. It contained my father’s old pistol, given to him by the army, which he had brought with him when he returned from the Philippines to earn himself an early and miserable death. Next to the pistol was a small cardboard box with bullets. I held the gun and felt its weight. It smelled of gunpowder and oil. I wondered how many men my father had killed with that weapon with which he had probably hoped to end his own life, until someone got there first. I put it back and closed the case. My first impulse was to throw it in the rubbish bin, but then I realized that it was all I had left of my father. I imagined it had come from the moneylender who, when my father died, had tried to recoup his debts by confiscating what little we had in the old apartment overlooking the Palau de la Música: he had now decided to send me this gruesome souvenir to welcome me to adulthood. I hid the case on top of my cupboard, against the wall, where filth accumulated and where Doña Carmen would not be able to reach it, even with stilts, and I didn’t touch it again for years.

  That afternoon I went back to Sempere & Sons and, feeling I was now a man of the world as well as a man of means, I made it known to the bookseller that I intended to buy that old copy of Great Expectations I had been forced to return to him years before.

  “Name your price,” I said. “Charge me for all the books I haven’t paid you for all these years.”

  Sempere, I remember, gave me a wistful smile and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “I sold it this morning,” he confessed.

  6

  Three hundred and sixty-five days after I had written my first story for The Voice of Industry I arrived as usual at the newspaper offices but found the place almost deserted. There were just a handful of journalists, colleagues who, months ago, had given me affectionate nicknames and even words of encouragement but who now ignored my greeting and gathered in a circle to whisper among themselves. In less than a minute they had picked up their coats and disappeared as if they feared they would catch something from me. I sat alone in that cavernous room staring at the strange sight of dozens of empty desks. Slow, heavy footsteps behind me announced the approach of Don Basilio.

  “Good evening, Don Basilio. What’s going on here today? Why has everyone left?”

  Don Basilio looked at me sadly and sat at the desk next to mine.

  “There’s a Christmas dinner for the staff. At the Set Portes restaurant,” he said quietly. “I don’t suppose they mentioned anything to you.”

  I feigned a carefree smile and shook my head.

  “Aren’t you going?” I asked.

  Don Basilio shook his head.

  “I’m no longer in the mood.”

  We looked at each other in silence.

  “What if I take you somewhere?” I suggested. “Wherever you fancy. Can Solé, if you like. Just you and me, to celebrate the success of The Mysteries of Barcelona.”

  Don Basilio smiled, slowly nodding.

  “Martín,” he said at last. “I don’t know how to say this to you.”

  “Say what to me?”

  Don Basilio cleared his throat.

  “I’m not going to be able to publish any more installments of The Mysteries of Barcelona.”

  I gave him a puzzled look. Don Basilio looked away.

  “Would you like me to write something else? Something more like Galdós?”

  “Martín, you know what people are like. There have been complaints. I’ve tried to put a stop to this, but the editor is a weak man and doesn’t like unnecessary conflicts.”

  “I don’t understand, Don Basilio.”

  “Martín, I’ve been asked to be the one to tell you.”

  Finally, he shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’m fired,” I mumbled.

  Don Basilio nodded.

  Despite myself, I felt my eyes filling with tears.

  “It might feel like the end of the world to you now, but believe me when I say that it’s the best thing that could have happened to you. This place isn’t for you.”

  “And what place is for me?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, Martín. Believe me, I’m very sorry.”

  Don Basilio stood up and put a hand affectionately on my shoulder.

  “Happy Christmas, Martín.”

  …

  That same evening I emptied my desk and left for good the place that had been my home, disappearing into the dark, lonely streets of the city. On my way to the pension I stopped by the Set Portes restaurant under the arches of Casa Xifré. I stayed outside watching my colleagues laughing and raising their glasses through the windowpane. I hoped my absence made them happy or at least made them forget that they weren’t happy and never would be.

  I spent the rest of that week pacing the streets, taking shelter every day in the Ateneo library and imagining that when I returned to the pension I would discover a note from the newspaper editor asking me to rejoin the team. Hiding in one of the reading rooms, I would pull out the business card I had found in my hand when I woke up in El Ensueño and start to compose a letter to my unknown benefactor, Andreas Corelli, but I always tore it up and tried rewriting it the following day. On the seventh day, tired of feeling sorry for myself, I decided to make the inevitable pilgrimage to my maker’s house.

  I took the train to Sarriá in Calle Pelayo—in those days it still operated aboveground—and sat at the front of the carriage to gaze at the city and watch the streets become wider and grander the farther we drew away from the center. I got off at the Sarriá stop and from there took a tram that dropped me by the entrance to the monastery of Pedralbes. It was an unusually hot day for the time of year and I could smell the scent of the pines and broom that peppered the hillside. I set off up Avenida Pearson, which at that time was already being developed. Soon I glimpsed the unmistakable profile of Villa Helius. As I climbed the hill and got nearer, I could see Vidal sitting in the window of his tower in his shirtsleeves, enjoying a cigarette. Music floated on the air and I remembered that Vidal was one of the privileged few who owned a radio receiver. How good life must have looked from up there, and how insignificant I must have seemed.

  I waved at him and he returned my greeting. When I reached the villa I met the driver, Manuel, who was on his way to the coach house carrying a handful of rags and a buck
et of steaming hot water.

  “Good to see you here, David,” he said. “How’s life? Keeping up the good work?”

  “We do our best,” I replied.

  “Don’t be modest. Even my daughter reads those adventures you publish in the newspaper.”

  I was amazed that the chauffeur’s daughter not only knew of my existence but had even read some of the nonsense I wrote.

  “Cristina?”

  “I have no other,” replied Don Manuel. “Don Pedro is upstairs in his study, in case you want to go up.”

  I nodded gratefully, slipped into the mansion, and went up to the third floor, where the tower rose above the undulating rooftop of polychrome tiles. There I found Vidal installed in his study with its view of the city and the sea in the distance. He turned off the radio, a contraption the size of a small meteorite that he’d bought a few months earlier when the first Radio Barcelona broadcast had been announced from the studios concealed under the dome of Hotel Colón.

  “It cost me almost two hundred pesetas, and it broadcasts a load of rubbish.”

  We sat facing each other, with all the windows wide open and a breeze that to me, an inhabitant of the dark old town, smelled of a different world. The silence was exquisite, like a miracle. You could hear insects fluttering in the garden and the leaves on the trees rustling in the wind.

  “It feels like summer,” I ventured.

  “Don’t pretend everything is OK by talking about the weather. I’ve already been told what happened,” Vidal said.

  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.

  7

  That 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 t
hat 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.”