The Angel's Game (12 page)

I watched her take the book out. She held it with both hands, looking at the cover, then turning it over to examine the back. I could hardly breathe and wanted to go up to her and say something, but couldn’t. I stood there, only a few metres away from my mother, spying on her without her being aware of my presence, until she set off again, clutching the book, walking towards Colón. As she passed the Palace of La Virreina she went over to a waste bin and threw the book inside. I watched as she headed down the Ramblas until she was lost among the crowd, as if she had never been there at all.

19

Sempere was alone in the bookshop, gluing down the spine of a copy of
Fortunata and Jacinta
that was coming apart. When he looked up, he saw me on the other side of the door. In just a few seconds he realised the state I was in and signalled to me to come in. As soon as I was inside, he offered me a chair.

‘You don’t look well, Martín. You should go and see a doctor. If you’re scared I’ll come with you. Physicians make my flesh crawl too, with their white gowns and those sharp things in their hands, but sometimes you’ve got to go through with it.’

‘It’s just a headache, Señor Sempere. It’s already getting better.’

Sempere poured me a glass of Vichy water.

‘Here. This cures everything, except for stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.’

I smiled weakly at Sempere’s joke, then drank down the water and sighed. I felt a wave of nausea and an intense pressure throbbed behind my left eye. For a moment I thought I was going to collapse and I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath, praying I wouldn’t drop dead right there. Destiny couldn’t have such a perverse sense of humour as to guide me to Sempere’s bookshop so I that could present him with a corpse, after all he’d done for me. I felt a hand holding my head gently. Sempere. I opened my eyes and saw the bookseller and his son, who had just stepped in, watching me as if they were at a wake.

‘Shall I call the doctor?’ Sempere’s son asked.

‘I’m better, thanks. Much better.’

‘Your way of getting better makes one’s hair stand on end. You look grey.’

‘A bit more water?’

Sempere’s son rushed to fill me another glass.

‘Forgive the performance,’ I said. ‘I can assure you I hadn’t rehearsed it.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense!’

‘It might do you good to eat something sweet. Maybe it was a drop in your sugar levels . . .’ the boy suggested.

‘Run over to the baker’s on the corner and get him something,’ the bookseller agreed.

When we were left alone, Sempere fixed his eyes on mine.

‘I promise I’ll go to the doctor,’ I said.

A few minutes later the bookseller’s son returned with a paper bag full of the most select assortment of buns in the area. He handed it to me and I chose a brioche which, any other time, would have seemed to me as tempting as a chorus girl’s backside.

‘Bite,’ Sempere ordered.

I ate my brioche obediently, and slowly I began to feel better.

‘He seems to be reviving,’ Sempere’s son observed.

‘What the corner-shop buns can’t cure—’

At that moment we heard the doorbell. A customer had come into the bookshop and, at Sempere’s nod, his son left us to serve him. The bookseller stayed by my side, trying to feel my pulse by pressing on my wrist with his index finger.

‘Señor Sempere, do you remember, many years ago, when you said that if one day I needed to save a book, really save it, I should come to see you?’

Sempere glanced at the rejected book I had rescued from the bin, which I was still holding in my hands.

‘Give me five minutes.’

It was beginning to get dark when we walked down the Ramblas among a crowd who had come out for a stroll on a hot, humid afternoon. There was only the hint of a breeze; balcony doors and windows were wide open, with people leaning out of them, watching the human parade under an amber-coloured sky. Sempere walked quickly and didn’t slow down until we sighted an arcade of shadows at the entrance to Calle Arco del Teatro.

Before crossing over he looked at me solemnly and said: ‘Martín, you mustn’t tell anyone what you’re about to see. Not even Vidal. No one.’

I nodded, intrigued by the bookseller’s air of seriousness and secrecy. I followed him through the narrow street, barely a gap between bleak and dilapidated buildings that seemed to bend over like willows of stone, attempting to close the narrow strip of sky between the rooftops. Soon we reached a large wooden door that looked as if it might be guarding the entrance to an old basilica that had spent a century at the bottom of a lake. Sempere went up the steps to the door and took hold of the brass knocker shaped like a smiling demon’s face. He knocked three times then came down the steps again to wait by my side.

‘You can’t tell anyone what you’re about to see . . . no one. Not even Vidal. No one.’

Sempere nodded severely. We waited for about two minutes until we heard what sounded like a hundred bolts being unlocked simultaneously. With a deep groan, the large door opened halfway and a middle-aged man with thick grey hair, a face like a vulture and penetrating eyes stuck his head round it.

‘We were doing just fine and now here’s Sempere!’ he snapped. ‘What are you bringing me today? Another aficionado who hasn’t got himself a girlfriend because he’d rather live with his mother?’

Sempere paid no attention to this sarcastic greeting.

‘Martín, this is Isaac Monfort, the keeper of this place. His friendliness has no equal. Do everything he says. Isaac, this is David Martín, a good friend, a writer and a trustworthy person.’

The man called Isaac looked me up and down without much enthusiasm and then exchanged a glance with Sempere.

‘A writer is never trustworthy. Let’s see, has Sempere explained the rules to you?’

‘Only that I can never tell anyone what I will see here.’

‘That is the first and most important rule. If you don’t keep it, I personally will wring your neck. Do you get the idea?’

‘One hundred per cent.’

‘Come on, then,’ said Isaac, motioning me to come in.

‘I’ll say goodbye now, Martín. You’ll find a safe place here.’

I realised that Sempere was referring to the book, not to me. He hugged me and then disappeared into the night. I stepped inside and Isaac pulled a lever on the back of the door. A thousand mechanisms, knotted together in a web of rails and pulleys, sealed it up. Isaac took a lamp from the floor and raised it to my face.

‘You don’t look well,’ he pronounced.

‘Indigestion,’ I replied.

‘From what?’

‘Reality.’

‘Join the queue.’

We walked down a long corridor, and on either side, through the shadows, I thought I could make out frescoes and marble staircases. We advanced further into the palatial building and shortly there appeared, in front of us, what looked like the entrance to a large hall.

‘What have you got there?’ Isaac asked.

‘
The Steps of Heaven
. A novel.’

‘What a tacky title. Don’t tell me you’re the author.’

‘Who, me?’

Isaac sighed, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.

‘And what else have you written?’

‘
City of the Damned
, volumes one to twenty-seven, among other things.’

Isaac turned round and smiled with satisfaction.

‘Ignatius B. Samson?’

‘May he rest in peace, and at your service.’

At that point, the mysterious keeper stopped and left the lamp resting on what looked like a balustrade rising in front of a large vault. I looked up and was spellbound. There before me stood a colossal labyrinth of bridges, passages and shelves full of hundreds of thousands of books, forming a gigantic library of seemingly impossible perspectives. Tunnels zigzagged through the immense structure, which seemed to rise in a spiral towards a large glass dome, curtains of light and darkness filtering through it. Here and there I could see isolated figures walking along footbridges, up stairs, or carefully examining the contents of the passageways of that cathedral of books and words. I couldn’t believe my eyes and I looked at Isaac Monfort in astonishment. He was smiling like an old fox enjoying his favourite game.

‘Ignatius B. Samson, welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.’

20

I followed the keeper to the foot of the large nave that housed the labyrinth. The floor we were stepping over was sewn with tombstones, their inscriptions, crosses and faces dissolving into the stone. The keeper stopped and lowered the gas lamp so that the light slid over some of the pieces of the macabre puzzle.

‘The remains of an old necropolis,’ he explained. ‘But don’t let that give you any ideas about dropping dead here.’

We continued towards an area just before the central structure that seemed to form a kind of threshold. In the meantime Isaac was rattling off the rules and duties, fixing his gaze on me from time to time, while I tried to soothe him with docile assent.

‘Article one: the first time somebody comes here he has the right to choose a book, whichever one he likes, from all the books there are in this place. Article two: upon adopting a book you undertake to protect it and do all you can to ensure it is never lost. For life. Any questions so far?’

I looked up towards the immensity of the labyrinth.

‘How does one choose a single book among so many?’

Isaac shrugged his shoulders.

‘Some like to believe it’s the book that chooses the person . . . destiny, in other words. What you see here is the sum of centuries of books that have been lost and forgotten, books condemned to be destroyed and silenced forever, books that preserve the memory and soul of times and marvels that no one remembers any more. None of us, not even the eldest, knows exactly when it was created or by whom. It’s probably as old as the city itself, and has been growing with it, in its shadow. We know the building was erected using the remains of palaces, churches, prisons and hospitals that may once have stood here. The origin of the main structure goes back to the beginning of the eighteenth century and has not stopped evolving since then. Before that, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books was hidden under the tunnels of the medieval town. Some say that, during the time of the Inquisition, people who were learned and had free minds would hide forbidden books in sarcophagi, or bury them in ossuaries all over the city to protect them, trusting that future generations would dig them up. In the middle of the last century a long tunnel was discovered leading from the bowels of the labyrinth to the basement of an old library that nowadays is sealed off, hidden in the ruins of an old synagogue in the Jewish quarter. When the last of the old city walls came down, there was a landslide and the tunnel was flooded with water from an underground stream that for centuries has run beneath what is now the Ramblas. It’s inaccessible at present, but we imagine that for a long time the tunnel was one of the main entrance routes to this place. Most of the structure you can see was developed during the nineteenth century. Only about a hundred people know about it and I hope Sempere hasn’t made a mistake by including you among them . . .’

I shook my head vigorously, but Isaac was looking at me with scepticism.

‘Article three: you can bury your own book wherever you like.’

‘What if I get lost?’

‘An additional clause, from my own stable: try not to get lost.’

‘Has anyone ever got lost?’

Isaac snorted.

‘When I started here years ago there was a story doing the rounds about Darío Alberti de Cymerman. I don’t suppose Sempere has told you this, of course . . .’

‘Cymerman? The historian?’

‘No, the seal tamer. How many Darío Alberti de Cymermans do you know? What happened is that in the winter of 1889 Cymerman went into the labyrinth and disappeared inside it for a whole week. He was found in one of the tunnels, half dead with fright. He had walled himself up behind a few rows of holy texts so he couldn’t be seen.’

‘Seen by whom?’

Isaac looked at me for a long while.

‘By the man in black. Are you sure Sempere hasn’t told you anything about this?’

‘I’m sure he hasn’t.’

Isaac lowered his voice, adopting a conspiratorial tone.

‘Over the years, some members have occasionally seen the man in black in the tunnels of the labyrinth. They all describe him differently. Some even swear they have spoken to him. There was a time when it was rumoured that the man in black was the ghost of an accursed author whom one of the members had betrayed after taking one of his books from here and not keeping the promise to protect it. The book was lost forever and the deceased author wanders eternally along the passages, seeking revenge - well, you know, the sort of Henry James effect people like so much.’

‘You’re not saying you believe the rumours.’

‘Of course not. I have another theory. The Cymerman theory.’

‘Which is . . . ? ’

‘That the man in black is the master of this place, the father of all secret and forbidden knowledge, of wisdom and memory, the bringer of light to storytellers and writers since time immemorial . . . He is our guardian angel, the angel of lies and of the night.’

‘You’re pulling my leg.’

‘Every labyrinth has its Minotaur,’ Isaac suggested. He smiled mysteriously and pointed towards the entrance. ‘It’s all yours.’

I set off along a footbridge then slowly entered a long corridor of books that formed a rising curve. When I reached the end of the curve the tunnel divided into four passages radiating out from a small circle from which a spiral staircase rose, vanishing upwards into the heights. I climbed the steps until I reached a landing that led into three different tunnels. I chose one of them, the one I thought would lead to the heart of the building, and entered. As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows. I wandered aimlessly for almost half an hour until I reached a sort of closed chamber with a table and chair. The walls were made of books and seemed quite solid except for a small gap that looked as if someone had removed a book from it. I decided that this would be the new home for
The Steps of Heaven.
I looked at the cover for the last time and reread the first paragraph, imagining the moment when, many years after I was dead and forgotten, someone, if fortune had it, would go down that same route and reach that room to find an unknown book into which I had poured everything I had. I placed it there, feeling that I was the one being left on the shelf. It was then that I felt the presence behind me, and turned to find the man in black, his eyes fixed steadily on mine.