The Angel's Game (19 page)

‘Don’t worry, Martín. Everything will turn out all right. Trust me,’ said Corelli in a sweet, almost paternal tone.

‘May I leave now?’

‘Of course. I don’t want to keep you any longer than is necessary. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. I’ll let you go now, so you can start mulling over all the things we’ve discussed. You’ll see that, once the indigestion has passed, the real answers will come to you. There is nothing in the path of life that we don’t already know before we started. Nothing important is learned, it is simply remembered.’

He signalled to the taciturn butler, who was waiting at the edge of the garden.

‘A car will pick you up and take you home. We’ll meet again in two weeks’ time.’

‘Here?’

‘It’s in the lap of the Gods,’ Corelli said, licking his lips as if he’d made a delicious joke.

The butler came over and motioned for me to follow him. Corelli nodded and sat down, his eyes lost once more on the city below.

9

The car - for want of a better word - was waiting by the door of the large, old house. It was not an ordinary automobile, but a collector’s item. It reminded me of an enchanted carriage, a cathedral on wheels, its chrome and curves engineered by science, its bonnet topped by a silver angel like a ship’s figurehead. In other words, a Rolls-Royce. The butler opened the door for me and took his leave with a bow. I stepped inside: it looked more like a hotel room than a motor car. The engine started up as soon as I settled in the seat, and we set off down the hill.

‘Do you know the address?’ I asked.

The chauffeur, a dark figure on the other side of a glass partition, nodded vaguely. We crossed Barcelona in the narcotic silence of that metal carriage, barely touching the ground, or so it seemed. Streets and buildings flew past the windows like underwater cliffs. It was after midnight when the black Rolls-Royce turned off Calle Comercio and entered Paseo del Borne. The car stopped on the corner of Calle Flassaders, which was too narrow for it to pass through. The chauffeur got out and opened my door with a bow. I stepped from the car and he closed the door and got in again without saying a word. I watched him leave, the dark silhouette blending into a veil of shadows. I asked myself what I had done, and, choosing not to seek an answer, I set off towards my house feeling as if the whole world was a prison from which there was no escape.

When I walked into the apartment I went straight up to the study. I opened the windows on all four sides and let the humid breeze penetrate the room. I could see people lying on mattresses and sheets on some of the neighbouring flat roofs, trying to escape the suffocating heat and get some sleep. In the distance, the three large chimneys in the Paralelo area rose like funeral pyres spreading a mantle of white ash over Barcelona. Nearer to me, on the dome of La Mercè church, the statue of Our Lady of Mercy, poised for ascension into heaven, reminded me of the angel on the Rolls-Royce and of the one Corelli always sported on his lapel. After many months of silence it felt as if the city were speaking to me again, telling me its secrets.

Then I saw her, curled up on a doorstep in that miserable, narrow tunnel between old buildings they called Fly Alley. Isabella. I wondered how long she’d been there and told myself it was none of my business. I was about to close the window and walk over to the desk when I noticed that she was not alone. Two figures were slowly, perhaps too slowly, advancing towards her from the other end of the street. I sighed, hoping they would pass her by. They didn’t. One of them took up a position blocking the exit from the alley. The other knelt down in front of the girl, stretching an arm out towards her. The girl moved. A few moments later the two figures closed in on Isabella and I heard her scream.

It took me about forty-five seconds to get there. When I did, one of the two men had grabbed Isabella by her arms and the other had pulled up her skirt. A terrified expression gripped the girl’s face. The second man guffawed as he made his way between her thighs, holding a knife to her throat. Three lines of blood oozed from the cut. I looked around me. A couple of boxes of rubbish and a pile of cobblestones and building materials lay abandoned by the wall. I grabbed what turned out to be a metal bar, solid and heavy, about half a metre long. The first man to notice my presence was the one holding the knife. I took a step forward, brandishing the metal bar. His eyes jumped from the bar to my eyes and his smile disappeared. The other turned and saw me advancing towards them holding the bar up high. A nod from me was enough to make him let go of Isabella and quickly stand behind his companion.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ he whispered.

The other man ignored his words. He was looking straight at me with fire in his eyes, the knife still in his hand.

‘Who asked you to stick your oar in, you son-of-a-bitch?’

I took Isabella by the arm, lifting her up from the ground, without taking my eyes off the man with the knife. I searched for the keys in my pocket and gave them to her.

‘Go home,’ I shouted. ‘Do as I say.’

Isabella hesitated for a moment, but soon I heard her running towards Calle Flassaders. The guy with the knife saw her leave and smiled angrily.

‘I’m going to slash you, you bastard.’

I didn’t doubt his ability or his wish to carry out his threat, but something in his eyes made me think that my opponent was not altogether stupid and if he had not done so already it was because he was wondering how much the metal bar I was holding might weigh and, above all, whether I’d have the strength, the courage and the time to squash his skull with it before he could thrust his blade into me.

‘Go on,’ I invited him.

The man held my eyes for a few seconds and then laughed. The other one sighed with relief. The first folded his blade and spat at my feet. Then he turned round and walked off into the shadows from which he had emerged, his companion running behind him like a puppy.

I found Isabella curled up at the bottom of the stairs in the inner courtyard of the tower house. She was trembling and held the keys with both hands. When she saw me come in she jumped up.

‘Do you want me to call a doctor?’

She shook her head.

‘Are you sure?’

‘They hadn’t managed to do anything to me yet,’ she mumbled, fighting away the tears.

‘It didn’t look that way.’

‘They didn’t do anything, all right?’ she protested.

‘All right,’ I said.

I wanted to hold her arm as we went up the stairs, but she avoided any contact.

Once in the apartment I took her to the bathroom and turned on the light.

‘Have you any clean clothes you can put on?’

Isabella showed me the bag she was carrying and nodded.

‘Come on, you wash while I get something ready for dinner.’

‘How can you be hungry after what just happened?’

‘Well, I am.’

Isabella bit her lower lip.

‘The truth is, so am I . . .’

‘End of discussion then,’ I said.

I closed the bathroom door and waited until I heard the taps running, then returned to the kitchen and put some water on to boil. There was a bit of rice left, some bacon, and a few vegetables that Isabella had brought over the day before. I improvised a dish made from leftovers and waited almost thirty minutes for her to come out of the bathroom, downing almost half a bottle of wine in that time. I heard her crying with anger on the other side of the wall. When she appeared at the kitchen door her eyes were red and she looked more like a child than ever.

‘I’m not sure that I’m still hungry,’ she murmured.

‘Sit down and eat.’

We sat down at the small table in the middle of the kitchen. Isabella examined her plate of rice and chopped-up bits with some suspicion.

‘Eat,’ I ordered.

She brought a tentative spoonful to her lips.

‘It’s good,’ she said.

I poured her half a glass of wine and topped it up with water.

‘My father doesn’t let me drink wine.’

‘I’m not your father.’

We had dinner in silence, exchanging glances. Isabella finished her plate and the slice of bread I’d given her. She smiled shyly. She didn’t realise that the shock hadn’t yet hit her. Then I went with her to her bedroom door and turned on the light.

‘Try to get some rest,’ I said. ‘If you need anything, bang on the wall. I’m in the next room.’

Isabella nodded. ‘I heard you snoring the other night.’

‘I don’t snore.’

‘It must have been the pipes. Or maybe there’s a neighbour with a pet bear.’

‘One more word and you’re back in the street.’

‘Thanks,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t close the door completely, please. Leave it ajar.’

‘Goodnight,’ I said, turning out the light and leaving Isabella in the dark.

Later, while I undressed in my bedroom, I noticed a dark mark on my cheek, like a black tear. I went over to the mirror and brushed it away with my fingers. It was dried blood. Only then did I realise that I was exhausted and my whole body was aching.

10

The following morning, before Isabella woke up, I walked over to her family’s grocery shop on Calle Mirallers. It was just getting light and the security grille over the shop door was only half open. I slipped inside and found a couple of young boys piling up boxes of tea and other goods on the counter.

‘We’re closed,’ one of them said.

‘Well, you don’t look closed. Go and fetch the owner.’

While I waited, I kept myself busy by examining the family emporium of the ungrateful heiress Isabella, who in her infinite innocence had turned her back on the ambrosia of commerce to prostrate herself before the miseries of literature. The shop was a small bazaar full of marvels brought from every corner of the world. Jams, sweets and teas. Coffees, spices and tinned food. Fruit and cured meats. Chocolates and smoked ham. A Pantagruelian paradise for well-lined pockets. Don Odón, the girl’s father and manager of the establishment, appeared shortly afterwards wearing a blue overall, a marshal’s moustache and an expression of alarm that seemed to herald a heart attack at any moment. I decided to skip the pleasantries.

‘Your daughter says you have a double-barrelled shotgun with which you have sworn to kill me,’ I said, stretching my arms out to the sides. ‘Well, here I am.’

‘Who are you, you scoundrel?’

‘I’m the scoundrel who’s had to take in a young girl because her pathetic father was unable to keep her under control.’

The shopkeeper’s angry expression disappeared and was replaced with a faint-hearted smile.

‘Señor Martín? I didn’t recognise you . . . How is my child?’

I sighed.

‘Your child is safe and sound in my house, snoring like a mastiff, but with her honour and virtue intact.’

The shopkeeper crossed himself twice, much relieved.

‘God bless you.’

‘Thank you very much, but in the meantime I’m going to ask you to come and collect her today without fail, otherwise I’ll smash your face in, shotgun or no shotgun.’

‘Shotgun?’ the shopkeeper mumbled in confusion.

His wife, a small nervous-looking woman, was spying on us from behind the curtain that concealed the back room. Something told me there would be no shots fired here. Don Odón huffed and puffed and looked as if he was on the point of collapse.

‘Nothing would please me more, Señor Martín. But the girl doesn’t want to be here,’ he argued, devastated.

When I realised the shopkeeper was not the rogue Isabella had painted him as, I was sorry for the way I’d spoken.

‘You haven’t thrown her out of your house?’

Don Odón opened his eyes wide and looked hurt. His wife stepped forward and took her husband’s hand.

‘We had an argument,’ he said. ‘Things were said that shouldn’t have been said, on both sides. But that girl has such a temper, you wouldn’t believe it . . . She threatened to leave us and said she’d never come back. Her saintly mother nearly passed away from the palpitations. I shouted at her and said I’d stick her in a convent.’

‘An infallible argument when reasoning with a seventeen-year-old girl,’ I pointed out.

‘It was the first thing that came to mind,’ the shopkeeper argued. ‘As if I would put her in a convent!’

‘From what I’ve seen, you’d need the help of a whole regiment of infantry.’

‘I don’t know what that girl has told you, Señor Martín, but you mustn’t believe her. We might not be very refined, but we’re not monsters either. I don’t know how to deal with her any more. I’m not the type of man who would pull out a belt and give her forty lashes. And my missus here daren’t even shout at the cat. I don’t know where the girl gets it from. I think it’s all that reading. Mind you, the nuns did warn us. And my father, God rest his soul, used to say it too: the day women are allowed to learn to read and write, the world will become ungovernable.’

‘A deep thinker, your father, but that doesn’t solve your problem or mine.’

‘What can we do? Isabella doesn’t want to be with us, Señor Martín. She says we’re dim and we don’t understand her; she says we want to bury her in this shop . . . There’s nothing I’d like more than to understand her. I’ve worked in this shop since I was seven years old, from dawn to dusk, and the only thing I understand is that the world is a nasty place with no consideration for a young girl who has her head in the clouds,’ the shopkeeper explained, leaning on a barrel. ‘My greatest fear is that, if I force her to return, she might really run away and fall into the hands of any old . . . I don’t even want to think about it.’

‘It’s true,’ his wife said, with a slight Italian accent. ‘Believe me, the girl has broken our hearts, but this is not the first time she’s gone away. She’s turned out just like my mother, who had a Neapolitan temperament . . .’

‘Oh,
la mamma
,’ said Don Odón, shuddering even at the memory of his mother-in-law.

‘When she told us she was going to stay at your house for a few days while she helped you with your work, well, we felt reassured,’ Isabella’s mother went on, ‘because we know you’re a good person and basically the girl is nearby, only two streets away. We’re sure you’ll be able to convince her to return.’

I wondered what Isabella had told them about me to persuade them that yours truly could walk on water.

‘Only last night, just round the corner from here, two labourers on their way home were given a terrible beating. Imagine! It seems they were battered with an iron pole, smashed to bits like dogs. One of them might not survive, and it looks like the other one will be crippled for life,’ said the mother. ‘What sort of world are we living in?’

Don Odón gave me a worried look.

‘If I go and fetch her, she’ll leave again. And this time I don’t know whether she’ll end up with someone like you. It’s not right for a young girl to live in a bachelor’s house, but at least you’re honest and will know how to take care of her.’

The shopkeeper looked as if he was about to cry. I would have preferred it if he’d rushed off to fetch the gun. There was still the chance that some Neapolitan cousin might turn up, armed with a blunderbuss, to save the girl’s honour.
Porca miseria.

‘Do I have your word that you’ll look after her for me until she comes to her senses?’

I grunted. ‘You have my word.’

I returned home laden with superb delicacies which Don Odón and his wife had insisted on foisting on me. I promised them I’d take care of Isabella for a few days, until she agreed to reason things out and understand that her place was with her family. The shopkeepers wanted to pay me for her keep, but I refused. My plan was that, before the week was up, Isabella would be back sleeping in her own home, even if, to achieve that, I had to keep up the pretence that she was my assistant. Taller towers had toppled.

When I got home I found her sitting at the kitchen table. She had washed all the dishes from the night before, had made coffee and had dressed and styled her hair so that she resembled a saint in a religious picture. Isabella, who was no fool, knew perfectly well where I’d been and looked at me like an abandoned dog, smiling meekly. I left the bags with the delicacies from Don Odón by the sink.

‘Didn’t my father shoot you with his gun?’

‘He’d run out of bullets and decided to throw all these pots of jam and Manchego cheese at me instead.’

Isabella pressed her lips together, trying to look serious.

‘So the name Isabella comes from your grandmother?’

‘
La mamma
,’ she confirmed. ‘In the area they called her Vesuvia.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘They say I’m a bit like her. When it comes to persistence.’

There was no need for a judge to pronounce on that, I thought.

‘Your parents are good folk, Isabella. They don’t misunderstand you any more than you misunderstand them.’

The girl didn’t say anything. She poured me a cup of coffee and waited for the verdict. I had two options: throw her out and give the two shopkeepers a fit; or be bold and patient for two or three more days. I imagined that forty-eight hours of my most cynical and cutting performance would be enough to break the iron determination of the young girl and send her, on her knees, back to her mother’s apron strings, begging for forgiveness and full board.

‘You can stay here for the time being—’

‘Thank you!’

‘Not so fast. You can stay here under the following conditions: one, that you go and spend some time in the shop every day, to say hello to your parents and tell them you’re well; and two, that you obey me and follow the rules of this house.’

It sounded patriarchal but excessively faint-hearted. I maintained my austere expression and decided to make my tone more severe.

‘What are the rules of this house?’ Isabella enquired.

‘Basically, whatever I damn well please.’

‘Sounds fair.’

‘It’s a deal, then.’

Isabella came round the table and hugged me gratefully. I felt the warmth and the firm shape of her seventeen-year-old body against mine. I pushed her away delicately, keeping my distance.

‘The first rule is that this is not
Little Women
and we don’t hug one another or burst into tears at the slightest thing
.
’

‘Whatever you say.’

‘That will be the motto on which we’ll build our coexistence: whatever I say.’

Isabella laughed and rushed off into the corridor.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘To tidy up your study. You don’t mean to leave it like that, do you?’