The Angel's Game (37 page)

8

Doctor Sanjuán found me in the hotel dining room, sitting by the fire next to a plate of food I hadn’t touched. There was nobody else there except for a maid who was going round the deserted tables, polishing the cutlery. Outside it had grown dark and the snow was still falling, like a dusting of powdered blue glass. The doctor walked over to my table and smiled at me.

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ he said. ‘All visitors end up in this hotel. It’s where I spent my first night in the village when I arrived ten years ago. What room were you given?’

‘It’s supposed to be the newly-weds’ favourite, with views over the lake.’

‘Don’t you believe it. That’s what they say about all the rooms.’

Away from the sanatorium and without his white coat, Doctor Sanjuán looked more relaxed, even friendly.

‘I hardly recognised you without your uniform,’ I remarked.

‘Medicine is like the army. The cowl maketh the monk,’ he replied. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘I see. I missed you earlier, when I went back to the office to look for you.’

‘I needed some air.’

‘I understand. I was hoping you wouldn’t be affected quite so much.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I need you. Or rather, Cristina needs you.’

I gave a deep sigh.

‘You must think I’m a coward,’ I said.

The doctor shook his head.

‘How long has she been like this?’

‘Weeks. Practically since she arrived here. And she’s getting steadily worse.’

‘Is she aware of where she is?’

‘It’s hard to tell,’ the doctor replied with a shrug.

‘What happened to her?’

Doctor Sanjuán exhaled.

‘She was found, four weeks ago, not far from here - in the village graveyard, lying on her father’s grave. She was delirious and suffering from hypothermia. They brought her to the sanatorium because one of the Civil Guards recognised her from last year, when she spent a few months here, because of her father. A lot of people in the village knew her. We admitted her and she was kept under observation for a night or two. She was dehydrated and had probably not slept in days. Every now and then she regained consciousness, and when she did, she spoke about you. She said you were in great danger. She made me swear I wouldn’t call anyone, not even her husband, until she was capable of doing so herself.’

‘Even so, why didn’t you let Vidal know what had happened?’

‘I would have but . . . You’ll think this is absurd.’

‘What?’

‘I was convinced that she was fleeing from something and thought it was my duty to help her.’

‘Fleeing from what?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said with an ambiguous expression.

‘What is it you’re not telling me?’

‘I’m just a doctor. There are things I don’t understand.’

‘What things?’

Doctor Sanjuán smiled nervously.

‘Cristina thinks that something, or someone, has got inside her and wants to destroy her.’

‘Who?’

‘I only know that she thinks it has something to do with you, and that it frightens her. That’s why I think nobody else can help her. It’s also why I didn’t let Vidal know, as I ought to have done. Because I knew that sooner or later you would turn up here.’

He looked at me with a strange mixture of pity and despair.

‘I’m fond of her too, Señor Martín. The months Cristina spent visiting her father . . . we ended up being good friends. I don’t suppose she talked to you about me - there was no reason why she should. It was a very difficult time for her. She confided a lot of things in me, and I in her, things I’ve never told anyone else. In fact, I even proposed to her. So you see, even the doctors here are slightly nuts. Of course she refused me. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’

‘But she’ll be all right again, won’t she, doctor? She’ll recover . . .’

Doctor Sanjuán turned his head towards the fire.

‘I hope so,’ he replied.

‘I want to take her away from here.’

The doctor raised his eyebrows.

‘Take her away? Where to?’

‘Home.’

‘Señor Martín, let me be frank. Aside from the fact that you’re not a relative, nor, indeed, the patient’s husband - which is a legal requirement - Cristina is in no fit state to go anywhere.’

‘She’s better off here with you, locked up in a rambling old house, tied to a chair and full of drugs? Don’t tell me you’ve proposed to her again.’

The doctor observed me carefully, ignoring the offence my words had clearly caused him.

‘Señor Martín, I’m glad you’re here because I believe that together we can help Cristina. I think your presence will allow her to come out of the place into which she has retreated. I believe it, because the only word she has uttered in the last two weeks is your name. Whatever happened to her, I think it had something to do with you.’

The doctor was watching me as if he expected something from me, something that would answer all his questions.

‘I thought she had abandoned me,’ I began. ‘We were about to run away together, leaving everything behind. I had gone out for a moment to buy the train tickets and do an errand. I wasn’t away for more than ninety minutes but when I returned home, Cristina had left.’

‘Did anything happen before she left? Did you have an argument?’

I bit my lip.

‘I wouldn’t call it an argument.’

‘What would you call it?’

‘I caught her looking through some papers relating to my work and I think she was offended by what she must have taken as a lack of trust.’

‘Was it something important?’

‘No. Just a manuscript, a draft.’

‘May I ask what type of manuscript it was?’

I hesitated.

‘A fable.’

‘For children?’

‘Let’s say for a family audience.’

‘I see.’

‘No, I don’t think you do. There was no argument. Cristina was slightly annoyed because I wouldn’t let her have a look, but that was all. When I left, she was fine, packing a few things. That manuscript is not important.’

The doctor acquiesced, more out of courtesy than conviction.

‘Could it be that while you were out someone else visited her?’

‘I was the only one who knew she was there.’

‘Can you think of any reason why she would have decided to leave the house before you returned?’

‘No. Why?’

‘It’s only a question, Señor Martín. I’m trying to understand what happened between the moment you last saw her and her appearance here.’

‘Did she say what, or who, had got inside her?’

‘It’s just a manner of speaking, Señor Martín. Nothing has got inside Cristina. It’s not unusual for patients who have suffered a traumatic experience to feel the presence of dead relatives or imaginary people, or even to disappear into their own minds and close every door to the outside world. It’s an emotional response, a form of self-defence against feelings or emotions that seem unacceptable. But you mustn’t worry about that now. What matters and what’s going to help is that, if there is anyone who is important to her right now, that person is you. From what Cristina confided in me at the time, I know that she loves you, Señor Martín. She loves you as she’s never loved anyone else, and certainly as she’ll never love me. That’s why I’m asking you to help me. Don’t let yourself be blinded by fear or resentment. Help me, because we both want the same thing. We both want Cristina to be able to leave this place.’

I felt ashamed.

‘I’m sorry if—’

The doctor raised his hand to silence me. Then he stood up and put on his overcoat.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Thank you, doctor.’

‘Thank
you
. For coming here.’

The following morning I left the hotel just as the sun was beginning to rise over the frozen lake. A group of children was playing by the shore, throwing stones at the hull of a small boat wedged in the ice. It had stopped snowing and white mountains were visible in the distance. Large clouds paraded across the sky like monumental cities built of mist. I reached Villa San Antonio shortly before nine o’clock. Doctor Sanjuán was waiting for me in the garden with Cristina. They were sitting in the sun and the doctor held Cristina’s hand as he spoke to her. She barely glanced at him. When he saw me crossing the garden, he beckoned me over to join them. He had kept a chair for me opposite Cristina. I sat down and looked at her, her eyes on mine without seeing me.

‘Cristina, look who’s here,’ said the doctor.

I took Cristina’s hand and moved closer to her.

‘Speak to her,’ said the doctor.

I nodded, lost in her absent gaze, but could find no words. The doctor stood up and left us alone. I saw him disappear into the sanatorium, but not without first asking a nurse to keep a close eye on us. Ignoring the presence of the nurse, I pulled my chair even closer to Cristina’s. I brushed her hair from her forehead and she smiled.

‘Do you remember me?’ I asked.

I could see my reflection in her eyes, but didn’t know whether she could see me or hear my voice.

‘The doctor says you’ll get better soon and we’ll be able to go home. Or wherever you like. I’ll leave the tower house and we’ll go far away, just as you wanted. A place where nobody will know us and nobody will care who we are or where we’re from.’

Her hands were covered with long woollen gloves that masked the bandages on her arms. She had lost weight and there were deep lines on her skin; her lips were cracked and her eyes dull and lifeless. All I could do was smile and stroke her cheek and her forehead, talking non-stop, telling her how much I’d missed her and how I’d looked for her everywhere. We spent a couple of hours like that, until the doctor returned and Cristina was taken indoors. I stayed there, sitting in the garden, not knowing where else to go, until I saw Doctor Sanjuán reappear at the door. He came over and sat down beside me.

‘She didn’t say a word,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she was even aware that I was here . . .’

‘You’re wrong, my friend,’ he replied. ‘This is a long process, but I can assure you that your presence helps her - a lot.’

I accepted the doctor’s meagre reassurance and kind-hearted lie.

‘We’ll try again tomorrow,’ he said.

It was only midday.

‘And what am I going to do until tomorrow?’ I asked him.

‘Aren’t you a writer? Then write. Write something for her.’

9

I walked round the lake back to the hotel. The receptionist had told me where to find the only bookshop in the village, and I was able to buy some blank sheets of paper and a fountain pen that must have been there since time immemorial. Thus equipped, I locked myself in my room. I moved the table over to the window and asked for a flask of coffee. I spent almost an hour gazing at the lake and the mountains in the distance before writing a single word. I remembered the old photograph Cristina had given me, that image she had never been able to place, of a girl walking along a wooden jetty that stretched out to sea. I imagined myself walking down that pier, my steps following behind her, and slowly the words began to flow and the outline of a story emerged. I knew I was going to write the story that Cristina could never remember, the story that had led her, as a child, to walk over those shimmering waters holding on to a stranger’s hand. I would write the tale of a memory that never was, the memory of a stolen life. The images and the light that began to appear between sentences took me back to the old, shadowy Barcelona that had shaped us both. I wrote until the sun had set and there was not a drop of coffee left in the flask, until the frozen lake was lit up by a blue moon and my eyes and hands were aching. I let the pen drop and pushed aside the sheets of paper lying on the table. When the receptionist came to knock on my door to ask if I was coming down for dinner, I didn’t hear him. I had fallen fast asleep, for once dreaming and believing that words, even my own, had the power to heal.

Four days passed with the same rhythm. I rose at dawn and went out onto the balcony to watch the sun tint with scarlet the lake at my feet. I would arrive at the sanatorium around half past eight in the morning and usually found Doctor Sanjuán sitting on the entrance steps, gazing at the garden with a steaming cup of coffee in his hands.

‘Do you never sleep, doctor?’ I would ask.

‘No more than you,’ he replied.

Around nine o’clock the doctor would take me to Cristina’s room and open the door, then leave us. I always found her sitting in the same armchair facing the window. I would bring over a chair and take her hand. She was barely aware of my presence. Then I would read out the pages I’d written for her the night before. Every day I started again from the beginning. Sometimes, when I interrupted my reading and looked at her, I would be surprised to discover the hint of a smile on her lips. I spent the day with her until the doctor returned in the evening and asked me to leave. Then I would trudge back to the hotel through the snow, eat some dinner and go up to my room to continue writing until I was overcome by exhaustion. The days ceased to have a name.

When I went into Cristina’s room on the fifth day, as I did every morning, the armchair in which she was usually waiting for me was empty. I looked around anxiously and found her on the floor, curled up into a ball in a corner, clasping her knees, her face covered with tears. When she saw me she smiled, and I realised that she had recognised me. I knelt down next to her and hugged her. I don’t remember ever having been as happy as I was during those miserable seconds when I felt her breath on my face and saw that a glimmer of light had returned to her eyes.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

That afternoon Doctor Sanjuán gave me permission to take her out for an hour. We walked down to the lake and sat on a bench. She started to tell me a dream she’d had, about a child who lived in the dark maze of a town in which the streets and buildings were alive and fed on the souls of its inhabitants. In her dream, as in the story I had been reading to her, the girl managed to escape and came to a jetty that stretched out over an endless sea. She was holding the hand of the faceless stranger with no name who had saved her and who now went with her to the very end of the wooden platform, where someone was waiting for her, someone she would never see, because her dream, like the story I had been reading to her, was unfinished.

Cristina had a vague recollection of Villa San Antonio and Doctor Sanjuán. She blushed when she told me she thought he’d proposed to her a week ago. Time and space seemed to be confused in her mind. Sometimes she thought that her father had been admitted to one of the rooms and she’d come to visit him. A moment later she couldn’t remember how she’d got there and at times she ceased to care. She remembered that I’d gone out to buy the train tickets and referred to the morning in which she had disappeared as if it were just the previous day. Sometimes she confused me with Vidal and asked me to forgive her. At others, fear cast a shadow over her face and she began to tremble.

‘He’s getting closer,’ she would say. ‘I have to go. Before he sees you.’

Then she would sink into a deep silence, unaware of my presence, unaware of the world itself, as if something had dragged her to some remote and inaccessible place.

After a few days, the certainty that Cristina had lost her mind began to affect me deeply. My initial hope became tinged with bitterness, and on occasions, when I returned at night to my hotel cell, I felt that old pit of darkness and hatred, which I had thought forgotten, opening up inside me. Doctor Sanjuán, who watched over me with the same care and tenacity with which he treated his patients, had warned me that this would happen.

‘Don’t give up hope, my friend,’ he would say. ‘We’re making great progress. Have faith.’

I nodded meekly and returned day after day to the sanatorium to take Cristina out for a stroll as far as the lake and listen to the dreamed memories she’d already described dozens of times but which she discovered anew every day. Each day she would ask me where I’d been, why I hadn’t come back to fetch her, and why I’d left her alone. Each day she looked at me from her invisible cage and asked me to hold her tight. Each day, when I said goodbye to her, she asked me if I loved her and I always gave her the same reply.

‘I’ll always love you,’ I would say. ‘Always.’

One night I was woken by the sound of someone knocking on my door. It was three in the morning. I stumbled over, in a daze, and found one of the nurses from the sanatorium standing in the doorway.

‘Doctor Sanjuán has asked me to come and fetch you.’

‘What’s happened?’

Ten minutes later I was walking through the gates of Villa San Antonio. The screams could be heard from the garden. Cristina had apparently locked the door of her room from the inside. Doctor Sanjuán, who looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week, and two male nurses were trying to force the door open. Inside, Cristina could be heard shouting and banging on the walls, knocking down furniture as if she were destroying everything she could find.

‘Who is in there with her?’ I asked, petrified.

‘Nobody,’ replied the doctor.

‘But she’s speaking to someone . . .’ I protested.

‘She’s alone.’

An orderly rushed up, carrying a large crowbar.

‘It’s the only thing I could find,’ he said.

The doctor nodded and the orderly levered the crowbar between the door and the frame.

‘How was she able to lock herself in?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know . . .’

For the first time I thought I saw fear in the doctor’s face, and he avoided my eyes. The porter was about to force the door when suddenly there was silence on the other side.

‘Cristina?’ called the doctor.

There was no reply. The door finally gave way and flew open with a bang. I followed the doctor into the room. It was dark. The window was open and an icy wind was blowing. The chairs, tables and armchair had been knocked over and the walls were stained with an irregular line of what looked like black ink. It was blood. There was no trace of Cristina.

The male nurses ran out to the balcony and scanned the garden for footprints in the snow. The doctor looked right and left, searching for Cristina. Then we heard laughter coming from the bathroom. I went to the door and opened it. The floor was scattered with bits of glass. Cristina was sitting on the tiles, leaning against the metal bathtub like a broken doll. Her hands and feet were bleeding, covered in cuts and splinters of glass, and her blood still trickled down the cracks in the mirror she had destroyed with her fists. I put my arms around her and searched her eyes. She smiled.

‘I didn’t let him in,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘He wanted me to forget, but I didn’t let him in,’ she repeated.

The doctor knelt down beside me and examined the wounds covering Cristina’s body.

‘Please,’ he murmured, pushing me aside. ‘Not now.’

One of the male nurses had rushed to fetch a stretcher. I helped him lift Cristina onto it and held her hand as they wheeled her to a treatment room. There, Doctor Sanjuán injected her with a sedative and in a matter of seconds her consciousness stole away. I stayed by her side, looking into her eyes until they became empty mirrors and one of the nurses led me gently from the room. I stood there, in the middle of a dark corridor that smelled of disinfectant, my hands and clothes stained with blood. I leaned against the wall and then slid to the floor.

Cristina woke up the following morning to find herself lying on a bed, bound with leather straps, locked up in a windowless room with no other light than the pale glow from a bulb on the ceiling. I had spent the night in a corner, sitting on a chair, observing her, with no notion of time passing. Suddenly she opened her eyes, and grimaced at the stabbing pain from the wounds that covered her arms.

‘David?’ she called out.

‘I’m here,’ I replied.

When I reached the bed I leaned over so that she could see my face and the anaemic smile I’d rehearsed for her.

‘I can’t move.’

‘They’ve strapped you down. It’s for your own good. As soon as the doctor comes he’ll take them off.’

‘You take them off.’

‘I can’t. It must be the doctor—’

‘Please,’ she begged.

‘Cristina, it’s better—’

‘Please.’

I saw pain and fear in her eyes, but above all a lucidity and a presence that had not been there in all the days I had visited her in that place. She was herself again. I untied the first two straps, which crossed over her shoulders and waist, and stroked her face. She was shaking.

‘Are you cold?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you want me to call the doctor?’

She shook her head again.

‘David, look at me.’

I sat on the edge of the bed and met her gaze.

‘You must destroy it,’ she said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You must destroy it.’

‘What must I destroy?’

‘The book.’

‘Cristina, I’d better call the doctor—’

‘No. Listen to me.’

She grabbed my hand.

‘The morning you went to buy the tickets, do you remember? I went up to your study again and opened the trunk.’

I took a breath.

‘I found the manuscript and began to read it.’

‘It’s just a fable, Cristina . . .’

‘Don’t lie to me. I’ve read it, David. At least enough to know that I had to destroy it . . .’

‘You don’t need to worry about that now. I told you: I’ve abandoned the manuscript.’

‘But it hasn’t abandoned you. I tried to burn it . . .’

For a moment I let go of her hand when I heard those words, repressing the surge of anger I felt when I remembered the burned matches I’d found on the floor of the study.

‘You tried to burn it?’

‘But I couldn’t,’ she muttered. ‘There was someone else in the house.’

‘There was no one in the house, Cristina. Nobody.’

‘As soon as I lit the match and held it close to the manuscript, I sensed him behind me. I felt a blow to the back of my neck and then I fell.’

‘Who hit you?’

‘It was all very dark, as if the daylight had suddenly vanished. I turned round but could only see his eyes. Like the eyes of a wolf.’

‘Cristina . . .’

‘He took the manuscript from my hands and put it back in the trunk.’

‘Cristina, you’re not well. Let me call the doctor . . .’

‘You’re not listening to me.’

I smiled at her and kissed her on the forehead.

‘Of course I’m listening to you. But there was no one else in the house.’

She closed her eyes and tilted her head, moaning as if my words were like daggers cutting her inside.

‘I’m going to call the doctor.’

I bent over to kiss her again and then stood up. I went towards the door, feeling her eyes on my back.

‘Coward,’ she said.

When I came back to the room with Doctor Sanjuán, Cristina had undone the last strap and was staggering round the room towards the door, leaving bloody footprints on the white tiles. We laid her back on the bed and held her down. Cristina shouted and fought with such anger it made my blood freeze. The noise alerted the other staff. An orderly helped us restrain her while the doctor tied the straps. Once she was immobilised, the doctor looked at me severely.

‘I’m going to sedate her again. Stay here and this time don’t even think of untying her straps.’

I was left alone with her for a moment but could not calm her. Cristina went on fighting to escape. I held her face and tried to catch her eye.

‘Cristina, please—’

She spat at me.

‘Go away.’

The doctor returned with a nurse who carried a metal tray with a syringe, dressings, and a glass bottle containing a yellowish solution.

‘Leave the room,’ he ordered.

I went to the doorway. The nurse held Cristina against the bed and the doctor injected the sedative into her arm. Cristina’s shrieks pierced the room. I covered my ears and went out into the corridor.

Coward, I told myself. Coward.