The Angel's Game (5 page)

‘We’ll manage, do you understand? You and me. Without the charity of those sons-of-bitches. And with our heads held high.’

‘Yes, father.’

He put a hand on my shoulder and looked at me as if, for a split second that was never to return, he was proud of me, even though we were so different, even though I liked books that he could not read, even if mother had left us both to face each other. At that moment I thought my father was the kindest man in the world, and that everyone would realise this if only, just for once, life saw fit to deal him a good hand of cards.

‘All the bad things you do in life come back to you, David. And I’ve done a lot of bad things. A lot. But I’ve paid the price. And our luck is going to change. You’ll see . . .’

Doña Mariana was razor sharp and could see what was going on, but despite her insistence I didn’t mention the subject of my education to my father again. When my teacher realised there was no hope she told me that every day, when lessons were over, she would devote an hour just to me, to talk to me about books, history and all the things that scared my father so much.

‘It will be our secret,’ said the teacher.

By then I had begun to understand that my father was ashamed that others might think him ignorant, a residue from a war which, like all wars, was fought in the name of God and country to make a few men, who were already far too powerful when they started it, even more powerful. Around that time I started occasionally to accompany my father on his night shift. We’d take a tram in Calle Trafalgar which left us by the entrance to the Pueblo Nuevo Cemetery. I would stay in his cubicle, reading old copies of the newspaper, and at times I would try to chat with him, a difficult task. By then, my father hardly ever spoke at all, neither about the war in the colonies nor about the woman who had abandoned him. Once I asked him why my mother had left us. I suspected it had been my fault, because of something I’d done, perhaps just for being born.

‘Your mother had already left me before I was sent to the front. I was the idiot; I didn’t realise until I returned. Life’s like that, David. Sooner or later, everything and everybody abandons you.’

‘I’m never going to abandon you, father.’

I thought he was about to cry and I hugged him so as not to see his face.

The following day, unannounced, my father took me El Indio, a large store that sold fabrics on Calle del Carmen. We didn’t actually go in, but from the windows at the shop entrance my father pointed at a smiling young woman who was serving some customers, showing them expensive flannels and other textiles. ‘That’s your mother,’ he said. ‘One of these days I’ll come back here and kill her.’

‘Don’t say that, father.’

He looked at me with reddened eyes, and I knew then that he still loved her and that I would never forgive her for it. I remember that I watched her secretly, without her knowing we were there, and that I only recognised her because of a photograph my father kept in a drawer, next to his army revolver. Every night, when he thought I was asleep, he would take it out and look at it as if it held all the answers, or at least enough of them.

For years I would have to return to the doors of that store to spy on her in secret. I never had the courage to go in or to approach her when I saw her coming out and walking away down the Ramblas, towards a life that I had imagined for her, with a family that made her happy and a son who deserved her affection and the touch of her skin more than I did. My father never knew that sometimes I would sneak round there to see her, or that some days I even followed close behind, always ready to take her hand and walk by her side, always fleeing at the last moment. In my world, great expectations only existed between the pages of a book.

The good luck my father yearned for never arrived. The only courtesy life showed him was not to make him wait too long. One night, when we reached the doors of the newspaper building to start the shift, three men came out of the shadows and gunned him down before my very eyes. I remember the smell of sulphur and the halo of smoke that rose from the holes the bullets had burned through his coat. One of the gunmen was about to finish him off with a shot to the head when I threw myself on top of my father and another one of the murderers stopped him. I remember the eyes of the gunman fixing on mine, debating whether he should kill me too. Then, all of a sudden, the men hurried off and disappeared into the narrow streets trapped between the factories of Pueblo Nuevo.

That night my father’s murderers left him bleeding to death in my arms and me alone in the world. I spent almost two weeks sleeping in the workshops of the newspaper press, hidden among Linotype machines that looked like giant steel spiders, trying to silence the excruciating whistling sound that perforated my eardrums when night fell. When I was discovered, my hands and clothes were still stained with dry blood. At first nobody knew who I was, because I didn’t speak for about a week and when I did it was only to yell my father’s name until I was hoarse. When they asked me about my mother I told them she had died and I had nobody else in the world. My story reached the ears of Pedro Vidal, the star writer at the paper and a close friend of the editor. At his request, Vidal ordered that I should be given a runner’s job and be allowed to live in the caretaker’s modest rooms, in the basement, until further notice.

Those were years in which blood and violence were beginning to be an everyday occurrence in Barcelona. Days of pamphlets and bombs that left bits of bodies shaking and smoking in the streets of the Raval quarter, of gangs of black figures who prowled about at night shedding blood, of processions and parades of saints and generals who smelled of death and deceit, of inflammatory speeches in which everyone lied and everyone was right. The anger and hatred which, years later, would lead such people to murder one another in the name of grandiose slogans and coloured 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 world until, when I was fourteen, my salary permitted me to rent that room in Doña Carmen’s
pensión
. I had barely lived there 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 grey, with a grey expression and a grey 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 grey absence contaminating the world of poverty I had joined. 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 revolver, 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 revolver 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 into the rubbish bin, but then I realised 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 the world of 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 in the last ten 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 was just a handful of journalists - colleagues who, months ago, had given me affectionate nicknames and even words of encouragement, but 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 his head.

‘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 instalments 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 deep down 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
pensión
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 window pane. 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, sheltering every day in the Ateneo library and imagining that when I returned to the
pensión
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 above ground - and sat at the front of the carriage to gaze at the city and watch the streets become wider and grander the further we drew away from the centre. 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 unmistakeable 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 bucket of steaming-hot water.

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

‘I do my best,’ I replied.

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

I swallowed hard, 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 which he’d bought a few months earlier when the first Radio Barcelona broadcast had been announced from the studios concealed under the dome of the Hotel Colón.

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

We sat in chairs facing one another, 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 far removed from the light plots of his crime fiction, so that his name could be inscribed in the more distinguished sections of libraries. I couldn’t see many sheets of paper.

‘How’s the masterpiece going?’

Vidal threw his cigarette butt out of 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 a 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 realise 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 hard-working 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 should fire you,’ said Vidal.

I felt as if he’d just slapped me on 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 new publishing house and are looking for fresh blood to exploit. You can’t trust them, of course.’

‘Sounds marvellous.’

‘They know all about
The Mysteries of Barcelona
and are prepared to make you an offer that will get you on your feet.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Of course I’m serious. They want you to write a series in instalments 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 and talk to them and that you’d be able to start work immediately.’

I heaved a deep sigh. Vidal winked and then embraced me.