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“You’re not going anywhere, Daniel.”
“What were those pills?”
“Morpheus’s liniment. You’re going to sleep like a log.”
“No, not now, I can’t….”
I continued to blabber until my eyelids closed and I dropped into a black, empty sleep, the sleep of the guilty.
IT WAS ALMOST DUSK WHEN THAT TOMBSTONE WAS LIFTED OFF ME. I opened my eyes to a dark room watched over by two tired candles flickering on the bedside table. Fermín, defeated on an armchair in the corner, snored with the fury of a man three times his size. At his feet, scattered like a flood of tears, lay Nuria Monfort’s manuscript. The headache had lessened to a slow, tepid throb. I tiptoed over to the bedroom door and went out into a little hall with a balcony and a door that seemed to open onto the staircase. My coat and shoes lay on a chair. A purplish light came in through the window, speckled with iridescence. I walked over to the balcony and saw that it was still snowing. Half the roofs of Barcelona were mottled with white and scarlet. In the distance the towers of the Industrial College looked like needles in the haze, clinging to the last rays of sun. The windowpane was veiled with frost. I put my index finger on the glass and wrote:
Gone to find Bea. Don’t follow me. Back soon.
The truth had struck me when I woke up, as if some stranger had whispered it to me in a dream. I stepped out onto the landing and rushed down the stairs and out of the front door. Calle Urgel was like a river of shiny white sand, and the wind blew the snow about in gusts. Streetlamps and trees emerged like masts in a fog. I walked to the nearest subway station, Hospital Clínico, past the stand of afternoon papers carrying the news on the front page, with photographs of the Ramblas covered in snow and the fountain of Canaletas bleeding stalactites. SNOWFALL OF THE CENTURY, the headlines blared. I fell onto a bench on the platform and breathed in that perfume of tunnels and soot that the sound of trains brings with it. On the other side of the tracks, on a poster proclaiming the delights of the Tibidabo amusement park, the blue tram was lit up like a street party, and behind it one could just make out the outline of the Aldaya mansion. I wondered whether Bea had seen the same image and had realized she had nowhere else to go.
·3·
WHEN I CAME OUT OF THE SUBWAY TUNNEL, IT WAS STARTING to get dark. Avenida del Tibidabo lay deserted, stretching out in a long line of cypress trees and mansions. I glimpsed the shape of the blue tram at the stop and heard the conductor’s bell piercing the wind. A quick run, and I jumped on just as it was pulling away. The conductor, my old acquaintance, took the coins, mumbling under his breath, and I sat down inside the carriage, a bit more sheltered from the snow and the cold. The somber mansions filed slowly by, behind the tram’s icy windows. The conductor watched me with a mixture of suspicion and bemusement, which the cold seemed to have frozen on his face.
“Number thirty-two, young man.”
I turned and saw the ghostly silhouette of the Aldaya mansion advancing toward us like the prow of a dark ship in the mist. The tram stopped with a shudder. I got off, fleeing from the conductor’s gaze.
“Good luck,” he murmured.
I watched the tram disappear up the avenue, leaving behind only the echo of its bell. Darkness fell around me. I hurried along the garden wall, looking for the gap in the back, where it had tumbled down. As I climbed over, I thought I heard footsteps on the snow approaching on the opposite pavement. I stopped for a second and remained motionless on the top of the wall. The sound of footsteps faded in the wind’s wake. I jumped down to the other side and entered the garden. The weeds had frozen into stems of crystal. The statues of the fallen angels were covered in shrouds of ice. The water in the fountain had iced over, forming a black, shiny mirror, from which only the stone claw of the sunken angel protruded, like an obsidian sword. Tears of ice hung from the index finger. The accusing hand of the angel pointed straight at the main door, which stood ajar.
I ran up the steps without bothering to muffle the sound of my footsteps. Pushing the door open, I walked into the lobby. A procession of candles lined the way toward the interior. They were Bea’s candles, almost burned down to the ground. I followed their trail and stopped at the foot of the grand staircase. The path of candles continued up the steps to the first floor. I ventured up the stairs, following my distorted shadow on the walls. When I reached the first-floor landing, I saw two more candles, set along the corridor. A third one flickered outside the room that had once been Penélope’s. I went up to the door and rapped gently with my knuckles.
“Julián?” came a shaky voice.
I grabbed hold of the doorknob and slowly opened the door. Bea gazed at me from a corner of the room, wrapped in a blanket. I ran to her side and held her. I could feel her dissolving into tears.
“I didn’t know where to go,” she murmured. “I called your home a few times, but there was no answer. I was scared….”
Bea dried her tears with her fists and fixed her eyes on mine. I nodded; there was no need to reply with words.
“Why did you call me Julián?”
Bea cast a glance at the half-open door. “He’s here. In this house. He comes and goes. He discovered me the other day, when I was trying to get into the house. Without my saying anything, he knew who I was and what was happening. He set me up in this room, and he brought me a blanket, water, and some food. He told me to wait. He said that everything was going to turn out all right, that you’d come for me. At night we talked for hours. He talked to me about Penélope, about Nuria—above all he spoke about you, about us two. He told me I had to teach you to forget him….”
“Where is he now?”
“Downstairs. In the library. He said he was waiting for someone, and not to move.”
“Waiting for who?”
“I don’t know. He said it was someone who would come with you, that you’d bring him….”
When I peered into the corridor, I could already hear footsteps below, near the staircase. I recognized the spidery shadow on the walls, the black raincoat, the hat pulled down like a hood, and the gun in his hand shining like a scythe. Fumero. He had always reminded me of someone, or something, but until then I hadn’t understood what.
·4·
I SNUFFED OUT THE CANDLES WITH MY FINGERS AND MADE A SIGN TO
Bea to keep quiet. She grabbed my hand and looked at me questioningly. Fumero’s slow steps could be heard below us. I led Bea back inside the room and signaled to her to stay there, hiding behind the door.
“Don’t go out of this room, whatever happens,” I whispered.
