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Day was dawning when I reached home, dragging myself in that absurd loaned suit through damp streets that shone with a scarlet hue. I found my father asleep in his dining-room armchair, with a blanket over his legs and his favorite book open in his hands—a copy of Voltaire’s Candide, which he reread a couple of times a year, the only times I heard him laugh heartily. I observed him: his hair was gray, thinning, and the skin on his face had begun to sag around his cheekbones. I looked at that man whom I had once imagined almost invincible; he now seemed fragile, defeated without knowing it. Perhaps we were both defeated. I leaned over to cover him with the blanket he had been promising to give away to charity for years, and I kissed his forehead, as if by doing so I could protect him from the invisible threads that kept him away from me, from that tiny apartment, and from my memories, as if I believed that with that kiss I could deceive time and convince it to pass us by, to return some other day, some other life.
·34·
I SPENT NEARLY ALL MORNING DAYDREAMING IN THE BACK ROOM, conjuring up images of Bea. I visualized her naked skin under my hands, and it seemed to me that I could almost savor her sweet breath. I caught myself remembering with maplike precision every contour of her body, the glistening of my saliva on her lips and on that line of fair hair, so fair it was almost transparent, that ran down her belly and that my friend Fermín, in his improvised lectures on carnal logistics, liked to call “the little road to Jerez.”
I looked at my watch for the umpteenth time and realized to my horror that there were still a few hours to go before I could see, and touch, Bea. I tried to sort out the month’s invoices, but the rustle of the sheets of paper reminded me of the sound of underwear slipping down the pale hips and thighs of Doña Beatriz Aguilar, sister of my childhood friend.
“Daniel, you’ve got your head in the clouds. Is anything worrying you? Is it Fermín?” my father asked.
I nodded, ashamed of myself. My best friend had lost a few ribs to save my skin a few hours earlier, and all I could think of was the fastener of a bra.
“Speaking of the devil…”
; I raised my eyes, and there he was. Fermín Romero de Torres, the one and only, wearing his best suit and with that ragged posture of a cheap cigar. He was coming in through the shop door with a victorious smile and a fresh carnation in his lapel.
“But what are you doing here? Weren’t you supposed to be resting?”
“Rest takes care of itself. I’m a man of action. And if I’m not here, you two won’t even sell a catechism.”
Ignoring the doctor’s advice, Fermín had come along determined to take up his post again. His face was yellow and covered in bruises; he limped badly and moved like a broken puppet.
“You’re going straight to bed, Fermín, for God’s sake,” said my horrified father.
“Wouldn’t hear of it. Statistics prove it: more people die in bed than in the trenches.”
All our protests went unheeded. After a while my father gave in, because something in poor Fermín’s eyes suggested that even though his bones hurt him terribly, the prospect of being alone in his pensión room was even more painful.
“All right, but if I see you lifting anything besides a pencil, I’ll give you an earful.”
“Yes, sir! You have my word of honor that I won’t even lift a finger.”
Fermín proceeded to put on his blue overalls and arm himself with a rag and a bottle of alcohol. He set himself up behind the counter, planning to clean the covers and spines of the fifteen secondhand books that had arrived that morning. They were all copies of a much-sought-after title, The Three-Cornered Hat: A History of the Civil Guard in Alexandrine Verse, by the exceedingly young graduate Fulgencio Capón, acclaimed as a prodigy by critics all over the country. While he devoted himself to his task, Fermín kept throwing me surreptitious looks, winking like a scheming devil.
“Your ears are as red as peppers, Daniel.”
“It must be from hearing you talk so much nonsense.”
“Or from the fever that’s gripped you. When are you seeing the young maid?”
“None of your business.”
“You look really bad. Are you avoiding spicy food? Hot spices are fatal; they dilate your blood vessels.”
“Piss off.”
It was going to be a long, miserable day.
THE AFTERNOON WAS CLOSING IN WHEN THE SUBWAY TRAIN LEFT ME AT the foot of Avenida del Tibidabo. I could distinguish the shape of the blue tram, moving away through folds of violet mist. I decided not to wait for its return but to make my way on foot in the twilight. Soon I discerned the outline of The Angel of Mist. I pulled out the key Bea had given me and opened the small door within the gate. I stepped into the property, leaving the door almost closed, so that it looked shut but was ready to be opened by Bea. I had arrived early deliberately. I knew that Bea would take at least half an hour or forty-five minutes more. I wanted to feel the presence of the house on my own and explore it before Bea arrived and made it hers. I stopped for a moment to look at the fountain and the hand of the angel rising from the waters that were tinted scarlet. The accusing index finger seemed sharp as a dagger. I went up to the edge of the bowl. The sculpted face, with no eyes and no soul, quivered beneath the water.
I walked up the wide staircase that led to the entrance. The main door was slightly ajar. I felt a pang of anxiety, because I thought I’d closed it when I left the place the other night. I examined the lock, which didn’t seem to have been tampered with, and came to the conclusion that I must have forgotten to close the door. I pushed it gently inward, and felt the breath from inside the house brushing my face, a whiff of burned wood, damp, and dead flowers. I pulled out a box of matches I’d picked up before leaving the bookshop and knelt down to light the first of the candles Bea had left. A copper-colored bubble lit up in my hands and revealed the dancing shapes of the walls that wept with tears of dampness, the fallen ceilings and dilapidated doors.
I proceeded to the second candle and lit it. Slowly, almost ritualistically, I followed the trail of the candles and lit them one by one, conjuring up a halo of amber light that seemed to float in the air like a cobweb trapped between mantles of impenetrable darkness. My journey ended by the sitting-room fireplace, by the blankets that were still lying on the floor, stained with ash. I sat there, facing the rest of the room. I had expected silence, but the house exhaled a thousand sounds. The creaking of wood, the brush of the wind over the roof tiles, a thousand and one tapping sounds inside the walls, under the floor, moving from place to place.
After about thirty minutes, I noticed that the cold and the dark were beginning to make me feel drowsy. I stood up and began to walk up and down the room to get warm. There was only the charred husk of a log in the hearth. By the time Bea arrived, the temperature inside the old mansion would have gone down enough to chill from my mind the feverish ideas I had been harboring for days and fill me with pure and chaste thoughts. Having found an aim more practical than the contemplation of the ruins of time, I picked up one of the candles and set off to explore the house in search of something to burn.
My notions of Victorian literature suggested that the most logical place to begin searching was the cellar, which must have once housed the cookers and a great coal bunker. With this idea in mind, I spent almost five minutes trying to find a door or staircase leading to the lower floor. I chose a large door made of carved wood, at the end of a passage. It looked like a piece of exquisite cabinetmaking, with reliefs in the shape of angels and a large cross in the center. The handle was in the middle of the door, under the cross. I tried unsuccessfully to turn it. The mechanism was probably jammed or simply ruined by rust. The only way that door would yield would be by forcing it open with a crowbar or knocking it down with an ax, alternatives I quickly ruled out. I studied the large piece of wood by candlelight and thought that somehow it looked more like a sarcophagus than a door. I wondered what was hidden behind it.
