The chauffeur bade me farewell. I saw him get into the car and drive away slowly. I wasn’t absolutely sure, but I could have sworn that, after a journey in which he had hardly opened his mouth, he was now talking to himself.
11
I spent the whole morning running about the house, straightening things and tidying up, airing the rooms, cleaning objects and corners I didn’t even know existed. I rushed down to a florist in the market and when I returned, laden with bunches of flowers, I realized I had forgotten where I’d hidden the vases in which to put them. I dressed as if I were going out to look for work. I practiced words and greetings that sounded ridiculous. I glanced at myself in the mirror and saw that Vidal was right; I looked like a vampire. Finally I sat down in an armchair in the gallery to wait, with a book in my hands. In two hours I hadn’t turned the first page. At last, at exactly four o’clock in the afternoon, I heard Cristina’s footsteps on the stairs and jumped up. By the time she rang the front doorbell I’d been at the door for an eternity.
“Hello, David. Is this a bad moment?”
“No, no, on the contrary. Please come in.”
Cristina smiled politely and stepped into the corridor. I led her to the reading room in the gallery and offered her a seat. She was examining everything carefully.
“It’s a very special place,” she said. “Pedro did tell me you had an elegant home.”
“He prefers the term gloomy, but I suppose it’s just a question of degree.”
“May I ask why you came to live here? It’s a rather large house for someone who lives alone.”
Someone who lives alone, I thought. You end up becoming what you see in th
e eyes of those you love.
“The truth?” I asked. “The truth is that I came to live here because for years I had seen this house almost every day on my way to and from the newspaper. It was always closed up, and I began to think it was waiting for me. In the end I dreamed, literally, that one day I would live in it. And that’s what happened.”
“Do all your dreams come true, David?”
The ironic tone reminded me too much of Vidal.
“No,” I replied. “This is the only one. But you wanted to talk to me about something and I’m distracting you with stories that probably don’t interest you.”
I sounded more defensive than I would have wished. The same thing that had happened with the flowers was happening with my longing: once I held it in my hands, I didn’t know where to put it.
“I wanted to talk to you about Pedro,” Cristina began.
“Ah.”
“You’re his best friend. You know him. He talks about you as if you were his son. He loves you more than anyone. You know that.”
“Don Pedro has been like a father to me,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for him and for Señor Sempere, I don’t know what would have become of me.”
“The reason I wanted to talk to you is that I’m very worried about him.”
“Why are you worried?”
“You know that some years ago I started work as his secretary. The truth is that Pedro is a very generous man and we’ve ended up being good friends. He has behaved very well toward my father, and toward me. That’s why it hurts me to see him like this.”
“Like what?”
“It’s that wretched book, the novel he wants to write.”
“He’s been at it for years.”
“He’s been destroying it for years. I correct and type all his pages. Over the years I’ve been working as his secretary he’s destroyed at least two thousand pages. He says he has no talent. He says he’s a fraud. He’s constantly at the bottle. Sometimes I find him upstairs in his study, drunk, crying like a child.”
I swallowed hard.
“He says he envies you, he wants to be like you, he says people lie and praise him because they want something from him—money, help—but he knows that his book is worthless. He keeps up appearances with everyone else, his smart suits and all that, but I see him every day and I know he’s losing hope. Sometimes I’m afraid he’ll do something stupid. It’s been going on for some time now. I haven’t said anything because I didn’t know who to speak to. If he knew I’d come to see you he’d be furious. He always says: Don’t bother David with my worries. He’s got his whole life ahead of him and I’m nothing now. He’s always saying things like that. Forgive me for telling you all this, but I didn’t know who to turn to.”
I felt an intense cold invading me: the knowledge that while the man to whom I owed my life had plunged into despair, I had been locked in my own world and hadn’t paused for one second to notice.