The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten 2)

“Who, me?”

Isaac sighed, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.

“And what else have you written?”

“City of the Damned, volumes one to twenty-seven, among other things.”

Isaac turned round and smiled with satisfaction.

“Ignatius B. Samson?”

“May he rest in peace, and at your service.”

At that point, the mysterious keeper stopped and left the lamp resting on what looked like a balustrade rising in front of a large vault. I looked up and was spellbound. There before me stood a colossal labyrinth of bridges, passages, and shelves full of hundreds of thousands of books, forming a gigantic library of seemingly impossible perspectives. Tunnels zigzagged through the immense structure, which seemed to rise in a spiral toward a large glass dome, curtains of light and darkness filtering through it. Here and there I could see isolated figures walking along footbridges and up stairs or carefully examining the contents of the passageways of that cathedral of books and words. I couldn’t believe my eyes and I looked at Isaac Monfort in astonishment. He was smiling like an old fox enjoying his favorite game.

“Ignatius B. Samson, welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.”

20

I followed the keeper to the foot of the large nave that housed the labyrinth. The floor we were stepping over was sown with tombstones, their inscriptions, crosses, and faces dissolving into the stone. The keeper stopped and lowered the gas lamp so that the light slid over some of the pieces of the macabre puzzle.

“The remains of an old necropolis,” he explained. “But don’t let that give you any ideas about dropping dead here.”

We continued toward an area just before the central structure that seemed to form a kind of threshold. In the meantime Isaac was rattling off the rules and duties, fixing his gaze on me from time to time, while I tried to soothe him with docile assent.

“Article one: the first time somebody comes here he has the right to choose a book, whichever one he likes, from all the books there are in this place. Article two: upon adopting a book you undertake to protect it and do all you can to ensure it is never lost. For life. Any questions so far?”

I looked up toward the immensity of the labyrinth.

“How does one choose a single book among so many?”

Isaac shrugged.

“Some like to believe it’s the book that chooses the person. Destiny, in other words. What you see here is the sum of centuries of books that have been lost and forgotten, books condemned to be destroyed and silenced forever, books that preserve the memory and soul of times and marvels that no one remembers anymore. None of us, not even the oldest, knows exactly when it was created or by whom. It’s probably as old as the city itself and has been growing with it, in its shadow. We know the building was erected using the ruins of palaces, churches, prisons, and hospitals that may once have stood here. The origin of the main structure goes back to the beginning of the eighteenth century and has not stopped evolving since then. Before that, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books was hidden under the tunnels of the medieval town. Some say that during the Inquisition people who were learned and had free minds would hide forbidden books in sarcophagi or bury them in ossuaries all over the city to protect them, trusting that future generations would dig them up. In the middle of the last century a long tunnel was discovered leading from the bowels of the labyrinth to the basement of an old library that nowadays is sealed off, hidden in the ruins of an old synagogue in the Jewish quarter. When the last of the old city walls came down, there was a landslide and the tunnel was flooded with water from an underground stream that for centuries has run beneath what is now the Ramblas. It’s inaccessible at present, but we imagine that for a long time the tunnel was one of the main entrance routes to this place. Most of the structure you can see was developed during the nineteenth century. Only about a hundred people know about it and I hope Sempere hasn’t made a mistake by including you among them …”

I shook my head vigorously, but Isaac was looking at me with skepticism.

“Article three: you can bury your own book wherever you like.”

“What if I get lost?”

“An additional clause, from my own stable: try not to get lost.”

“Has anyone ever got lost?”

Isaac snorted.

“When I started here years ago there was a story doing the rounds about Darío Alberti de Cymerman. I don’t suppose Sempere has told you this, of course.”

“Cymerman? The historian?”

“No, the seal tamer. How many Darío Alberti de Cymermans do you know? What happened is that in the winter of 1889 Cymerman went into the labyrinth and disappeared for a whole week. He was found in one of the tunnels, half dead with fright. He had walled himself up behind a few rows of holy texts so he couldn’t be seen.”

“Seen by whom?”

Isaac looked at me for a long while.

“By the man in black. Are you sure Sempere hasn’t told you anything about this?”