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

“Who is this Señor Corelli? He has nice handwriting, not like yours.”

I looked at her severely.

“If I’m going to be your assistant, it’s only logical that I should know who your contacts are. In case I have to send them packing, that is.”

I grunted.

“He’s a publisher.”

“He must be a good one—just look at the writing paper and envelope he uses. What book are you writing for him?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“How can I help you if you won’t tell me what you’re working on? No, don’t answer. I’ll shut up.”

For ten miraculous seconds, Isabella was silent.

“What’s this Señor Corelli like, then?”

I looked at her coldly.

“Peculiar,” I ventured.

“Takes one to know one …”

Watching that girl with a noble heart I felt, if anything, more miserable and understood that the sooner I got her away from me, even at the risk of hurting her, the better it would be for both of us.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m going out tonight, Isabella.”

“Shall I leave some supper for you? Will you be back very late?”

“I’ll be having dinner out and I don’t know when I’ll be back, but by the time I return, whenever it is, I want you to have left. I want you to collect your things and go. I don’t care where to. There’s no place for you here. Do you understand?”

Her face grew pale, and her eyes began to water. She bit her lip and smiled at me, her cheeks lined with falling tears.

“I’m not needed here. Understood.”

“And don’t do any more cleaning.”

I got up and left her alone in the gallery. I hid in the study, up in the tower, and opened the windows. From down in the gallery I could hear Isabella sobbing. I gazed at the city stretching out under the midday sun, then turned my head to look in the other direction, where I thought I could almost see the shining tiles covering Villa Helius. I imagined Cristina, Señora de Vidal, standing by the windows of her tower, looking down at the Ribera quarter. Something dark and murky filled my heart. I forgot Isabella’s weeping and wished only for the moment when I would meet Corelli, so that we could discuss his accursed book.

…

I stayed in the study as the afternoon spread over the city like blood floating in water. It was hot, hotter than it had been all summer, and the rooftops of the Ribera quarter seemed to shimmer like a mirage. I went down to the lower floor and changed my clothes. The house was silent, and in the gallery the shutters were half closed and the windows tinted with an amber light that seeped down the corridor.

“Isabella?” I called.

There was no reply. I went to the gallery and saw that the girl had left. First, though, she had cleaned off and put in order a collection of the complete works of Ignatius B. Samson. For years they had collected dust and sunk into oblivion in a glass cabinet that now shone immaculately. She had taken one of the books and left it open on a lectern. I read a line at random and felt as if I were traveling back to a time when everything seemed simple and inevitable.

“Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink,” said the cardinal, as he spread poison on the knife edge by the light of a candelabra.

The studied naïveté of those lines made me smile and brought back a suspicion that had never really left me: perhaps it would have been better for everyone, especially for me, if Ignatius B. Samson had never committed suicide and David Martín had never taken his place.

8

It was getting dark when I went out. The heat and humidity had encouraged many of my neighbors to bring their chairs out into the street, hoping for a breeze that never came. I dodged the improvised rings of people sitting around front doors and on street corners and made my way to the railway station, where there was always a queue of taxis waiting for customers. I got into the first cab in line. It took us about twenty minutes to cross the city and climb the hill on whose slopes lay Gaudí’s ghostly forest. The lights in Corelli’s house could be seen from afar.