As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I began to distinguish a few outlines. I went over to the windows and half opened the shutters. A fan of light cut through the darkness, revealing the full profile of the room.
“Is anyone here?” I called out.
The sound of my voice sank into the bowels of the house like a coin falling into a bottomless well. I walked to the end of the conservatory, where an arch of carved wood led to a dim corridor lined with paintings that were barely visible on the velvet-covered walls. At the end of the corridor there was a large, round sitting room with a mosaic floor and a mural of enameled glass showing the figure of a white angel with one arm extended and fingers pointing like flames. A wide staircase rose around the room. I stopped at the foot of the stairs and called out again.
“Good morning! Señora Marlasca?”
The house drowned the dull echo of my words. I went up the stairs to the first floor and paused on the landing, looking down on the sitting room and the mural. From there I could see the trail my feet had left on the film of dust covering the ground. Apart from my footsteps, the only other sign of movement I could discern was parallel lines drawn in the dust, about half a meter apart, and a trail of footprints between them. Large footprints. I stared at those marks in some confusion until I understood what I was seeing: the movement of a wheelchair and the marks of the person pushing it.
I thought I heard a noise behind my back and turned. A half-open door at one end of the corridor was gently swinging and I could feel a breath of cold air. I moved slowly toward the door, glancing at the rooms on either side, bedrooms with dust sheets covering the furniture. The closed windows and heavy darkness suggested these rooms had not been used in a long time, except for one, which was larger than the others, the master bedroom. It smelled of that odd mixture of perfume and illness associated with elderly people. I imagined this must be the room of Marlasca’s widow, but there was no sign of her.
The bed was neatly made. Opposite it stood a chest of drawers with a number of framed photographs on it. In all of them, without exception, was a boy with fair hair and a cheerful expression. Ismael Marlasca. In some pictures he posed next to his mother or other children. There was no sign of Diego Marlasca in any of them.
The sound of a door banging in the corridor startled me again and I exited the bedroom, leaving the pictures as I’d found them. The door to the room at the end was still swinging back and forth. I walked up to it and stopped for a second before entering, taking a deep breath.
Inside, everything was white. The walls and the ceiling were painted an immaculate white. White silk curtains. A small bed covered with white sheets. A white carpet. White shelves and cupboards. After the darkness that had prevailed throughout the house, the contrast dazzled my vision for a few seconds. The room seemed to be straight out of a fairy tale. There were toys and storybooks on the shelves. A life-size china harlequin sat at a dressing table, looking at himself in the mirror. A mobile of white birds hung from the ceiling. At first sight it looked like the room of a spoiled child, Ismael Marlasca, but it had the oppressive air of a funeral chamber.
I sat on the bed and sighed. Something in the room, I now noticed, seemed out of place. Beginning with the smell, a sickly, sweet stench. I stood up and looked around me. On a chest of drawers I saw a china plate with a black candle, its wax melted into beads. I turned round. The smell seemed to be coming from the head of the bed. I opened the drawer of the bedside table and found a crucifix broken in three. The stench grew stronger. I walked around the room a few times but was unable to find the source. Then I saw it. There was something under the bed. A tin box, the sort that children use to hold their childhood treasures. I pulled out the box and placed it on the bed. The stench was now more powerful, and penetrating. I ignored my nausea and opened the box. Inside was a white dove, its heart pierced by a needle. I took a step back, covering my mouth and nose, and retreated to the corridor. The harlequin with its jackal smile observed me in the mirror. I ran back to the staircase and hurtled down the stairs, looking for the passage that led to the reading room and the door to the garden. At one point I thought I was lost and the house, like a creature capable of moving its passageways and rooms at will, was trying to prevent me from escaping. At last I sighted the conservatory and ran to the door. Only then, while I was struggling to release the bolt, did I hear malicious laughter behind me and know I was not alone in the house. I turned for an instant and saw a dark figure watching me from the end of the corridor, carrying a shining object in its hand. A knife. The bolt yielded and I pushed open the door, falling headlong onto the marble tiles surrounding the swimming pool. My face was barely centimeters from the surface and I could smell the stench of stagnant water. For a moment I peered into the shadows at the bottom of the pool. There was a short break in the clouds and a shaft of sunlight pierced the water, touching the floor, with its loose fragments of mosaic. The vision was over in a second: the wheelchair, tilted forward, stranded on the pool floor. The sunlight continued its journey to the deep end and it was there that I saw her: lying against the wall was what looked like a body shrouded in a threadbare white dress. At first I thought it was a doll, with scarlet lips shriveled by the water and eyes as bright as sapphires. Her red hair undulated gently in the rancid water and her skin was blue. It was Marlasca’s widow. A second later the gap in the clouds closed again and the water was once more a clouded mirror in which I could glimpse only my face and a form that appeared in the doorway of the conservatory behind me, holding a knife. I shot up and ran straight into the garden, crossing the grove, scratching my face and hands on the bushes, until I reached the iron door and was out in the alleyway. I didn’t stop running until I reached the main road. There I turned, out of breath, and saw that Ca
sa Marlasca was once again hidden down its long alleyway, invisible to the world.
37
I returned home on the same tram, crossing a city that was growing darker by the minute. An icy wind lifted the fallen leaves from the streets. When I got out in Plaza Palacio I heard two sailors who were walking up from the docks talking about a storm that was approaching from the sea and would hit the town before nightfall. I looked up and saw a blanket of reddish clouds beginning to cover the sky. In the streets surrounding the Borne Market people were rushing to secure doors and windows, shopkeepers were closing early, and children came outside to play in the wind, lifting their arms and laughing at the distant roar of thunder. Streetlamps flickered and a flash of lightning bathed the buildings in a sudden white light. I hurried to the door of the tower house and rushed up the steps. The rumble of the storm could be felt through the walls, getting closer.
It was so cold indoors that I could see my breath as I stepped into the corridor. I went straight to the room with an old charcoal stove that I had used only four or five times since I’d lived there and lit it with a wad of old newspapers. I also lit the wood fire in the gallery and sat on the floor facing the flames. My hands were shaking, I didn’t know whether from the cold or from fear. I waited until I had warmed up, staring out at the web of white light traced by lightning across the sky.
The rain didn’t arrive until nightfall, and when it did, it plummeted in curtains of furious drops that quickly blinded the night and flooded rooftops and alleyways, hitting walls and windowpanes with tremendous force. Little by little, with the help of the stove and the fireplace, the house started to warm up, but I was still cold. I got up and went to the bedroom in search of blankets to wrap around myself. I opened the wardrobe and started to rummage in the two large drawers at the bottom. The case was still there, hidden at the back. I picked it up and placed it on the bed.
I opened the case and stared at my father’s old revolver, the only thing I had left of him. I held it, stroking the trigger with my thumb. I opened the drum and inserted six bullets from the ammunition box in the false bottom of the case. I left the box on the bedside table and took the gun and a blanket back to the gallery. Lying on the sofa wrapped in the blanket, with the gun against my chest, I abandoned myself to the storm behind the windowpanes. I could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece but didn’t need to look at it to realize that there was barely half an hour to go before my meeting with the boss in the billiard room at the Equestrian Club.
I closed my eyes and imagined him traveling through the deserted streets of the city, sitting in the backseat of his car, his golden eyes shining in the dark, the silver angel on the hood of the Rolls-Royce plunging through the storm. I imagined him motionless, like a statue, not breathing or smiling, with no expression at all. I heard the crackle of burning wood and the sound of the rain on the windows; I fell asleep with the weapon in my hands and the certainty that I was not going to keep my appointment.
…
Shortly after midnight I opened my eyes. The fire was almost out and the gallery was submerged in the flickering half-light projected by the last blue flames in the embers. It continued to rain heavily. The revolver was still in my hands: it felt warm. I remained like that for a few seconds, barely blinking. I knew that there was someone at the door before I heard the knock.
I pushed aside the blanket and sat up. I heard the knock again. Knuckles on the front door. I stood up, the gun in my hands, and went into the corridor. Again the knock. I took a few steps toward the door and stopped. I imagined him smiling on the landing, the angel on his lapel gleaming in the dark. I pulled back the hammer on the gun. Once again the sound of a hand knocking on the door. I tried to turn the light on, but there was no power. I kept walking. I was about to slide the peephole open but didn’t dare. I stood there stock-still, hardly daring to breathe, with the gun raised and pointing toward the door.
“Go away,” I called out, with no strength in my voice.
Then I heard a sob on the other side of the door and lowered the gun. I opened the door and found her there in the shadows. Her clothes were soaking and she was shivering. Her skin was frozen. When she saw me, she almost collapsed into my arms. I could find no words, I just held her tight. She smiled weakly at me and when I put my hand on her cheek she kissed it and closed her eyes.
“Forgive me,” whispered Cristina.
She opened her eyes and gave me a broken look that would have stayed with me even in hell. I smiled at her.
“Welcome home.”
38
I undressed her by candlelight. I removed her shoes and dress, which were soaking wet, and her laddered stockings. I dried her body and her hair with a clean towel. She was still shaking with cold when I put her to bed and lay down next to her, hugging her to give her warmth. We stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything, just listening to the rain. Slowly I felt her body warming up and her breathing become deeper. I thought she had fallen asleep when I heard her speak.
“Your friend came to see me.”
“Isabella.”
“She told me she’d hidden my letters. She said she hadn’t done it in bad faith. She thought she was doing it for your own good. Perhaps she was right.”