Cristina nodded but looked unconvinced.
“Why don’t we go away?” she asked.
“Where to?”
“Far away.”
I couldn’t help smiling, but she didn’t smile back.
“How far?” I asked.
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“Far enough that people won’t know who we are, and won’t care, either.”
“Is that what you want?” I asked.
“Don’t you?”
I hesitated for a second.
“What about Pedro?” I asked, almost choking on the words.
She let the blanket fall from her shoulders and looked at me defiantly. “Do you need his permission to sleep with me?”
I bit my tongue.
Cristina looked at me, her eyes full of tears.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I had no right to say that.”
I picked up the blanket and tried to cover her, but she moved away, rejecting my gesture.
“Pedro has left me,” she said in a broken voice. “He went to the Ritz yesterday to wait until I’d gone. He said he knew I didn’t love him, that I married him out of gratitude or pity. He said he doesn’t want my compassion and that every day I spend with him pretending to love him only hurts him. Whatever I did he would always love me, he said, and that is why he doesn’t want to see me again.”
Her hands were shaking.
“He’s loved me with all his heart and all I’ve done is make him miserable,” she murmured.
She closed her eyes and her face twisted in pain. A moment later she let out a deep moan and began to hit her face and body with her fists. I threw myself on her and put my arms around her, holding her still. Cristina struggled and shouted. I pressed her against the floor, restraining her. Slowly she gave in, exhausted, her face covered in tears, her eyes reddened. We remained like that for almost half an hour, until I felt her body relaxing. I covered her with the blanket and embraced her, hiding my own tears.
“We’ll go far away,” I whispered in her ear, not knowing whether she could hear or understand me. “We’ll go far away where nobody will know who we are, and won’t care, either. I promise.”
Cristina tilted her head and looked at me, her face robbed of all expression, as if her soul had been smashed to pieces with a hammer. I held her tight and kissed her on the forehead. The rain was still whipping against the windowpanes. Trapped in that gray, pale light of a dead dawn, it occurred to me for the first time that we were sinking.
39
That same morning I abandoned my work for the boss. While Cristina slept I went up to the study and put the folder containing all the pages, notes, and drafts for the project in an old trunk by the wall. I wanted to set fire to it, but I didn’t have the courage. I had always felt that the pages I left behind were a part of me. Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives. Among all the strange creatures made of paper and ink that I’d brought into the world, this one, my mercenary offering to the promises of the boss, was undoubtedly the most grotesque. There was nothing in those pages that deserved anything better than to be burned, and yet they were still flesh of my flesh and I couldn’t find the courage to destroy them. I abandoned the work in the bottom of that trunk and left the study with a heavy heart, almost ashamed of my cowardice and the murky sense of paternity inspired in me by that manuscript of shadows. The boss would probably have appreciated the irony of the situation. All it inspired in me was disgust.
…
Cristina slept well into the afternoon. I took advantage of her sleep to go to the grocer’s shop next to the market and buy some milk, bread, and cheese. The rain had stopped at last, but the streets were full of puddles and you could feel the dampness in the air, like a cold dust that permeated your clothes and your bones. While I waited for my turn in the shop I had the feeling that someone was watching me. When I went outside again and crossed Paseo del Borne, I turned and saw that a boy was following me. He could not have been more than five years old. I stopped and looked at him. The boy held my gaze.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “Come here.”
The boy came closer, until he was standing about two meters away. His skin was pale, almost blue, as if he’d never seen the sunlight. He was dressed in black and wore shiny new patent leather shoes. His eyes were dark, with pupils so large they left no space for the whites.
“What’s your name?” I asked.