5
When I returned home an hour later, I found her sitting on my doorstep, clutching what I imagined must be her story. As soon as she saw me she stood up and forced a smile.
‘I told you to leave it in my letter box,’ I said.
Isabella nodded and shrugged her shoulders.
‘As a token of my gratitude I’ve brought you some coffee from my parents’ shop. It’s Colombian and really good. The coffee didn’t fit through your letter box so I thought I’d better wait for you.’
Such an excuse could only have been invented by a budding novelist. I sighed and opened the door.
‘In.’
I went up the stairs, Isabella following like a lapdog a few steps behind.
‘Do you always take that long to have your breakfast? Not that it’s any of my business, of course, but I’ve been waiting here for three quarters of an hour, so I was beginning to worry. I said to myself, I hope he hasn’t choked on something. It would be just my luck. The one time I meet a writer in the flesh and then he goes and swallows an olive the wrong way and bang goes my literary career,’ she rattled on.
I stopped halfway up the flight of steps and looked at her with the most hostile expression I could muster.
‘Isabella, for things to work out between us we’re going to have to set down a few rules. The first is that I ask the questions and you just answer them. When there are no questions from me, you don’t give me answers or spontaneous speeches. The second rule is that I can take as long as I damn well please to have breakfast, an afternoon snack or to daydream, and that does not constitute a matter for debate.’
‘I didn’t mean to offend you. I understand that slow digestion of food is an aid to inspiration.’
‘The third rule is that sarcasm is not allowed before noon. Understood?’
‘Yes, Se?or Martín.’
‘The fourth is that you must not call me Se?or Martín, not even at my funeral. I might seem like a fossil to you, but I like to think that I’m still young. In fact, I am young, end of story.’
‘How should I call you?’
‘By my name: David.’
The girl nodded. I opened the door of the apartment and showed her in. Isabella hesitated for a moment, then slipped in giving a little jump.
‘I think you still look quite young for your age, David.’
I stared at her in astonishment.
‘How old do you think I am?’
Isabella looked me up and down, assessing.
‘About thirty? But a young-looking thirty?’
‘Just shut up and go and make some coffee with that concoction you’ve brought.’
‘Where is the kitchen?’
‘Look for it.’
We shared a delicious Colombian coffee sitting in the gallery. Isabella held her cup and watched me furtively as I read the twenty pages she had brought with her. Every time I turned a page and looked up I was confronted by her expectant gaze.
‘If you’re going to sit there looking at me like an owl, this will take a long time.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Didn’t you want to be my assistant? Then assist. Look for something that needs tidying and tidy it, for example.’
Isabella looked around.
‘Everything is untidy.’
‘This is your chance then.’
Isabella agreed and went off, with military determination, to confront the chaos that reigned in my home. I listened as her footsteps retreated down the corridor and then continued reading. The story she had brought me had almost no narrative thread. With a sharp sensitivity and an articulate turn of phrase, it described the feelings and longings that passed through the mind of a girl confined to a cold room in an attic of the Ribera quarter, from which she gazed at the city with its people coming and going along dark, narrow streets. The images and the sad music of her prose spoke of a loneliness that bordered on despair. The girl in the story spent hours trapped in her world; sometimes she would sit facing a mirror and slit her arms and thighs with a piece of broken glass, leaving scars like the ones just visible under Isabella’s sleeves. I had almost finished my reading when I noticed that she was looking at me from the gallery door.
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but what’s in the room at the end of the corridor?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It smells odd.’
‘Damp.’
‘I can clean it if you like . . .’
‘No. That room is never used. And besides, you’re not my maid. You don’t need to clean anything.’
‘I’m only trying to help.’
‘You can help by getting me another cup of coffee.’
‘Why? Did the story make you feel drowsy?’
‘What’s the time, Isabella?’
‘It must be about ten o’clock.’
‘And what does that mean?’
‘No sarcasm before noon,’ Isabella replied.
I smiled triumphantly and handed her my empty cup. She took it and headed off towards the kitchen.
When she returned with the steaming coffee, I had just read the last page. Isabella sat down opposite me. I smiled and slowly sipped the delicious brew. The girl wrung her hands and gritted her teeth, glancing now and then at the pages of her story, which I had left face down on the table. She held out for a couple of minutes without saying a word.
‘And?’ she said at last.
‘Superb.’
Her face lit up.
‘My story?’
‘The coffee.’
She gave me a wounded look and went to gather her pages.
‘Leave them where they are.’
‘Why? It’s obvious that you didn’t like them and you think I’m nothing but a poor idiot.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t say anything, which is worse.’
‘Isabella, if you really want to devote yourself to writing, or at least to writing something others will read, you’re going to have to get used sometimes to being ignored, insulted and despised, and almost always to being considered with indifference. It comes with the territory.’
Isabella looked down and took a deep breath.
‘I don’t know if I have any talent. I only know that I like to write. Or, rather, that I need to write.’
‘Liar.’
She looked up and gazed at me harshly.
‘OK. I am talented. And I don’t care two hoots if you think that I’m not.’
I smiled.
‘That’s better; I couldn’t agree with you more.’
She looked confused.
‘In that I have talent, or in that you think that I don’t?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Then, do you believe I have potential?’
‘I think you are talented and passionate, Isabella. More than you think and less than you expect. But there are a lot of people with talent and passion, and many of them never get anywhere. This is only the first step for achieving anything in life. Natural talent is like an athlete’s strength. You can be born with more or less ability, but nobody can become an athlete just because he or she was born tall, or strong, or fast. What makes the athlete, or the artist, is the work, the vocation and the technique. The intelligence you are born with is just ammunition. To achieve something with it you need to transform your mind into a high-precision weapon.’
‘Why the military metaphor?’
‘Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist’s life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one’s limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.’
Isabella considered my words.
‘Do you hurl that speech at everyone, or have you just made it up?’
‘The speech isn’t mine. It was “hurled” at me, as you put it, by someone to whom I asked the same questions that you’re asking me today. It was many years ago, but not a day goes by when I don’t realise how right he was.’
‘So, can I be your assistant?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
Isabella nodded, satisfied. On the table, close to where she was sitting, lay the photograph album Cristina had left behind. She opened it at random, starting from the back, and was soon staring at a picture of Se?ora de Vidal, taken by the gates of Villa Helius two or three years before she was married. I swallowed hard. Isabella closed the album and let her eyes wander around the gallery until they came to rest on me. I was observing her impatiently. She gave me a nervous smile, as if I’d caught her poking around where she had no business.
‘Your girlfriend is very beautiful,’ she said.
The look I gave her removed the smile in an instant.
‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
‘Oh.’
A long silence ensued.
‘I suppose the fifth rule is that I’m not to meddle in anything that doesn’t concern me, right?’
I didn’t reply. Isabella nodded to herself and stood up.
‘Then I’d better leave you in peace and not bother you any more today. If you like, I can come back tomorrow and we’ll start then.’
She gathered her pages and smiled shyly. I nodded.
Isabella left discreetly and disappeared down the corridor. I heard her steps as she walked away and then the sound of the door closing. Her absence made me aware, for the first time, of the silence that bewitched that house.