7
I was woken by the agony of the hangover - a press clamping down on my temples - and the scent of Colombian coffee. Isabella had set a table by my bed with a pot of freshly brewed coffee and a plate with bread, cheese, ham and an apple. The sight of the food made me nauseous, but I stretched out my hand to reach for the coffee pot. Isabella, who had been watching from the doorway, rushed forward and poured a cup for me, full of smiles.
‘Drink it like this, good and strong; it will work wonders.’
I accepted the cup and drank.
‘What’s the time?’
‘One o’clock in the afternoon.’
I snorted.
‘How long have you been awake?’
‘About seven hours.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Cleaning, tidying up, but there’s enough work here for a few months,’ Isabella replied.
I took another long sip of coffee.
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled. ‘For the coffee. And for cleaning up, although you don’t have to do it.’
‘I’m not doing it for you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m doing it for myself. If I’m going to live here, I’d rather not have to worry about getting stuck to something if I lean on it accidentally.’
‘Live here? I thought we’d said that—’
As I raised my voice, a stab of pain scythed through my brain.
‘Shhhh,’ whispered Isabella.
I nodded, agreeing to a truce. I couldn’t quarrel with Isabella now, and I didn’t want to. There would be time enough to take her back to her family once the hangover had beaten a retreat. I finished my coffee in one long gulp and got up. Five or six thorns pierced my head. I groaned. Isabella caught hold of my arm.
‘I’m not an invalid. I can manage on my own.’
She let go of me tentatively. I took a few steps towards the corridor, with Isabella following close behind, as if she feared I was about to topple over at any moment. I stopped in front of the bathroom.
‘May I pee on my own?’
‘Mind how you aim,’ the girl murmured. ‘I’ll leave your breakfast in the gallery.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You have to eat something.’
‘Are you my apprentice or my mother?’
‘It’s for your own good.’
I closed the bathroom door and sought refuge inside. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to what I was seeing. The bathroom was unrecognisable. Clean and sparkling. Everything in its place. A new bar of soap on the sink. Clean towels that I didn’t even know I owned. A smell of bleach.
‘Good God,’ I mumbled.
I put my head under the tap and let the cold water run for a couple of minutes, then went out into the corridor and slowly made my way to the gallery. If the bathroom was unrecognisable, the gallery now belonged to another world. Isabella had cleaned the windowpanes and the floor and tidied the furniture and armchairs. A diaphanous light filtered through the tall windows and the smell of dust had disappeared. My breakfast awaited on the table opposite the sofa, over which the girl had spread a clean throw. The books on the shelves seemed to have been reorganised and the glass cabinets had recovered their transparency. Isabella served me a second cup of coffee.
‘I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work.’
‘Pouring you a coffee?’
She had tidied up the books that lay scattered around in piles on tables and in corners. She had emptied magazine racks that had been overflowing for a decade or more. In just seven hours she had swept away years of darkness, and still she had the time and energy to smile.
‘I preferred it as it was,’ I said.
‘Of course you did, and so did the hundred thousand cockroaches you had as lodgers. I’ve sent them packing with the help of some ammonia.’
‘So that’s the stink I can smell?’
‘This “stink” is the smell of cleanliness,’ Isabella protested. ‘You could be a little bit grateful.’
‘I am.’
‘It doesn’t show. Tomorrow I’ll go up to the study and—’
‘Don’t even think about it.’
Isabella shrugged her shoulders, but she still looked determined and I knew that in twenty-four hours the study in the tower was going to suffer an irreparable transformation.
‘By the way, this morning I found an envelope in the corridor. Somebody must have slipped it under the door last night.’
I looked at her over my cup.
‘The main door downstairs is locked,’ I said.
‘That’s what I thought. Frankly, I did find it rather odd and, although it had your name on it—’
‘You opened it.’
‘I’m afraid so. I didn’t mean to.’
‘Isabella, opening other people’s letters is not a sign of good manners. In some places it’s even considered a crime that can be punished by a prison sentence.’
‘That’s what I tell my mother - she always opens my letters. And she’s still free.’
‘Where’s the letter?’
Isabella pulled an envelope out of the pocket of the apron she had donned and handed it to me, averting her eyes. The envelope had serrated edges and the paper was thick, porous and ivory-coloured, with an angel stamped on the red wax - now broken - and my name written in red, perfumed ink. I opened it and pulled out a folded sheet.
Dear David,
I hope this finds you in good health and that you have banked the agreed money without any problems. Do you think we could meet tonight at my house to start discussing the details of our project? A light dinner will be served around ten o’clock. I’ll be waiting for you.
Your friend,
ANDREAS CORELLI
I folded the sheet of paper and put it back in the envelope. Isabella looked at me with curiosity.
‘Good news?’
‘Nothing that concerns you.’
‘Who is this Se?or 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 Se?or Corelli like, then?’
I looked at her coldly.
‘Peculiar . . .’
‘Birds of a feather . . .’
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. I could hear Isabella sobbing down in the gallery. 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, Se?ora 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 spread down the corridor.
‘Isabella?’ I called.
There was no reply. I went over to the gallery and saw that the girl had left. Before doing so, however, she had cleaned and put in order a collection of the complete works of Ignatius B. Samson. For years they had collected dust and 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 travelling back to a time when everything seemed simple and inevitable.
‘Poetry is written with tears, novels 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 naivety 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.