15
On my way home I stopped by a stationer’s in Calle Argenteria to look at the shop window. On a sheet of fabric was a case containing a set of nibs, an ivory pen and a matching ink pot engraved with what looked like fairies or muses. There was something melodramatic about the whole set, as if it had been stolen from the writing desk of some Russian novelist, the sort who would bleed to death over thousands of pages. Isabella had beautiful handwriting that I envied, as pure and clear as her conscience, and the set seemed to have been made for her. I went in and asked the shop assistant to show it to me. The nibs were gold-plated and the whole business cost a small fortune, but I decided that it would be a good idea to repay my young assistant’s kindness and patience with this little gift. I asked the man to wrap it in bright purple paper with a ribbon the size of a carriage.
When I got home I was looking forward to the selfish satisfaction that comes from arriving with a gift in one’s hand. I was about to call Isabella as if she were a faithful pet with nothing better to do than wait devotedly for her master’s return, but what I saw when I opened the door left me speechless. The corridor was as dark as a tunnel. The door of the room at the other end was open, casting a square of flickering yellow light across the floor.
‘Isabella?’ I called out. My mouth was dry.
‘I’m here.’
The voice came from inside the room. I left the parcel on the hall table and walked down the corridor. I stopped in the doorway and looked inside. Isabella was sitting on the floor. She had placed a candle inside a tall glass and was earnestly devoting herself to her second vocation after literature: tidying up other people’s belongings.
‘How did you get in here?’
She smiled at me and shrugged her shoulders.
‘I was in the gallery and I heard a noise. I thought it was you coming back, but when I went into the corridor I saw that this door was open. I thought you’d told me it was locked.’
‘Get out of here. I don’t want you coming into this room. It’s very damp.’
‘Don’t be silly. With all the work there is to do here? Come on. Look at all the things I’ve found.’
I hesitated.
‘Here, come in.’
I stepped into the room and knelt down beside her. Isabella had separated all the items and boxes into categories: books, toys, photographs, clothes, shoes, spectacles. I looked at all the objects with a certain apprehension. Isabella seemed to be delighted, as if she’d discovered King Solomon’s mines.
‘Is all of this yours?’
I shook my head.
‘It belonged to the previous owner.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘No. It had all been here for years when I moved in.’
Isabella was holding a packet of letters and held it out to me as if it were evidence in a magistrate’s court.
‘Well, I think I’ve discovered his name.’
‘You don’t say.’
Isabella smiled, clearly delighted with her detective work.
‘Marlasca,’ she announced. ‘His name was Diego Marlasca. Don’t you think it’s odd?’
‘What?’
‘That his initials are the same as yours: D. M.’
‘It’s just a coincidence; tens of thousands of people in this town have the same initials.’
Isabella winked at me. She was really enjoying herself.
‘Look what else I’ve found.’
Isabella had salvaged a tin box full of old photographs. They were images from another age, postcards of old Barcelona, of pavilions that had been demolished in Ciudadela Park after the 1888 Universal Exhibition, of large crumbling houses and avenues full of people dressed in the ceremonious style of the time, of carriages and memories the colour of my childhood. Faces with absent expressions stared at me from thirty years back. In some of those photographs I thought I recognised the face of an actress who had been popular when I was a young boy and who had long since disappeared into obscurity. Isabella watched me in silence.
‘Do you remember her?’ she asked, after a time.
‘I think her name was Irene Sabino. She was quite a famous actress in the Paralelo theatres. This was a long time ago. Before you were born.’
‘Just look at this, then.’
Isabella handed me a photograph in which Irene Sabino appeared leaning against a window. It didn’t take me long to identify that window as the one in my study at the top of the tower.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ Isabella asked. ‘Do you think she lived here?’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Maybe she was Diego Marlasca’s lover . . .’
‘I don’t think that’s any of our business.’
‘Sometimes you’re so boring.’
Isabella put the photographs back in the box. As she did so, one of them slipped from her hands. The picture fell at my feet. I picked it up and examined it: Irene Sabino, wearing a dazzling black gown, posed with a group of people dressed for a party in what seemed to be the grand hall of the Equestrian Club. It was just a picture of a social gathering that wouldn’t have caught my eye had I not noticed in the background, almost blurred, a gentleman with white hair standing at the top of a staircase. Andreas Corelli.
‘You’ve gone pale,’ said Isabella.
She took the photograph from my hand and perused it silently. I stood up and made a sign to Isabella to leave the room.
‘I don’t want you to come in here again,’ I said weakly.
‘Why?’
I waited for her to leave the room and closed the door behind us. Isabella looked at me as if I wasn’t altogether sane.
‘Tomorrow you’ll call the Sisters of Charity and tell them to come and collect all this. They’re to take everything. What they don’t want, they can throw away.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t argue with me.’
I didn’t want to face her and went straight to the stairs that led up to the study. Isabella watched me from the corridor.
‘Who is that man, Se?or Martín?’
‘Nobody,’ I murmured. ‘Nobody.’