31
One of the first expedients of the professional writer that Isabella had learned from me was the art of procrastination. Every veteran in the trade knows that any activity, from sharpening a pencil to cataloguing daydreams, has precedence over sitting down at one’s desk and squeezing one’s brain. Isabella had absorbed this fundamental lesson by osmosis and when I got home, instead of finding her at her desk, I surprised her in the kitchen as she was giving the last touches to a dinner that smelled and looked as if its preparation had been a question of a few hours.
‘Are we celebrating something?’ I asked.
‘With that face of yours, I don’t think so.’
‘What’s the smell?’
‘Caramelised duck with baked pears and chocolate sauce. I found the recipe in one of your cookery books.’
‘I don’t own any cookery books.’
Isabella got up and brought over a leather-bound volume, which she placed on the table: The 101 Best Recipes of French Cuisine by Michel Aragon.
‘That’s what you think. On the second row of the library bookshelves I’ve found all sort of things, including a handbook on marital hygiene by Doctor Pérez-Aguado with some very suggestive illustrations and gems such as “Woman, in accordance with the divine plan, has no knowledge of carnal desire and her spiritual and sentimental fulfilment is sublimated in the natural exercise of motherhood and household chores.” You’ve got a veritable King Solomon’s mine there.’
‘Can you tell me what you were looking for on the second row of the shelves?’
‘Inspiration. Which I found.’
‘But of a culinary persuasion. We agreed that you were going to write every day, with or without inspiration.’
‘I’m stuck. And it’s your fault, because you’ve got me moonlighting and mixed up in your schemes with the immaculate son of Sempere.’
‘Do you think it’s right to make fun of the man who’s madly in love with you?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Sempere’s son confessed to me that you’ve robbed him of sleep. Literally. He can’t sleep, he can’t eat and he can’t even pee, poor guy, for thinking so much about you all day.’
‘You’re delirious.’
‘The one who is delirious is poor Sempere. You should have seen him. I came very close to shooting him, to put an end to his pain and misery.’
‘But he pays no attention to me whatsoever,’ Isabella protested.
‘Because he doesn’t know how to open his heart and find the words with which to express his feelings. We men are like that. Brutish and primitive.’
‘He had no trouble finding words to tell me off for not putting a collection of the National Episodes in the right order!’
‘That’s not the same. Administrative procedure is one thing, the language of passion another.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘There’s no nonsense in love, my dear assistant. Changing the subject, are we having dinner or aren’t we?’
Isabella had set a table to match her banquet, using a whole arsenal of dishes, cutlery and glasses I’d never seen before.
‘I don’t know why, if you have all these beautiful things, you don’t use them. They were all in boxes, in the room next to the laundry,’ said Isabella. ‘Typical man!’
I picked up one of the knives and examined it in the light of the candles that Isabella had placed on the table. I realised these household utensils belonged to Diego Marlasca and this made me lose my appetite altogether.
‘Is anything the matter?’ asked Isabella.
I shook my head. My assistant served the food and stood there looking at me expectantly. I tasted a mouthful and smiled.
‘Very good,’ I said.
‘It’s a bit leathery, I think. The recipe said you had to cook it over a low flame for goodness knows how long, but on your stove the heat is either non-existent or scorching, with nothing in between.’
‘It’s good,’ I repeated, eating without appetite.
Isabella kept giving me furtive looks. We continued to eat in silence, the tinkling of the cutlery and plates our only company.
‘Were you serious about Sempere’s son?’
I nodded, without glancing up from my plate.
‘And what else did he say about me?’
‘He said you have a classical beauty, you’re intelligent, intensely feminine - that’s how old-fashioned he is - and he feels there’s a spiritual connection between you.’
Isabella threw me a murderous look.
‘Swear you’re not making this up,’ she said.
I put my right hand on the cookery book and raised my left hand.
‘I swear on The 101 Best Recipes of French Cuisine,’ I declared.
‘One usually swears with the other hand.’
I changed hands and repeated the performance with a solemn expression.
Isabella puffed.
‘What am I going to do?’
‘I don’t know. What do people do when they’re in love? Go for a stroll, go dancing . . .’
‘But I’m not in love with this man.’
I went on sampling the caramelised duck, ignoring her insistent stare. After a while, Isabella banged her hand on the table.
‘Will you please look at me? This is all your fault.’
I calmly put down my knife and fork, wiped my mouth with the napkin and looked at her.
‘What am I going to do?’ she asked again.
‘That depends. Do you like Sempere or don’t you?’
A cloud of doubt crossed her face.
‘I don’t know. To begin with, he’s a bit old for me.’
‘He’s practically my age,’ I pointed out. ‘One or two years older, at the most. Maybe three.’
‘Or four or five.’
I sighed.
‘He’s in the prime of his life. Hadn’t we decided that you like them mature?’
‘Don’t tease me.’
‘Isabella, who am I to tell you what to do?’
‘That’s a good one!’
‘Let me finish. What I mean is that this is something between Sempere’s son and you. If you want my advice, I’d say give him a chance. Nothing else. If one of these days he decides to take the first step and asks you out, let’s say, to have tea, accept the invitation. Perhaps you’ll get talking and you’ll end up being friends, or maybe you won’t. But I think Sempere is a good man, his interest in you is genuine and I dare say, if you think about it, deep down you feel something for him too.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘But Sempere isn’t. And I think that not to respect the affection and admiration he feels for you would be mean. And you’re not mean.’
‘This is emotional blackmail.’
‘No, it’s life.’
Isabella looked daggers at me. I smiled.
‘Will you at least finish your dinner?’ she ordered.
I bolted down the food on my plate, mopped it up with bread, and let out a sigh of satisfaction.
‘What’s for pudding?’
After dinner I left a pensive Isabella going over her doubts and anxieties in the reading room and went up to the study in the tower. I pulled out the photograph of Diego Marlasca lent to me by Salvador and left it by the base of the table lamp. Then I looked through the small citadel of writing pads, notes and sheets of paper I had been accumulating for the boss. Still feeling the chill of Diego Marlasca’s cutlery in my hands, I did not find it hard to imagine him sitting there, gazing at the same view over the rooftops of the Ribera quarter. I took one of my pages at random and began to read. I recognised the words and sentences because I’d composed them, but the troubled spirit that fed them felt more remote than ever. I let the sheet of paper fall to the floor and looked up only to meet my own reflection in the windowpane, a stranger in the blue darkness burying the city. I knew I was not going to be able to work that night, that I would be incapable of putting together a single paragraph for the boss. I turned off the lamp and stayed there in the dark, listening to the wind scratching at the windows and imagining Diego Marlasca in flames, throwing himself into the water of the reservoir, while the last bubbles of air left his lips and the freezing liquid filled his lungs.
I awoke at dawn, my body aching from being encased in the armchair. As I got up I heard the grinding of two or three cogs in my anatomy. I dragged myself to the window and opened it wide. The flat rooftops in the old town shone with frost and a purple sky wreathed itself around Barcelona. At the sound of the bells of Santa María del Mar, a cloud of black wings took to the air from a dovecote. The smell of the docks and the coal ash issuing from neighbouring chimneys was borne on a biting cold wind.
I went down to the kitchen to make some coffee. I glanced at the larder and was astonished. Since Isabella’s arrival in the house, it looked more like the Quílez grocer’s in Rambla de Catalu?a. Among the parade of exotic delicacies imported by Isabella’s father, I found a tin of English chocolate biscuits and decided to have some. Half an hour later, once my veins were pumping with sugar and caffeine, my brain started to work and I had the brilliant idea of beginning the day by complicating my existence even further, if that was possible. As soon as the shops opened, I’d pay a visit to the one selling items for conjurers and magicians in Calle Princesa.
‘What are you doing up so early?’
Isabella, the voice of my conscience, was observing me from the doorway.
‘Eating biscuits.’
Isabella sat at the table and poured herself a cup of coffee. She looked as if she hadn’t slept all night.
‘My father says this was the Queen Mother’s favourite brand.’
‘No wonder she looked so strapping.’
Isabella took one of the biscuits and bit into it distractedly.
‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do? About Sempere, I mean . . .’
She threw me a venomous look.
‘And what are you going to do today? Nothing good, I’m sure.’
‘A couple of errands.’
‘Right.’
‘Right, right? Or “Right, I don’t believe you”?’
Isabella set the cup on the table, her face as severe as that of a judge.
‘Why do you never talk about whatever it is you’re involved in with that man, the boss?’
‘Among other things, for your own good.’
‘For my own good. Of course. How stupid could I be? By the way, I forgot to mention that your friend, the inspector, came by yesterday.’
‘Grandes? Was he on his own?’
‘No. He came with two thugs as large as wardrobes with faces like pointers.’
The thought of Marcos and Castelo at my door tied my stomach in knots.
‘And what did Grandes want?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘What did he say, then?’
‘He asked me who I was.’
‘And what did you reply?’
‘I said I was your lover.’
‘Outstanding.’
‘Well, one of the large ones seemed to find it very amusing.’
Isabella took another biscuit and devoured it in two bites. She noticed me looking at her and immediately stopped chewing.
‘What did I say?’ she asked, projecting a shower of biscuit crumbs.