21
Somehow I managed to crawl through the narrow streets of the Raval as far as the Paralelo, where a row of taxis had formed outside the Apolo theatre. I slipped into the first one I could find. When he heard the door, the driver turned round; he took one look at me and pulled a face. I fell onto the back seat, ignoring his protests.
‘Listen, you’re not going to die on me back there, are you?’
‘The sooner you take me where I want to go, the sooner you’ll get shot of me.’
The driver cursed under his breath and started the engine.
‘Where do you want to go?’
I don’t know, I thought.
‘Just drive and I’ll let you know.’
‘Drive where?’
‘Pedralbes.’
Twenty minutes later I glimpsed the lights of Villa Helius. I pointed them out to the driver, who couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. He left me at the entrance to the mansion and almost forgot to charge me the fare. I staggered up to the large front door and rang the bell, then collapsed on the steps and leaned my head against the wall. I heard footsteps approaching and at some point thought I saw the door open and heard someone saying my name. I felt a hand on my forehead and I seemed to recognise Vidal’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Don Pedro,’ I begged. ‘I had nowhere else to go . . .’
I heard him call out and after a while I felt various hands taking my legs and arms and lifting me. When I opened my eyes again I was in Don Pedro’s bedroom, lying on the same bed he had shared with Cristina during the two short months of their marriage. I sighed. Vidal was watching me from the end of the bed.
‘Don’t speak now,’ he said. ‘The doctor is on his way.’
‘Don’t believe them, Don Pedro,’ I moaned. ‘Don’t believe them.’
‘Of course not.’
Vidal picked up a blanket and covered me with it.
‘I’ll go downstairs to wait for the doctor,’ he said. ‘Get some rest.’
After a while I heard footsteps and voices coming into the bedroom. I could feel my clothes being removed and glimpsed the dozens of cuts covering my body like bloodstained ivy. I felt tweezers poking into my wounds, pulling out needles of glass that brought with them bits of skin and flesh. I felt the heat of antiseptic and the pricks of the needle as the doctor sewed up my wounds. There was no longer any pain, only tiredness. Once I had been bandaged, sewn up and mended like a broken puppet, the doctor and Vidal covered me with a sheet and placed my head on the sweetest, softest pillow I had ever come across. I opened my eyes to see the doctor’s face, an aristocratic-looking gentleman with a reassuring smile. He was holding a hypodermic syringe.
‘You’ve been lucky, young man,’ he said as he plunged the needle into my arm.
‘What’s that?’ I mumbled.
Vidal’s face appeared next to the doctor’s.
‘It will help you rest.’
A cold mist spread up my arm and across my chest. I felt myself falling into a chasm of black velvet while Vidal and the doctor watched me from on high. Gradually, the world closed until it was reduced to a single drop of light that evaporated in my hands. I sank into that warm, chemical peace from which I would have preferred never to escape.
I remember a world of black water under the ice. Moonlight touched the frozen vault, breaking into thousands of dusty beams that swayed in the current as it pulled me away. The white mantle draped around her body undulated, the silhouette of her body just visible in the translucent waters. Cristina stretched out a hand towards me and I fought against that cold, heavy current. When our fingers were only a hair’s breadth apart, a sombre mass unfolded its wings behind her, enveloping her like an explosion of ink. Tentacles of black light surrounded her arms, her throat and her face, dragging her inexorably towards a dark void.