‘Then I’ll leave you to work, and after dinner you can show me what you’ve written.’
‘It’s not ready. I have to correct it all and rewrite it and-’
‘It’s never ready, Isabella. Get used to it. We’ll read it together after dinner.’
‘Tomorrow.’
I gave in.
‘Tomorrow.’
I walked away, leaving her alone with her words. I was just closing the door when I heard her voice calling me.
‘David?’
I stopped on the other side of the door, but didn’t say anything. ‘It’s not true. It’s not true that you don’t know how to love anyone.’
I took refuge in my bedroom and closed the door. I lay down on the bed, curled up, and closed my eyes.
26
I left the house after dawn. Dark clouds crept over the rooftops, stealing the colour from the streets. As I crossed Ciudadela Park I saw the first drops hitting the trees and exploding on the path like bullets, raising eddies of dust. On the other side of the park a forest of factories and gas towers multiplied towards the horizon, the soot from the chimneys diluted in the black rain that plummeted from the sky like tears of tar. I walked along the uninviting avenue of cypress trees leading to the gates of the cemetery, the same route I had taken so many times with my father. The boss was already there. I saw him from afar, waiting patiently under the rain, at the foot of one of the large stone angels that guarded the main entrance to the graveyard. He was dressed in black and the only thing that set him apart from the hundreds of statues on the other side of the cemetery railings was his eyes. He didn’t move an eyelash until I was a few metres away. Not quite sure what to do, I raised my hand to greet him. It was cold and the wind smelled of lime and sulphur.
‘Visitors naively think that it’s always sunny and hot in this town,’ said the boss. ‘But I say that sooner or later Barcelona’s ancient, murky soul is always reflected in the sky.’
‘You should publish tourist guides instead of religious texts,’ I suggested.
‘It comes to the same thing, more or less. How have these peaceful, calm days been? Have you made progress with the work? Do you have good news for me?’
I opened my jacket and handed him a sheaf of pages. We entered the cemetery in search of a place to shelter from the rain. The boss chose an old mausoleum with a dome held up by marble columns and surrounded by angels with sharp faces and fingers that were too long. We sat on a cold stone bench. The boss gave me one of his canine smiles, his shining pupils contracting to a black point in which I could see the reflection of my own uneasy expression.
‘Relax, Martín. You make too much of the props.’
Calmly, the boss began to read the pages I had brought.
‘I think I’ll go for a walk while you read,’ I said.
Corelli didn’t bother to look up.
‘Don’t escape from me,’ he murmured.
I got away as fast as I could without making it obvious that I was doing just that, and wandered among the paths with their twists and turns. I skirted obelisks and tombs as I entered the heart of the necropolis. The tombstone was still there, marked by a vase containing only the skeleton of shrivelled flowers. Vidal had paid for the funeral and had even commissioned a pietà from a sculptor of some repute in the undertakers’ guild. She guarded the tomb, eyes looking heavenward, her hands on her chest in supplication. I knelt down by the tombstone and cleaned away the moss that had covered the letters chiselled on it.
JOSÉ ANTONIO MARTÍN CLARÉS
1875-1908
Hero of the Philippines War
His country and his friends will never forget him
‘Good morning, father,’ I said.
I watched the black rain as it slid down the face of the pietà, listened to the sound of the drops hitting the tombstones, and offered a smile to the health of those friends he’d never had and that country that had consigned him to a living death in order to enrich a handful of caciques who never knew he existed. I sat on the gravestone and put my hand on the marble.
‘Who would have guessed, eh?’
My father, who had lived on the verge of destitution, rested eternally in a bourgeois tomb. As a child I had never understood why the newspaper had decided to give him a funeral with a smart priest and hired mourners, with flowers and a resting place fit for a sugar merchant. Nobody told me it was Vidal himself who paid for the lavish funeral of the man who had died in his place, although I had always suspected as much and had attributed the gesture to that infinite kindness and generosity with which the heavens had blessed my mentor and idol.
‘I must beg your forgiveness, father. For years I hated you for leaving me here, alone. I told myself you’d got the death you deserved. That’s why I never came to see you. Forgive me.’
My father had never liked tears. He thought a man never cried for others, only for himself. And if he did, he was a coward and deserved no pity. I didn’t want to cry for him and betray him yet again.
‘I would have liked you to have seen my name in a book, even if you couldn’t read it. I would have liked you to have been here with me, to see that your son is managing to get on in life and has been able to do things that you were never allowed to do. I would have liked to have known you, father, and for you to have known me. I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I’m the stranger.’
I didn’t hear the boss approaching, but when I raised my head I saw him watching me from just a few metres away. I stood up and went over to him, like a well-trained dog. I wondered whether he knew my father was buried there and whether he had asked me to meet him in the graveyard for that very reason. My expression must have betrayed me, because the boss shook his head and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘I didn’t know, Martín. I’m sorry.’
I was not going to open that door of friendship to him. I turned away to rid myself of his gesture of sympathy and pressed my eyes shut to contain the tears of anger. I started to walk towards the exit, without him. The boss waited a few seconds and then decided to follow me. He walked beside me in silence until we reached the main gates. There I stopped and glared at him impatiently.
‘Well? Any comments?’
The boss ignored my hostile tone and smiled indulgently.
‘The work is excellent.’
‘But-’
‘If I had any observation to make it would be that you’ve hit the nail on the head by constructing the whole story from the point of view of a witness to the events, someone who feels like a victim and speaks on behalf of a people awaiting the warrior saviour. I want you to continue along those lines.’
‘You don’t think it sounds forced, contrived…?’
‘On the contrary. Nothing makes us believe more than fear, the certainty of being threatened. When we feel like victims, all our actions and beliefs are legitimised, however questionable they may be. Our opponents, or simply our neighbours, stop sharing common ground with us and become our enemies. We stop being aggressors and become defenders. The envy, greed or resentment that motivates us becomes sanctified, because we tell ourselves we’re acting in self-defence. Evil, menace, those are always the preserve of the other. The first step towards believing passionately is fear. Fear of losing our identity, our life, our status or our beliefs. Fear is the gunpowder and hatred is the fuse. Dogma, the final ingredient, is only a lighted match. That is where I think your work has a hole or two.’
‘Please clarify one thing: are you looking for a faith or a dogma?’
‘It’s not enough that people should believe. They must believe what we want them to believe. And they must not question it or listen to the voice of whoever questions it. Dogma must form part of identity itself. Whoever questions it is our enemy. He is evil. And it is our right and our duty to confront and destroy him. It is the only road to salvation. Believe in order to survive.’
I sighed and looked away, nodding reluctantly.