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 Cataluña. 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.
32
A sliver of light fell through the blanket of clouds, illuminating the red paintwork of the shopfront in Calle Princesa. The establishment selling conjuring tricks stood behind a carved wooden canopy. Its glass doors revealed only the bare outlines of the gloomy interior. Black velvet curtains were draped across cases displaying masks and Victorian-style apparatus: marked packs of cards, weighted daggers, books on magic, and bottles of polished glass containing a rainbow of liquids labelled in Latin and probably bottled in Albacete. The bell tinkled as I came through the door. An empty counter stood at the far end of the shop. I waited a few seconds, examining the collection of curiosities. I was searching for my face in a mirror that reflected everything in the shop except me when I glimpsed, out of the corner of my eye, a small figure peeping round the curtain of the back room.
‘An interesting trick, don’t you think?’ said the little man with grey hair and penetrating eyes.
I nodded.
‘How does it work?’
‘I don’t yet know. It arrived a few days ago from a manufacturer of trick mirrors in Istanbul. The creator calls it refractory inversion.’
‘It reminds one that nothing is as it seems,’ I said.
‘Except for magic. How can I help you, sir?’
‘Am I speaking to Señor Damián Roures?’
The little man nodded slowly, without blinking. I noticed that his lips were set in a bright smile which, like the mirror, was not what it seemed. Beneath it, his expression was cold and cautious.
‘Your shop was recommended to me.’
‘May I ask by whom?’
‘Ricardo Salvador.’
Any pretence of a smile disappeared from his face.
‘I didn’t know he was still alive. I haven’t seen him for twenty-five years.’
‘What about Irene Sabino?’
Roures sighed, muttering under his breath. He came round the counter and went over to the door. After hanging up the CLOSED sign he turned the key.