It was the first time he had called me by my name; he always summoned me with a mere come here, help me, sit down, come upstairs, follow me. And it struck me that perhaps because he uttered it with the voice of a sick person, my name sounded different, it aged me and made me feel stronger. That man trusted me. He stayed in bed for days. I took his meals and bowls of herbal tea up to him. I changed his clothes, I washed him, shaved him, kept him company at night, sitting by the balcony. Don’t leave me. . I drew nearer. Don’t leave me.
One night when he had fallen asleep and was breathing calmly, I went into the foyer. I stood under the bulb that cast a yellow light and studied my reflection in the mirror, which was as old and cloudy as always. In it I saw myself, part of the coat rack, a stool. . I looked at my feet, my legs, my hands at the end of my arms, my chest, neck, cheeks, eyes. My whole person. What did the man of the house by the sea see in the mirror?
Some nights, if he was resting peacefully, I would go into the library and, after gazing at the sea from the balcony, I would take a book. But I could never make much sense of what I read and soon tired of it. One night I braved going out after the chimes had sounded midnight. A light rain was falling, and the scent of the sea was intoxicating. The sand shifted under my feet, mist covered the water and lowered the sky. I walked on and on until I reached the dead, deserted village. I saw a light in a window near a ravine, and as I drew closer I tripped on a pile of stones and bricks. I climbed on the stones and peered into a room with a bed covered by a red quilt and a Virgin Mary with a crown of roses hanging above the headboard. A girl was undressing. She slipped her nightgown over her head, pulled her underskirt down to her feet and stepped out. I couldn’t see very well because the curtains, though translucent, blurred her image. I would have liked to meet her, talk to her, know what she was thinking. Sleep by her side.
When I returned to the house by the sea and was about to climb the stairs I saw a light in the foyer. Wrapped in a robe, Senyor was sitting on a stool in front of the mirror. He did not see me.
He died the following day as evening was setting in. He had had a peaceful night. When he woke his eyes no longer had the frightened look they had on other occasions, but his face was devoid of color. He removed an envelope from beneath the pillow and asked me to keep it. I’m leaving, he said, I won’t be here long. . you’ll find my will in the envelope. My last will and testament. Open it as soon as I’m gone. He ate nothing. When Senyora Isabel saw that I was returning the food tray untouched, she mumbled that it was as if he were dead already. I kept vigil by his bedside all night, as one might for a saint. Little by little his skin wizened in a disturbing fashion. His eyes, fixed on the ceiling, sank farther into the sockets. He had not yet reached true old age, but in a matter of hours all of him changed into a bag of bones that was slowly shriveling up. It was as if there were a child in the bed. The palm of his right hand was turned upward, displaying a bleeding wound, long and narrow.
It fell to me to bury him. Aided by some kindly soul, the rector of the parish had fled the village at the beginning of the revolution. The gravedigger had gone to live with a sister who was as ancient as he was. The church had been emptied of saints, and an old farmer who had been an altar boy as a child had taken it upon himself to ring the hours. Children played in the streets with the candelabras that had stood on the high altar, a gift from the masters of the house where old Isabel had served, people, who like so many others, had died with their faces to the wall.
I dug a pit in the corner of the cemetery, after first removing quite a bit of dogwood. Five spans beneath the earth, bones began to appear; I picked one up as one would a branch. It was blackened and decayed; whether it had belonged to an arm or a leg I could not say. A young boy was watching and asked if he could have it. Will you give it to me? He took it and ran away jumping and shouting, it’s from a dead person! I have the bone of a dead person! The man who brought us wood, having been notified by Senyora Isabel, helped me carry the proprietor of the house by the sea to the cemetery and lower him into the earth. On top we placed a few stones that we took from the pile beneath the window of the girl I saw undressing for bed.
That night, after Senyora Isabel had left, I opened the envelope. Inside was a thick sheet of paper and, in a clear handwriting, the words: “I bequeath all my possessions, furniture and property to Adrià Guinart, who has kept me company until the hour of my death. In exchange I ask one last favor of him: that he shred and burn all my documents. Pere Ardèvol.” Seated at the desk in the library, I began to peruse his papers. There were many, all of them carefully classified in faded folders. Letters to a bank in Barcelona, letters to the village mayor discussing some land Senyor Ardèvol wanted to sell. Letters from a friend, Esteve Aran, dated in Arenys de Mar, in which the friend spoke of the mystery of dreams and the memories of another life. In the last of these letters the friend announced that he would soon be paying Senyor a visit. In a file bound with greater care than the rest was a group of papers that spoke only of mirrors. Senyor Ardèvol stated at the beginning of these that each person is the mirror of the entire universe. Of God. And then I came across some sheets of paper — written in a handwriting that was difficult to make out — that explained how he had come to that house and told the story of the mirror in the foyer. The new day found me still reading.
PART TWO
XXIII THE INHERITANCE
IN HIS PAPERS, SENYOR ARDÈVOL EXPLAINED THAT HE HAD RECEIVED an inheritance from his uncle at the age of twenty-two. He was orphaned when he was very young and didn’t remember a thing about his parents. They had both died at the same time, and the circumstances of their death had remained a mystery, at least to him. Nobody had ever told him how or when those who put him on this earth had passed away.
On one occasion, in a chest of drawers at his uncle’s apartment, he had come across a portrait of a beautiful woman with light-colored hair and eyes. It was summer, and the discovery of that portrait would be forever fused in his memory with the smell of wilted flowers and afternoons that seemed to never end. Years later, as a way of shoring himself up when depression struck, he would remember that photograph, hoping it was of his mother. Trying to feel the warm caress of those hands on his forehead, cleansing him of whatever bad he carried within him.
He had had little contact with his Uncle Hipòlit. He was an amiable man, who spent his life calling on others, always arriving with tins of bonbons or boxes of pastries for the ladies, always keen to play cards with their husbands. But he never received anyone in his own home. He lived alone in Barcelona, in an apartment on Carrer Aragó that was richly appointed with fine old furniture, authentic rugs, thick wooden doors, and stained glass windows. His uncle’s fortune consisted of a house in a coastal village, many hectares of land and a more than respectable amount of securities — a term I was not familiar with but I assumed referred to some sort of valuable documents. In his younger years, Senyor Ardèvol had lived with his nanny, a country woman who was worth more than her weight in gold. She had instilled in him the notion that growing wheat was the most important endeavor in the world, and that a well-formed cabbage was of greater merit than a gentleman in patent-leather shoes and a satin-trimmed jacket. As soon as he was old enough, his uncle locked him away in a boarding school. All that had once been skies and open fields, freshwater springs and chirping birds, was replaced by walls with peeling paint and high windows with foggy panes. Expelled for bad behavior, he bounced from one school to the next. When it came time to choose a career, after much thought, he decided on architecture. His uncle then lodged him in a family-run pension uptown. Each month, to cover his expenses, he sent him a sum of money that was neither too substantial nor too paltry. He spent Christmas and his uncle’s Saint’s Day at the apartment on Carrer Aragó. In his papers, Senyor Ardèvol described his uncle as a quiet man, with nervous eyes, droopy eyebrows, a prominent jaw and a short neck, a man of few words, orderly and well-mannered. But then one year the customary Christmas invitation never arrived. He didn’t dare show up unannounced at his uncle’s apartment, and instead waited for an explanation for the unusual conduct. A few weeks later he received a letter from a notary informing him that his uncle had died of heart failure and had left him all of his possessions. Senyor Ardèvol said he quit his studies as though removing a tether from around his neck.