‘It’s a five-hundred-copy print run,’ Escobillas specified. ‘The other two hundred were collected by Barceló and Sempere in person yesterday. The rest will go out with our next delivery; they couldn’t go out with this one because there were too many new titles. If you bothered to understand our problems and weren’t so selfish you would recognise this.’
I looked at the three of them in disbelief.
‘Don’t tell me you’re not going to do anything.’
Barrido gave me a mournful look.
‘And what would you have us do, my friend? We have bet everything on you. Try to help us a little.’
‘If only you’d written a book like the one your friend Vidal has written,’ said Escobillas.
‘Now that was one hell of a novel,’ Barrido asserted. ‘Even The Voice of Industry says so.’
‘I knew this was going to happen,’ Escobillas went on. ‘You’re so ungrateful.’
Lady Venom, sitting by my side, was looking at me sadly. I thought she was going to take my hand to comfort me so I quickly moved it away. Barrido gave me one of his unctuous smiles.
‘Maybe it’s all for the best, Martín. Maybe it’s a sign from Our Lord, who, in his infinite wisdom, wants to show you the way back to the work that has given so much happiness to the readers of City of the Damned.’
I burst out laughing. Barrido joined in and, at this signal from him, so did Escobillas and Lady Venom. I watched the choir of hyenas and told myself that, under other circumstances, this would have seemed a moment of delicious irony.
‘That’s better. I like to see you handling this with a positive attitude,’ Barrido proclaimed. ‘What do you say? When will we have the next instalment by Ignatius B. Samson?’
The three of them looked at me expectantly. I cleared my throat so I could speak clearly and smiled at them.
‘You can go screw yourselves.’
18
On leaving, I wandered aimlessly for hours round the streets of Barcelona. I was finding it difficult to breathe, as if something were pressing down on my chest. A cold sweat covered my forehead and hands. When evening fell, not knowing where else to hide, I started to make my way back home. As I passed Sempere & Sons, I saw the bookseller filling his shop window with copies of my novel. It was already late and the shop was closed, but the light was still on. I tried to rush past, but Sempere noticed me and smiled with a sadness that I had never seen on his face before. He went over to the door and opened it.
‘Come in for a while, Martín.’
‘Some other day, Señor Sempere.’
‘Do it for me.’
He took me by the arm and dragged me into the bookshop. I followed him to the back room and he offered me a chair. He poured two glasses of something that looked thicker than tar and motioned to me to down it in one, as he did.
‘I’ve been glancing through Vidal’s book,’ he said.
‘This season’s success story,’ I pointed out.
‘Does he know you’ve written it?’
‘What does it matter?’ I said, shrugging my shoulders.
Sempere looked at me the same way he’d looked at that eight-year-old boy who had come to his house one distant day with a bruised face and broken teeth.
‘Are you all right, Martín?’
‘I’m fine.’
Sempere shook his head, muttering to himself, and got up to take something from one of the shelves. It was a copy of my novel. He handed it to me with a pen and smiled.
‘Please sign it for me.’
When I’d finished writing something for him, Sempere took the book from my hands and placed it carefully in the glass case behind the counter where he displayed first editions that were not for sale. It was his private shrine.
‘You don’t have to do that, Señor Sempere,’ I mumbled.
‘I’m doing it because I want to and because the occasion demands it. This book is a piece of your heart, Martín. And it is also a piece of my heart, for the small part I played in it. I’ll place you between Le Père Goriot and L’Éducation Sentimentale.’
‘That’s a sacrilege.’
‘Nonsense. It’s one of the best books I’ve sold in the last ten years, and I’ve sold a lot,’ old Sempere said.
Sempere’s kind words could only scratch the surface of the cold, impenetrable calm that was beginning to invade me. I ambled back to my house, in no hurry.
When I walked into the tower house I poured myself a glass of water. As I drank it in the kitchen, in the dark, I burst out laughing.
The following morning I received two courtesy calls. The first one was from Pep, Vidal’s new chauffeur. He was bringing a message from his boss, summoning me to a lunch at La Maison Dorée – doubtless the celebration he had promised me some time ago. Pep seemed a little stiff and anxious to leave as soon as possible. The air of complicity he’d once had with me had evaporated. He wouldn’t come in, preferring to wait on the landing. Without looking straight at me, he handed me Vidal’s written message, and as soon as I told him I would go to the lunch, he left without saying goodbye.
The second visit, half an hour later, brought my two publishers to my door, accompanied by a forbidding-looking gentleman with piercing eyes who identified himself as a lawyer. The formidable trio arrived displaying a mixture of mourning and belligerence, leaving me in no doubt as to the purpose of the occasion. I invited them into the gallery, where they proceeded to sit down on the sofa, lined up from left to right in descending order of height.
‘May I offer you anything? A small glass of cyanide?’
I was not expecting a smile and I didn’t get one. After a brief preamble from Barrido concerning the terrible losses that the fiasco associated with the failure of The Steps of Heaven was going to cause the publishing house, the lawyer went on to give a brief exposition which, in plain language, said that if I didn’t return to my work in the guise of Ignatius B. Samson and hand in a manuscript for the City of the Damned series within a month and a half, they would proceed to sue me for breach of contract, damages and five or six other legal terms that escaped me because by then I wasn’t paying attention. It was not all bad news. Despite the aggravations caused by my behaviour, Barrido and Escobillas had found a pearl of generosity in their hearts with which to smooth away our differences and establish a new alliance, a friendship, which would benefit both sides.
‘If you want, you can buy all the copies of The Steps of Heaven that haven’t been distributed at a special rate of 75 per cent of the cover price, since there is clearly no demand for the title and it will be impossible for us to include it in our next delivery,’ Escobillas explained.
‘Why don’t you give me back my rights? After all, you didn’t pay a penny for the book and you’re not planning on trying to sell a single copy.’
‘We can’t do that, dear friend,’ Barrido pointed out. ‘Even if no advance materialised in front of you personally, the edition has required a huge outlay and the agreement you signed with us was for twenty years, automatically renewable under the same terms if our firm decides to exercise its rights. You have to understand that we are also entitled to something. The author can’t get everything.’
When he had finished his speech I invited the gentlemen to make their way to the exit, either willingly or with the help of a kick – they could choose. Before I slammed the door in their faces, Escobillas was good enough to cast me one of his evil-eyed looks.
‘We demand a reply within a week, or that will be the end of you,’ he muttered.
‘In a week you and that idiot partner of yours will be dead,’ I replied calmly, without quite knowing why I’d uttered those words.
I spent the rest of the morning staring at the walls, until the bells of Santa María reminded me that it would soon be time for my meeting with Pedro Vidal.
He was waiting for me at the best table in the room, toying with a glass of white wine and listening to the pianist, who was playing with velvet fingers a piece by Granados. When he saw me, he stood up and held out his hand.