Cristina raised her eyebrows in surprise and looked at me again, unable to place me.
‘David Martín. A friend of Don Pedro’s,’ I said.
‘Oh, of course,’ she replied. ‘Good morning.’
‘How is your father?’ I asked.
‘Fine, fine. He’s waiting for me on the corner with the car.’
Sempere, who never missed a trick, quickly interjected.
‘Señorita Sagnier has come to collect some books Señor Vidal ordered. As they are so heavy, perhaps you could help her take them to the car…’
‘Please don’t worry…’ protested Cristina.
‘But of course,’ I blurted out, ready to lift the pile of books that turned out to weigh as much as the luxury edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, appendices included.
I felt something go crunch in my back and Cristina gave me an embarrassed look.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Don’t worry, miss. My friend Martín here might be a man of letters, but he’s as strong as a bull,’ said Sempere. ‘Isn’t that right, Martín?’
Cristina was looking at me unconvinced. I offered her my ‘strong man’ smile.
‘Pure muscle,’ I said. ‘This is just a warm-up exercise.’
Sempere’s son was about to offer to carry half the books, but his father, in a display of great diplomacy, held him back. Cristina kept the door open for me and I set off to cover the fifteen or twenty metres that separated me from the Hispano-Suiza parked on the corner of Puerta del Ángel. I only just managed to get there, my arms almost on fire. Manuel, the chauffeur, helped me unload the books and greeted me warmly.
‘What a coincidence, meeting you here, Señor Martín.’
‘Small world.’
Cristina gave me a grateful smile and got into the car.
‘I’m sorry about the books.’
‘It was nothing. A bit of exercise lifts the spirit,’ I volunteered, ignoring the tangle of knots I could feel in my back. ‘My regards to Don Pedro.’
I watched them drive off towards Plaza de Cataluña, and when I turned I noticed Sempere at the door of the bookshop, looking at me with a cat-like smile, and gesturing to me to wipe the drool off my chin. I went over to him and couldn’t help laughing at myself.
‘I know your secret now, Martín. I thought you had a steadier nerve in these matters.’
‘Everything gets a bit rusty.’
‘I should know! Can I keep the book for a few days?’
I nodded.
‘Take good care of it.’
10
A few months later I saw her again, in the company of Pedro Vidal, at the table that was always reserved for him at La Maison Dorée. Vidal invited me to join them, but a quick look from her was enough to tell me that I should refuse the offer.
‘How is the novel going, Don Pedro?’
‘Swimmingly.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it. Bon appétit.’
My meetings with Cristina were always by chance. Sometimes I would bump into her in the Sempere & Sons bookshop, where she often went to collect books for Vidal. If the opportunity arose, Sempere would leave me alone with her, but soon Cristina grew wise to the trick and would send one of the young boys from Villa Helius to pick up the orders.
‘I know it’s none of my business,’ Sempere would say. ‘But perhaps you should stop thinking about her.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Señor Sempere.’
‘Come on, Martín, we’ve known each other for a long time…’
The months seemed to slip by in a blur. I lived at night, writing from evening to dawn, and sleeping all day. Barrido and Escobillas couldn’t stop congratulating themselves on the success of City of the Damned, and when they saw me on the verge of collapse they assured me that after a couple more novels they would grant me a sabbatical so that I could rest or devote my time to writing a personal work, which they would publish with much fanfare and with my real name printed in large letters on the cover. It was always just a couple of novels away. The sharp pains, the headaches and the dizzy spells became more frequent and intense, but I attributed them to exhaustion and treated them with more injections of caffeine, cigarettes and some tablets tasting of gunpowder that contained codeine and God knows what else, supplied on the quiet by a chemist in Calle Argenteria. Don Basilio, with whom I had lunch on alternate Thursdays in an outdoor café in La Barceloneta, urged me to go to the doctor. I always said yes, I had an appointment that very week.
Apart from my old boss and the Semperes, I didn’t have much time to see anybody else except Vidal, and when I did see him it was more because he came to see me than through any effort on my part. He didn’t like my tower house and always insisted that we go out for a stroll, to the Bar Almirall on Calle Joaquín Costa, where he had an account and held literary gatherings on Friday evenings. I was never invited to them because he knew that all those attending, frustrated poetasters and arse-lickers who laughed at his jokes in the hope of some charity – a recommendation to a publisher or a compliment to soothe their wounded pride – hated me with an unswerving vigour and determination that were quite absent from their more artistic endeavours, which were persistently ignored by the fickle public. There, knocking back absinthe and puffing on Caribbean cigars, he spoke to me about his novel, which was never finished, about his plans for retiring from his life of retirement, and about his romances and conquests: the older he got, the younger and more nubile they became.
‘You don’t ask after Cristina,’ he would sometimes say, maliciously.
‘What do you want me to ask?’
‘Whether she asks after you.’
‘Does she ask after me, Don Pedro?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there you are.’
‘The fact is, she did mention you the other day.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘You’re not going to like it.’
‘Go on.’
‘She didn’t say it in so many words, but she seemed to imply that she couldn’t understand how you could prostitute yourself by writing second-rate serials for that pair of thieves; that you were throwing away your talent and your youth.’
I felt as if Vidal had just plunged a frozen dagger into my stomach.
‘Is that what she thinks?’
Vidal shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, as far as I’m concerned she can go to hell.’
I worked every day except Sundays, which I spent wandering the streets, always ending up in some bar on the Paralelo where it wasn’t hard to find company and passing affection in the arms of another solitary soul like myself. It wasn’t until the following morning, when I woke up lying next to a stranger, that I realised they all looked like her: the colour of their hair, the way they walked, a gesture or a glance. Sooner or later, to fill the painful silence of farewells, those one-night stands would ask me how I earned my living, and when, surrendering to my vanity, I explained that I was a writer, they would take me for a liar, because nobody had ever heard of David Martín, although some of them did know of Ignatius B. Samson, and had heard people talk about City of the Damned. After a while I began to say that I worked at the customs offices in the port, or that I was a clerk in a solicitors’ office called Sayrach, Muntaner and Cruells.
One afternoon I was sitting in the Café de la Ópera with a music teacher called Alicia, helping her get over – or so I imagined – someone who was hard to forget. I was about to kiss her when I saw Cristina’s face on the other side of the glass pane. When I reached the street, she had already vanished among the crowds in the Ramblas. Two weeks later Vidal insisted on inviting me to the premiere of Madame Butterfly at the Liceo. The Vidal family owned a box in the dress circle and Vidal liked to attend once a week during the opera season. When I met him in the foyer I discovered that he had also brought Cristina. She greeted me with an icy smile and didn’t speak to me again or even glance at me until, halfway through the second act, Vidal decided to go down to the adjoining Círculo club to say hello to one of his cousins. We were left alone together in the box, with no other shield than Puccini and the hundreds of faces in the semi-darkness of the theatre. I held back for about ten minutes before turning to look her in the eye.