The Angel's Game (3 page)

“I think you’re confused, sir. I’m not a servant …”

He gave me a smile that clarified the order of things in the world without any need for words.

“You’re the one who is confused, young lad. You’re a servant, whether you know it or not. What’s your name?”

“David Martín, sir.”

The patriarch considered my name.

“Take my advice, David Martín. Leave this house and go back to where you belong. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble, and you’ll save me the trouble too.”

I never confessed this to Vidal, but I immediately went off to the kitchen in search of soda water and a rag and spent a quarter of an hour cleaning the great man’s jacket. The shadow of the clan was a long one, and however much Don Pedro liked to affect a bohemian air, his whole life was an extension of his family network. Villa Helius was conveniently situated five minutes from the great paternal mansion that dominated the upper stretch of Avenida Pearson, a cathedral-like jumble of balustrades, staircases, and dormer windows that looked out over the whole of Barcelona from a distance, like a child gazing at the toys he has thrown away. Every day, an expedition of two servants and a cook left the
big house, as the paternal home was known among the Vidal entourage, and went to Villa Helius to clean, shine, iron, cook, and cosset my wealthy protector in a nest that comforted him and shielded him from the inconveniences of everyday life. Pedro Vidal got around the city in a resplendent Hispano-Suiza piloted by the family chauffeur, Manuel Sagnier, and he had probably never set foot in a tram in his life. A creature of the palace and good breeding, Vidal could not comprehend the dismal, faded charm of the cheap Barcelona pensions of the time.

“Don’t hold back, Don Pedro.”

“This place looks like a dungeon,” he finally proclaimed. “I don’t know how you can live here.”

“With my salary, only just.”

“If necessary, I could pay you whatever you need to live somewhere that doesn’t smell of sulfur and urine.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Vidal sighed.

“‘He died of suffocation and pride.’ There you are, a free epitaph.”

For a few moments Vidal wandered around the room without saying a word, stopping to inspect my meager wardrobe, stare out of the window with a look of revulsion, touch the greenish paint that covered the walls, and gently tap with his index finger the naked bulb that hung from the ceiling, as if he wanted to verify the wretched quality of each thing.

“What brings you here, Don Pedro? Too much fresh air in Pedralbes?”

“I haven’t come from home. I’ve come from the newspaper.”

“Why?”

“I was curious to see where you lived and, besides, I’ve brought something for you.”

He pulled a white parchment envelope from his jacket and handed it to me.

“This arrived at the office today.”

I took the envelope and examined it. It was closed with a wax seal
on which I could make out a winged silhouette. An angel. Apart from that, the only other thing visible was my name, neatly written in scarlet ink in a fine hand.

“Who sent this?” I asked, intrigued.

Vidal shrugged.

“An admirer. Or admiress. I don’t know. Open it.”

I opened the envelope with care and pulled out a folded sheet of paper on which, in the same writing, was the following:

“Interesting,” mumbled Vidal, who had been reading over my shoulder.

“What do you mean, interesting?” I asked. “What sort of a place is this El Ensueño?”

Vidal pulled a cigarette out of his platinum case.

“Doña Carmen doesn’t allow smoking in the pension,” I warned him.

“Why? Does it ruin the perfume from the sewers?”

Vidal lit the cigarette with twice the enjoyment, as one relishes all forbidden things.

“Have you ever known a woman, David?”

“Of course I have. Dozens of them.”

“I mean in the biblical sense.”

“As in Mass?”

“No, as in bed.”

“Ah.”

“And?”

The truth is that I had nothing much to tell that would impress someone like Vidal. My adventures and romances had been characterized until then by their modesty and a consistent lack of originality. Nothing in my brief catalog of pinches, cuddles, and kisses stolen in doorways or the back row of the picture house could aspire to deserve the consideration of Pedro Vidal—Barcelona’s acclaimed master of the art and science of bedroom games.

“What does this have to do with anything?” I protested.

Vidal adopted a patronizing air and launched into one of his speeches.

“In my younger days the normal thing, at least among my sort, was to be initiated in these matters with the help of a professional. When I was your age my father, who was and still is a regular of the most refined establishments in town, took me to a place called El Ensueño, just a few meters away from that macabre palace that our dear Count Güell insisted Gaudí should build for him near the Ramblas. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the name.”

“The name of the count or the brothel?”

“Very funny. El Ensueño used to be an elegant establishment for a select and discerning clientele. In fact, I thought it had closed down years ago, but I must be wrong. Unlike literature, some businesses are always on an upward trend.”

“I see. Is this your idea? Some sort of joke?”

Vidal shook his head.

“One of the idiots at the newspaper, then?”

“I detect a certain hostility in your words, but I doubt that anyone who devotes his life to the noble profession of the press, especially those at the bottom of the ranks, could afford a place like El Ensueño, if it’s the same place I remember.”

I snorted.

“It doesn’t really matter, because I’m not planning to go.”

Vidal raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t tell me you’re not a skeptic like I am and that you want to reach the marriage bed pure of heart and loins. That you’re an immaculate soul eagerly awaiting that magic moment when true love will lead you to the discovery of a joint ecstasy of flesh and inner being, blessed by the Holy Spirit, thus enabling you to populate the world with creatures who bear your family name and their mother’s eyes—that saintly woman, a paragon of virtue and modesty in whose company you will enter the doors of heaven under the benevolent gaze of the Baby Jesus.”

“I was not going to say that.”

“I’m glad, because it’s possible, and I stress possible, that such a moment may never come: you may not fall in love, you may not be able to or you may not wish to give your whole life to anyone, and, like me, you may turn forty-five one day and realize that you’re no longer young and you have never found a choir of cupids with lyres or a bed of white roses leading to the altar. The only revenge left for you then will be to steal from life the pleasure of firm and passionate flesh—a pleasure that evaporates faster than good intentions and is the nearest thing to heaven you will find in this stinking world where everything decays, beginning with beauty and ending with memory.”

I allowed a solemn pause by way of silent ovation. Vidal was a keen operagoer and had picked up the tempo and style of the great arias. He never missed his appointment with Puccini in the Liceo family box. He was one of the few—not counting the poor souls crammed together in the gods—who went there to listen to the music he loved so much, music that tended to inspire the grandiloquent speeches with which at times he regaled me, as he did that day.

“What?” asked Vidal defiantly.

“That last paragraph rings a bell.”

I had caught him red-handed. He sighed and nodded.

“It’s from
Murder in the Liceo,”
admitted Vidal. “The final scene where Miranda LaFleur shoots the wicked marquis who has broken her heart by betraying her during one night of passion in the nuptial suite of Hotel Colón, in the arms of the tsar’s spy Svetlana Ivanova.”

“That’s what I thought. You couldn’t have made a better choice. It’s your most outstanding novel, Don Pedro.”

Vidal smiled at the compliment and considered whether or not to light another cigarette.

“Which doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in what I say,” he concluded.

Vidal sat on the windowsill, but not without first placing a handkerchief on it so as to avoid soiling his classy trousers. I saw that his Hispano-Suiza was parked below, on the corner of Calle Princesa. The chauffeur, Manuel, was polishing the chrome with a rag as if it were a sculpture by Rodin. Manuel had always reminded me of my father; they were men of the same generation who had suffered too much misfortune and whose memories were written on their faces. I had heard some of the servants at Villa Helius say that Manuel Sagnier had done a long stretch in prison and that when he’d come out he had endured hardship for years because nobody would offer him a job except as a stevedore, unloading sacks and crates on the docks, a job for which by then he no longer had the requisite youth or health. Rumor had it that one day Manuel, risking his life, had saved Vidal from being run over by a tram. In gratitude, Pedro Vidal, having heard of the poor man’s dire situation, offered him a job and the possibility of moving, with his wife and daughter, into a small apartment above the Villa Helius coach house. He assured him that little Cristina would study with the same tutors who came every day to his father’s house on Avenida Pearson to teach the cubs of the Vidal dynasty, and Manuel’s wife could work as seamstress to the family. He had been thinking of buying one of the first automobiles that were soon to appear for sale in Barcelona and if Manuel would agree to take instructions in the art of driving and forget the trap and the wagon, Vidal would be needing a chauffeur, because in those days gentlemen didn’t lay their hands on combustion machines or any other device with gaseous exhaust. Manuel, naturally, accepted. Following his rescue from penury, the official version assured us all, Manuel Sagnier and his family felt blind devotion for Vidal, eternal champion of the dispossessed. I didn’t know whether to believe this story or to attribute it to the long
string of legends woven around the image of the benevolent aristocrat that Vidal cultivated. Sometimes it seemed as if all that remained for him to do was to appear wrapped in a halo before some orphaned shepherdess.

“You’ve got that rascally look about you, the one you get when you’re harboring wicked thoughts,” Vidal remarked. “What are you scheming?”

“Nothing. I was thinking about how kind you are, Don Pedro.”

“At your age and in your position, cynicism opens no doors.”

“That explains everything.”

“Go on, say hello to good old Manuel. He’s always asking after you.”

I looked out the window, and when he saw me the driver, who always treated me like a gentleman and not like the bumpkin I was, waved up at me. I returned the greeting. Sitting on the passenger seat was his daughter, Cristina, a creature of pale skin and well-defined lips who was a couple of years older than me and had taken my breath away ever since I saw her the first time Vidal invited me to visit Villa Helius.

“Don’t stare at her so much, you’ll break her,” mumbled Vidal behind my back.

I turned round and met with the Machiavellian face that Vidal reserved for matters of the heart and other noble parts of the body.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Never a truer word spoken,” replied Vidal. “So, what are you going to do about tonight?”

I read the note once again and hesitated.

“Do you frequent this type of venue, Don Pedro?”

“I haven’t paid for a woman since I was fifteen years old and then, technically, it was my father who paid,” replied Vidal without bragging. “But don’t look a gift horse in the mouth …”

“I don’t know, Don Pedro …”

“Of course you know.”

Vidal patted me on the back as he walked toward the door.

“There are seven hours left to midnight,” he said. “You might like to have a nap and gather your strength.”

I looked out the window and saw him approach the car. Manuel opened the door and Vidal flopped onto the backseat. I heard the engine of the Hispano-Suiza deploy its symphony of pistons. At that moment Cristina looked up toward my window. I smiled at her but realized that she didn’t remember who I was. A moment later she looked away and Vidal’s grand carriage sped off toward its own world.

I
n those days, the streetlamps and illuminated signs of Calle Nou de la Rambla projected a corridor of light through the shadows of the Raval quarter. On either pavement, cabarets, dance halls, and other ill-defined venues jostled cheek by jowl with all-night establishments that specialized in arcane remedies for venereal diseases, condoms, and douches, while a motley crew, from gentlemen of some cachet to sailors from ships docked in the port, mixed with all sorts of extravagant characters who lived only for the night. On both sides of the street narrow, misty alleyways housed a string of brothels of ever-decreasing quality.

El Ensueño occupied the top story of a building. On the ground floor was a music hall with large posters depicting a dancer clad in a diaphanous toga that did nothing to hide her charms, holding in her arms a black snake whose forked tongue seemed to be kissing her lips.

“Eva Montenegro and the Tango of Death,” the poster announced in bold letters. “The Queen of the Night, for six evenings only—no further performances. With the guest appearance of Mesmero, the mind reader who will reveal your most intimate secrets.”

Next to the main entrance was a narrow door behind which rose a long staircase with walls painted red. I went up the stairs and stood in front of a large carved oak door adorned with a brass knocker in the shape of a nymph wearing a modest clover leaf over her pubis. I knocked a couple of times and waited, shying away from my reflection in the
tinted mirror that covered most of the adjoining wall. I was debating the possibility of hotfooting it out of the place when the door opened and a middle-aged woman, her hair completely white and tied neatly in a bun, smiled at me calmly.