Carlos Zafón: The Angel's Game

‘God Almighty! Are you all right? Who did this to you?’

‘Nobody. I fell.’

I held out the book.

‘I came to return it, because I don’t want anything to happen to it…’

Sempere looked at me but didn’t say a word – he simply took me in his arms and carried me up to the apartment. His son, a twelve-year-old boy who was so shy I didn’t remember ever having heard his voice, had woken up at the sound of his father going out, and was waiting on the landing. When he saw the blood on my face he looked at his father with fear in his eyes.

‘Call Doctor Campos.’

The boy nodded and ran to the telephone. I heard him speak, realising that he was not dumb after all. Between the two of them they settled me into an armchair in the dining room and cleaned the blood off my wounds while we waited for the doctor to arrive.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me who did this to you?’

I didn’t utter a sound. Sempere didn’t know where I lived and I was not going to give him any ideas.

‘Was it your father?’

I looked away.

‘No. I fell.’

Doctor Campos, who lived four or five doors away, arrived five minutes later. He examined me from head to toe, feeling my bruises and dressing my cuts as delicately as possible. You could see his eyes burning with indignation, but he made no comment.

‘There’s nothing broken, but the bruises will last a while and they’ll hurt for a few days. Those two teeth will have to come out. They’re no good any more and there’s a risk of infection.’

When the doctor had left, Sempere made me a cup of warm cocoa and smiled as he watched me drink it.

‘All this just to save Great Expectations, eh?’

I shrugged my shoulders. Father and son looked at one another with a conspiratorial smile.

‘Next time you want to save a book, save it properly; don’t risk your life. Just let me know and I’ll take you to a secret place where books never die and nobody can destroy them.’

I looked at both of them, intrigued.

‘What place is that?’

Sempere gave me a wink and smiled at me in that mysterious manner that seemed to be borrowed from an Alexandre Dumas romance, and which, people said, was a family trait.

‘Everything in due course, my friend. Everything in due course.’

My father spent that whole week with his eyes glued to the floor, consumed with remorse. He bought a new light bulb and even told me that I could turn it on, but not for long, because electricity was very expensive. I preferred not to play with fire. On the Saturday he tried to buy me a book and went to a bookshop on Calle de la Palla, opposite the old Roman walls – the first and last bookshop he ever entered – but as he couldn’t read the titles on the spines of the hundreds of tomes that were on show, he came out empty-handed. Then he gave me some money, more than usual, and told me to buy whatever I wanted with it. It seemed the perfect moment to bring up something that I’d wanted to say to him for a long time but had never found the opportunity.

‘Doña Mariana, the teacher, has asked me whether you could go by the school one day and talk to her,’ I said, trying to sound casual.

‘Talk about what? What have you done?’

‘Nothing, father. Doña Mariana wanted to talk to you about my future education. She says I have possibilities and thinks she could help me win a scholarship for a place at the Escolapios…’

‘Who does that woman think she is, filling your head with nonsense and telling you she’s going to get you into a school for rich kids? Have you any idea what that pack is like? Do you know how they’re going to look at you and treat you when they find out where you come from?’

I looked down.

‘Doña Mariana only wants to help, father. That’s all. Please don’t get angry. I’ll tell her it’s not possible, end of story.’

My father looked at me angrily, but controlled himself and took a few deep breaths with his eyes shut before speaking again.

‘We’ll manage, do you understand? You and me. Without the charity of those sons-of-bitches. And with our heads held high.’

‘Yes, father.’

He put a hand on my shoulder and looked at me as if, for a split second that was never to return, he was proud of me, even though we were so different, even though I liked books that he could not read, even if mother had left us both to face each other. At that moment I thought my father was the kindest man in the world, and that everyone would realise this if only, just for once, life saw fit to deal him a good hand of cards.

‘All the bad things you do in life come back to you, David. And I’ve done a lot of bad things. A lot. But I’ve paid the price. And our luck is going to change. You’ll see…’

Doña Mariana was razor sharp and could see what was going on, but despite her insistence I didn’t mention the subject of my education to my father again. When my teacher realised there was no hope she told me that every day, when lessons were over, she would devote an hour just to me, to talk to me about books, history and all the things that scared my father so much.

‘It will be our secret,’ said the teacher.

By then I had begun to understand that my father was ashamed that others might think him ignorant, a residue from a war which, like all wars, was fought in the name of God and country to make a few men, who were already far too powerful when they started it, even more powerful. Around that time I started occasionally to accompany my father on his night shift. We’d take a tram in Calle Trafalgar which left us by the entrance to the Pueblo Nuevo Cemetery. I would stay in his cubicle, reading old copies of the newspaper, and at times I would try to chat with him, a difficult task. By then, my father hardly ever spoke at all, neither about the war in the colonies nor about the woman who had abandoned him. Once I asked him why my mother had left us. I suspected it had been my fault, because of something I’d done, perhaps just for being born.

‘Your mother had already left me before I was sent to the front. I was the idiot; I didn’t realise until I returned. Life’s like that, David. Sooner or later, everything and everybody abandons you.’

‘I’m never going to abandon you, father.’

I thought he was about to cry and I hugged him so as not to see his face.

The following day, unannounced, my father took me El Indio, a large store that sold fabrics on Calle del Carmen. We didn’t actually go in, but from the windows at the shop entrance my father pointed at a smiling young woman who was serving some customers, showing them expensive flannels and other textiles. ‘That’s your mother,’ he said. ‘One of these days I’ll come back here and kill her.’

‘Don’t say that, father.’

He looked at me with reddened eyes, and I knew then that he still loved her and that I would never forgive her for it. I remember that I watched her secretly, without her knowing we were there, and that I only recognised her because of a photograph my father kept in a drawer, next to his army revolver. Every night, when he thought I was asleep, he would take it out and look at it as if it held all the answers, or at least enough of them.

For years I would have to return to the doors of that store to spy on her in secret. I never had the courage to go in or to approach her when I saw her coming out and walking away down the Ramblas, towards a life that I had imagined for her, with a family that made her happy and a son who deserved her affection and the touch of her skin more than I did. My father never knew that sometimes I would sneak round there to see her, or that some days I even followed close behind, always ready to take her hand and walk by her side, always fleeing at the last moment. In my world, great expectations only existed between the pages of a book.