Isaac let out a muffled scream. “Alicia’s gone,” he panted. “You’re wasting your time . . .”
Hendaya ignored the old man and scanned the shadows. Candlelight glowed behind a doorframe in a corner. The policeman held his gun with both hands and edged his way toward the door, keeping close to the wall. The anxiety in the old man’s eyes confirmed that he was on the right track.
He stepped into the room, his weapon raised. In the middle stood a makeshift bed with its sheets pulled to one side. A chest of drawers was set against a wall, covered with medicines and other supplies. Hendaya examined every corner and dark area before going any farther into the room. The air smelled of alcohol, of wax, and of something sweet and floury that made him salivate. He walked over to a small table standing next to the bed, with a candle resting on it. There he found an open ink bottle and a wad of sheets of paper. On the first of these, in sloping, free-flowing handwriting, he read:
Alicia
Hendaya smiled and went back to the doorway. He looked at the keeper, who was still struggling with the handcuffs that tied him to the pipe. Farther away, by the entrance to the labyrinth of books, he noticed a slight wavering of shadows, as if a raindrop had fallen on the surface of a pond, leaving a trail of ripples spreading across the water. As he walked past Isaac, he picked up the oil lamp without bothering to look at the keeper. There’d be time enough to settle the score with him.
When he reached the foot of the huge structure, Hendaya stopped to gaze at the basilica of books soaring before him. He spat to one side. Then, after checking that the revolver’s magazine was full and there was a bullet in the chamber, he stepped into the labyrinth, following the scent of Alicia and the echo of her footsteps.
20
The tunnel traced a slight upward curve that drove into the center of the structure and narrowed as Hendaya left the entrance behind him. The walls were lined with book spines from top to bottom. A coffered ceiling sealed the passage, made out of old leather book covers on which one could still read titles in dozens of different languages. After a while he reached an octagonal hallway with a table in its center. The table was packed with open books, lecterns, and a lamp shedding a soft golden light. A web of corridors spread in multiple directions, some descending, others climbing upward.
Hendaya stopped to listen to the sound of the labyrinth, a sort of murmur, as if of old wood and paper in constant movement, barely perceptible. He’d decided to take one of the descending corridors, assuming that Alicia would try to find another way out, hoping that he would get lost inside and give her time to escape. That’s what he would have done in her place. A second before entering the passage, however, he noticed it. A book hung from one of the shelves, as if someone had started to pull it out but left it dangling, about to fall. Hendaya drew closer and read the title:
ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Lewis Carroll
“So we’re in the mood for games?” he asked out loud, his voice echoing through the tangle of tunnels and halls. There was no answer. Hendaya pushed the book back against the wall and continued along the passage, which soon started to go uphill, becoming ever steeper, eventually forming steps under his feet at short distances. The farther he penetrated into the labyrinth, the more he felt that he was moving through the bowels of a legendary creature, a leviathan of words that was perfectly aware of his presence and of every step he took. He raised the lamp as far as the corridor’s vaulted ceiling allowed him and kept walking. Some ten meters farther on, he stopped dead in his tracks. In front of him loomed the figure of an angel with wolfish eyes. A fraction of a second before firing, he realized that the figure was made of wax. Its hands, which were large and looked like tongs, held a book he’d never heard of before:
PARADISE LOST
John Milton
The angel guarded another oval hall, twice the size of the previous one. The room was flanked by glass cabinets, curved shelves, and niches laid out like a burial chamber for books.
Hendaya sighed. “Alicia? Stop fooling around and show your face. I only want to talk to you. As one professional to another.”
Walking across the room to the point from which new corridors set out, he listened carefully. Here again, next to the curve where the gloom darkened, a book peeped out from a shelf in one of the passageways. Hendaya clenched his teeth. If Leandro’s whore wanted to go on playing cat and mouse, she was going to get the surprise of her life.
He didn’t bother to see what new book Alicia had chosen in her trajectory toward the heart of the labyrinth. “Up to you,” he said, taking that corridor, which rose very steeply.
For almost twenty minutes Hendaya climbed what appeared to be a colossal piece of stage machinery. On his way he crossed large halls and walked over balustrades suspended between arches and walkways from which he was able to see that he’d climbed far more than he’d estimated. The figure of Isaac, handcuffed to the water pipe below, now seemed minute. He looked up toward the dome, sprawling and swirling into increasingly elaborate configurations above him. Every time he thought he’d lost the trail, he found the spine of a book peeping out at the entrance to a new tunnel, leading to yet another hall from which the path forked into endless twists and spirals.
The labyrinth went on mutating as he ascended toward its zenith, its intricate design using arches and ventilation shafts to allow the entrance of vaporous beams. Mirrors set at different angles spread the eerie, floating light. Every new room he found was increasingly populated by paintings and contraptions that he could barely make out. Some figures looked like unfinished automatons; paper or plaster sculptures hung from the ceiling or were encased in the walls, like creatures hidden in coffins made of books. An indefinable sense of vertigo and unease took hold of him, and soon he found his gun slipping between his sweaty fingers.
“Alicia, if you don’t come out, I’m going to set fire to this pile of shit and watch you burn alive. Is that what you want?”
At a noise behind him, he turned. A round object the size of a fist, which at first he thought was a ball or a globe, was rolling down a set of stairs from one of the tunnels. He knelt down to pick it up. It was the head of a doll with a disquieting smile and glass eyes. A second later the air was filled with the tinkle of a metallic melody. It sounded like a lullaby.
“You bitch,” he muttered.
He raced up the stairs, his temples throbbing. The strains of music led him to a circular room that opened onto a balustrade flooded by a dense, almost liquid shaft of light. Seeing the glass dome on the other side, he realized that he’d reached the summit. The music came from the back of the room. On either side of the doorway stood pale figures encased between books, like mummified bodies abandoned to their fate. The floor was covered with open volumes, which Hendaya trampled on as he made his way across the room to a small built-in cupboard that looked like a reliquary. He could hear the music playing inside it.
Hendaya opened the small door carefully.
A music box made with mirrors tinkled on the cupboard floor. Inside the box, an angel with open wings turned slowly in a hypnotic trance. The sound gradually petered out as the mechanism unwound and the angel was left suspended in mid-flight. It was then he noticed a reflection on one of the mirrors in the music box. One of the figures he had taken for plaster corpses when he came in had shifted.
Hendaya felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He spun around and fired his gun three times at the figure silhouetted against the bright light. The layers of paper and plaster that made up the effigy were ripped apart, leaving a cloud of dust floating in the air. The policeman lowered the weapon slightly and strained his eyes. Only then did he notice a gentle movement in the air next to him. He turned, and when he tightened the revolver’s hammer again, he recognized the dark glow of two penetrating eyes emerging from the shadows.
The nib of the pen perforated Hendaya’s cornea and cut through into his brain, so deep it scratched the bone at the back of his skull. He
collapsed instantly, like a puppet whose strings had been severed, his trembling body stretched out over the books.
Alicia knelt, snatched the weapon he still held in his hand, and, using her feet, pushed the body toward the balustrade. Then she kicked it over the edge and watched it fall into the abyss, still alive, and smash against the stone floor with a dead, humid echo.
21
Isaac saw her come out of the labyrinth. She limped slightly and held a gun in her hand in such a natural way, it made his blood run cold. He watched her approach the place where Hendaya’s body had crashed against the marble floor. She was barefoot, but didn’t hesitate before stepping through the pool of blood that spread around the corpse. Leaning over Hendaya’s body, she looked through his pockets and pulled out a wallet. She examined it, keeping a wad of notes and discarding the rest. Then she felt his jacket pockets and drew out a set of keys, which she also kept. After glancing dispassionately at the dead body for a few moments, Alicia grabbed something sticking out of Hendaya’s face and pulled hard. Isaac recognized the pen he’d given her barely an hour earlier.
Slowly, Alicia walked over to Isaac. She knelt down beside him and unlocked his handcuffs. Isaac, trembling, not realizing that his own eyes were brimming with tears, searched hers. Alicia gazed back at him impassively, as if she were trying to make clear to that poor old man that she was not a reincarnation of his lost daughter.
She wiped the pen on her nightdress skirt and handed it to him. “I could never be like her, Isaac.”
The keeper dried his tears but said nothing. Alicia offered him her hand and helped him get up. Then she walked over to the little bathroom next to the keeper’s room. Isaac heard the water run.
After a while Dr. Soldevila staggered in. Isaac waved at him, and he came over.
“What happened? Who was that man?”
Isaac pointed his head toward the knot of limbs embedded on the floor, some twenty meters away.
“Good God . . . ,” murmured the doctor. “And the young lady?”
* * *
Alicia emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and went into Isaac’s room. The doctor looked inquisitively at Isaac, who shrugged. Soldevila walked over to Isaac’s door and peered around. Alicia was putting on some of Nuria Montfort’s clothes.
“Are you all right?” asked the doctor.
“I’m fine,” replied Alicia, not taking her eyes off the mirror.
Dr. Soldevila shelved his amazement, sat down on a chair, and gazed at her in silence while she explored a toilet bag that had belonged to Isaac’s daughter and chose a few cosmetics. She put on her makeup conscientiously, outlining her lips and eyes with precision as, once again, she built a character that fit in much better with the scene of her actions than did the weakened body the doctor had become accustomed to caring for during the past few weeks. When his eyes met hers in the mirror, Alicia winked at him.
“As soon as I’ve left,” she said, “you’re going to have to get in touch with Fermín. Tell him the body needs to disappear. Tell him to go see the taxidermist in Plaza Real, and say I sent him. He has the necessary chemical products.”
Alicia stood up, swirled around once to check herself in the mirror, and, after putting the gun and the money she had taken from Hendaya’s body into a black bag, headed for the door.
“Who are you?” asked Dr. Soldevila as she walked past.
“The devil,” Alicia replied.
22
As soon as Fermín saw the good old doctor walk in through the bookshop door, he knew it was open season for shocks. Soldevila showed unmistakable signs of having been very professionally punched in the face. Daniel and Bea, who were behind the counter trying to balance the month’s accounts, opened their mouths wide and rushed over to help.
“What happened, Doctor?”
Dr. Soldevila let out a snort that sounded like a bursting balloon and hung his head dejectedly.
“Daniel, bring out the bottle of strong brandy your father hides behind the Exemplary Lives of the Saints collection,” Fermín ordered.
Bea took the doctor to a chair and helped him sit down. “Are you all right? Who did this to you?”
“Yes, and I’m not entirely sure,” he replied. “In that order.”
“And Alicia?” asked Bea.
“I wouldn’t worry about her, honestly . . .”
Fermín sighed. “She’s flown off?”
“Wrapped in a cloud of sulfur.”
Daniel handed the doctor a glass of brandy to which he offered no resistance. He downed it in one gulp and let the concoction do the trick. “Another, please.”
“What about Isaac?” asked Fermín.
“He stayed behind, meditating.”
Fermín crouched down next to the doctor and looked into his eyes. “Come on, Your Eminence, out with it—and, if possible, holding back on the editorializing.”
* * *
When he’d finished his account, the doctor asked for a third glass, as a nightcap. Bea, Daniel, and Fermín joined him cautiously.
After a tactful silence, Daniel opened the discussion. “Where could she have gone?”
“To right a wrong, I imagine,” said Fermín.
“Please speak plainly, Your Graces,” said the doctor. “When I studied medicine, the Sempere family mysteries were not on the curriculum.”
“Believe me when I say I’m doing you a favor by suggesting you go home,” Fermín advised. “Place a veal steak like a beret on your head and leave us to untangle this mess.”
The doctor nodded. “Must I expect more gunmen? I’m just asking in case I need to be prepared.”
“Not for the time being, I think,” said Fermín. “But perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave town and go off to a spa in Montgat for a couple of weeks. Take a merry widow with you and work on the elimination of a kidney stone, or any other corpuscle that may have got stuck in your urinary tract.”
“For once, I wouldn’t say no,” said the doctor.
“Daniel, why don’t you do us the favor of taking the doctor home and making sure he gets there in one piece?” suggested Fermín.
“Why me?” Daniel protested. “Are you trying to get me out of the way again?”
“If you’d rather, I’ll send your son Julián along. But I think the mission requires someone who has at least taken his first communion.”
Daniel agreed reluctantly. Fermín felt Bea’s eyes fixed on the back of his neck, but he preferred to ignore it for the time being. Before saying good-bye to Dr. Soldevila, he poured him one last glass of brandy and, seeing there was still a shot of liquor left in the bottle, downed the remains in one swig.
Free at last of Daniel and the doctor, Fermín collapsed on the chair and covered his face with his hands.
“What was all that the doctor said about the taxidermist and making a body disappear?” asked Bea.
“Some unpleasant matter that unfortunately will have to be resolved,” said Fermín. “One of the two most annoying things about Alicia is that she’s always right.”
“What’s the other?”
“That she doesn’t forgive. Did she say anything to you these last few days that might allow us to guess what was going through her mind? Think carefully.”
Bea hesitated, but then shook her head.
Fermín nodded resignedly and got to his feet. He took his coat from the stand and prepared to hit the road on a winter’s afternoon that did not look promising. “Then I’d better go off to meet the taxidermist. Let’s see if I come up with any ideas on the way.”
“Fermín?” Bea called, before he’d reached the door.
He stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“There’s something Alicia didn’t tell us, isn’t there?”
“I suspect there are a lot of things, Doña Bea. And I think she did that for our own good.”
“But there’s something that has to do with Daniel. Something that can hurt him a lot.”
At this point Fermín
turned around and smiled sadly. “But that’s what you and I are here for, isn’t it? To stop something like that from happening.”
Bea looked straight at him. “Be very careful, Fermín.”
* * *
Bea watched Fermín leave in a blue twilight that threatened sleet. She stood there, looking out as people filed along Calle Santa Ana, hidden under scarves and coats. Something told her that winter, the real winter, had just collapsed on them without warning. And this time it would not go unnoticed.
23
Fernandito lay on the bed in his room, his gaze lost in the small window that gave onto the inner courtyard. The room, or cupboard, as everyone called it, shared a wall with the laundry room and had always reminded him of scenes set in submarines he sometimes saw in the matinee shows of the Capitol Cinema—only far gloomier and less cozy. Even so, that afternoon, thanks to the wondrous alchemy of hormones, which he tended to mistake for a spiritual or mystical experience, Fernandito floated in seventh heaven. Love, with a capital L and a tight skirt, had knocked on his door. Technically it hadn’t knocked; it had just walked past his door, to be precise. Yet he believed that, like a stubborn toothache, fate didn’t let go of you until you faced it with courage. All the more so where love was concerned.
The epiphany that had managed to banish, once and for all, the ghost of the treacherous Alicia and the entire spectral femme-fatale number that had ensnared him since early adolescence, had taken place a few days ago. Love, even when it implodes, leads to another. That’s what the boleros certified. Their lyrics might be as sickly sweet as a cream cake, but they were almost always well grounded when it came to the science of loving. His unholy infatuation with Señorita Alicia had led him to meet the Sempere family and be offered a job by the kind bookseller. And from there to paradise, only chance had played a part.
The Labyrinth of the Spirits Page 68