“It might feel like the end of the world to you now, but—”
“I’ll soon realize that this is the best thing that could have happened to me,” I said, completing the sentence. “Don’t tell me Don Basilio is writing your speeches now. Or is it the other way round?”
Vidal laughed.
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t you need a secretary?”
“I’ve already got the best secretary I could have. She’s more intelligent than me, infinitely more hardworking, and when she smiles I even feel that this lousy world still has some future.”
“And who is this marvel?”
“Manuel’s daughter.”
“Cristina.”
“At last I hear you utter her name.”
“You’ve chosen a bad week to make fun of me, Don Pedro.”
“Don’t look at me all doe-eyed. Did you think Pedro Vidal was going to allow that mediocre, constipated, envious bunch to sack you without doing anything about it?”
“A word from you to the editor could have changed things.”
“I know. That’s why I was the one who suggested he fire you,” said Vidal.
I felt as if he’d just slapped me in the face.
“Thanks for the push,” I improvised.
“I told him to fire you because I have something much better for you.”
“Begging?”
“Have you no faith? Only yesterday I was talking about you to a couple of partners who have just opened a publishing house and are looking for fresh blood to exploit. You can’t trust them, of course.”
“Sounds marvelous.”
“They know all about The Mysteries of Barcelona and are prepared to tender an offer that will make your name.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious. They want you to write a series in installments in the most baroque, bloody, and delirious Grand Guignol tradition—a series that will tear The Mysteries of Barcelona to shreds. I think that this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. I told them you’d go talk to them and that you’d be able to start work immediately.” I heaved a deep sigh. Vidal winked and then embraced me.
7
That was how, only a few months after my twentieth birthday, I received and accepted an offer to write penny dreadfuls under the name of Ignatius B. Samson. My contract committed me to hand in two hundred pages of typed manuscript a month packed with intrigue, high society murders, countless underworld horrors, illicit love affairs featuring cruel, lantern-jawed landowners and damsels with unmentionable desires, and all sorts of twisted family sagas with plots as thick and murky as the water in the port. The series, which I decided to call City of the Damned, was to appear in monthly hardback installments with a full-color illustrated cover. In exchange I would be paid more money than I had ever imagined could be made doing something that I cared about, and the only censorship imposed on me would be dictated by the loyalty of my readers. The terms of the offer obliged me to write anonymously under an extravagant pseudonym, but it seemed a small price to pay for being able to make a living from the profession I had always dreamed of practicing. I would put aside any vanity about seeing my name on my work, while remaining true to myself, to what I was.
My publishers were a pair of colorful characters called Barrido and Escobillas. Barrido, who was small and squat and always affected an oily, sibylline smile, was the brains of the operation. He sprang from the sausage industry and although he hadn’t read more than three books in his life—and those included the catechism and the telephone directory—he was possessed of a proverbial audacity for cooking the books, which he falsified for his investors, displaying a talent for fiction that any of his authors might have envied. These, as Vidal had predicted, the firm swindled, exploited, and, in the end, kicked into the gutter when the winds were unfavorable—something that always happened sooner or later.
Escobillas played a complementary role. Tall, gaunt, with a vaguely threatening appearance, he had gained his experience in the undertaker business and beneath the pungent eau de cologne with which he bathed his private parts there always seemed to be a faint, disturbing whiff of formaldehyde. His role was essentially that of the sinister foreman, whip in hand, always ready to do the dirty work that Barrido, with his more cheerful nature and less athletic disposition, wasn’t naturally inclined to. The ménage à trois was completed by their secretary, Herminia, who followed them around like a loyal dog wherever they went and whom we all nicknamed Lady Venom because, although she looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, she was as trustworthy as a rattlesnake in heat.
Social niceties aside, I tried to see them as little as possible. Ours was a strictly commercial relationship and none of the parties felt any great desire to alter the established protocol. I had resolved to make the most of the opportunity and work hard: I wanted to prove to Vidal, and to myself, that I was worthy of his help and his trust. With fresh money in my hands, I decided to abandon Doña Carmen’s pension for more comfortable quarters. For some time now I’d had my eye on a huge pile of a house at 30 Calle Flassaders, a stone’s throw from Paseo del Borne, which for years I had passed as I went between the newspaper and the pension. Topped by a tower that rose from a façade carved with reliefs and gargoyles, the building had been closed for years, its front door sealed with chains and rusty padlocks. Despite its gloomy and somewhat melodramatic appearance, or perhaps for that very reason, the idea of inhabiting it awoke in me that desire that comes only with ill-advised ideas. In other circumstances I would have accepted t
hat such a place was far beyond my meager budget, but the long years of abandonment and oblivion to which the dwelling seemed condemned made me hope that, if nobody else wanted it, perhaps its owners might accept my offer.
Asking around in the area, I discovered that the house had been empty for years and was handled by a property manager called Vicenç Clavé, who had an office in Calle Comercio, opposite the market. Clavé was a gentleman of the old school who liked to dress in a fashion similar to that of the statues of mayors or national heroes that greeted you at the various entrances of Ciudadela Park, and if you weren’t careful he would take off on rhetorical flights that encompassed every subject under the sun.