I began to distribute the candles around the rooms, along the corridor, and in various corners, until the whole house was enveloped in a flickering twilight of pale gold.
“It looks like a cathedral,” Cristina said.
I took her to one of the rooms that I didn’t use but kept clean and tidy because of the few times Vidal, too drunk to return to his mansion, had stayed the night.
“I’ll bring you some clean towels. If you don’t have anything to change into I can offer you a wide selection of dreadful Belle Epoque clothes the former owners left in the wardrobes.”
My clumsy attempt at humor barely drew a smile from her and she simply nodded. I left her sitting on the bed while I rushed off to fetch the towels. When I returned she was still sitting there, motionless. I left the towels next to her on the bed and brought over a couple of candles that I’d placed by the door, to give her a bit more light.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
“While you change, I’ll go prepare some hot soup for you.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“It will do you good, all the same. If you need anything, let me know.”
I left her alone and went off to my room to remove my sodden shoes. I put water on to boil and sat waiting in the gallery. The rain was still crashing down, angrily machine-gunning the large windows; it poured through the gutters up in the tower and funneled along the flat roof, sounding like footsteps on the ceiling. Farther out, the Ribera quarter was plunged into almost total darkness.
After a while the door of Cristina’s room opened and I heard her approaching. She was wearing a white dressing gown and had thrown an ugly woolen shawl over her shoulders.
“I’ve borrowed this from one of the wardrobes,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“You can keep it if you like.”
She sat in one of the armchairs and glanced round the room, stopping to look at a pile of paper on the table. She looked at me and I nodded.
“I finished it a few days ago,” I said.
“And yours?”
I thought of both manuscripts as mine, but I just nodded again.
“May I?” she asked, taking a page and bringing it nearer the candlelight.
“Of course.”
I watched her read, a thin smile on her lips.
“Pedro will never believe he’s written this,” she said.
“Trust me,” I replied.
Cristina put the sheet back on the pile and looked at me for a long time.
“I’ve missed you,” she said. “I didn’t want to, but I have.”
“Me too.”
“Some days, before going to the sanatorium, I’d walk to the station and sit on the platform to wait for the train coming from Barcelona, hop
ing you might be on it.”
I swallowed hard.
“I thought you didn’t want to see me,” I said.
“That’s what I thought, too. My father often asked after you, you know? He asked me to look after you.”