That’s all I wanted. Do you believe this at least?” Kloster looked me straight in the eye, as if expecting an immediate answer.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” I said. “What matters is what Luciana believes. She called me this evening, after the fire. That’s why I’m here. She’s desperate, on the brink of madness, I think. I promised I’d go to see her. But I’d like you to come with me.”

“Me?” Kloster made a face, as if the very idea were distasteful. “I don’t see how it would help. I think it might even make things worse.”

“I want her to hear from you what you’ve just told me. Even only this small part of it: that since her parents’ death, you no longer bear her any ill will. I think that, coming from you, would change everything for her.”

“And then we’d give each other a big Christian hug of reconciliation? That’s rather naive of you, young man. Don’t you see it no longer depends on me? Ten years ago, when I was in despair, my atheism faltered and I prayed. I prayed every night to a dark, unknown god. My prayer was heard and is slowly being answered. It came from me, but I can’t now take it back. Because the punishment, the full punishment, has already been written. It is written.”

“How do you know how much of it has been written? How do you know that a gesture of forgiveness now wouldn’t change everything? If what you’ve told me is taking place as you say, there is one fundamental thing you could do: stop writing. Give it up right now.”

“I could even burn it, but there’s no guarantee it would stop anything. It’s outside me. And I think he’s getting ahead of me now: this time he didn’t wait for the scene to be fully written and finished.”

“So are you saying you refuse to come with me?”

“On the contrary: I said I’d like to stop it, if only I knew how. I’m prepared to try anything you say. But I’m sceptical about the results. We don’t even know if she’d be willing to see me again face to face.”

“Why don’t we ask her? Is there a phone here I can use?”

Kloster indicated the bar and signalled to the barman to let me use the telephone. Reluctantly the barman reached for an old Bakelite phone with a thick spiral cord. I took it to one end of the bar and dialled Luciana’s number, waiting patiently for the dial to return between digits. A sleepy voice answered.

“Luciana?”

“No, it’s Valentina. Luciana’s gone to bed. But she said to wake her if you called.”

There was a click on the line, as the receiver was lifted in another room, and I heard Luciana’s voice, weak and defeated.

“You said you’d come,” she said, only faint reproach in her voice, as if it no longer surprised her to be let down. “I was waiting for you, because I…” Her voice faded to a whisper and she said, as if she had remained stuck at this one thought: “I can’t deal with the coffin.”

“I’m here with Kloster,” I said. “I want to bring him with me, so you can hear what he has to say.”

“Bring Kloster? Here? Now?” In her disbelief, she seemed unable to comprehend the meaning of my words. Or rather, I thought I perceived something helpless and disoriented in her voice, as if she could no longer think coherently and so clung to these questions, before letting them slip from her grasp. Suddenly she laughed bitterly, and for a moment sounded lucid again. “Yes, why not? We can have a chat, the three of us, like old friends. Isn’t it funny? The first time I went to see you I still thought there was a slight hope that I could convince you. I had a plan, something I’d been thinking of doing for years. I just needed your help. I learned from him. I’d planned it all down to the last detail. I thought I could pre-empt it, before it was too late. I didn’t want to die,” she said, pitifully, and she started crying quietly. A moment passed before she spoke, her voice reproachful again: “The only thing I never thought, never could have imagined, was that you would believe him.”

“I don’t believe him,” I said. “I don’t know what to believe. But I think you should listen to what he has to say. If only for a moment.”

There was a long silence, as if Luciana was weighing the implications and dangers of the visit, or for once was seeing everything from another perspective.

“Why not?” she said again, but now she seemed strangely detached, indifferent, as if nothing could touch her any more. Or perhaps (but I only realised this later) she suddenly had a new plan, one in which she no longer needed me, and her sudden acceptance, the unexpected meekness, was her way of setting it in motion. “We can face each other again. Like civilised people. I suppose I’m curious to find out how he convinced you.”

“It would only take a moment. And afterwards I’ll go and sort out the coffin.”

“You’ll sort it out? You’d do that for me?” Her tone suddenly switched to gratitude, so that she sounded like a little girl thankful for a huge, unexpected favour.

“Of course I would. You need to rest.”

“To rest,” she said longingly. “Yes. I’m so tired.” She seemed to drift for a moment, lost in her dark thoughts. “But there’s Valentina. It’s too dangerous for me to go back to sleep-I have to protect Valentina. I’m the only one who can protect her.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to Valentina,” I said, aware of the dishonesty and weakness of the attempt to reassure her. Too much had happened since the last time I’d said something similar.

“I don’t want him to see her,” she whispered. “I don’t want her to see him again.”

“I’ll be there,” I said. “And there’s no reason for him to see her.”

“I know what he wants. I know why he’s coming here,” she said, madness in her voice again. “But I want Valentina to be saved, at least.”

“I’ve got to go now,” I said, keen to end the conversation. I was afraid she’d change her mind. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I hung up and signalled to Kloster that she had agreed. He leaned his cue carefully against the wall and followed me to the stairs without a word.

Twelve

I now come to the most difficult part of my story. I’ve tried many times since to return in memory to those moments, beginning when Kloster and I left the club. I’ve gone over the scenes many times, as if they were stills from a movie, searching for something that might have foretold what I failed to see until it was too late. But though I later examined them from all angles, those few, fatal events didn’t yield any clues. Kloster was plunged in hostile silence, as if he were being forced against his will to perform an unpleasant duty. We got into a taxi with a loud radio and I gave the driver Luciana’s address. The man warned he’d have to take a roundabout route as some streets were blocked off because of the fires. Although neither of us had asked, he told us the Chinese man had been caught, in a raid in the Bajo Flores district, and that a map marked with the locations of over a hundred more furniture stores had been found in his house. Despite this, he said, there had been more fires that night. Bored thugs, pyromaniacs, rival shop owners taking advantage of the chaos to settle scores, who could tell? He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, head turned slightly, appearing to address Kloster rather than me. But Kloster gave no sign that he was listening. At the first intersection there were barriers and a policeman was diverting traffic. The taxi driver pointed out the fire engines further down the street and the blackened facade of a building from which dark smoke billowed in the light of the street lamps. I asked if anyone else had died in the fires and he shook his head. The only dead were the residents of the old people’s home. Some of them were strapped to their beds, he added, so they hadn’t been able to get out. Nearly all of them had died: that was the real tragedy. I glanced at Kloster, but he remained expressionless, as if he hadn’t heard a word. He was tapping his foot impatiently on the taxi’s rubber mat. I detected no emotion in his face, but maybe he was just absorbed in his own thoughts. Every so often he looked out of the window at the street names, as if looking for a sign that the journey would soon be over.