I pushed aside the blanket and sat up. I heard the knock again. Knuckles on the front door. I stood up, holding the gun in my hands, and went into the corridor. Again the knock. I took a few steps towards the door and stopped. I imagined him smiling on the landing, the angel on his lapel gleaming in the dark. I pulled back the hammer on the gun. Once again the sound of a hand, knocking on the door. I tried to turn the light on, but there was no power. I kept walking. I was about to slide the spyhole open, but didn’t dare. I stood there stock-still, hardly daring to breathe, with the gun raised and pointing towards the door.

‘Go away,’ I called out, with no strength in my voice.

Then I heard a sob on the other side of the door, and lowered the gun. I opened the door and found her there in the shadows. Her clothes were soaking and she was shivering. Her skin was frozen. When she saw me, she almost collapsed into my arms. I could find no words; I just held her tight. She smiled weakly at me and when I put my hand on her cheek she kissed it and closed her eyes.

‘Forgive me,’ whispered Cristina.

She opened her eyes and gave me a broken look that would have stayed with me even in hell. I smiled at her.

‘Welcome home.’

38

I undressed her by candlelight. I removed her shoes and dress, which were soaking wet, and her laddered stockings. I dried her body and her hair with a clean towel. She was still shaking with cold when I put her to bed and lay down next to her, hugging her to give her warmth. We stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything, just listening to the rain. Slowly I felt her body warming up and her breathing become deeper. I thought she had fallen asleep but then I heard her speak.

‘Your friend came to see me.’

‘Isabella.’

‘She told me she’d hidden my letters. She said she hadn’t done it in bad faith. She thought she was doing it for your own good. Perhaps she was right.’

I leaned over and searched her eyes. I caressed her lips and for the first time she smiled weakly.

‘I thought you’d forgotten me,’ she said.

‘I tried.’

Her face was marked by tiredness. The months I had not seen her had drawn lines on her skin and her eyes had an air of defeat and emptiness.

‘We’re no longer young,’ she said, reading my thoughts.

‘When have we ever been young, you and I?’

I pulled away the blanket and looked at her naked body stretched out on the white sheet. I stroked her neck and her breasts, barely touching her skin with my fingertips. I drew circles on her belly and traced the outline of the bones of her hips. I let my fingers play with the almost transparent hair between her thighs.

Cristina watched me without saying a word, her smile sad and her eyes half open.

‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

I bent over her and kissed her lips. She embraced me and we remained like that as the light from the candle sputtered then went out.

‘We’ll think of something,’ she whispered.

I woke up shortly after dawn and discovered I was alone in the bed. I sat up suddenly, fearing that Cristina had left again in the middle of the night. Then I saw her clothes and shoes on the chair and let out a deep sigh. I found her in the gallery, wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the floor by the fireplace, where a breath of blue fire emerged from a smouldering log. I sat down next to her and kissed her on the neck.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said, her eyes fixed on the fire.

‘You should have woken me.’

‘I didn’t dare. You looked as if you were sleeping for the first time in months. I preferred to explore your house.’

‘And?’

‘This house is cursed with sadness,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you set fire to it?’

‘And where would we live?’

‘In the plural?’

‘Why not?’

‘I thought you’d stopped writing fairy tales.’

‘It’s like riding a bike. Once you learn…’

Cristina looked at me.

‘What’s in that room at the end of the corridor?’

‘Nothing. Junk.’

‘It’s locked.’

‘Do you want to see it?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s only a house, Cristina. A pile of stones and memories. That’s all.’

Cristina nodded but looked unconvinced.

‘Why don’t we go away?’ she asked.

‘Where to?’

‘Far away.’

I couldn’t help smiling, but she didn’t smile back.

‘How far?’ I asked.

‘Far enough that people won’t know who we are, and won’t care either.’

‘Is that what you want?’ I asked.

‘Don’t you?’

I hesitated for a second.

‘What about Pedro?’ I asked, almost choking on the words.

She let the blanket fall from her shoulders and looked at me defiantly. ‘Do you need his permission to sleep with me?’

I bit my tongue.

Cristina looked at me, her eyes full of tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I had no right to say that.’

I picked up the blanket and tried to cover her, but she moved away, rejecting my gesture.

‘Pedro has left me,’ she said in a broken voice. ‘He went to the Ritz yesterday to wait until I’d gone. He said he knew I didn’t love him, that I married him out of gratitude or pity. He said he doesn’t want my compassion and that every day I spend with him pretending to love him only hurts him. Whatever I did he would always love me, he said, and that is why he doesn’t want to see me again.’

Her hands were shaking.

‘He’s loved me with all his heart and all I’ve done is make him miserable,’ she murmured.

She closed her eyes and her face twisted in pain. A moment later she let out a deep moan and began to hit her face and body with her fists. I threw myself on her and put my arms around her, holding her still. Cristina struggled and shouted. I pressed her against the floor, restraining her. Slowly she gave in, exhausted, her face covered in tears, her eyes reddened. We remained like that for almost half an hour, until I felt her body relaxing and she fell into a long silence. I covered her with the blanket and embraced her, hiding my own tears.

‘We’ll go far away,’ I whispered in her ear, not knowing whether she could hear or understand me. ‘We’ll go far away where nobody will know who we are, and won’t care either. I promise.’

Cristina tilted her head and looked at me, her face robbed of all expression, as if her soul had been smashed to pieces with a hammer. I held her tight and kissed her on the forehead. The rain was still whipping against the windowpanes. Trapped in that grey, pale light of a dead dawn, it occurred to me for the first time that we were sinking.

39

That same morning I abandoned my work for the boss. While Cristina slept I went up to the study and put the folder containing all the pages, notes and drafts for the project in an old trunk by the wall. My first impulse had been to set fire to it, but I didn’t have the courage. I had always felt that the pages I left behind were a part of me. Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives. Among all the strange creatures made of paper and ink that I’d brought into the world, this one, my mercenary offering to the promises of the boss, was undoubtedly the most grotesque. There was nothing in those pages that deserved anything better than to be burned, and yet they were still flesh of my flesh and I couldn’t find the courage to destroy them. I abandoned the work in the bottom of that trunk and left the study with a heavy heart, almost ashamed of my cowardice and the murky sense of paternity inspired in me by that manuscript of shadows. The boss would probably have appreciated the irony of the situation. All it inspired in me was disgust.