The Labyrinth of the Spirits

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

  Alicia sighed. “And there am I, believing everything I read in the papers.”

  “Sure, you look just the type. But those were other times, when the pens that told lies in newspapers did so with a certain flair. The fact is that on more than one occasion I had to cut down Mataix’s texts just as we were going to press to make room for some last-minute publicity or an ill-timed column from one of the publisher’s friends or relatives. One day, when Mataix had come to the office to get paid for his contributions, he came up to me. I thought he was going to tell me off, but instead he shook my hand, introduced himself as if I didn’t know who he was, and thanked me for being the one who handled the scissors on his pieces, when there was no other option. ‘You have a good eye, Vilajuana,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t lose your touch here.’

  “Mataix had the gift of elegance. I’m not referring to his clothes, although he always dressed impeccably, with his three-piece suit and his round wire-rimmed glasses, which lent him a Proustian air, but without the madeleines. No, I mean in his manners, in the way he addressed people and the way he spoke. He was what old-school editors in chief call a rare bird. Besides, he was a generous man, who did favors without being asked and without expecting anything in return. In fact it was he who, shortly afterward, recommended me for a job at La Vanguardia: thanks to him I was able to escape from The Voice of Industry. By then Mataix hardly wrote for the papers anymore. He’d never liked it in the first place, and only did it to bump up his income in times of need. One of the series of novels he wrote for Barrido & Escobillas, The City of Mirrors, was quite popular at the time. I think that between them, he and David Martín kept the whole Barrido & Escobillas team afloat, and they worked incessantly. Martín, in particular, lost what little health and sanity he had left after frying his brains at the typewriter. Mataix, for family reasons, enjoyed a more comfortable situation.”

  “He came from a well-to-do family?”

  “Not exactly, but he had a stroke of luck—or maybe he didn’t, depending on how you look at it. He inherited the property of an uncle of his, Ernesto, a somewhat eccentric character known as the Sugar Cube Emperor. Mataix was Ernesto’s favorite nephew, or at least the only member of the family he didn’t detest. So, shortly after he got married, Víctor Mataix was able to move into an imposing old house next to the Carretera de las Aguas, on the slopes of Vallvidrera, which his uncle Ernesto had left him, together with some shares in a company of imported goods he’d established when he returned from Cuba.”

  “So Uncle Ernesto was a rich colonial?”

  “More like the poster boy for them all. He’d left Barcelona aged seventeen without two sticks to rub together, his hand in other people’s pockets. The Civil Guard were on the lookout for him, aiming to break his legs, but he miraculously managed to stow away in a merchant ship en route to Havana.”

  “And how did the Americas treat him?”

  “Much better than he treated them. When Uncle Ernesto returned to Barcelona on his own ship, dressed in white linen and with a Scandinavian wife thirty years his junior, just acquired by mail order, more than four decades had gone by. In that time, the Sugar Cube Emperor had won and lost fortunes, his own and other people’s, both in the sugar business and in the arms trade. Thanks to a well-stocked battalion of lovers and mistresses, he’d engendered enough bastard children to populate all the Caribbean islands and committed atrocities that, had there been a God on duty and a little justice, would have guaranteed him bed and breakfast in hell for ten thousand years.”

  “Had there been,” said Alicia.

  “Still, one could say that although there was no justice, there was at least a spot of irony. Such is heaven. They say that shortly after returning from Cuba, the Sugar Cube Emperor began to lose his mind thanks to a poison supplied during his last tropical dinner by a resentful mulatto cook, pregnant with malice and goodness knows what else. The loaded colonial ended up blowing his brains out in the attic of the house he’d only just moved into, convinced that there was something living in the house, something that crept along the walls and the ceiling and smelled like a serpent’s nest. . . . Something that slid nightly into his bedroom and nestled up beside him in his bed, to suck away his soul.”

  “Impressive,” said Alicia. “Are the theatrical touches yours?”

  “I borrowed them from Mataix, who included the anecdote, with some operatic embellishments, in one of the Labyrinth novels.”

  “What a shame.”

  “Reality never beats fiction, at least not quality fiction.”

  “And reality in this case was . . .”

  “In all probability something more mundane. The most reliable theory was already put forward on the day of Ernesto the nabob’s funeral, a huge event that took place in the cathedral in the presence of the bishop, the mayor, and all the menagerie of the city council. Not to mention all those to whom Uncle Ernesto had lent money, there to make quite sure he was dead so they wouldn’t have to give it back to him. But, as I was saying, the gossip of the day was that the only thing that slid between the sugar tycoon’s sheets was the housekeeper’s daughter, a seventeen-year-old girl not to be messed around with, who later in life acquired fame and fortune as a cabaret artist in the Paralelo theaters, calling herself Doris Laplace, and that what she sucked every night was not precisely his soul.”

  “So, the suicide . . .”

  “Assisted, it would appear. Everything seems to suggest that the magnate’s long-suffering new wife—and they say Nordic women are cold!—after putting up with years of marriage and serial infidelity, finally flipped her lid. One midsummer’s night she shot him in the face, the rumor goes, with the hunting gun he always kept next to his bed in case the Anarchists arrived.”

  “An exemplary tale.”

  “The lives of saints and sinners, a classic Barcelona genre. Whatever the true version of events, the fact is that the mansion was abandoned for years. Its reputation for spells and curses linked to it since the wealthy colonial baron placed the first stone never went away, not even when the newlyweds Mataix and his wife, Susana, settled there. Admittedly, the house was quite something. Once Mataix offered me a deluxe tour that sent shivers up my spine—though I have to admit I’m someone who prefers musical comedies and light romance. There were stairs that led nowhere, a corridor with mirrors placed to make you think someone was following you, and a cellar where a mosaic on the bottom of a swimming pool depicted the face of the mogul’s first Cuban wife, Leonor, who at nineteen, convinced that she was pregnant by a snake, had committed suicide by sticking a hairpin into her heart.”

  “How sweet. And is that where you sent Lomana?”

  Vilajuana smiled cunningly.

  “Did you tell him all this stuff about evil spirits from the great beyond and the haunted house on the hill? Lomana can be very superstitious and apprehensive about these things . . .”

  “I shouldn’t say this, but that’s the impression I got. I didn’t take much of a liking to the guy, so I preferred not to ruin his surprise by offering him any unrequested information.”

  “Do you believe in these things? Spells and curses?”

  “I believe in literature. And sometimes in the art of gastronomy, especially when it involves a good paella. The rest are just fibs or half measures, depending on how you look at it. I have a feeling that we’re quite similar in this respect. About literature, not gastronomy.”

  “So what happened then?” asked Alicia, eager to return to the story about Mataix.

  “To tell you the truth, I never heard Mataix complain about interference from the hereafter or anything like that. I’d say he believed in all this baloney even less than in the political harangues that in those days had already turned this country into a cackling henhouse. He’d just married Susana, with whom he was madly in love, and worked relentlessly in an office looking down on the whole of Barcelona. Susana was a frail, delicate creature. Her skin was almost transparent, and when you embraced her, you felt she
might break. She tired very easily and sometimes spent the whole day in bed, too weak to get up. Mataix was always worrying about her, but he loved her to bits, and I think she loved him too. I visited them there a couple of times, and although I must admit that, as I said, the house was a bit sinister for my taste, they did seem happy, despite everything. At least at first.

  “When Mataix went down to the city, as he used to say, he often came into the offices of La Vanguardia, and we’d go out to lunch together, or for a coffee. He always talked to me about the novel he was writing and would hand me a couple of pages to get my opinion, even if afterward he’d pay little attention to my comments. He used me as a guinea pig, so to speak. In those days Mataix was still a mercenary. He wrote under goodness knows how many pseudonyms at a fixed price per word. Susana’s health required constant medical attention and pricey medication, and Mataix would only allow the best specialists to see her. If this meant he had to work flat out at the expense of his own health, little did he care. Susana dreamed of getting pregnant. The doctors had already told her it would be complicated. And costly.”

  “But the miracle occurred.”

  “Yes. After several miscarriages and years of hardship, Susana became pregnant in 1931. Mataix lived in constant fear that she would lose the baby again, and perhaps her life. But for once everything went well. Susana had always wanted a daughter, so she could name her after a sister she had lost when she was a child.”

  “Ariadna.”

  “During the years when they were trying to conceive a child, Susana asked Mataix to begin a new book, different from all the others he’d written until then. A book that would only be for the girl she was dreaming of. Literally. Susanna said she’d seen her in dreams and had spoken to her.”

  “Is that the origin of the Labyrinth books?”

  “Yes. Mataix started writing the first installment of the series with the adventures of Ariadna in a magical Barcelona. I think he also wrote them for himself, not just for Ariadna. I always thought that the Labyrinth books were, in a way, a warning.”

  “About what?”

  “About what was coming. You must have been very young then, just a child, but in the years before the war, things already looked very bad. You could smell it. It was in the air . . .”

  “There’s a good title for your book.”

  Vilajuana smiled.

  “Do you think Mataix foresaw what was going to happen?”

  “He did, and so did many others. You had to be blind not to see it. He often spoke about it. Once or twice I heard him say that he was thinking of leaving the country, but Susana didn’t want to leave Barcelona. She thought that if they left, she would never get pregnant. And then it was too late.”

  “Tell me about David Martín. Did you know him?”

  Vilajuana rolled his eyes. “Martín? A little. I came across him on two or three occasions. Mataix introduced me to him one day when we’d arranged to meet in Bar Canaletas. They’d been good friends since they were very young, before Martín got a few screws loose, but Mataix was still very fond of him. To be honest, I thought he was the strangest person I’d met in my entire life.”

  “In what sense?”

  Vilajuana hesitated a few moments. “David Martín was a brilliant man, probably too brilliant for his own good. But in my modest opinion he was completely unhinged.”

  “Unhinged?”

  “He was mad. Mad as a hatter.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Call it intuition. Martín heard voices . . . and I don’t mean the voices of the muses.”

  “Do you mean he was schizophrenic?”

  “Who knows? What I do know is that Mataix was worried about him. Very worried. Mataix was like that—he worried about everyone except himself. It seems that Martín had got himself into God knows what sort of trouble, and after that they hardly saw each other anymore. Martín avoided people.”

  “Didn’t he have family who could help him?”

  “He didn’t have anyone. And if he did, he always ended up pushing them away. His only connection with the real world was a young girl he’d taken on as an apprentice, someone called Isabella. Mataix thought Isabella was the only person who kept Martín alive, doing her best to protect him from himself. Mataix used to say that the only real demon was Martín’s brain, which was eating him alive.”

  “The only demon? Were there more?”

  Vilajuana shrugged. “I wouldn’t know how to explain it to you without making you laugh.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well, the thing is this: Mataix once told me that David Martín thought he’d signed a contract with a mysterious publisher to write some sort of sacred text, a kind of bible for a new religion. Don’t look at me like that. According to Mataix, he used to meet up every so often with this character, someone called Andreas Corelli, to receive instructions from beyond the grave, or something like that.”

  “And Mataix naturally doubted Corelli’s existence.”

  “‘Doubted’ is putting it mildly. He had him well placed on his list of improbable figures, somewhere between Spring-Heeled Jack and the Tooth Fairy. Mataix asked me to make inquiries in publishing circles to see if we could find the alleged publisher. I did make inquiries. I left no stone unturned.”

  “And?”

  “The only Corelli I found was a Baroque composer called Arcangelo Corelli. You could call him the Vivaldi’s Vivaldi.”

  “So who was the Corelli that Martín was working for, or imagined he was working for?”

  “Martín thought he was some other sort of arcangelo, a fallen one.”

  The journalist placed two fingers on his forehead like horns and smiled mockingly.

  “The devil?”

  “With tail and hoofs. A Mephistopheles with a Savile Row tailor who had arrived from hell and drawn Martín into a Faustian pact to create an accursed book, the foundation of a new religion that would set fire to the world. As I was saying, mad as a hatter. And that’s how he ended.”

  “You mean in Montjuïc Prison?”

  “That was a bit later. At the start of the thirties David Martín, as a result of his delusions and that strange alliance with his tormentor, had to get the hell out of Barcelona when the police accused him of a series of crimes that were never solved. Apparently he managed to escape by the skin of his teeth. But imagine how mad he must have been that he could think of nothing better to do but return to Spain during the war. They arrested him in Puigcerdá, shortly after he’d crossed the Pyrenees, and he ended up in Montjuïc Castle. Like so many others. And like Mataix himself a bit later. That’s where they met up again after not having seen each other for years . . . a sad end if ever there was one.”

  “Do you know why he returned? Even if Martín wasn’t altogether sane, he must have realized that if he went back to Barcelona, he’d be arrested sooner or later . . .”

  Vilajuana shrugged. “Why do we make such stupid mistakes in life?”

  “For love, for money, out of spite . . .”

  “Deep down you’re a romantic, I knew it.”

  “For love, then?”

  “Who knows. I don’t know what else he was hoping to find in a place where half the country was murdering the other half in the name of some colored rags.”

  “The so-called Isabella?”

  “I don’t know. . . . I haven’t found that part of the jigsaw yet.”

  “Was Isabella the same person who a bit later married the bookseller Sempere?”

  Vilajuana looked at her, somewhat surprised. “How do you know that?”

  “Let’s say I have my sources.”

  “Which it would be nice if you shared with me.”

  “As soon as I can. You have my word. So was Isabella that same person?”

  “Yes. She was. Isabella Gispert, the daughter of the owners of the Gispert grocers, which is still behind Santa María del Mar. She was the person destined to become Isabella de Sempere.”

  “Do you thi
nk Isabella was in love with David Martín?”

  “May I remind you that she married the bookseller Sempere, not Martín.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” replied Alicia.

  “I suppose it doesn’t.”

  “Did you know her? Did you know Isabella?”

  Vilajuana nodded. “I was at her wedding.”

  “Did she seem happy?”

  “All brides are happy on their wedding day.”

  This time it was Alicia’s turn to smile maliciously. “What was she like?”

  The man lowered his eyes. “I only spoke to her once or twice.”

  “But she must have made an impression.”

  “Yes. Isabella made an impression.”

  “And?”

  “And she seemed to me one of those very rare people who make this dog’s world a place worth visiting.”

  “Did you go to the funeral?”

  Vilajuana nodded slowly.

  “Is it true she died of cholera?”

  A shadow crossed the journalist’s face. “That’s what they said.”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  The journalist shook his head.

  “So, why don’t you tell me the rest of the story?”

  “In all honesty, it’s a very sad story that I’d rather forget.”

  “Is that why you’ve spent so many years writing a book about it? A book I’m sure you know you’ll never be able to publish. At least not in this country . . .”

  Vilajuana smiled sadly. “Do you know what David Martín said to me, the last time I saw him? It was on a night when the three of us, Mataix, Martín, and me, had drunk a glass too many in El Xampanyet to celebrate Víctor finishing his first Labyrinth book.”

  Alicia shook her head.

  “I don’t know why, but the conversation drifted toward the old subject of writers and alcohol. Martín, who could drink a bathful of liquor and still remain lucid, told me something that night that I have never forgotten. ‘One drinks to remember, and one writes to forget.’”