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[9]A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or
a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the
sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he
succeeds in not letting any¬one discover his lack of talent,
the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head,
a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his
name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive
him. A writer is condemned to remember that mo¬ment, because
from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.
My first time came one faraway day in December 1917. I was
sev¬enteen and worked at The Voice of Industry, a
newspaper that had seen bet¬ter days and now languished in a
barn of a building that had once housed a sulfuric acid factory.
The walls still oozed the corrosive vapor that ate away at
furniture and clothes, sapping the spirits, consuming even the
soles of shoes. The newspaper’s headquarters rose behind the
forest of an¬gels and crosses of the Pueblo Nuevo cemetery;
from afar, its outline merged with the mausoleums silhouetted
against the horizon --- a skyline stabbed by hundreds of chimneys
and factories that wove a perpetual twilight of scarlet and black
above Barcelona.
On the night that was about to change the course of my life, the
newspaper’s deputy editor, Don Basilio Moragas, saw fit to
summon me, just before closing time, to the dark cubicle at the far
end of the editorial staff room that doubled as his office and
cigar den. Don Basilio was a forbidding- looking man with a bushy
moustache who did not suffer fools and who subscribed to the theory
that the liberal use of adverbs and adjectives was the mark of a
pervert or someone with a vitamin defi¬ciency. Any journalist
prone to florid prose would be sent off to write fu¬neral
notices for three weeks. If, after this penance, the culprit
relapsed, Don Basilio would ship him off permanently to the "House
and Home" pages. We were all terrified of him, and he knew it.
"Did you call me, Don Basilio?" I ventured timidly.
The deputy editor looked at me askance. I entered the office,
which smelled of sweat and tobacco in that order. Ignoring my
presence, Don Basilio continued to read through one of the articles
lying on his table, a red pencil in hand. For a couple of minutes,
he machine- gunned the text with corrections and amputations,
muttering sharp comments as if I weren’t there. Not knowing
what to do, and noticing a chair placed against the wall, I slid
toward it.
"Who said you could sit down?" muttered Don Basilio without
raising his eyes from the text.
I quickly stood up and held my breath. The deputy editor sighed,
let his red pencil fall, and leaned back in his armchair, eyeing me
as if I were some useless piece of junk.
"I've been told that you write, Martín."
I gulped. When I opened my mouth only a ridiculous, reedy voice
emerged.
"A little, well, I don't know, I mean, yes, I do write..."
"I hope you write better than you speak. And what do you write
--- if that's not too much to ask?"
"Crime stories. I mean..."
"I get the idea."
The look Don Basilio gave me was priceless. If I'd said I
devoted my time to sculpting figures for Nativity scenes out of
fresh dung I would have drawn three times as much enthusiasm from
him. He sighed again and shrugged his shoulders.
"Vidal says you're not altogether bad. He says you stand out. Of
course, with the sort of competition in this neck of the woods, one
doesn't have to run very fast. Still, if Vidal says so."
Pedro Vidal was the star writer at The Voice of
Industry. He penned a weekly column on crime and lurid events
--- the only thing worth read¬ing in the whole paper. He was
also the author of a dozen modestly suc¬cessful thrillers
about gangsters in the Raval quarter carrying out bedroom intrigues
with ladies of high society. Invariably dressed in im¬peccable
silk suits and shiny Italian moccasins, Vidal had the looks and the
manner of a matinee idol: fair hair always well combed, a pencil
moustache, and the easy, generous smile of someone who feels
comfort¬able in his own skin and at ease with the world. He
belonged to a family whose forebears had made their pile in the
Americas in the sugar busi¬ness and, on their return to
Barcelona, had bitten off a large chunk of the city’s
electricity grid. His father, the patriarch of the clan, was one of
the newspaper’s main shareholders, and Don Pedro used its
offices as a play¬ground to kill the tedium of never having
worked out of necessity a sin¬gle day in his life. It mattered
little to him that the newspaper was losing money as quickly as the
new automobiles that were beginning to circulate around Barcelona
leaked oil: with its abundance of nobility, the Vidal dynasty was
now busy collecting banks and plots of land the size of small
principalities in the new part of town known as the Ensanche.
Pedro Vidal was the first person to whom I had dared show rough
drafts of my writing when, barely a child, I carried coffee and
cigarettes round the staff room. He always had time for me: he read
what I had written and gave me good advice. Eventually, he made me
his assistant and would allow me to type out his drafts. It was he
who told me that if I wanted to bet on the Russian roulette of
literature, he was willing to help me and set me on the right path.
True to his word, he had now thrown me into the clutches of Don
Basilio, the newspaper's Cerberus.
"Vidal is a sentimentalist who still believes in those
profoundly un-Spanish myths such as meritocracy or giving
opportunities to those who deserve them rather than to the current
favorite. Loaded as he is, he can allow himself to go around being
a free spirit. If I had one hundredth of the cash he doesn't even
need I would have devoted my life to honing sonnets and little
twittering nightingales would come to eat from my hand, captivated
by my kindness and charm."
"Señor Vidal is a great man!" I protested.
"He's more than that. He's a saint, because although you may
look scruffy he's been banging on at me for weeks about how
talented and hardworking the office boy is. He knows that deep down
I'm a softy and, besides, he's assured me that if I give you this
break he'll present me with a box of Cuban cigars. And if Vidal
says so, it's as good as Moses coming down from the mountain with
the lump of stone in his hand and the revealed truth shining from
his forehead. So, to get to the point, be¬cause it's Christmas
and because I want your friend to shut up once and for all, I'm
offering you a head start, against wind and tide."
"Thank you so much, Don Basilio. I promise you won't regret
it."
"Don't get too carried away, boy. Let's see, what do you think
of the indiscriminate use of adjectives and adverbs?"
"I think it's a disgrace and should be set down in the penal
code," I replied with the conviction of a zealot.
Don Basilio nodded in approval.
"You're on the right track, Martín. Your priorities are
clear. Those who make it in this business have priorities, not
principles. This is the plan. Sit down and concentrate, because I'm
not going to tell you twice."
The plan was as follows. For reasons that Don Basilio thought
best not to set out in detail, the back page of the Sunday edition,
which was traditionally reserved for a short story or a travel
feature, had fallen through at the last minute. The content was to
have been a fiery narrative in a patriotic vein about the exploits
of Catalan medieval knights who saved Christianity and all that was
decent under the sun, starting with the Holy Land and ending with
the banks of our Llobregat delta. Unfortunately, the text had not
arrived in time or, I suspected, Don Basilio simply didn't want to
publish it. This left us, only six hours before deadline, with no
other substitute for the story than a full- page
ad¬vertisement for whalebone corsets that guaranteed perfect
hips and full immunity from the effects of buttery by-products. The
editorial board had opted to take the bull by the horns and make
the most of the liter¬ary excellence that permeated every
corner of the newspaper. The problem would be overcome by
publishing a four- column human interest piece for the
entertainment and edification of our loyal family- oriented
readership. The list of proven talent included ten names, none of
which, needless to say, was mine.
"Martín, my friend, circumstances have conspired so that
not one of the champions on our payroll is on the premises or can
be contacted in time. With disaster imminent, I have decided to
give you your first crack at glory."
"You can count on me."
"I'm counting on five double- spaced pages in six hours, Don
Edgar Allan Poe. Bring me a story, not a speech. If I want a
sermon, I'll go to Midnight Mass. Bring me a story I have not read
before and, if I have read it, bring it to me so well written and
narrated that I won't even notice."
I was about to leave the room when Don Basilio got up, walked
round his desk, and rested a hand, heavy and large as an anvil, on
my shoulder. Only then, when I saw him close up, did I notice a
twinkle in his eyes.
"If the story is decent I’ll pay you ten pesetas. And if
it's better than decent and our readers like it, I’ll publish
more."
"Any specific instructions, Don Basilio?" I asked.
"Yes. Don't let me down."
* * *
I spent the next six hours in a trance. I installed myself at a
table that stood in the middle of the editorial room and was
reserved for Vidal, on the days when he felt like dropping by. The
room was deserted, submerged in a gloom thick with the smoke of a
thousand cigarettes. Closing my eyes for a moment, I conjured up an
image, a cloak of dark clouds spilling down over the city in the
rain, a man walking under cover of shadows with blood on his hands
and a secret in his eyes. I didn't know who he was or what he was
fleeing from, but during the next six hours he was going to become
my best friend. I slid a page into the typewriter and without
pausing, I proceeded to squeeze out everything I had inside me. I
quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image
and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I
wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then
rewrote it again. My only company was the incessant clacking of the
typewriter echoing in the darkened hall and the large clock on the
wall exhausting the minutes left until dawn.
* * *
Shortly before six o'clock in the morning I pulled the last
sheet out of the typewriter and sighed, utterly drained. My brain
felt like a wasp's nest. I heard the heavy footsteps of Don
Basilio, who had emerged from one of his brief naps and was
approaching unhurriedly. I gathered up the pages and handed them to
him, not daring to meet his gaze. Don Basilio sat down at the next
table and turned on the lamp. His eyes skimmed the text, betraying
no emotion. Then he rested his cigar on the end of the table for a
moment, glared at me, and read out the first line:
Night falls on the city and the streets carry the scent of
gunpowder like the breath of a curse.
Don Basilio looked at me out of the corner of his eye and I hid
behind a smile that didn't leave a single tooth uncovered. Without
saying another word, he got up and left with my story in his hands.
I saw him walking toward his office and closing the door behind
him. I stood there, petrified, not knowing whether to run away or
await the death sentence. Ten minutes later --- it felt more like
ten years to me --- the door of the deputy editor's office opened
and the voice of Don Basilio thundered right across the
department.
"Martín. In here. Now."
I dragged myself along as slowly as I could, shrinking a
centimeter or two with every step, until I had no alternative but
to show my face and look up. Don Basilio, the fearful red pencil in
hand, was staring at me icily. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was
dry. He picked up the pages and gave them back to me. I took them
and turned to go as quickly as I could, telling myself that there
would always be room for another shoeshine boy in the lobby of
Hotel Colón.
"Take this down to the composing room and have them set it,"
said the voice behind me.
I turned round, thinking I was the object of some cruel joke.
Don Basilio pulled open the drawer of his desk, counted out ten
pesetas, and put them on the table.
"This belongs to you. I suggest you buy yourself a better suit
with it --- I've seen you wearing the same one for four years and
it's still about six sizes too big. Why don't you pay a visit to
Señor Pantaleoni at his shop in Calle Escudellers? Tell him I
sent you. He'll look after you."
"Thank you so much, Don Basilio. That's what I'll do."
"And start thinking about another of these stories for me. I'll
give you a week for the next one. But don't fall asleep. And let's
see if we can have a lower body count this time --- today's readers
like a slushy ending in which the greatness of the human spirit
triumphs over adversity, that sort of rubbish."
"Yes, Don Basilio."
The deputy editor nodded and held out his hand to me. I shook
it.
"Good work, Martín. On Monday I want to see you at the desk
that belonged to Junceda. It's yours now. I'm putting put you on
the crime beat."
"I won't fail you, Don Basilio."
"No, you won't fail me. You'll just cast me aside sooner or
later. And you'll be right to do so, because you're not a
journalist and you never will be. But you're not a crime novelist
yet, even if you think you are. Stick around for a while and we'll
teach you a thing or two that will always come in handy."
At that moment, my guard down, I was so overwhelmed by gratitude
that I wanted to hug that great bulk of a man. Don Basilio, his
fierce mask back in place, gave me a steely look and pointed toward
the door.
"No scenes, please. Close the door. And happy Christmas."
"Happy Christmas."
* * *
The following Monday, when I arrived at the editorial room ready
to sit at my own desk for the very first time, I found a coarse
gray envelope with a ribbon and my name on it in the same
recognizable type that I had been typing out for years. I opened
it. Inside was a framed copy of my story from the back page of the
Sunday edition, with a note saying:
"This is just the beginning. In ten years I'll be the
apprentice and you'll be the teacher. Your friend and colleague,
Pedro Vidal."
Excerpted from THE ANGEL’S GAME © Copyright 2010 by
Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Reprinted with permission by Doubleday. All
rights reserved.
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The Angel’s Game