The pages of the book he imagined written in violet ink transported him to a palace in ancient Persia, where a young maiden had been cursed by a genie for spurning his amorous advances. The maiden was turned into a diamond as punishment for her hard heart and imprisoned in a bedchamber, cared for by a slave who polished her, made her sparkle every morning for the wicked genie’s delight. But under her veil and rings of gold, the slave hid the arts of a sorceress, and she took pity on the maiden. One day the slave brought in a divan, setting it under a window with bubbling fountains outside. Its damask silk held the power to counter any spell in the sunset’s rays. And so, when the bedchamber succumbed to purple light, the sorceress slave set the diamond on the divan and the maiden regained her human form. A secret door was immediately then opened for her lover to come in, a desert man concealed up to his eyes, exhausted from navigating the labyrinth hallways, guided at times by the poetry of desire, at others by the rattle between his thighs.
At first they had to learn to love according to the architecture of magic, for as soon as any part of the maiden’s body left the divan, it became diamond again, her lover suddenly delighting in the taste of stone. Disheveled by desperation, he would plead with his god to make it sunset again the next day. After weeks and months of ardor ending in the sparkle of a jewel, they became virtuosos of a calculated affair, cavorting fearlessly on the divan. But one night the sorceress slave spied on them from behind a folding screen and was surprised to see their amorous romps had ended, giving way to a melancholy that left them lying entwined on the divan.
Santiago finished his bath before the end of the book. As he toweled off, he imagined what he would do if Úrsula Perla Montoya lay on her divan at sunset and was transformed into a diamond. It wouldn’t matter, he thought. I’m prepared to love her in whatever form she takes: alive, dead, or in dreams.
Santiago had agreed to meet Isidro for one o’clock Mass at the Cristo del Olivar cathedral. The guard was waiting for him at the front door, a serious look on his face.
“The sky is falling, my friend; it just doesn’t know where to begin.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Madrid lay oppressed under the leaden obesity of clouds. They lay siege to each of its streets, plunging a normal Sunday of tapas and Mass into a tortured wait. People sat in bars eating potatoes sautéed in spicy tomato sauce and pickled anchovies, staring out at the sky. “It hasn’t let go. No, not yet,” they commented with beer foam on their lips. “But it’ll be a good one when it does.”
A group of young people played guitars and sang at Mass. Santiago stood to light candles for his ancestors: one for the great-great grandmother he knew only through her oak-scented presence; another for his mother, named after a flower; one more for Manuela Laguna, without any childish remorse; one more for Olvido with a shaky hand; and the last for Padre Rafael, to bring him peace. He sat back down with Isidro, singing quietly in his hoarse cricket warble, a reminder of his curse. He received Communion nervously and prayed under Isidro’s watchful eye. The guard listened intently for any prayers in the apocryphal gospel of Úrsula Perla Montoya.
The two went to a bar after church, where Santiago suddenly had a voracious appetite somehow related to the rain that was reluctant to fall. He was a thin young man with a French constitution and could not remember ever eating as much as he did that day. Isidro celebrated the boy’s appetite with the first four dishes, believing it a sign of good physical and mental health, but began to worry when he grew full and Santiago continued to order grilled prawns, mushrooms and garlic,
tortilla española,
and other delicacies, washing them all down with cold beer.
“Maybe you’ve got one of those parasites where you eat and eat but never get full.”
“If only the sky would clear, I wouldn’t be so hungry—or just rain and get it all over with.”
“What does the weather have to do with your stomach?” Isidro asked. “Maybe it’s love devouring everything you put inside?”
“That, too.”
Santiago kept eating until a rumble of thunder cracked the sky’s grief and his stomach shut at the very same second.
“Let’s go,” he said to Isidro.
They paid the bill and stepped into the street, where everything was the same as before the thunder. Clouds squeezed tightly so not a drop of rain would fall, abandoning the city to this anxious portent once again.
And so it was as Isidro napped on his couch to the background noise of television documentaries that Santiago baked cinnamon cake and palmiers. At about five that afternoon, Úrsula Perla Montoya opened her shutters. The fresh breeze of morning had grown profligate. Overwhelmed, sparrows sought refuge in holes under the roof where they fainted, as doves spiraled beakfirst into fountains.
It was on this morbidly drowsy Sunday that Santiago Laguna first touched the skin of the woman he had been searching for for five years. It happened when he handed her the plate with his baked goods. Úrsula answered the door just out of the shower, wearing a knee-length bathrobe, her hair in a towel turban. At first they simply brushed hands when Úrsula took the plate, but Santiago prolonged it into a touch, an extended taste of flesh as, for a fleeting moment, he longed to die and be resurrected all at once.
“I’m going to drop it,” Úrsula said, smiling at him.
Santiago let her go, following her down the dim hallway into the kitchen.
“This is the cinnamon cake I told you about last night. My grandmother taught me to make it.”
Paragraphs for Ursula’s new novel filled her head. She set the plate on the table. A bellyful of her neighbor would take her to her grave if she tried even one. She had eaten Santiago’s lemon cake for breakfast, and the taste of him filled her mouth.
“Would you like coffee or maybe a beer?” she asked.
“No, thank you.”
“Then how about you tell me another story, or more about you and your family?”
“I’ll tell you whatever you like, even if it displeases you and you chop off my head.”
“Let me change, then. It wouldn’t be polite to condemn you to death in my bathrobe.”
“You’re just fine with that towel on your head.”
An overwhelming heat stirred their emotions. Úrsula’s bathrobe, her arms, her knees, grew impossibly heavy. She wanted Santiago to wait in the living room while she put on a dress, but he asked her to show him where she worked.
“You already know what my study looks like.”
“It’s not the same as being there.”
It was smaller than it appeared through the window. Two corn plants stood in the corners Santiago could not see from his apartment. As soon as he walked into the room, they began to burst with new shoots. The only furniture was the desk, the chair, the divan, and a bookcase piled with scrolls among the books.
“What are those?”
Úrsula chose one, unrolling it with an adoration that brought her back to childhood.
“They’re my grandmother’s poems. She always wrote on parchment with the quill I inherited. She said she had an old soul and, despite the times, it was the only way she felt inspired.”
Long, pointed calligraphy ran across the parchment.
“What language is this?”
“Persian. My grandmother was born in Iran, in Shiraz, the city of poets. She raised me.”
“Is she still alive?”
“No, and neither are my parents. They were actors who spent all their time traveling. They died in a plane crash some years ago.”
“I’m an orphan, too.”
Úrsula put her hand on his cheek. She rolled up the parchment as Santiago’s heart palpitated.
“Can I ask what happened?”
“Of course. I said I’d tell you anything. My mother threw herself out a window when I was just a baby. She was lovesick—the risk of being born into a cursed family. My father died of kidney disease a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry. You’re so young.”
“I’m twenty-one.”
Úrsula unrolled the parchment to distract herself.
“Do you speak Persian?”
“Yes, my grandmother taught me.”
“Will you translate the poem for me?”
“Certainly. This one tells the story of a genie who refused to take pity on a young man’s eyes.”
Úrsula Perla Montoya began to recite verses in Persian, surrendering herself to the absurdity of the poetry. Though he could not understand the words, every hexameter stirred feelings, immersing him in effervescent, late-afternoon heat and the joy of being alive. When Úrsula finished, she let the scroll roll up and began to recite the poem again in Spanish, from memory, as her fingers twirled and untwirled locks of Santiago’s hair. He could not wait for the end and, profaning those hexameters, kissed her on the lips. The scar on his wrist erupted in a wound of irises. The parchment fell from Úrsula’s hands, and the towel from her head. The two lost themselves in a sleepless afternoon.
A torrent of water rushed up and down through the pipes, disturbing their neighbors’ siesta. Spots of mildew peeled from the walls. Úrsula undressed. Santiago lifted her by the waist onto the desk, her novel sailing through the air. They made love on the chair, against the bookshelf where scrolls exhaled golden desert sand and spells from centuries beyond mortal time. They wound up on the divan, crushing the peacock feather fan, Úrsula under the spell of this extraordinary creature Santiago Laguna, satiated but not full of her lover’s taste.
At nine o’clock that night the Madrid sky was still being tormented by the threat of a coming storm. Santiago said goodbye to Úrsula and kissed her collarbone.
“I have to go. I have a show in the café at ten.”
“Come by when you’re done. I’ll be waiting.”
A blockade of clouds stopped the night sky from arriving, sketching the moon like a ghostly blot. Although Santiago had showered and put on clean clothes, everything about him still smelled of Úrsula, so he did not sense the rain amid the cars and traffic lights, amid the streetlights and centuries-old houses. The first drops fell just as he reached the café. Only then did he recall the insatiable premonition from his dreams, and his bones seized up in fear of the patter of rain, its watery monotone, brilliant lightning, and riotous thunder.
The crowd was bigger than usual for a Sunday night, with customers ordering expensive cocktails and bottles of imported beer. The tables were mostly full. Nacha Pop was playing on the stereo, lights were low, flames fluttering in glass candleholders. Ceiling fans sliced through the heat above.
“You’re late,” the bartender said, serving Santiago the glass of whiskey he always drank before performing. “Just so you know, the boss is here tonight, so I won’t be going down to your favorite basement. You should also know I wouldn’t go down there anyhow because you haven’t been to see me all day, and yesterday you were an ass.”
“I’m with someone now, and she’s very important to me.” Santiago drank his whiskey in two gulps.
“You’re all a bunch of pricks,” the bartender replied, throwing a cloth into the sink. “And the better you are, the bigger the prick.”
The stage lights blinked, and Santiago walked over. The owner introduced him when the music ended, saying no one told a better story about the sea than this young man, even if he was from the frosty mountains and forests of Castile. Applause rang out. A spotlight hovered over him.
“They say that many years ago a phantom ship sailed the northern seas, terrorizing sailors and captains alike. A cold fog as thick as the manes of the dead blanketed water and sky so that nothing was clear, not even whether it was day or night.” Santiago had to stop.
The sky over Madrid had opened up, just like in his dream, and rain pelted the café windows, steaming asphalt and roofs in an agonizing release. The spectators sat mesmerized by the power of the storm.
“Few dared head out on such seas,” Santiago continued, “but those who did and made it back alive”—thunder crashed—“told that from out of the fog came the monstrous silhouette of a galleon fitted with mermaid cannons. The foam parted reverently and a vast silence reigned. They all knew what would happen next and covered their ears in vain, hoping to escape the terrible threat—the red bell that hung from the mainmast, as brilliant as fire.” His voice cracked. He had just noticed the woman with a white scarf over her hair sitting on a barstool. He had not seen her come in and could have sworn she was not there when he arrived. Wherever she came from, her back was now turned to the stage, like the day before.
A surge of thunder roared and lightning lit up the sky; the café windows shook.
“The bell was rung by a shadow as the name of one sailor was pronounced. No matter how that poor man cried and begged, the captain was forced to hand him over to the specter unless he wanted to suffer the same fate. For that phantom ship, once it filled its hold with victims, would set sail for hell. One day . . . or night . . . a young man arrived . . . with horseshoes on the soles of his boots . . . like a mule . . .” Santiago was forced to stop as honeysuckle choked his throat.
The murmur of patrons filled the bar.
“Tattooed on his tongue . . . was a list of his exploits and glories . . . He assured the people he could free them from the threat . . . of the phantom ship . . . in exchange for three barrels of gold . . . ‘All you have to do . . . is take . . . the red bell,’ he said. ‘The next time it rings . . . with the name . . . of some poor sod, I’ll go in his place . . . and take it.’” He was deathly pale. “And so he did. He took the bell no problem, but . . . became a fabulous . . . galleon . . .”
Santiago could not go on. A heavy silence extended out over the tables. The woman on the barstool turned, looked at Santiago with identical eyes burdened by a tomb of tears, and he was swallowed by the past. The woman stood, uncovered her hair, walked, alive, toward the stage, and told the end of the story.
“His neck stretched until it was as long as the mainmast, with the red bell hanging there. They say the fog disappeared and the man-boat sailed into the horizon, his tongue now a flag flapping in the breeze. A hundred years passed before they saw him again, on stormy nights, when the sound of his approach is like mule hoofs on the earth, and sailors tremble in fear. They know he will have to make the bell ring and steal their souls.”