The Serpent Papers (48 page)

Oriol leads me through a winter market. Little stalls with taupe-coloured shelters. Peaks and waves of fabric. At long tables, men in aprons offer sweet marmalades, honeys, beeswax candles. Cured meats.

‘Try this –’ Oriol gives me a marzipan square covered in candied pine nuts. It is sweet and damp on the tongue. A warm buzz, though hands stay inside pockets, scarves wrapped round cold necks, moisture drips from red noses. I feel his weight drift towards me. He points out gargoyles in the Gothic, a secret fountain, the grave of a philandering bishop, the square of a massacre. He pushes my attention to the ferns growing out of balconies, the sun-faded roofs.

‘This is my city,’ he says again and again. ‘My home. I belong here.’

I hear him calling, a siren-voiced yearning.
Come closer.
He walks quickly – ‘The Born? You’re staying in the Born?’ In the restaurants before the cathedral he buys me a beer and tapas.
Black bread. Salt cracked between forefinger and thumb.
I watch him move his hands, playing a beat on the tablecloth, running fingers through his hair. He is kind. Gentle.
Lonely.
He feels lonely. When we are finished I do not know what to do. I do not want him to know where I live. For privacy. For intimacy with myself; no one from her world can be permitted into mine. I remind myself.
An arm’s length. A healthy distance. For clarity’s sake.
Another beer. I giggle.
Stupid.
A third. A fourth. At the door to my apartment I stop him. He looks up at the house number, my windows. I put out my hand. ‘You’re not coming in.’ He leans in towards me, body closer – laughing by my ear. ‘You really are very pretty for a researcher.’
I brush him aside. His lips close to my own.
Oriol Duran—

I open my mouth to speak when the chuntering rips through me. Chattering down through the crown of my skull. Laughing. Singing. Crying. Louder. They come louder and louder. I lose control of my body, slumping forward onto his shoulder, my face collapsing into his chest, my throat swelling – but I am silent! I keep them out with all my power.
You will not come through – you will not come uninvited.

I smell the full-bodied man of Oriol – feel the hard muscle of his chest – his body dips under my weight, but he holds me up against him, I grind my teeth together.
You will not come out, not here, not now.
The blood rushes from my forehead, tingling in my elbows and knees and I know that they have come for me – that nothing I do will keep them out. With the familiar certainty of the damned, I accept their presence. These episodes – the doctors say – are psychological side effects of physical relapses caused by a degenerative neurological disorder that has created an epicentre of lesions in the tissue of my brain. The doctors call these psychic constructs
hallucinatory incubi
. That is an idiotic name for them. I am meant to breathe deeply –
relax, damn it, relax
 
–
I am meant to enter the state of sleeping and let them fade away . . .

‘You are a funny little thing,’ Oriol whispers into my ear. ‘You’ve had too much to drink.’ I feel my body lift off the ground, arms around my shoulder and legs. The tangy jingle of keys in the latch.

* * *

Remember
.

I look closer. Slither of woman in violet darkness.
Think of your family. Of your history
.
Think of your love, of your happiness. Think of your future, your past, your present.
First there was the theatre and only the theatre.
Yes. That’s good
.
The theatre was the cave.
A watery sheen. She has run to the edge of the stage and waits for the lights to illumine.
Molt bé! Molt bé!
grins a bearded gentleman in spectacles, who lifts her on his shoulders and pirouettes before setting her down on the floorboards.
You were born to dance, my Maca! Querida Estimada, t’estimo! Escolta
 . . . sounds like rich
xocolata
and cold water.
We must build the walls here
, he says,
and cover the orchestra pit so they may walk out into the audience and appear to be floating.

Spotlights explode into her consciousness, supernovas brighter than the loveliest star, and then the floor lights spring out and Dance! With a
pop
,
pop
,
pop
and the little girl runs her hands in the liquid gold, watching the shadows as they form on the wall. A red lifeline glows round her fingers and she shrieks and giggles, playing in the dust clouds that rise around the lights, and the steam, for the air inside the theatre is damp. If she holds her hands there long enough and squints, she will see her bones, but the stage manager finds her then and
tsk
,
tsk
, pulls the little girl into her arms who says to the woman –
Mama! Mama! A kiss on the forehead.
At night she sleeps at the house of her guardian, and by day he brings her to the theatre where she sits in the wings with the pulleys and rope on a fly box and watches the people build new universes, the houses with their swinging doors and chequered tablecloths, the painted mountains and powdered flowers, the installation of the truss with its gels that change the colour of the light and all emotions with a delicious, whirring
click
,
click! I have made this world for you, and only you, my nightingale.
Her mother whispers in her ear and in that instant, she is gone, swept into the spirit of the wind, leaving the child standing alone in the centre of the darkened stage, staring into a void. In her pocket the girl reaches for the golden dials, the spheres made by her mother, engraved with the magic letters, and spins them intently, watching the combinations as they form.

B, C, D

First there was the theatre and only the theatre / As man is a pen so he is a knife.
But tonight it is a dream. She is alone. But this is what she remembers.
Com
,
Medi
,
l’Extrem
, and she remarks that the legend is true. That the coming of Love brings a certain quality of Truth. You will see it all.
The secrets of the beloved are revealed in the secrets of the lover / The secrets of the lover are revealed in the secrets of the beloved.
Past–Present–Future. But in the meantime she drifts.
The only rule of history that was any good was the rule taught her by her family. That in the world of the living, past–present–future means one thing and one thing only: an old maxim of the arts which wove round her thoughts in circles, like a prayer of intent.
The ground slopes gently where she rests. The pain, which had been vast, has left her, and now there is only dampness around her ears, growing cold against the stones and the world very quiet beneath her. For a long time she is still. There are sirens in the distance and a car that crosses the upper line of the square. She can feel the cement cold under her fingers. She has been left close to the tree and she is grateful. If she had the movement of her hands, she would reach out and touch it, and hold herself against it – to be so close to something living! She does not want to go, not yet, she lies there and watches the clouds part above her head and tries not to think at all. To be empty and clear and remember her childhood. But – no. The memory is gone. When she closes her eyes, this is what she hears:
Follow. Me.
Two words, spoken soft and low.

* * *

I sit bolt upright in bed, pushing the covers away, breaking the dream, and look down at my clothed chest, running my hands over my stomach. My skin clammy and warm, jeans crusted to my legs.
Why have I gone to sleep in my clothes?
The air oppressively hot. I have left the heater on and now it stifles everything. My body rebels against the night. I stand and walk to the tall balcony window that interrupts the exterior wall of my bedroom. I pause here, pressing my forehead into the glass, looking out over the jagged line of Barcelona. A second city, the rooftop gardens, linked exterior patios, laundry lines, gargoyles and church steeples, cranes’ nests, a million mismatched TV radials. Hidden from view, I open the balcony windows, stepping out into the cool night air. The roar of the city devours me.

There is a book. She has hidden a book.

But where?

I stumble to the shower, cleaning my hair twice, scrubbing down my body with a hard stone, pushing suds over my chest and legs and arms. Time stretches and slows. I do not know if I am there for minutes or hours but I do not care. I lean my head against the glass of the shower walls and dissolve into the steam. I make a cup of chamomile tea naked in the kitchen, wet feet dripping on the floor. It is only then that I notice the flowers: a bouquet of yellow tulips in an ornamental vase. A folded note in confident English:

CALL ME. LET ME KNOW HOW YOU ARE.

Oriol.

P.S. DOES THIS HAPPEN OFTEN?

Shit
,
I think.
He got me inside. How long did he stay here? What did he see? Nothing on my desk but a laptop.
I send a quick text, too embarrassed to ask.
Thank you. Sorry to put you in that position.

He writes back immediately: ‘
Res, Nena, res.
ALL COOL.’

A second message flashes up: ‘
I know something about you. You’re real
.’

A third: ‘
You have a bed in the city. A home to sleep in.
’ Do I tell Fabregat?
No
,
I think.
Too embarrassing. Besides . . 
. Two pills into my mouth and swallow with water.
You’ve got this under control.

II

A FATE LIKE HERS

I emerge with a pounding migraine. The lights of my apartment are dimmed and I stay flat in my bed, breathing carefully, so as not to forget myself in the repeated hammering on my skull. The plaster on the ceiling has lumps and I make out the shape of a rabbit. The skin around my ears itches, tingling down my back into my wrists. I check my alarm. I’ve slept through the best hour of the day.
Why? Why do you do this to yourself?
Bare feet on linoleum floor. Outside my barred window rests winter. She renders this city limp like the slit belly of a fish, cold and wet and slippery. A silver sheen to its roofs and radars. A damp, pernicious darkness, even in the afternoon sun. Grey walls consume the light, birthing fungi and rot – the line of mildew running round the corner of my roof. I stumble to the bathroom. The world spins. Something has died in my mouth and buried itself in the stale mulch of day-old liquor.
Is it worth it?
The mirror above the sink is cracked. I’m shocked by the circles under my eyes. Pale formaldehyde skin.
You have come here to locate the palimpsest pages of a book.
Nothing more, nothing less
.
Do not complicate it.
But even I know that is a lie –
You are seduced. You want to know, as much as the others did. You want to understand what would drive a man to murder, and a woman to sacrifice her life and the lives of three others, for that is what I am convinced she did.
I distract myself from the stomping noises coming from the roof. A ghost has moved into the attic above my apartment and started dragging small objects from one side to the other
. Pat, pat, BANG!
goes the ghost. Or the footsteps of pigeons? My head throbs louder. Iron-smelting by my left temple. I run my hands under harsh water. The boiler is not working. My knuckles turn a bright inflamed red. And then I sense it.
A presence in the room.
A wind blows up from nowhere. Sliding through the apartment – rustling my pages – but I know that I have opened no windows, and this wind is dangerous, other-worldly. I shiver, and try to ignore it.
You are summoning things, Anna, and they are coming as you call. Do you follow? Do you follow?