'Tell me, Oscar. What's happening in the world these days?'

He asked that question in such a way that I thought I'd cause a stir if I told him that World War II had ended.

'Nothing much, frankly,' I said, under Marina's watchful eye. 'There are elections coming up . . .'

This awoke German's interest. He stopped moving his spoon about and considered the matter.

'And, if I may ask, on what side do your sympathies lie, Oscar? The right or the left?'

'Oscar is a nihilist, Dad,' Marina cut in.

The piece of bread I was eating got stuck in my throat. I didn't know what the word meant, but it sounded like an anarchist on a bike. German eyed me carefully, intrigued.

'The idealism of youth . . .' he murmured. 'I understand, I understand. At your age I also read Bakunin. It's like the measles: until you've had it . . .'

I glared at Marina, who was licking her lips like a cat. She winked at me then looked away. German was observing me with a benevolent curiosity. I nodded in agreement and went back to sipping my soup. At least that way I wouldn't have to speak and I'd avoid putting my foot in it. We ate in silence. I soon noticed that on the other side of the table German was falling asleep. When the spoon finally slipped from his fingers, Marina stood up and, without saying a word, loosened his silvery silk bow tie. German sighed. One of his hands shook a little. Holding her father's arm, Marina helped him up. German nodded with resignation and gave me a faint smile, almost embarra.s.sed. He seemed to have aged fifteen years in the s.p.a.ce of a breath.

'Please excuse me, Oscar . . .' he said in a tiny voice. 'Despite all my good intentions, I don't seem to be getting any younger . . .'

I stood up as well and glanced questioningly at Marina. She refused my help, asking me to stay in the dining room. Her father leaned on her and I watched them both leave the room.

'It's been a pleasure, Oscar . . .' came German's tired voice, fading into the shadowy corridor. 'Come and visit us again, come again . . .'

I heard his footsteps disappearing inside the house and waited in the candlelight for Marina's return. Half an hour elapsed, and the atmosphere in the house was starting to get to me. When I felt certain that Marina wasn't coming back, I began to worry. I wondered whether to go and look for her, but I didn't think it was right for me to nose around the house without having been invited. I thought of leaving a note, but didn't have anything to write with. It was beginning to get dark, so the best thing for me to do was leave. I'd come by the following day, after lessons, to make sure everything was all right. I was surprised to realise that after only half an hour of not seeing Marina I was already searching for excuses to return. I went out through the kitchen door and walked across the garden to the gate. Over the city the sky was growing darker with pa.s.sing clouds.

As I made my way slowly back to the boarding school the events of the day filed through my mind. By the time I walked up the steps to my room on the fourth floor I was convinced that this had been the strangest day of my life. But had I been able to buy a ticket to relive it all over again, I would have done so without a second thought.

CHAPTER 7.

THAT NIGHT I DREAMED THAT I WAS TRAPPED INSIDE an enormous kaleidoscope. A diabolical creature of which I could only see a large eye through the lens was making it turn. All around me the world splintered into a twisting maze of optical illusions. Insects. Black b.u.t.terflies. I woke up with a start as if undiluted caffeine were coursing through my veins instead of blood. That feverish state of mind stayed with me all day. Monday lessons filed past like trains that weren't stopping at my station. JF noticed immediately.

'You're usually in the clouds,' he said. 'But today you're in outer s.p.a.ce. Are you ill?'

I rea.s.sured him with a vague gesture, then checked the clock above the blackboard. Half past three. Lessons finished in just under two hours. An eternity. Outside, the rain pattered on the windowpanes.

When the bell rang I slipped out as fast as I could, standing up JF with whom in other circ.u.mstances I would have gone on one of our usual strolls into the real world. I hurried down endless corridors to the exit. The gardens and the fountains at the front of the school paled under a gathering storm. I didn't have an umbrella with me, not even a hood. The sky was a leaden slab. The street lamps burned like matchsticks.

I started to run, dodging puddles and overflowing drains, until I reached the school gates. Outside, water gushed down the road in rivulets. Soaked to the skin, I ran down narrow silent streets. The sewers roared beneath my feet. The city seemed to be slowly sinking into a black ocean. It took me ten minutes to reach the gates of Marina and German's house. By then my clothes and shoes were hopelessly sodden. On the horizon twilight faded into a curtain of greyish marble. I thought I heard something snap behind me at the bottom of the road, and I turned round, startled. For a second I felt as if somebody had been following me. But there was n.o.body there, just the rain pelting down furiously into the puddles.

I slid through the gate. Bright flashes of lightning guided me to the house, where I was greeted by the grinning mermaid in the fountain. Trembling with cold, I reached the kitchen door at the back of the old mansion. It was open. I went in. The house lay in almost complete darkness. Then I remembered what German had said about the absence of electricity.

Until that moment it hadn't occurred to me to think that I hadn't even been invited. This was the second time I was slipping into that house for no reason. I thought of leaving, but the storm was howling outside. I sighed. My hands were aching with cold and I could barely feel the tips of my fingers. I coughed like a dog and felt my heartbeat hammering in my temples. My damp clothes were stuck to my body. I was frozen. 'My kingdom for a towel,' I thought.

'Marina?' I called.

The echo of my voice died away inside the large old house. I became acutely aware of the blanket of shadows spreading around me. They seemed to be moving. Only the flashes of lightning penetrating through the windows afforded brief glimpses of the contours, like the flash of a camera, too quick for the eye.

'Marina?' I called again. 'It's me, Oscar . . .'

I stepped timidly further into the house, my sodden shoes squelching as I walked. I stopped when I reached the dining hall where we'd had lunch the day before. The table was empty, the chairs deserted.

'Marina? German?'

No answer came. In the deepening gloom I spied the outline of a candlestick and a box of matches resting on a dresser. It took my wrinkled, numb fingers five attempts to light the flame.

When I raised the flickering light an eerie glow filled the room. I set off down the corridor along which I'd seen Marina and her father disappear the day before.

The corridor led to another large room, also crowned by a chandelier, whose crystals gleamed in the dark like a diamond merry-go-round. The house was peopled with slanting shadows projected by the storm through the windowpanes. Old pieces of furniture and armchairs lay under white sheets. A marble staircase led to the first floor. I walked over to it, feeling like an intruder. Two yellow eyes shone at the top of the stairs. I heard a meow. Kafka. I let out a sigh of relief. A second later the cat withdrew into the shadows. I stopped and looked around me: I'd left a trail of footprints in the dust.

'Anyone home?' I called out again. There was no reply.

I imagined that large room some decades ago, in all its finery and splendour, with an orchestra and dozens of dancing couples dressed up to the nines. Now it looked like the ballroom of a sunken ship. The walls were covered with oil paintings all of them portraits of a woman. I recognised her: she was the same woman who appeared in the painting I'd seen the first night I'd sneaked into the house. The perfection and artistry evident in each brushstroke and the ethereal luminosity exuding from those pictures were uncanny. I wondered who the artist might be. Even I realised that they were all painted by the same hand. The lady seemed to be watching me from every angle. It wasn't hard to notice the striking resemblance between her and Marina. The same lips on a pale, almost transparent face. The same build, slender and fragile, like a porcelain figurine. The same sad deep ash-coloured eyes. I felt something brush against my ankle. Kafka was purring at my feet. I crouched down and stroked his silvery coat.

'Where's your mistress, killer boy?'

Kafka replied with a sad meow. There was n.o.body there. I listened to the rain scratching at the roof. It sounded like thousands of water spiders scuttling through the attic. I imagined that Marina and German must have gone out, though I couldn't think what for. Anyhow, it was none of my business. I stroked Kafka and decided I had to leave before they returned.

'One of us shouldn't be here,' I murmured to Kafka. 'And that's me.'

Suddenly the fur on the cat's back stood on end. I felt his muscles tense like steel cables under my hand. Kafka meowed with panic. I was wondering what could have frightened the animal like that when I noticed it. The smell. The same stench of animal rot I had smelled in the greenhouse. I felt nauseous.

I looked up. A curtain of rain veiled the windows, but I was able to make out the blurred shape of the mermaid in the fountain outside. Instinctively I knew something was wrong. There was another figure keeping her company. I stood up and moved closer to the French windows. The silhouette turned round. I stopped, petrified. I couldn't make out its face, just a dark figure wrapped in a cloak. The stranger was watching me I was quite sure and he knew I was watching him. I stood there unmoving for an instant that felt endless. Seconds later the figure retreated into the shadows. When the next flash of lightning broke over the garden, the stranger was no longer there. It took me a while to realise that the stench had disappeared with him.

All I could think of doing was to sit and wait for German and Marina's return. The thought of venturing outside was not tempting: it wasn't just the storm I was concerned about. I dropped into a huge armchair. Slowly the tapping of the rain and the faint glow floating around the large room lulled me to sleep. At some point I heard the sound of the main door opening and then footsteps inside the house. I awoke from my trance and my heart skipped a beat. I heard voices coming from the corridor. A candle. Kafka ran towards the light just as German and his daughter stepped into the room. Marina threw me an icy look.

'What are you doing here, Oscar?'

I mumbled an incoherent reply. German smiled and looked at me with curiosity.

'Goodness gracious, Oscar. You're soaking! Marina, go and fetch some clean towels for Oscar . . . Come here, Oscar, let's light a fire. It's a dreadful night . . .'

I sat facing the fireplace, holding a cup of hot broth Marina had prepared for me. I made up some dubious explanation for my presence and was careful to leave out the part about the figure I'd seen through the window or the dreadful stench that had accompanied it. German readily accepted my unlikely account and didn't seem in the least bit annoyed by my intrusion; on the contrary. Marina was another matter. Her eyes smouldered. I was afraid that by stupidly slipping into her home again, as if I was making a habit of it, I might have harmed our friendship beyond repair. She didn't utter a single word during the half-hour we sat in front of the fire. When German excused himself and wished me goodnight, I feared that my ex-friend was going to kick me out unceremoniously and tell me never to come back again.

'Here it comes,' I thought. 'The kiss of death.'

At last Marina smiled sarcastically. 'You look lousy, by the way,' she said.

'Thanks,' I replied. I was expecting worse.

'I'm being generous. So, are you going to tell me what the h.e.l.l you were doing here?'

Her eyes shone in the light of the fire. I sipped the rest of my broth and looked down.

'The truth is, I don't know . . .' I said. 'I suppose . . . I don't really know.'

My awful appearance must have helped, because Marina drew closer to me and tapped my hand.

'Look at me,' she ordered.

I did as I was told. She was gazing at me with a mixture of concern and affection.

'I'm not angry at you, do you understand?' she said. 'It's just that I was surprised to find you here, like that, without warning. Every Monday I take German to the doctor, at the Sant Pau Hospital that's why we weren't in. It's not a good day for visiting.'

I felt ashamed of myself.

'It won't happen again,' I promised.

I was on the point of telling Marina about the strange apparition I thought I'd witnessed when she gave a gentle laugh and leaned over, kissing me on the cheek. The touch of her lips was enough to dry my clothes instantly. My words were left unspoken. Marina noticed my mute mumbling.

'What?' she asked.

I stared at her, speechless, and shook my head.

'Nothing.'

She raised an eyebrow as if she didn't believe me, but didn't insist.

'A bit more broth?' she asked, standing up.

'Please.'

Marina took my soup bowl and went to the kitchen to fill it up again. I remained by the fireplace, fascinated by the portraits hanging on the walls. When Marina returned, she followed my eyes.

'The woman in all these paintings . . .' I began.

'She's my mother,' said Marina.

I felt I was on slippery ground.

'I've never seen portraits like these. They're like . . . like photographs of the soul . . .'

Marina nodded but didn't say anything.

'They must be by some famous artist,' I insisted. 'I've never seen anything like them.'

Marina took a while to reply.

'And you never will. The artist hasn't produced a single painting for almost fifteen years. This group of portraits was his last work.'

'He must have known your mother really well to be able to portray her like this,' I remarked.

Marina gazed at me. She gave me the same look that was captured in the paintings.

'Better than anyone,' she replied. 'He married her.'

CHAPTER 8.

THAT NIGHT, BY THE FIRE, MARINA TOLD ME THE story of German and the Sarria mansion.

German Blau had been born into a wealthy family of the flourishing Catalan bourgeoisie. The Blau dynasty were the proud owners of a sprawling industrial colony on the banks of the River Llobregat, an exclusive box at the Liceo Opera House and a peerless list of spicy yet discreet society scandals that was the envy of the respectable set. It was said that little German was not the son of the great Blau patriarch but the fruit of an illicit liaison between his mother, Diana, and a picturesque individual named Quim Salvat. A man for all seasons, Salvat paid homage to three n.o.ble callings in this order the enlightened libertine, the confident portrait artist and the consummate philanderer. He scandalised respectable clients and at the same time immortalised their improbable good looks in somewhat unremarkable oil paintings for which he charged a fortune. Whatever the truth may have been, the fact was that German, among other blessings, bore no physical or character resemblance to any known member of his family. To make matters worse, since early childhood his only interests had been painting and drawing, which seemed suspicious to everyone. Especially to his official father.

On German's sixteenth birthday Blau pere informed him that there was no room for layabouts in the family. If the boy persisted in his ambition of becoming a so-called artist, he was prepared to find him gainful employment in his factory as a night porter, provide him with an entry-level job as a quarry worker or just send him off to the Foreign Legion or any other inst.i.tution that would contribute to strengthening his character and turning him into a useful member of society. Faced with that formidable array of options, the young German decided to run away from home, to where he returned twenty-four hours later escorted by Civil Guards.

Desperate and utterly disappointed with his alleged firstborn, the head of the Blau dynasty decided to place his hopes on his second son, Gaspar, a more pliable soul who was keen to learn the textile business and showed a greater willingness to continue the family traditions. For all his fury, however, the captain of industry was not one to let resentment prevail over good form or appearances. Thus, fearing for German's financial future, Blau put the Sarria mansion, which had been semi-abandoned for years, into his eldest son's name. 'Even if you shame us all,' he informed German, 'I haven't worked like a slave to have a son of mine end up without a roof over his head.' In its heyday the mansion had been one of the most talked-about residences among the carriage-driven upper cla.s.s, but n.o.body took care of it any longer. It was cursed, some said, even if the curse was a touch prosaic: rumour had it that the clandestine meetings between Diana and the libertine Salvat had taken place there. And so, by one of those ironies of fate, the house in which he had supposedly been conceived pa.s.sed into German's hands and became his residence. A short time later, once he was liberated from the ambitions and hopes his father had placed upon him, his mother secretly intervened and German became apprenticed to none other than Quim Salvat. On the first day Salvat looked German straight in the eye and p.r.o.nounced the following words: 'One, I'm not your father and I only know your mother by sight. Two, an artist's life is a life of risk, uncertainty and, almost always, of poverty. You don't choose it; it chooses you. If you have any doubts about either of these points, you'd better leave through that door right now.'

German stayed.

His years of apprenticeship under Quim Salvat provided German with the keys to another world and, most importantly, to another self. For the first time in his life he realised that someone actually believed in him, in his talent and worth. For the first time ever he thought he really had a chance of becoming something more than a pale copy of his father, a man who had in turn devoted his life to becoming an even paler copy of his own father. Once he'd stepped into Salvat's studio, German felt like a different person. During the first six months he learned and improved his skills more than in all his preceding years combined. Before long he had begun to understand the nature of light and what it was trying to tell him.

Despite his frivolous reputation, Salvat was just a rather extravagant but truly generous man who happened to love the most exquisite things in life. He only painted at night, and although he was not good-looking by any standards (other than those of a grizzly bear), he was deemed a real heartbreaker, touched by an uncanny gift for seduction which he handled with rather more ability than his paintbrush.

Breathtaking models and nubile ladies of high society paraded through his studio eager to shed their clothes, their modesty and any other qualms to pose for him and, German suspected, for something more. Salvat knew about obscure wines, obscurer poets, legendary lost cities and newly imported amorous techniques from Bombay. He'd lived his forty-seven years with enviable panache and intensity, maintaining that human beings foolishly allowed their existence to drift by as if they were going to live for ever: that was their undoing. He laughed at life and at death, at the divine and the human, and mostly at himself. He cooked better than the great chefs in the Michelin Guide and ate as much as they all did put together. During the time German spent by his side, Salvat became his best friend. German would always appreciate that everything he achieved in his life, both as a man and a painter, he owed to Quim Salvat.

Salvat was one of the privileged few who knew the secret of light. Light, he said, was like a whimsical ballerina fully aware of her charms. In Quim's hands, light was transformed into wondrous lines that lit up the canvas and opened doors into the soul. At least, that is what was written in the promotional prose of his exhibition catalogues.

'To paint is to write with light,' Salvat would say. 'First you must learn its alphabet; then its grammar. Only then will you be able to possess the style and the magic.'

It was Quim Salvat who widened German's vision of the world, taking him along on his travels. Together they went to Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Rome . . . It didn't take long for German to realise that Salvat was as good a promoter of his art as he was an artist, if not better. That was the key to his success.

'Out of every thousand people who purchase a painting or a work of art, only one of them has the remotest idea of what it is they're buying,' Salvat would say, a sly smile on his lips. 'The rest don't buy the work, they buy the artist, what they've heard and, more often than not, what they imagine about him. This business is no different from selling a quack's remedies or love potions, German. The only difference lies in the price.'

Quim Salvat's big heart stopped on 17 July 1938. Some said it was due to his manifold excesses. But German always thought that what truly killed his mentor's faith and his will to live were the horrors of the civil war.

'I could go on painting for a thousand years,' Salvat murmured on his deathbed, 'but that wouldn't change men's folly, bigotry and savagery in the slightest. Beauty is a breath of air that blows against the wind of reality, German. My art makes no sense. It's entirely useless . . .'

An endless list of lovers, creditors, friends and colleagues, the dozens of people he'd helped without asking for anything in return, mourned him at his funeral. They knew that a light had gone out in the world and from that day on they'd all feel lonelier. Emptier.

Salvat left German a very modest sum of money and his studio. He asked him to distribute the rest (which wasn't much because Salvat spent more than he earned and before he earned it) among his lovers and his friends. The solicitor dealing with the will handed German a letter that Salvat had entrusted to him when he felt his end approaching. German was to open it once Salvat had died.

With tears in his eyes and a shattered soul the young man spent a whole night wandering aimlessly through the city. Dawn found him walking along the breakwater in the port, and it was there, in the first light of day, that he read the last words Quim Salvat had reserved for him.

Dear German, I didn't tell you this when I was alive because I thought I had to wait for the right moment. But I'm afraid I won't be there when that moment comes.