A Manuscript of Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page B

his imposture. Manuel nodded gravely, as if he too remembered the lines, and when Minaya finished saying them neither of them spoke, so that in the end the urgent will to die in those words remained suspended and present in the library like the final striking of a clock, like the smile and gaze of the man who had written them. Later, when they went upstairs so that Minaya could see his bedroom, Manuel opened the door to a room that contained only an iron bed and a desk placed in front of a mirror.
    "Here it is," he said, "the window and the mirror in that poem. This is where he wrote it."
    As they went up, the piano music that had been playing since Minaya entered the house sounded more clearly and closer. It invaded the silence and suddenly broke off in the middle of a phrase, though nothing had announced the proximity of its ending, and then all that could be heard was the beating of pigeons' wings against the glass dome. "That's my mother," said Manuel, smiling, as if excusing her for her eccentric way of playing a habanera that never advanced, that stopped abruptly and returned to the first phrase, like the exercises of a student who does not achieve the certainty of perfection. Minaya climbed the stairs, sliding his hand along the varnished, curved wood of the railing as if guided by a silk ribbon that dissolved in the music and traced lingering art nouveau curves in the angles of the labyrinth. Always, ever since he was a boy, he had liked to climb shadowy staircases in houses and movie theaters this way, and he half-closed his eyes so he had only the polished touch of the wood to guide him.
    "This house is too big," said Manuel in the gallery, gesturing toward the large windows of the courtyard and the line of doors to the rooms. "It's all Ines and Teresa can do to keep it clean, and in winter it's very cold, but it has the advantage of allowing you to lose yourself in any room as if it were a desert island."
    Lost forever, Minaya swore, safe, enclosed behind the white shutters to the balconies, in the heat of the fire burning in the marble fireplaces, and the clean sheets, and the water in which he dissolved with closed eyes, abandoned and alone, undamaged, naked, not fearing anything or anyone, as if fear and the obscene possibility of failure had not been able to pursue him to Magina. Manuel had left him alone in the bedroom, and before unpacking and taking a long bath that made him lose his awareness of the time and place where he found himself, he examined with gratitude and discretion the large, high bed that yielded so sweetly under the weight of his body, the deep closet, the paintings, the modern lamp on the night table, the desk facing the balcony that made him imagine tranquil afternoons of literature and indolence when he would look out at the tops of the acacias and the dark roofitiles of the houses in Magina. I'll be thrown out of here, he thought as he dried himself before a mirror, as he shaved and dressed and used the comb and razor as the toolsof an actor who isn't sure he has learned his part and doesn't have time to rehearse before he's called on stage: "I'll be thrown out or I'll have to leave when I can't pretend anymore that I'm writing a book about Jacinto Solana and I don't even have enough money to take a taxi to the station." Lost forever, for two weeks, he calculated, using each hour as if it were his last coin, a respite for an impostor or a condemned man. When he left the room, bathed and relatively decent in his only suit and tie, he found himself in the parlor that opened onto the nuptial bedroom. Before they married, Manuel had assigned the front rooms on the second floor to his conjugal life with Mariana so they could have their own area separate from the rest of the house, but of that original plan all that remained was the bedroom no one had used since May 21, 1937, and the wedding photograph hanging on the wall of the parlor over the sofa with yellow flowers. Tall and erect in his