Silver Nitrate(70)
The building that corresponded to Ediciones B was a turn-of-the-century construction with very tall, narrow windows that had been boarded up. A frieze with flower shapes ran above the windows, and the cornice was also decorated with floral motifs. Two wooden double doors were locked with a large chain and a padlock. The wall by the door was plastered with a sign that had been painted over with so much graffiti you could not read what it said, though it was obvious it had once spelled the word “condemned.” Now only the letter “c” was clearly visible.
The building in front of Ediciones B was a toy store or kids’ clothing store. It had a sign that said “Pingos” in colorful letters, but its steel shutters were rolled down. The street was quiet, with no street vendors or nosy neighbors to watch her. Montserrat decided to take a chance and reached into her purse, pulling out the two paper clips she had used to open Abel’s apartment, and went to work on the padlock.
It was exceedingly simple to figure out its mechanism, and after looking both ways and making sure no one was watching her, she removed the chain and pushed one of the doors open, slipping inside.
The lobby of the building was impressively vast, and then came a flowing wrought-iron staircase and behind it a long hallway. The interior was half in shadows. She walked past the staircase, following the hallway, and reached what must have been a ballroom at one point. It was now an expanse of dust and darkness, a chandelier glinting and catching a stray ray of light as she poked her head inside. It was empty.
Montserrat changed directions and went back to the staircase, ascending it with a hand firmly on the banister. Darkness gave way to light as she reached the second floor; they had not bothered boarding up the windows at that level, and although it was getting late, light still streamed in, making it easy to find her way. She walked into offices that had a desk or two, or a chair that lay upturned, like cargo that had spilled from a shipwreck and been left abandoned on a lonesome beach.
A couple of windowpanes on this floor were broken. Rain had filtered in through the years, licking the floorboards and staining the walls. Pigeons had also drifted inside, nesting in filing cabinets. There were droppings on tables. A few of the birds, startled as she walked into a room, flew away. But others remained, eyeing her from above empty bookcases.
She stumbled onto a series of bluelines, tucked in dusty drawers, and opened boxes that had been piled in a corner. She pulled out a copy of The House of Infinite Wisdom and gazed at its familiar first page with the vegvísir.
Alma was right. Clarimonde Bauer had kept reprinting her lover’s book.
On the third and top floor she paused in front of a bathroom without a door—it had been pulled off; only the hinges marked its passing—to rub her leg. A tap could be heard dripping, the sound of the water echoing against the white tiles.
She kept looking, opened more doors or poked her head into abandoned offices. In one room there was a calendar that said “1985” and a metal filing cabinet. She pulled at a drawer and found dusty invoices from years past. That office had an interconnecting door with another room, and when she opened it, she found herself in what must have been Clarimonde Bauer’s office. At least, it was her photograph hanging on the wall, behind a desk.
Montserrat approached it, looking up at the face of the young girl she had seen in pictures, now sliding into middle age. She opened a drawer and found business cards bearing the address of Ediciones B. She chanced upon an old invitation for a party organized by Clarimonde, printed on ivory cardstock with an address in Las Lomas. She pocketed the invitation and looked in other drawers, but they only yielded stationery and envelopes. Montserrat exited the room and went back to the hallway.
When she passed by the bathroom it was quiet.
Montserrat froze in her tracks. The sound of water dripping, which had been so evident minutes before, had vanished. It was as if someone had closed the tap, or something was muffling the noise.
She took a step back and stood in the doorway of the bathroom. Light streamed through a frosted glass window, and the mirrors above the sinks reflected tiles, peeling walls, the bathroom stalls. The ordinary sights one would expect.
But on the mirror closest to the window, she saw a shadow that had the curious shape of a man. Just a shadow that gave the impression of someone in a trench coat, standing in profile. It could have been a trick of the light, an object reflected across the bathroom. Except then the shadow shifted, a silver spark rippling across the glass, reminiscent of a flash frame.
The silence strained her senses, making her wince.
It was a silence she recognized, that she’d met back in Abel’s apartment, and which had threatened to burst her eardrums and now seemed to encase her in a velvet softness.
Montserrat reached into her purse and clutched the napkin that she’d smeared with her blood. Her throat was dry, and her heart was pounding. She was afraid of moving, of walking down the hallway, because if she turned she’d see something behind her, but in front of her there was the bathroom with its mirrors that held within them impossible reflections.
You should never be afraid of magic. That’s what she had told Tristán. Fear gives others power over you. But her hands were trembling.
“Leave me,” she told the silence, mouthing the words, although she could hardly hear them, and made herself turn around and hurry down the hallway.
She reached the stairs and began her descent, moving carefully, rapidly, yet without running. She had the impression that something was following her, something that moved with a quiet, liquid ease, and left no echoes as they descended the stairs. Something that she could not see, but only feel, although, as she reached the second landing, there in the corner of her eye—the edge of something. A coat. The flap of a loose belt, perhaps, trailing on the floor.