The Serpent Papers by Jessica Cornwell Read Free Book Online

this city – OOOOOH! El Llop Fabregat , we call him. The Wolf!’ The landlord gloats. ‘He swept the streets of Barcelona with the coat-tails of the corrupt! He stitched the brothels with the hairs of the indecent! Hòstia! És famós! He is famous! Nothing but the greatest respect.’ A tap to the nose. ‘Ours is a special agreement. I have found places for many different types of people to stay. But he makes no favours, not even for young senyoretas.’ Keys exchange hands. ‘You must tell me what you do for him?’
    No. I rebuke him firmly.
    He whistles as he wanders out.
     
    This evening I study them. A young man occupies the room across from mine. I stand in the balcony and smoke a cigarette, wrapped in a jacket and scarf. The wide, wet branches of the trees between us. I watch the stranger move his bags into his room and arrange his paintings on the wall in the bright frame of his window. His bedroom a bare yellow glow against the dusk. A Warhol-inspired poster of Che Guevara, Swedish upholstery. He opens the doors of a large oak wardrobe that looks like it’s been there for centuries. Only twenty metres between this parallel life and mine – I could call to him! Shout across: Hello! Hello! Instead I inhale and feel the night darken and smooth, wondering if that piece of furniture is the same. My cigarette stubs out. I move inside. The cold bites the skin beneath my shirt. Everything in its place. You can’t understand a mystery without inhabiting the space that gave birth to it, without knowing what it looked like, how it smelt, the geometry of the home, what I call the psychological architecture of a person’s inner life.
    The phone interrupts me angrily, vibrating in my pocket.
    FRANCESC .
    Let it ring out.
    Again. A second, third time.
    A voicemail flashes up and then a text. WHERE ARE YOU?
    Gone.
    I listen to the message. A pregnant pause. Fish hook dangling. I need you.
    Another text comes through: Is this about your health? The phone rings again.
    You can tell me. Please.
    Do not answer.
    You’re behaving like a child.
    But what would you say? Nothing. You can tell him nothing. You dig too deep for him to follow.
    I catch my reflection in the black glass of the French doors. The line of my shirt rubs against my neck. Worn cotton vest beneath a woollen jumper and waxed parka. Thin grey scarf. Mud on my jeans from this morning, dried onto my boots. I remember the hawk I had seen like an omen, before the car had come to take me away. A shooting black thing. Rocketing down! Wings wrenched back as the rabbit lunged, leaping into underbrush at the edge of the field. The hawk, reckless, dishevelled, soaring over the sleeping village. The sky cloudless. Slate blue. Sharp as the ice at the edge of my pine-needle path, brown husks of grass pummelled into mud.
    Back inside the apartment, I survey my new environment with a certain element of unease. Already installed for the renter: knives and spoons, books and oven mitts, a radio, a small TV, the beautiful steel vase with dying flowers. I look about me. An entire floor to myself with long windows on the front facing side. When I was seventeen, living in this city, I would have dreamt of such privacy. Ten years later it feels too spacious. How much have you changed? I ask myself, pulling my bags into the kitchen, taking the cooled container from my carry-on first. I check the contents gingerly, placing my hand against the box of medication. Almost warm. Twenty-eight vials. A month’s worth. In case of emergency. I open the refrigerator door and position the blue and white box that holds the syringe capsules, each designed to be popped into a plastic injector – bright and cheerful, accompanied by cotton balls and alcohol swatches. I select a syringe from the box, breaking a single injection out of its packaging and set it on the kitchen counter. Wait.
    I begin the familiar distractions. Memory games. The warm triangle of his chest. Sleeping beside. I push him