Free The Prisoner of Heaven: A Novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafón Page B

for him, or even a few lumps of sugar, which Martín loved.
    ‘You’re a good man, Fermín. Try not to let it show,’ the writer would tell him.
    Martín always carried an old photograph on him, which he liked to gaze at for long spells. It showed a man dressed in white, holding the hand of a girl of about eight. They were both watching the sunset from the end of a wooden jetty that stretched out over a beach, like a gangway suspended over crystalline waters. Usually, when Fermín asked him about the photograph, Martín didn’t reply. He would just smile, before putting the picture back in his pocket.
    ‘Who is the girl in the photograph, Señor Martín?’
    ‘I’m not sure, Fermín. Sometimes my memory lets me down. Doesn’t that happen to you?’
    ‘Of course. It happens to everyone.’
    It was rumoured that Martín was not altogether in his right mind, but soon after Fermín started to befriend him he realised that the poor man was far worse than the rest of the prisoners assumed. There were moments when he proved more lucid than anyone, but often he didn’t seem to understand where he was and he spoke about people and places that obviously existed only in his imagination or memory.
    Often Fermín would wake up in the early hours and hear Martín talking in his cell. If he drew stealthily up to the bars and listened carefully, he could hear him clearly arguing with someone he called ‘Señor Corelli’ who, judging by the words he exchanged with him, appeared to be a notoriously sinister character.
    On one of those nights Fermín lit the remains of his last candle and raised it in the direction of the opposite cell. He wanted to make sure Martín really was alone and that both voices, his own and the other voice belonging to the person called Corelli, were coming from the same lips. Martín was walking in circles round his cell, and when their eyes met, Fermín realised that his prison mate couldn’t see him. He was behaving as if those walls didn’t exist and his conversation with that strange man was taking place far from there.
    ‘Pay no attention to him,’ murmured Number 12 from the shadows. ‘He does that every night. He’s off his trolley. Lucky him.’
    The following morning, when Fermín asked him about the man called Corelli and his midnight conversations, Martín looked at him in surprise and gave him a puzzled smile. On another occasion, when Fermín was so cold he couldn’t sleep, he walked over to the bars again and listened to Martín talking to one of his invisible friends. That night Fermín dared to interrupt him.
    ‘Martín? It’s me. Fermín, your neighbour across the landing. Are you all right?’
    Martín walked over to the bars of his cell and Fermín could see his face was covered in tears.
    ‘Señor Martín? Who is Isabella? You were talking about her a moment ago.’
    Martín stared at him.
    ‘Isabella is the only good thing remaining in this shitty world,’ he replied after a while, with unusual bitterness. ‘If it weren’t for her, we might as well set fire to the whole thing and let it burn until even the ashes have blown away.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Martín. I didn’t mean to bother you.’
    Martín withdrew into the shadows. The following day he was found shivering in a pool of his own blood. Seeing that Bebo had fallen asleep in his chair, he’d managed to slit his wrists by scratching them against the stone. When they took him away on a stretcher he was so pale Fermín thought he would never see him again.
    ‘Don’t worry about your friend, Fermín,’ said Number 15. ‘If that was anyone else, he’d go straight into the canvas sack, but the governor won’t let Martín die. Nobody knows why.’
    David Martín’s cell was empty for five weeks. When Bebo brought him back, carrying him like a child, dressed in white pyjamas, Martín’s arms were bandaged up to his elbows. He didn’t remember anyone and spent the first night talking to himself and laughing. Bebo