The Angel's Game

The final chapters of The Angel's Game read as a fever dream of violence and twisty revelations that call into question the entire narrative. Particularly beguiling is David's visit to the Witch of Somorrostro, who at first claims to be the Witch's daughter. She claims there is no such thing as magic and that the Witch is a fraud. The daughter says, “Life had taught her that we all require big and small lies in order to survive, just as much as we need air” (575).

If true, this could suggest that David's psychotic break may have occurred when his novel, Steps of Heaven, failed to capture an audience or the hearts of critics. David's vanity—his belief in his own great expectations—was so high that it called upon his literary imagination to invent an alternate reality in which it was he who wrote Pedro's smash hit. In fact, his talents were so formidable that they captured the attention of the Devil himself, who enlists David to create a piece of writing so powerful that it makes men kill one another on a scale never before seen.

In the room with the Witch's daughter, David rejects this intrusion of reality into his elaborate fantasy world. This would explain why the daughter, for no apparent reason, suddenly morphs into the Witch herself, cackling as if she belongs in one of Ignatius B. Samson's cheap penny dreadful yarns and warning in arch fashion, "Soon the sun will rise. Leave while you can" (579).

The idea that David's gone mad is supported by Grandes's investigation, which uncovers evidence that conflicts with nearly everything David told him. There are a few ways to interpret this. One is that Grandes knows David is insane the minute he finishes his story. Rather than conduct an investigation of what is clearly the fantasy of a sick and damaged mind, he merely leaves David alone for hours then returns claiming to have uncovered conflicting evidence of his story. In short, the entire ruse is an interrogation technique. Another explanation is that Grandes does verify parts of David's story, but because his chief concern is finding Cristina, he lies to David in an effort to break him into revealing the woman's location. In either case, the fact that Grandes says he found Sempere's copy of The Steps of Heaven at Irene's—whether true or false—appears to be little more than a tactic to drive David there so that Marcos and Castelo can kill him.

Aside from all that, perhaps the most thematically relevant portion of the interrogation is when David says he doesn't know what the truth is, and Grandes replies, "The truth is what hurts" (586). The concept of truth is one that is debated at various points throughout the novel. To Corelli, the truth is inaccessible, hidden behind a veil that is impossible for humans to lift. For that reason, the emotional truth offered by great storytelling is the only truth that is of any use to mankind. Here, however, Grandes offers a definition of truth more closely aligned with the Witch of Somorrostro's, although his takeaway is different. He suggests there are truths that are both accessible and useful to humans, only they are often so painful that individuals willfully avoid them. Unlike the Witch, however, Grandes believes these truths should be revealed, not obscured.

Another point of confusion involves Marlasca's motivations. From the Witch, David learns that Marlasca killed Salvador to take his soul, protecting him from death and even from the Devil. Why, then, must David now "take the place of poor Salvador" (636), as Marlasca says in their confrontation? Why does the Witch say the soul Marlasca needs is David's? Does the soul-binding ritual only last 25 years before Marlasca needs a new soul? Because nothing in the text mentions such a restriction, Marlasca and the Witch are likely speaking figuratively, and Marlasca's aim is merely to kill David so he can bring the book to Corelli himself and get his son back. That said, considering Marlasca already broke the terms of their deal, it seems unlikely Corelli will fulfill his end of the bargain.

After his confrontation with Marlasca, David visits the Cemetery of Forgotten Books one last time to place the manuscript inside, believing it will keep the cursed words hidden from the world. However, if the interpretation holds true that the Cemetery is a battlefield between good and evil that reflects on the outside world, then doing so will only doom humanity. This is reflected by the fact that when David examines dozens of volumes, "they all contained different arrangements of the same words, the same images darkened their pages, the same fable was repeated in them like a pas de deux in an infinite hall of mirrors. Lux Aeterna" (644).

Once again, there are multiple interpretations of this. The first is that the Devil's method of perpetuating evil in the world is by enlisting writers over the ages to project their darkest fantasies onto the page in a cycle that's lasted millennia. David's contribution is merely the latest but also arguably one of the most successful, given the tide of evil that destroys much of Europe and Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. It is telling that the Cemetery is said to have been established sometime around the Holy Inquisition, one of the darkest chapters in European history. If the Cemetery is a depository for books that represent both good and evil, another explanation is that David's manuscript possesses so much dark power that it infects all of the books in the Cemetery, thus winning the battle once and for all on behalf of the forces of darkness.

In the Epilogue, David reflects from the year 1945 on the death and destruction that roared across the planet: the Spanish Civil War, the Holocaust, World War II, and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings:

The years have taught me to live in the body of a stranger who does not know whether he committed those crimes he can still smell on his hands or whether he has indeed lost his mind and is condemned to roam the world in flames that he dreamed up in exchange for a few coins and the promise of evading a death that now seems to him like the sweetest of rewards (649).

On the next page, David again makes reference to having caused these events, as old newspapers bring him "stories of the war, of the world in flames that I had dreamed up for the boss" (650). If the reader takes the book at face value, then this would seem to confirm that the contents of Corelli's commissioned books have a mystical effect on the amount of evil in the world, and that given the unprecedented violence of the 1930s and 1940s, David's book is a uniquely powerful entry in the Devil's canon. On the other hand, it can also be viewed as the pinnacle of David's original sin of vanity that he believes himself responsible for these world-shattering events, simply because he's such a great writer. Further, David's attitude may be a mechanism for coping with the trauma experienced by individuals who lived during those dark years.

Finally, there is Corelli's final act: "You won't age a single day and you will see Cristina grow; you will fall in love with her again and one day you will see her die in your arms. That is my blessing, and my revenge" (656). Like so much in the book, this statement can be read either literally or figuratively. The implausible return of Corelli alongside a seven-year-old Cristina in the exact pose as the old photograph may be real, at least within the twisty logic of the book, but it may also be a fantasy David concocts while staring at the photo in his isolated cabin. After all, it wouldn't be the first time David invented a story about the photo—he did it at Villa San Antonio to bring Cristina out of her catatonia.

Pushing this interpretation further, if the reader assumes that every supernatural element of the book is a product of David's diseased mind, that cabin may in fact be a prison cell. In The Prisoner of Heaven, the author's 2011 follow-up to The Angel's Game, a character mentions spending time in prison in the 1940s with a man named David Martín. This point seems to confirm that most of David's story is the product of his own imagination. Whether or not that detracts from the thematic richness of his supernatural saga is up to the reader.