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“I have a bit of wine. It’s not too bad. Drink a little. It will help you warm up. And disinfect that…”
I took a swig from the bottle he offered me. It tasted of diesel oil laced with vinegar, but its heat calmed my stomach and my nerves. A few drops sprinkled over my wound, and I saw stars in the blackest night of my life.
“Good, isn’t it?” The beggar smiled. “Go on, have another shot. This stuff can raise a person back from the dead.”
“No thanks. You have some,” I mumbled.
The beggar had a long drink. I watched him closely. He looked like some gray government accountant who had been sleeping in the same suit for the last fifteen years. He stretched out his hand, and I shook it.
“Fermín Romero de Torres, currently unemployed. Pleased to meet you.”
“Daniel Sempere, complete idiot. The pleasure is all mine.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. On nights like this, everything looks worse than it is. You’d never guess it, but I’m a born optimist. I have no doubt at all that the present regime’s days are numbered. All intelligence points toward the Americans invading us any day now and setting Franco up with a peanut stand down in Melilla. Then my position, my reputation, and my lost honor will be restored.”
“What did you work at?”
“Secret service. High espionage,” said Fermín Romero de Torres. “Suffice it to say that I was President Maciá’s man in Havana.”
I nodded. Another madman. At night Barcelona gathered them in by the handful. And idiots like me, too.
“Listen, that cut doesn’t look good to me. They’ve given you quite a tanning, eh?”
I touched my mouth with my fingers. It was still bleeding.
“Woman trouble?” he asked. “You could have saved yourself
the effort. Women in this country—and I’ve seen a bit of the world—are a sanctimonious, frigid lot. Believe me. I remember a little mulatto girl I left behind in Cuba. No comparison, eh? No comparison. The Caribbean female draws up to you with that island swing of hers and whispers ‘Ay, papito,gimme pleasure, gimme pleasure.’ And a real man, with blood in his veins…well, what can I say?”
It seemed to me that Fermín Romero de Torres, or whatever his true name was, longed for lighthearted conversation almost as much as he longed for a hot bath, a plate of stew, and a clean change of clothes. I got him going for a while, as I waited for my pain to subside. It wasn’t very difficult, because all the man needed was a nod at the right moment and someone who appeared to be listening. The beggar was about to recount the details of a bizarre plan for kidnapping Franco’s wife when I saw that the rain had abated and the storm seemed to be slowly moving away toward the north.
“It’s getting late,” I mumbled, standing up.
Fermín Romero de Torres nodded with a sad look and helped me get up, making as if he were dusting down my drenched clothes.
“Some other day, then,” he said in a resigned tone. “I’m afraid talking is my undoing. Once I start…Listen, this business about the kidnapping, it should go no further, understand?”
“Don’t worry. I’m as silent as a grave. And thanks for the wine.”
I set off toward the Ramblas. I stopped by the entrance to the square and turned to look at the Barcelós’ apartment. The windows were still in darkness, weeping with rain. I wanted to hate Clara but was unable to. To truly hate is an art one learns with time.
I swore to myself that I would never see her again, that I wouldn’t mention her name or remember the time I had wasted by her side. For some strange reason, I felt at peace. The anger that had driven me out of my home had gone. I was afraid it would return, and with renewed vigor, the following day. I was afraid that jealousy and shame would slowly consume me once all the pieces of my memory of that night fell into place. But dawn was still a few hours away, and there was one more thing I had to do before I could return home with a clean conscience.
CALLE ARCO DEL TEATRO WAS THERE WAITING FOR ME. A STREAM OF black water converged in the center of the narrow street and made its way, like a funeral procession, toward the heart of the Raval quarter. I recognized the old wooden door and the baroque façade to which my father had brought me that morning at dawn, six years before. I went up the steps and took shelter from the rain under the arched doorway. It reeked of urine and rotten wood. More than ever, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books smelled of death. I didn’t recall that the door knocker was shaped as a demon’s face. I took it by its horns and knocked three times. The cavernous echo dispersed within the building. After a while I knocked again, six knocks this time, each one louder than before, until my fist hurt. A few more minutes went by, and I began to fear that perhaps there was no longer anyone there. I crouched down against the door and took the Carax book from the inside pocket of my jacket. I opened it and reread that first sentence that had entranced me years before.
That summer it rained every day, and although many said it was God’s wrath because the villagers had opened a casino next to the church, I knew that it was my fault, and mine alone, for I had learned to lie and my lips still retained the last words spoken by my mother on her deathbed: “I never loved the man I married but another, who, I was told, had been killed in the war; look for him and tell him my last thoughts were for him, for he is your real father.”
I smiled, remembering that first night of feverish reading six years earlier. I closed the book and was about to knock one last time, but before my fingers touched the knocker, the large door opened far enough to reveal the profile of the keeper. He was carrying an oil lamp.
“Good evening,” I mumbled. “Isaac, isn’t it?”
The keeper observed me without blinking. The glow from the oil lamp sculpted his angular features in amber and scarlet hues, conferring on him a striking likeness to the little demon on the door knocker.
“You’re Sempere junior,” he muttered wearily.
“Your memory is excellent.”
“And your sense of timing is lousy. Do you know what the time is?”
