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“Tell me, Julián, what are you doing this afternoon?” Aldaya asked.
Julián looked alternatively at his father and at the tycoon.
“Well, helping my father here, in the shop.”
“Apart from that.”
“I was thinking of going to the library….”
“You like books, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you read Conrad?Heart of Darkness?”
“Three times.”
The hatter frowned, utterly lost. “And who is this Conrad, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Aldaya silenced him with a gesture that seemed made for a shareholders’ meeting.
“In my house I have a library with fourteen thousand books, Julián. When I was young, I read a lot, but now I no longer have the time. Come to think of it, I have three copies signed by Conrad himself. My son Jorge can’t even be dragged into the library. In the house the only person who thinks and reads is my daughter Penélope, so all those books are being wasted. Would you like to see them?”
Julián nodded, speechless. The hatter observed the scene with a sense of unease he couldn’t quite define. All those names were unknown to him. Novels, as everyone knew, were for women and for people who had nothing better to do.Heart of Darknesssounded to him like a mortal sin at least.
“Fortunato, your son is coming with me. I want to introduce him to my son Jorge. Don’t worry, we’ll bring him back to you later. Tell me, young man, have you ever been in a Mercedes-Benz?”
Julián presumed that was the name of the cumbersome, imperial-looking machine the industrialist used for getting around. He shook his head.
“Well, then, it’s about time. It’s like going to heaven, but without dying.”
Antoni Fortuny saw them leave in that exceedingly luxurious carriage, and when he searched his heart, all he found was sadness. That night, while he had dinner with Sophie (who was wearing her new dress and shoes and had almost no bruises or scars), he asked himself where he had gone wrong this time. Just when God was returning a son to him, Aldaya was taking him away.
“Take off that dress, woman, you look like a whore. And don’t let me see this wine on the table again. The watered-down sort is quite good enough for us. Greed will corrupt us all in the end.”
Julián had never crossed over to the other side of Avenida Diagonal. That line of groves, empty plots of land, and palaces awaiting the expansion of the city was a forbidden frontier. Hamlets, hills, and mysterious places of wealth and legend extended beyond it. As they passed through them, Aldaya talked to him about San Gabriel’s School, about new friends Julián had never set eyes on, about a future he had not thought possible.
“What do you aspire to, Julián? In life, I mean.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a writer. A novelist.”
“Like Conrad, eh? Yo
u’re very young, of course. And tell me, doesn’t banking tempt you?”
“I don’t know, sir. The truth is that it hadn’t even entered my head. I’ve never seen more than three pesetas together. High finance is a mystery to me.”
Aldaya laughed. “There’s no mystery, Julián. The trick is not to put pesetas together in threes, but in three million. That way there’s no enigma, I can assure you. No Holy Trinity.”
That afternoon, as he drove up Avenida del Tibidabo, Julián thought he was entering the doors of paradise. Mansions that seemed like cathedrals flanked the way. Halfway along the avenue, the driver turned, and they went through the gates of one of them. Instantly an army of servants set about receiving the master. All Julián could see was a large, majestic house with three floors. It had never occurred to him that real people could live in places like this. He let himself be taken through the lobby, then he crossed a vaulted hall from where a marble staircase rose, framed by velvet curtains, and finally entered a large room whose walls were a tapestry of books, from floor to ceiling.
“What do you think?” asked Aldaya.
Julián was barely listening.
“Damián, tell Jorge to come down to the library immediately.”
The faceless and silent servants glided away at the slightest order from the master with the efficiency and submissiveness of a body of well-trained insects.
