THAT YEAR AUTUMN BLANKETED BARCELONA WITH FALLEN LEAVES that rippled through the streets like silvery scales. The distant memory of the night of my sixteenth birthday had put a damper on my spirits, or perhaps life had decided to grant me a sabbatical from my melodramatic woes so that I could begin to grow up. I was surprised at how little I thought about Clara Barceló, or Julián Carax, or that faceless cipher who smelled of burned paper and claimed to be a character straight out of a book. By November, I had observed a month of sobriety, a month without going anywhere near Plaza Real to beg a glimpse of Clara through the window. The merit, I must confess, was not altogether mine. Business in the bookshop was picking up, and my father and I had more on our hands than we could juggle.
“At this rate we’ll have to hire another person to help us find the orders,” my father remarked. “What we’d really need is someone very special, half detective, half poet, someone who won’t charge much or be afraid to tackle the impossible.”
“I think I have the right candidate,” I said.
I found Fermín Romero de Torres in his usual lodgings below the arches of Calle Fernando. The beggar was putting together the front page of the Monday paper from bits he had rescued from a trash can. The lead story went on about the greatness of national public works as yet more proof of the glorious progress of the dictatorship’s policies.
“Good God! Another dam!” I heard him cry. “These fascists will turn us all into a race of saints and frogs.”
“Good morning,” I said quietly. “Do you remember me?”
The beggar raised his head, and a wonderful smile suddenly lit up his face.
“Do mine eyes deceive me? How are things with you, my friend? You’ll accept a swig of red wine, I hope?”
“It’s on me today,” I said. “Are you hungry?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say no to a good plate of seafood, but I’ll eat anything that’s thrown at me.”
On our way to the bookshop, Fermín Romero de Torres filled me in on all manner of escapades he had devised during the last weeks to avoid the Security Services, and in particular one Inspector Fumero, his nemesis, with whom he appeared to have a running battle.
“Fumero?” I asked. That was the name of the soldier who had murdered Clara Barceló’s father in Montjuïc Castle at the outbreak of the war.
The little man nodded fearfully, turning pale. He looked famished and dirty, and he stank from months of living in the streets. The poor fellow had no idea where I was taking him, and I noticed a certain apprehension, a growing anxiety that he tried to disguise with incessant chatter. When we arrived at the shop, he gave me a troubled look.
“Please come in. This is my father’s bookshop. I’d like to introduce you to him.”
The beggar hunched himself up into a bundle of grime and nerves. “No, no, I wouldn’t hear of it. I don’t look presentable, and this is a classy establishment. I would embarrass you….”
My father put his head around the door, glanced at the beggar, and then looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Dad, this is Fermín Romero de Torres.”
“At your service,” said the beggar, almost shaking.
My father smiled at him calmly and stretched out his hand. The beggar didn’t dare take it, mortified by his appearance and the filth that covered his skin.
“Listen, I think it’s best if I go away and leave you,” he stammered.
My father took him gently by the arm. “Not at all; my son has told me you’re going to have lunch with us.”
The beggar looked at us amazed, terrified.
“Why don’t you come up to our home and have a nice hot bath?” said my father. “Afterward, if that’s all right, we could walk down to Can Solé for lunch.”
Fermín Romero de Torres mumbled something unintelligible. Still smiling, my father led him toward the front door and practically had to drag him up the stairs to the apartment while I closed the shop. By dint of honeyed words and underhanded tactics, we managed to remove his rags and get him into the bath. With nothing on, he looked like a wartime photograph and trembled like a plucked chicken. Deep marks showed on his wrists and ankles, and his trunk and back were covered with terrible scars that were painful to see. My father and I exchanged horrified looks but made no comment.
The beggar allowed himself to be washed like a child, frightened and shivering. While I searched for clean clothes, I could hear my father’s voice talking to him without pause. I found him a suit that my father no longer wore, an old shirt, and some underwear. From the pile of clothes the beggar had taken off, not even the shoes could be rescued. I chose a pair that my father seldom put on because they were too small for him. Then I wrapped the rags in newspaper, including a pair of trousers that were the color and consistency of smoked ham, and shoved them in the trash can. When I returned to the bathroom, my father was shaving Fermín in the bathtub. Pale and smelling of soap, he looked twenty years younger. From what I could see, the two had already struck up a friendship. It may have been the effects of the bath salts, but Fermín Romero de Torres was on overdrive.
“Believe me, Mr. Sempere, if fate hadn’t led me into the world of international intrigue, what I would have gone for, what was closest to my heart, was humanities. As a child I felt the call of poetry and wanted to be a Sophocles or a Virgil, because tragedy and dead languages give me the goose pimples. But my father, God rest his soul, was a pigheaded man without much vision. He’d always wanted one of his children to join the Civil Guard, and none of my seven sisters would have qualified for that, despite the facial-hair problem that characterized all the women on my mother’s side of the family. On his deathbed my father made me swear that if I didn’t succeed in wearing the Civil Guard’s three-cornered hat, at least I would become a civil servant and abandon all my literary ambitions. I’m rather old-fashioned, and I believe that a father, however dim-witted, should be obeyed, if you see what I mean. Even so, don’t imagine that I set aside all intellectual pursuits during my years of adventure. I’ve read a great deal, and can recite some of the best fragments ofLa Divina Commedia from memory.”
“Come on, boss, put these clothes on, if you don’t mind; your erudition is beyond any doubt,” I said, coming to my father’s rescue.
When Fermín Romero de Torres came out of the bath, sparkling clean, his eyes beamed with gratitude. My father wrapped him up in a towel, and the beggar laughed from the sheer pleasure of feeling clean fabric brushing his skin. I helped him into his change of clothes, which proved about ten sizes too big. My father removed his belt and handed it to me to put around him.
“You look very dashing,” said my father. “Doesn’t he, Daniel?
“Anyone might mistake you for a film star.”