The boy nodded. I gave him the coin and the book.
“Now we’ll wait.”
We didn’t have to wait long. Three minutes later I saw her coming out. She was heading for the Ramblas.
“It’s that lady, see?”
My mother stopped for a moment by the portico of the Church of Belén and I made a sign to the boy, who ran after her. I watched the scene from afar, but could not hear her words. The boy handed her the packet and she gave it a puzzled look, not sure whether to accept it or not. The boy insisted and finally she took the parcel in her hands and watched the boy run away. Disconcerted, she turned right and left, searching with her eyes. She weighed the packet, examining the purple wrapping paper. Finally curiosity got the better of her and she opened it.
I watched her take the book out. She held it with both hands, looking at the cover, then turning it over to examine the back. I could hardly breathe and wanted to go up to her and say something but couldn’t. I stood there, only a few meters away from my mother, spying on her without her being aware of my presence, until she set off again, clutching the book, walking toward Colón. As she passed the Palace of La Virreina she went up to a waste bin and threw the book in it. I watched as she headed down the Ramblas until she was lost among the crowd, as if she had never been there at all.
19
Sempere was alone in the bookshop gluing down the spine of a copy of Fortunata and Jacinta that was coming apart. When he looked up, he saw me on the other side of the door. In just a few seconds he realized the state I was in and signaled to me to come in. As soon as I was inside, he offered me a chair.
“You don’t look well, Martín. You should see a doctor. If you’re scared, I’ll come with you. Physicians make my flesh crawl too, with their white gowns and those sharp things in their hands, but sometimes you’ve got to go through with it.”
“It’s just a headache, Señor Sempere. It’s already getting better.”
Sempere poured me a glass of Vichy water.
“Here. This cures everything except stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.”
I smiled weakly at Sempere’s joke, then drank the water and sighed. I felt a wave of nausea and an intense pressure throbbed behind my left eye. For a moment I thought I was going to collapse and I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath, praying I wouldn’t drop dead right there. Destiny couldn’t have such a perverse sense of humor as to guide me to Sempere’s bookshop so I that could present him with a corpse, after all he’d done for me. I felt a hand holding my head gently. Sempere. I opened my eyes and saw the bookseller and his son, who had popped in, watching me as if they were at a wake.
“Shall I call the doctor?” Sempere’s son asked.
“I’m better, thanks. Much better.”
“Your way of getting better makes one’s hair stand on end. You look gray.”
“A bit more water?”
Sempere’s son rushed to fill me another glass.
“Forgive me for this performance,” I said. “I can assure you I hadn’t rehearsed it.”
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
“It might do you good to eat something sweet. Maybe it was a drop in your sugar levels …” the son suggested.
“Run over to the baker’s on the corner and get him something,” the bookseller agreed.
When we were alone, Sempere fixed his eyes on mine.
“I promise I’ll go to the doctor,” I said.
A few minutes later the bookseller’s son returned with a paper bag full of the most select assortment of buns in the area. He handed it to me and I chose a brioche that any other time would have seemed to me as tempting as a chorus girl’s backside.
“Bite,” Sempere ordered.
I ate my brioche obediently, and slowly I began to feel better.
“He seems to be reviving,” Sempere’s son observed.
“What the corner shop buns can’t cure …”
At that moment we heard the doorbell. A customer had come into the bookshop, and at Sempere’s nod his son left us to serve him. The bookseller stayed by my side, trying to feel my pulse by pressing on my wrist with his index finger.