Part One
A Christmas Story
1
Barcelona, December 1957
That year at Christmas time, every morning dawned laced with frost under leaden skies. A bluish hue tinged the city and people walked by, wrapped up to their ears and drawing lines of vapour with their breath in the cold air. Very few stopped to gaze at the shop window of Sempere & Sons; fewer still ventured inside to ask for that lost book that had been waiting for them all their lives and whose sale, poetic fancies aside, would have contributed to shoring up the bookshop’s ailing finances.
‘I think today will be the day. Today our luck will change,’ I proclaimed on the wings of the first coffee of the day, pure optimism in a liquid state.
My father, who had been battling with the ledger since eight o’clock that morning, twiddling his pencil and rubber, looked up from the counter and eyed the procession of elusive clients disappearing down the street.
‘May heaven hear you, Daniel, because at this rate, if we don’t make up our losses over the Christmas season, we won’t even be able to pay the electricity bill in January. We’re going to have to do something.’
‘Fermín had an idea yesterday,’ I offered. ‘He thinks it’s a brilliant plan that’ll save the bookshop from imminent bankruptcy.’
‘Lord help us.’
I quoted Fermín, word for word:
‘Perhaps if by chance I was seen arranging the shop window in my underpants, some lady in need of strong literary emotions would be drawn in and inspired to part with a bit of hard cash. According to expert opinion, the future of literature depends on women and as God is my witness the female is yet to be born who can resist the primal allure of this stupendous physique,’ I recited.
I heard my father’s pencil fall to the floor behind me and I turned round.
‘So saith Fermín,’ I added.
I thought my father would smile at Fermín’s plea, but when I noticed that he remained silent, I sneaked a glance at him. Not only did Sempere senior not appear to find the suggestion the least bit funny, but he had adopted a pensive expression, as if he were seriously considering it.
‘Well, well … perhaps Fermín has unexpectedly hit the nail on the head,’ he murmured.
I looked at him in disbelief. Maybe the customer drought that had struck in the last few weeks was finally affecting my father’s good judgement.
‘Don’t tell me you’re going to allow him to wander around the bookshop in his Y-fronts.’
‘No, of course not. It’s about the shop window. Now that you’ve mentioned it, it’s given me an idea … We may still be in time to save our Christmas after all.’
He disappeared into the back room, then emerged sporting his official winter uniform: the same coat, scarf and hat I remembered him wearing since I was a child. Bea suspected that my father hadn’t bought any new clothes since 1942 and everything seemed to indicate that my wife was right. As he slipped on his gloves, my father smiled absently, his eyes twinkling with almost childlike excitement, a look that only momentous tasks managed to bring out in him.
‘I’ll leave you on your own for a while,’ he announced. ‘I’m going out to do an errand.’
‘May I ask where you’re going?’
My father winked at me.
‘It’s a surprise. You’ll see.’
I followed him to the door and saw him set off at a brisk pace towards Puerta del Ángel, one more figure in the grey tide of pedestrians advancing through another long winter of shadows and ashes.
2
Making the most of the fact that I’d been left alone, I decided to turn on the radio and enjoy a bit of music while I reorganised the collections on the shelves to my liking. My father argued that to have the radio on when there were customers in the shop was in bad taste and if I turned it on when Fermín was around, he’d start to hum on the back of any melody, or even worse, given a chance he’d start swaying to what he called ‘sensual Caribbean rhythms’ and after a few minutes he’d get on my nerves. Taking those practical difficulties into account, I’d come to the conclusion that I should limit my enjoyment of the radio waves to the rare moments when there was nobody else in the shop but me and thousands of books.
That morning, Radio Barcelona was broadcasting a rare recording of a fabulous Louis Armstrong concert – made when the trumpeter and his band had played at the Hotel Windsor Palace on Avenida Diagonal, three Christmases earlier. During the publicity breaks, the presenter insisted on labelling that music as chass, with the warning that some of its suggestive syncopations might not be suitable for pious Spanish listeners brought up on the popular tonadillas and boleros that ruled the airwaves.