‘It’s right here,’ he said.
His icy look seemed to betray years of anger and resentment.
‘Would you like to include a dedication, or add a personal note before I wrap the book up, sir?’
The visitor opened the book at the title page with some difficulty. I noticed then that his left hand was artificial, made of painted porcelain. He pulled out a fountain pen and wrote a few words. Then he gave the book back to me and turned to leave. I watched him as he hobbled towards the door.
‘Would you be so kind as to give me the name and address where you would like us to deliver the book, sir?’ I asked.
‘It’s all there,’ he said, without turning his head.
I opened the book and looked for the page with the inscription the stranger had written out.
For Fermín Romero de Torres,
who came back from among the dead
and holds the key to the future.
13
Then I heard the tinkle of the doorbell and when I looked up, the stranger was gone.
I dashed over to the door and peered out into the street. The visitor was limping away, merging with the silhouettes that moved through the veil of blue mist sweeping up Calle Santa Ana. I was about to call him, but I bit my tongue. The easiest thing would have been to let him go and have done with it, but my instinct and my characteristic lack of prudence got the better of me.
4
I hung the CLOSED sign on the door and locked up, determined to follow the stranger through the crowd. I knew that if my father returned and discovered that I had abandoned my post – on the one occasion when he’d left me alone and bang in the middle of that sales drought – I’d be in serious trouble. But I’d think of a convenient excuse along the way. Better to face my father’s temper than be consumed by the anxiety left in me by that sinister character, and not know what was the true intent of his business with Fermín.
A professional bookseller has few opportunities to acquire the fine art of following a suspect in the field without being spotted. Unless a substantial number of his customers are prominent defaulters, such opportunities are only granted to him vicariously by the collection of crime stories and penny dreadfuls on his bookshelves. Clothes maketh not the man, but crime, or its presumption, maketh the detective, especially the amateur sleuth.
While I followed the stranger towards the Ramblas, I recalled the essentials, beginning by leaving a good fifty metres between us, camouflaging myself behind someone larger and always having a quick hideaway ready – a doorway or a shop – in case the subject I was tailing should stop and turn around without warning. When he reached the Ramblas the stranger crossed over to the central boulevard and began to walk down towards the port. The boulevard was festooned with traditional Christmas decorations and more than one shop had decked its window with lights, stars and angels announcing a seasonal bonanza. If the regime’s radio said better times were ahead, it must be true.
In those days, Christmas still retained a certain aura of magic and mystery. The powdery light of winter, the hopeful expressions of people who lived among shadows and silences, lent that setting a slight air of promise in which at least children and those who had learned the art of forgetting could still believe.
Perhaps that is why it became increasingly obvious to me that nobody seemed more out of place amid all that Christmas fantasy than the peculiar object of my investigation. He limped slowly, often stopping by one of the bird stalls or flower stands to admire parakeets and roses, as if he’d never before set eyes on one. A couple of times he walked over to the newspaper kiosks that dotted the Ramblas and amused himself glancing at the covers of papers and magazines and idly twirling the postcard carousels. He acted as if he had never been there in his life, like a child or a tourist walking down the Ramblas for the first time – but then children and tourists often display an air of innocence that comes with not knowing one’s whereabouts, whereas our man couldn’t have looked less innocent even with the blessing of Baby Jesus, whose statue he passed when he reached the Church of Belén.
Then he stopped, apparently entranced by a cockatoo that was eyeballing him from one of the animal stalls opposite the entrance to Calle Puertaferrisa. Approaching the birdcage just as he’d approached the glass cabinet in the bookshop, the stranger started mumbling something to the cockatoo. The bird, a specimen with a large head, the body of a capon and luxurious plumage, survived the stranger’s sulphuric breath and applied itself with great relish and concentration to what his visitor was reciting. In case there was any doubt, the bird nodded its head repeatedly and raised its feathery pink crest, visibly excited.
After a few minutes, the stranger, satisfied with his avian exchange, resumed his itinerary. No more than thirty seconds later, as I walked past the bird stall, I noticed that a small hullabaloo had broken out. The shop assistant, plainly embarrassed, was hastily covering the cockatoo’s cage with a hood because the bird kept repeating with exemplary elocution the refrain, Franco, you prick, you can’t lift your dick. I was in no doubt at all about the source of the couplet. The stranger at least displayed a daring sense of humour and audacious political leanings, which in those days were as rare as skirts worn above the knee.
Distracted by the incident, I thought I’d lost sight of him, but soon I glimpsed his hunched figure standing in front of the window of the Bagués jewellery shop. I sidled over to one of the scriveners’ booths bordering the entrance to the Palace of La Virreina and observed him carefully. His eyes shone like rubies and the sight of gold and precious stones behind the bulletproof pane seemed to have awoken a lust in him that not even a row of chorus girls from La Criolla in its years of splendour could have aroused.
‘A love letter, an application, a request to the distinguished official of your choice, a spontaneous “hope this letter finds you well” for the relatives in the country, young man?’
The scribe whose booth I had adopted as a hiding place was peering out like a father confessor and looked at me expectantly, hoping I’d make use of his services. The poster above the counter read:
OSWALDO DARÍO DE MORTENSSEN
MAN OF LETTERS AND FREE THINKER
Writes love letters, petitions, wills, poems, praises,
greetings, pleas, obituaries, hymns, dissertations, applications
and all types of compositions in all classic styles and metrics
Ten céntimos per sentence (rhymes are extra)