'You know where to find me, at least?'
She nodded.
'I'll be waiting.'
'Me, too.'
As I moved away, I couldn't take my eyes off her. The night watchman, an expert in these situations, was already walking up to open the door for her.
'You rascal,' he whispered as he went by, not without admiration. 'What a looker.'
I waited until Bea had gone into the building and then set off briskly, turning to glance back at every step. Slowly I became possessed by the absurd conviction that anything was possible, and it seemed to me that even those deserted streets and that hostile wind smelled of hope. When I reached Plaza de Cataluna, I noticed that a flock of pigeons had congregated in the centre of the square, covering it with a blanket of white feathers that swayed silently. I thought of going round them, but at that moment I noticed that the pigeons were parting to let me pass, instead of flying off. I felt my way forward, as the pigeons broke ranks in front of me and re-formed behind me. When I got to the middle of the square, I heard the peal of the cathedral bells ringing out midnight. I paused for a moment, stranded in an ocean of silvery birds, and thought how this had been the strangest and most marvellous day of my life.
22.
The light was still on in the bookshop when I crossed the street towards the shop window. I thought that perhaps my father had stayed on until late, getting up to date with his correspondence or finding some other excuse to wait up for me and pump me for information about my meeting with Bea. I could see a silhouette making a pile of books and recognized the gaunt, nervous profile of Fermin, lost in concentration. I rapped on the pane with my knuckles. Fermin looked out, pleasantly surprised, and signalled to me to pop in through the backroom door.
'Still working, Fermin? It's terribly late.'
'I'm really just killing time until I go over to poor Don Federico's to watch over him. I'm taking turns with Eloy from the optician's. I don't sleep much anyhow. Two or three hours at the most. Mind you, you can't talk either, Daniel. It's past midnight, from which I infer that your meeting with the young lady was a roaring success.'
I shrugged my shoulders. 'The truth is I don't know,' I admitted.
'Did she let you feel her up?'
'No.'
'A good sign. Never trust girls who let themselves be touched right away. But even less those who need a priest for approval. Good sirloin steak - if you'll excuse the comparison - needs to be cooked until it's medium rare. Of course, if the opportunity arises, don't be prudish, and go for the kill. But if what you're looking for is something serious, like this thing with me and Bernarda, remember the golden rule.'
'Is your thing serious?'
'More than serious. Spiritual. And what about you and this pumpkin, Beatriz? You can see a mile off that she's worth a million, but the crux of the matter is this: is she the sort who makes you fall in love or the sort who merely stirs your nether regions?'
'I haven't the slightest idea,' I pointed out. 'Both things, I'd say.'
'Look, Daniel, this is like indigestion. Do you notice something here, in the mouth of the stomach - as if you'd swallowed a brick? Or do you just feel a general feverishness?'
'The brick things sounds more like it,' I said, although I didn't altogether discard the fever.
'That means it's a serious matter. God help us! Come on, sit down and I'll make you a lime-blossom tea.'
We settled down round the table in the back room, surrounded by books. The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows. Fermin handed me a steaming hot cup and smiled at me a little awkwardly. Something was bothering him.
'May I ask you a personal question, Daniel?'
'Of course.'
'I beg you to answer in all frankness,' he said, and he cleared his throat. 'Do you think I could ever be a father?'
He must have seen my puzzled expression, and he quickly added, 'I don't mean biologically - I may look a bit rickety, but by good luck Providence has endowed me with the potency and the fury of a fighting bull. I'm referring to the other sort of father. A good father, if you see what I mean.'
'A good father?'
'Yes. Like yours. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's his father but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.'
'Why are you asking me this, Fermin? I thought you didn't believe in marriage and families. The yoke and all that, remember?'
Fermin nodded. 'Look, all that's for amateurs. Marriage and family are only what we make of them. Without that they're just a nest of hypocrisy. Garbage and empty words. But if there is real love, the sort you don't go around telling everyone about, the sort that is felt and lived...'
'You're a changed man, Fermin.'
'I am. Bernarda has made me want to be a better man.'
'How's that?'
'So that I can deserve her. You cannot understand such things right now, because you're young. But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up. Bernarda and I have been talking. She's quite a mother hen, as you know. She doesn't say so, but I think the one thing in life that would make her truly happy is to become a mother. And that woman is sweeter than peaches in syrup to me. Suffice it to say that, for her, I'm prepared to enter a church after thirty-two years of clerical abstinence and recite the psalms of St Seraph or whatever needs to be done.'
'Aren't you getting a bit ahead of yourself, Fermin? You've only just met her. . . .'
'Look, Daniel, at my age either you begin to see things for what they are or you're pretty much done for. Only three or four things are worth living for; the rest is shit. I've already fooled around a lot, and now I know that the only thing I really want is to make Bernarda happy and die one day in her arms. I want to be a respectable man again, see? Not for my sake - as far as I'm concerned, I couldn't give a fly's fart for the respect of this chorus of simians we call humanity - but for hers. Because Bernarda believes in such things - in radio soaps, in priests, in respectability and in Our Lady of Lourdes. That's the way she is, and I want her exactly like that. I even like those hairs that grow on her chin. And that's why I want to be someone she can be proud of. I want her to think, My Fermin is one hell of a man, like Cary Grant, Hemingway, or Manolete.'
I crossed my arms, weighing up the situation. 'Have you spoken about all this with her? About having a child together?'
'Goodness no. What do you take me for? Do you think I go around telling women I want to get them knocked up? And it's not that I don't feel like it. Take that silly Merceditas: I'd put some triplets in her right now and feel on top of the world, but-'
'Have you told Bernarda you'd like to have a family?'
'These things don't need to be said, Daniel. They show on your face.'
I nodded. 'Well, then, for what my opinion is worth, I'm sure you'll be an excellent father and husband. And since you don't believe in those things, you'll never take them for granted.'
His face melted into happiness. 'Do you mean it?'
'Of course.'
'You've taken a huge weight off my mind. Because just remembering my own father and thinking that I might end up being like him makes me want to get sterilized.'
'Don't worry, Fermin. Besides, there's probably no treatment capable of crushing your procreative powers.'
'Good point,' he reflected. 'Go on, go and get some sleep. I mustn't keep you any longer.'
'You're not keeping me, Fermin. I have a feeling I'm not going to sleep a wink.'
'Take a pain for a pleasure. ... By the way, remember you mentioned that PO box?'
'Have you discovered anything?'
'I told you to leave it to me. This lunchtime I went up to the post office and had a word with an old acquaintance of mine who works there. PO Box 2321 is registered under the name of one Jose Maria Requejo, a lawyer with offices on Calle Leon XIII. I took the liberty of checking out the address and wasn't surprised to discover that it doesn't exist, although I imagine you already know that. Someone has been collecting the letters addressed to that box for years. I know because some of the mail received from a property business comes as registered post and requires a signature on a small receipt and proof of identification.'
'Who is it? One of Requejo's employees?' I asked.
'I couldn't get that far, but I doubt it. Either I'm very mistaken or this Requejo guy exists on the same plane as Our Lady of Fatima. All I can tell you is the name of the person who collects the mail: Nuria Monfort.'
I felt the blood draining from me.
'Nuria Monfort? Are you sure, Fermin?'
'I saw some of those receipts myself. That name and the number of her identity card were on all of them. I deduce, from that sick look on your face, that this revelation surprises you.'
'Quite a lot.'
'May I ask who this Nuria Monfort is? The clerk I spoke to told me he remembered her clearly because she went there two weeks ago to collect the mail and, in his impartial opinion, she looked hotter than the Venus de Milo - and with a firmer bust. I trust his assessment, because before the war he was a professor of aesthetics - but he was also a distant cousin of Socialist leader Largo Caballero, so naturally he now licks one-peseta stamps.'
'I was with that woman today, in her home,' I murmured.
Fermin looked at me in amazement. 'With Nuria Monfort? I'm beginning to think I was wrong about you, Daniel. You've become quite a rake.'
'It's not what you think, Fermin.'
'That's your loss, then. At your age I was like El Molino music hall -shows morning, afternoon, and night.'
I gazed at that small, gaunt, and bony man, with his large nose and his yellow skin, and I realized he was becoming my best friend.
'May I tell you something, Fermin? Something that's been on my mind for some time?'
'But of course. Anything. Especially if it's shocking and concerns this yummy maiden.'
For the second time that night I began to tell the story of Julian Carax and the enigma of his death. Fermin listened very attentively, writing things down in a notebook and interrupting me every now and then to ask me some detail whose relevance escaped me. Listening to myself, it became increasingly clear to me that there were many lacunae in that story. More than once my mind went blank and my thoughts became lost as I tried to work out why Nuria Monfort would have lied to me. What was the significance of all this? Why had she, for years, been collecting the mail directed to a nonexistent lawyers' office that was supposedly in charge of the Fortuny-Carax apartment in Ronda de San Antonio? I didn't realize I was voicing my doubts out loud.
'We can't yet know why that woman was lying to you,' said Fermin.
'But we can speculate that if she did so in this respect, she may have done so, and probably did, in many others.'
I sighed, completely lost. What do you suggest, Fermin?'
Fermin Romero de Torres sighed and put on his most Socratic expression. 'I'll tell you what we can do. This coming Sunday, if you agree, we'll drop by San Gabriel's school quite casually, and we'll make some inquiries concerning the origins of the friendship between this Carax fellow and the other lad, the rich boy...'
'Aldaya.'
'I have a way with priests, you'll see, even if it's just because I look like a roguish monk. I butter them up a little, and I get them eating out of my hand.'
'Are you sure?'
'Positive. I guarantee this lot is going to sing like the Montserrat Boys' Choir.'
23.
I spent the Saturday in a trance, anchored behind the bookshop counter in the hope of seeing Bea come through the door as if by magic. Every time the telephone rang, I rushed to answer it, grabbing the receiver from my father or Fermin. Halfway through the afternoon, after about twenty calls from clients and no news from Bea, I began to accept that the world and my miserable existence were coming to an end. My father had gone out to price a collection in San Gervasio, and Fermin took advantage of the situation to deliver another of his magisterial lectures on the many mysteries of romance.
'Calm down or you'll grow a stone in your liver,' Fermin advised me. 'This business of courtship is like a tango: absurd and pure embellishment. But you're the man, and you must take the lead.' It was all beginning to look pretty grim. 'The lead? Me?' 'What do you expect? One has to pay some price for being able to piss standing up.'
'But Bea implied that she would get back to me.' 'You really don't understand women, Daniel. I bet you my Christmas bonus that the little chick is in her house right now, looking languidly out of the window like the Lady of the Camellias, waiting for you to come and rescue her from that idiot father of hers and drag her into an unstoppable spiral of lust and sin.'
'Are you sure?'
'It's a mathematical certainty.'
'What if she's decided she doesn't want to see me again?'
'Look, Daniel. Women - with remarkable exceptions like your neighbour Merceditas - are more intelligent than we are, or at least more honest with themselves about what they do or don't want. Another question is whether they tell you or the world. You're facing the enigma of nature, Daniel. Womankind is an indecipherable maze. If you give her time to think, you're lost. Remember: warm heart, cold mind. The seducer's code.' .
Fermin was about to detail the particulars and techniques of the art of seduction when the doorbell tinkled and in walked my friend Tomas Aguilar. My heart missed a beat. Providence was denying me Bea but sending me her brother. A fateful herald, I thought. Tomas had a sombre expression and a certain despondent air.
'What a funereal appearance, Don Tomas,' Fermin remarked. 'You'll accept a small coffee at least, I hope?'
'I wouldn't say no,' said Tomas, with his usual reserve.
Fermin served him a cup of the concoction he kept in a Thermos. It gave out an odour suspiciously like sherry.
'Is there a problem?' I asked.
Tomas shrugged. 'Nothing new. My father is having one of his days, and I thought it best to get out and breathe some fresh air for a while.'
I gulped. 'Why's that?'
'Goodness knows. Last night my sister, Bea, arrived home very late. My father was waiting up for her, a bit worked up as usual. She refused to say where she'd been or who she'd been with, and my father flew into a rage. He was screaming and yelling until four o'clock in the morning, calling her all sorts of names, a tart being the least of them. He swore he was going to send her to a nunnery and said that if she ever came back pregnant, he was going to kick her out into the goddamn street.'
Fermin threw me a look of alarm. Cold beads of sweat were running down my back.
'This morning,' Tomas continued, 'Bea locked herself up in her room, and she hasn't come out all day. My father has plonked himself in the dining room to read his newspaper and listen to operettas on the radio, full blast. During the interval of Luisa Fernanda, I had to go out because I was going crazy.'
'Well, your sister was probably out with her fiance, don't you think?' Fermin needled. 'It would be perfectly natural'
I gave Fermin a kick under the counter, which he avoided with feline dexterity.
'Her fiance is doing his military service,' Tomas said. 'He doesn't come back on leave for another two weeks. Besides, when she goes out with him, she's home by eight at the latest.'