‘Digging your elbows in and squeezing your brain until it hurts. I know.’

She looked into my eyes, hesitating. She’d been staying in my house for a week and a half and I still showed no signs of sending her home. I imagined she was asking herself when I was going to do it, or why I hadn’t done it yet. I also asked myself that very question and could find no answer.

‘I like being your assistant, even if you are the way you are,’ she said at last.

The girl was staring at me as if her life depended on a kind word. I yielded to temptation. Good words are a vain benevolence that demand no sacrifice and are more appreciated than real acts of kindness.

‘I also like you being my assistant, Isabella, even if I am the way I am. And I will like it even more when there is no longer any need for you to be my assistant as you will have nothing more to learn from me.’

‘Do you think I have potential?’

‘I have no doubt whatsoever. In ten years you’ll be the teacher and I’ll be the apprentice,’ I said, repeating words that still tasted of treason.

‘You liar,’ she said, kissing me sweetly on the cheek before running off down the stairs.

14

That afternoon I left Isabella sitting at the desk we had set up for her in the gallery, facing her blank pages, while I went over to Gustavo Barceló’s bookshop on Calle Fernando hoping to find a good, readable edition of the Bible. All the sets of New and Old Testaments I had in the house were printed in microscopic type on thin, almost translucent onionskin paper and reading them, rather than bringing about fervour and divine inspiration, only induced migraines. Barceló, who among many other things was a persistent collector of holy books and apocryphal Christian texts, had a private room at the back of his shop filled with a formidable assortment of Gospels, lives of saints and holy people, and all kinds of other religious texts.

When I walked into the bookshop, one of the assistants rushed into the back-room office to alert the boss. Barceló emerged looking euphoric.

‘Bless my eyes! Sempere told me you’d been reborn, but this is quite something. Next to you, Valentino looks like someone just back from the salt mines. Where have you been hiding, you rogue?’

‘Oh, here and there,’ I said.

‘Everywhere except at Vidal’s wedding party. You were sorely missed, my friend.’

‘I doubt that.’

The bookseller nodded, implying that he understood my wish not to discuss the matter.

‘Will you accept a cup of tea?’

‘Or two. And a Bible. If possible, one that is easy to read.’

‘That won’t be a problem,’ said the bookseller. ‘Dalmau?’

The shop assistant called Dalmau came over obligingly.

‘Dalmau, our friend Martín here needs a Bible that is legible, not decorative. I’m thinking of Torres Amat, 1825. What do you think?’

One of the peculiarities of Barceló’s bookshop was that books were spoken about as if they were exquisite wines, catalogued by bouquet, aroma, consistency and vintage.

‘An excellent choice, Señor Barceló, although I’d be more inclined towards the updated and revised edition.’

‘Eighteen sixty?’

‘Eighteen ninety-three.’

‘Of course. That’s it! Wrap it up for our friend Martín and put it on the house.’

‘Certainly not,’ I objected.

‘The day I charge an unbeliever like you for the word of God will be the day I’m struck dead by lightning, and with good reason.’

Dalmau rushed off in search of my Bible and I followed Barceló into his office, where the bookseller poured two cups of tea and offered me a cigar from his humidor. I accepted it and lit it with the flame of the candle he handed me.

‘Macanudo?’

‘I see you’re educating your palate. A man must have vices, expensive ones if possible, otherwise when he reaches old age he will have nothing to be redeemed of. In fact, I’m going to have one with you. What the hell!’

A cloud of exquisite cigar smoke covered us like high tide.

‘I was in Paris a few months ago and took the opportunity to make some enquiries on the subject you talked about with our friend Sempere some time before,’ Barceló explained.

‘Éditions de la Lumière.’

‘Exactly. I wish I’d been able to scratch a little deeper, but unfortunately, after the publishing house closed down, nobody, it seems, bought its backlist, so it was difficult to gather much information.’

‘You say it closed? When?’

‘In 1914, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘There must be some mistake.’

‘Not if we’re talking about the same Éditions de la Lumière, on Boulevard Saint-Germain.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘In fact, I made a note of everything so I wouldn’t forget it when I saw you.’

Barceló looked in the drawer of his desk and pulled out a small notebook.

‘Here it is: “Éditions de la Lumière, publishing house specialising in religious texts with offices in Rome, Paris, London and Berlin. Founder and publisher, Andreas Corelli. Date of the opening of the first office in Paris, 1881-”’

‘Impossible,’ I muttered.

Barceló shrugged his shoulders.

‘Of course, I could have got it wrong, but-’

‘Did you get a chance to visit the offices?’

‘As a matter of fact, I did try, because my hotel was opposite the Panthéon, very close by, and the former offices of the publishing house were on the southern pavement of the boulevard, between Rue Saint-Jacques and Boulevard Saint-Michel.’

‘And?’

‘The building was empty, bricked up, and it looked as if there’d been a fire or something similar. The only thing that had remained intact was the door knocker, an exquisite object in the shape of an angel. Bronze, I think. I would have taken it, had there not been a gendarme watching me disapprovingly. I didn’t have the courage to provoke a diplomatic incident – heaven forbid France should decide to invade us again!’

‘With the way things are, they might be doing us a favour.’

‘Now that you mention it… But going back to the subject: when I saw what a state the place was in, I went to the café next door to make some enquiries and they told me the building had been like that for twenty years.’

‘Were you able to discover anything about the publisher?’

‘Corelli? From what I gathered, the publishing house closed when he decided to retire, although he can’t even have been fifty years old. I think he moved to a villa in the south of France, in the Luberon, and died shortly afterwards. They say a snake bit him. A viper. That’s what you get for retiring to Provence.’

‘Are you sure he died? ‘

‘Père Coligny, an old competitor of Corelli, showed me his death notice – he had it framed and treasures it like a trophy. He said he looks at it every day to remind himself that the damned bastard is dead and buried. His exact words, although in French they sounded much prettier and more musical.’

‘Did Coligny mention whether the publisher had any children?’

‘I got the impression that Corelli was not his favourite topic, because as soon as he could Coligny slipped away from me. It seems there was some scandal – Corelli stole one of his authors from him, someone called Lambert.’

‘What happened?’

‘The funniest thing about all this is that Coligny had never actually set eyes on Corelli. His only contact with him was by correspondence. The root of the problem, I think, was that Monsieur Lambert signed an agreement to write a book for Éditions de la Lumière behind Coligny’s back, when Coligny had sole rights to his work. Lambert was a terminal opium addict and had accumulated enough debts to pave Rue de Rivoli from end to end. Coligny suspected that Corelli had offered Lambert an astronomical sum and that the poor man, who was dying, had accepted it because he wanted to leave his children well provided for.’

‘What sort of book was it?’