‘Thank you, but I can’t abandon ship. My son has gone to Sarriá to appraise a collection and business isn’t so good that we can afford to close the shop when there are customers about.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re having financial problems.’

‘This is a bookshop, Martín, not an investment broker’s. The world of letters provides us with just enough to get by, and sometimes not even that.’

‘If you need help…’

Sempere held up his hand.

‘If you want to help me, buy a book or two.’

‘You know that the debt I owe you can never be repaid with money.’

‘All the more reason not even to think about it. Don’t worry about us, Martín. The only way they’ll get me out of here is in a pine box. But if you like, you can come and share a tasty meal of bread, raisins and fresh Burgos cheese. With that, and the Count of Montecristo, anyone can live to be a hundred.’

19

Sempere hardly tasted his food. He smiled wearily and pretended to be interested in my comments, but I could see that from time to time he was having trouble breathing.

‘Tell me, Martín, what are you working on?’

‘It’s difficult to explain. A book I’ve been commissioned to write.’

‘A novel?’

‘Not exactly. I wouldn’t know how to describe it.’

‘What’s important is that you’re working. I’ve always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don’t have a brain.’

‘But some people work more than is reasonable, Señor Sempere. Shouldn’t you take a break? How many years have you been here, always hard at work, never stopping?’

Sempere looked around him.

‘This place is my life, Martín. Where else would I go? To a sunny bench in the park, to feed pigeons and complain about my rheumatism? I’d be dead in ten minutes. My place is here. And my son isn’t ready to take up the reins of the business, even if he thinks he is.’

‘But he’s a good worker. And a good person.’

‘Between you and me, he’s too good a person. Sometimes I look at him and wonder what will become of him the day I go. How is he going to cope…? ’

‘All fathers say that, Señor Sempere.’

‘Did yours? Forgive me, I didn’t mean to…’

‘Don’t worry. My father had enough worries of his own without having to worry about me as well. I’m sure your son has more experience than you think.’

Sempere looked dubious.

‘Do you know what I think he lacks?’

‘Malice?’

‘A woman.’

‘He’ll have no shortage of girlfriends with all the turtle doves who cluster round the shop window to admire him.’

‘I’m talking about a real woman, the sort who makes you become what you’re supposed to be.’

‘He’s still young. Let him have fun for a few more years.’

‘That’s a good one! If he’d at least have some fun. At his age, if I’d had that chorus of young girls after me, I’d have sinned like a cardinal.’

‘The Lord gives bread to the toothless.’

‘That’s what he needs: teeth. And a desire to bite.’

Something else seemed to be going round his mind. He was looking at me and smiling.

‘Maybe you could help…’

‘Me?’

‘You’re a man of the world, Martín. And don’t give me that expression. I’m sure that if you apply yourself you’ll find a good woman for my son. He already has a pretty face. You can teach him the rest.’

I was speechless.

‘Didn’t you want to help me?’ the bookseller asked. ‘Well, there you are.’

‘I was talking about money.’

‘And I’m talking about my son, the future of this house. My whole life.’

I sighed. Sempere took my hand and pressed it with what little strength he had left.

‘Promise you’ll not allow me to leave this world before I’ve seen my son set up with a woman worth dying for. And who’ll give me a grandson.’

‘If I’d known this was coming, I’d have stayed at the Novedades Café for lunch.’

Sempere smiled.

‘Sometimes I think you should have been my son, Martín.’

I looked at the bookseller, who seemed more fragile and older than ever before, barely a shadow of the strong, impressive man I remembered from my childhood days, and I felt the world crumbling around me. I went up to him and, before I realised it, did what I’d never done in all the years I’d known him. I gave him a kiss on his forehead, which was spotted with freckles and touched by a few grey hairs.

‘Do you promise?’

‘I promise,’ I said, as I walked to the door.

20

Señor Valera’s office occupied the top floor of an extravagant modernist building located at number 442 Avenida Diagonal, just round the corner from Paseo de Gracia. For want of a better description, the building looked like a cross between a giant grandfather clock and a pirate ship, and was adorned with huge French windows and a roof with green dormers. In any other part of the world the baroque and Byzantine structure would have been proclaimed either as one of the seven wonders of the world or as the freakish creation of a mad artist who was possessed by demons. In Barcelona’s Ensanche quarter, where similar buildings cropped up everywhere, like clover after rain, it barely raised an eyebrow.

I walked into the hallway and was shown to a lift that reminded me of something a giant spider might have left behind, if it were weaving cathedrals instead of cobwebs. The doorman opened the cabin and imprisoned me in the strange capsule that began to rise through the middle of the stairwell. A severe-looking secretary opened the carved oak door at the top and showed me in. I gave her my name and explained that I had not made an appointment, but that I was there to discuss a matter relating to the sale of a building in the Ribera quarter. Something changed in her expression.

‘The tower house?’ she asked.

I nodded. The secretary led me to an empty office. I sensed that this was not the official waiting room.

‘Please wait, Señor Martín. I’ll let Señor Valera know you’re here.’

I spent the next forty-five minutes in that office, surrounded by bookshelves that were packed with volumes the size of tombstones, bearing inscriptions on the spines such as ‘1888-1889, B.C.A. Section One. Second title’. It seemed like irresistible reading matter. The office had a large window looking onto Avenida Diagonal that provided an excellent view over the city. The furniture smelled of fine wood, weathered and seasoned with money. Carpets and leather armchairs were reminiscent of those in a British club. I tried to lift one of the lamps presiding over the desk and guessed that it must weigh at least thirty kilos. A huge oil painting, resting over a hearth that had never been used, portrayed the rotund and expansive presence of none other than Don Soponcio Valera y Menacho. The titanic lawyer sported moustaches and sideburns like the mane of an old lion, and his stern eyes, with the fire and steel of a hanging judge, dominated every corner of the room from the great beyond.

‘He doesn’t speak, but if you stare at the portrait for a while he looks as if he might do so at any moment,’ said a voice behind me.

I hadn’t heard him come in. Sebastián Valera was a man with a quiet gait who looked as if he’d spent the best part of his life trying to crawl out from under his father’s shadow and now, at fifty-plus, was tired of trying. He had penetrating and intelligent eyes, and that exquisite manner only enjoyed by royal princesses and the most expensive lawyers. He offered me his hand and I shook it.

‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I wasn’t expecting your visit,’ he said, pointing to a seat.

‘Not at all. Thank you for receiving me.’

Valera gave me the smile of someone who knows how much he charges for every minute.

‘My secretary tells me your name is David Martín. You’re David Martín, the author?’

The look of surprise must have given me away.