“And couldn’t I help you? My trade isn’t poetry, but you’d be surprised at my range of stylistic resources with which to stir up what should be left alone.”
Pumares looked at her at length. “You wouldn’t surprise me; you’d scare me, and I’m only bold enough with idiots. Besides, even if you’re not aware of this, you’ve already helped me enough. Good luck, Alicia.”
“Good luck, master.”
Bermeo Pumares smiled, a wide and open smile. It was the first and last time Alicia saw him do that. He shook her hand firmly, lowering his voice. “Tell me something, Alicia. Out of curiosity, apart from your devotion to Mount Parnassus, knowledge, and all those exemplary things, what is it that really brings you to this place?”
She shrugged. “A memory.”
The librarian raised his eyebrows.
“A childhood memory. Something I once dreamed when I was on the point of dying. That was a long time ago. A cathedral made of books . . .”
“And where was that?”
“In Barcelona. During the war.”
The librarian nodded slowly, smiling to himself. “And you say you dreamed it? Are you sure?”
“Almost sure.”
“Certainty is reassuring, but one can only learn by doubting. One more thing. The day will come when you’ll have to rummage around where you shouldn’t, and disturb the bottom of some murky pond. I know because you’re not the first or the last person passing through this place with the same shadow as the one I see in your eyes. And when that day comes, and it will come, be assured that this house conceals far more than it appears to do, and that people like me come and go, but there’s someone here who might one day be of use to you.” Pumares pointed to a black door at the end of a vast arched gallery filled with books. “Behind that door there’s a staircase that leads to the library’s basements. Floors and floors of endless corridors with millions of books, many of which are incunabula. During the civil war alone half a million volumes were added to the collection to save them from being burned. But that’s not the only thing down there. I suppose you’ve never come across the legend of the Recoletos palace vampire?”
“No.”
“But you must admit that the idea intrigues you, at least for its melodramatic tone.”
“I can’t say it doesn’t. But are you being serious?”
Pumares winked at her. “I already told you once that, despite appearances, I know how to appreciate irony. I leave you with that thought. Mull it over. And I hope you’ll never stop coming to this place, or to another similar one.”
“I’ll do so, as a toast to your health.”
“Better to the health of the world, which is in the doldrums. Take good care of yourself, Alicia. I hope you find the path that I missed.”
And that was how, without saying another word, Don Bermeo Pumares crossed the researchers’ gallery one last time and then the large reading room of the National Library and continued through its doors without once turning his head to look back until he’d stepped out through the entrance on Paseo de Recoletos and set off, walking toward oblivion, one more drop amid the unending flood of lives shipwrecked in gray ancestral Spain.
And that was also how, months later, the day came when her curiosity was greater than her prudence, and Alicia decided to go through that black door and dive into the shadows of the basement floors hidden beneath the library, to unravel its secrets.
13
A legend is a lie that has been whipped up to explain a universal truth. Places where lies and fantasy pepper the earth are particularly apt for the development of these tales. The first time Alicia Gris lost her way in the dark corridors of the library basements in search of the supposed vampire and its legend, all she found was a subterranean city peopled by hundreds of thousands of books, waiting silently among cobwebs and echoes.
Few are the occasions when life allows us to stroll through our dreams, caressing a lost memory with our hands. More than once, while she explored that place, Alicia stopped in the dark, expecting to hear once again the explosion of the bombs and the metallic roar of the airplanes. After two hours spent wandering about, floor after floor, she didn’t meet a soul: only a couple of gourmet bookworms making their way up the spine of a collection of Schiller verse in search of a snack. On her second incursion, this time armed with a flashlight she’d bought at an ironmonger’s in Plaza de Callao, she didn’t even meet her friends the worms, but as she was leaving, after an exploratory hour and a half, she discovered a note pinned on the door that said:
Pretty flashlight.
But don’t you ever change your colors?
In this country that is almost an eccentricity.
Yours sincerely,
Virgilio
The following day, Alicia stopped at the ironmonger’s again to buy another flashlight, just like hers, and a packet of batteries. Sporting the same blue coat, she walked into the farthest part of the bottom floor and sat down next to a collection of novels by the Brontë sisters, her favorite books since her years at the orphanage. There she pulled out the marinated porkloin sandwich and the beer she’d bought at the Café Gijón and tucked into her lunch. Afterward, with a full stomach, she nodded off.
The sound of footsteps in the shadows roused her. Soft steps, like feathers being dragged along the dust. She opened her eyes and saw needles of amber light filtering through the books on the other side of the corridor. The bubble of light moved along slowly, like a jellyfish. Alicia sat up and brushed the bread crumbs off her lapels. Seconds later, a dark profile turned the corner of the corridor and kept moving forward in her direction, the steps faster now. The first thing Alicia noticed was the eyes, blue and reared in a world of darkness. The skin was as pale as the pages of an unread book, the hair straight and combed back.
“I’ve brought you a flashlight,” said Alicia. “And batteries.”
“What a kind gesture.”
The voice was hoarse and oddly high-pitched.
“My name is Alicia Gris. You must be Virgilio.”
“Touché.”
“This is just a formality, but I need to ask you whether you’re a vampire.”
Virgilio smiled questioningly. Alicia thought he looked like a moray eel when he did that.
“If I were, I’d be dead by now, given the garlicky stench emanating from the sandwich you’ve just polished off.”
“So you don’t drink human blood.”
“I prefer orange Fanta. Are you making up these questions as you go, or did you write them down in advance?”
“I’m afraid I’ve been the object of a practical joke.”
“And who isn’t? That’s the essence of life. Tell me, how can I help you?”
“Señor Bermeo Pumares told me about you.”
“That’s what I imagined. Scholastic humor.”
“He mentioned that you might be able to help me if I ever needed help.”
“And do you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then that means you don’t. May I see the flashlight?”
“It’s yours.”
Virgilio accepted the gift and inspected it.
“How many years have you been working here?”
“About thirty-five. I started with my father.”
“Did your father also live down in these depths?”
“I think you’re mistaking us for a family of crustaceans.”
“Is that how the legend of the vampire-librarian began?”
Virgilio’s laughter sounded like sandpaper. “There’s never been such a legend,” he assured her.
“So Señor Pumares invented it to pull my leg?”
“Technically speaking, he didn’t invent it. He got it out of a novel by Julián Carax.”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“Most people haven’t. It’s very entertaining. It’s about a diabolical murderer who lives in hiding in the basement of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and uses his victims’ blood to write a demonic book with
which he hopes to ward off Satan himself. A delight. If I manage to find it, I’ll lend it to you. Tell me, are you a policewoman or something like that?”
“Something like that.”
* * *
During that year, in between the shady tasks and other dirty jobs Leandro pressed on her, Alicia visited Virgilio in his underground domain whenever she had the chance. Eventually, the librarian became her only real friend in town. Virgilio always had books ready to lend her, and his choices were always perfect.
“Listen, Alicia, don’t misunderstand me, but one of these evenings, would you like to come to the cinema with me?”
“So long as it’s not to see a film about saints or exemplary lives.”
“May the immortal spirit of Don Miguel de Cervantes strike me down right now, should it ever occur to me to suggest we see an epic film on the triumph of the human spirit.”
“Amen,” said Alicia.
Sometimes, when Alicia had no assignment, they’d stroll over to one of the cinemas on Gran Vía to catch the last show. Virgilio loved Technicolor, biblical stories, and films about Romans, which allowed him to see the sun and enjoy the muscular torsos of the gladiators without restraint. One night, when he was walking her back to the Hotel Hispania after they’d watched Quo Vadis, Alicia stopped in front of a bookshop window on Gran Vía. He stood there, looking at her.
“Alicia, if you were a young boy I’d ask for your hand, to indulge in illicit cohabitation.”
She held out her hand to him, and he kissed it.
“What lovely things you say, Virgilio.”
The man smiled, with all the sadness of the world in his eyes.
“That’s what comes from being well read. One already knows all the verses and all the tricks of fate.”
Some Saturday afternoons, Alicia would buy a few bottles of orange Fanta and go over to the library to listen to Virgilio’s stories about obscure authors nobody had ever heard of, authors whose ill-fated biographies were sealed in the book-lined crypt of the lowest basement floor.
“Alicia, I know it’s none of my business, but this thing with your hip . . . What happened?”
“The war.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t like to talk about it.”
“I can imagine. But that’s precisely why. Tell me. It will do you good.”
Alicia had never told anybody the story of how a stranger had saved her life the night Mussolini’s air force, recruited to support the Nacionales, had bombed Barcelona without pity. She surprised herself as she listened to her tale and realized that she’d forgotten nothing. She could still perceive the smell of sulfur and burned flesh in the air.
“And you never found out who that man was?”
“A friend of my parents. Someone who really loved them.”
She didn’t realize until Virgilio handed her a handkerchief that she’d been crying, and that, however embarrassed and angry she felt, she couldn’t stop herself.
“I’ve never seen you cry.”
“Nor has anyone else. And you’d better hope it doesn’t happen again.”
* * *
That afternoon, after visiting Villa Mercedes and sending Vargas off to sniff around police headquarters, Alicia walked over to the National Library. As they knew her well, she didn’t even have to show her card. She crossed the reading room and headed for the wing reserved for researchers. A large number of academics were daydreaming at their desks when Alicia passed discreetly by on her way to the black door at the far end. Over the years she’d learned to decipher Virgilio’s habits. It was early afternoon, so he would probably be putting away the incunabula used by the scholars that morning on the third floor. There he was, armed with the flashlight she had given him, whistling to a melody on the radio and absentmindedly swaying his pale skeleton in time to the music. The uniqueness of the scene made such an impression on her she felt it worthy of its own legend.
“Your tropical rhythm is fascinating, Virgilio.”
“The clave tempo does get under your skin. Have they let you out early today, or have I got the day wrong?”
“I’m on a semiofficial visit.”
“Don’t tell me I’m being arrested.”
“No, but your knowledge is being sequestered temporarily to be put at the service of the national interest.”
“If that’s the case, tell me how I can help.”
“I’d like you to have a quick look at something.”
Alicia pulled out the book she’d found hidden in Valls’s desk and handed it to him. Virgilio took it and switched on the flashlight. As soon as he saw the design of the coiled staircase on the cover, he looked Alicia straight in the eyes. “But have you even the remotest idea of what this is?”
“I was hoping you’d be able to enlighten me.”
Virgilio looked over his shoulder, as if he feared there might be someone else in the passageway, and motioned with his head toward a door. “We’d better go to my office.”
Virgilio’s office was a cubicle squeezed into the end of a corridor on the lowest floor. One got the feeling that the room had grown out of the walls as a result of the pressure of those millions of volumes stacked floor upon floor, a sort of cabin formed of books, lever-arch files, and all sorts of peculiar objects, from glasses full of paintbrushes and sewing needles to spectacles, magnifying glasses, and tubes of pigments. Alicia guessed that this was where Virgilio undertook the occasional emergency surgery on damaged volumes. The cubicle’s pièce de resistance was a small fridge, full of orange Fanta. Virgilio pulled a couple bottles out and served them. Then, armed with his special magnifying glasses, he placed the book on a piece of red velvet and slipped on a pair of silk gloves.
“From all this ceremonial, I deduce the volume is a rare one—”
“Shhh,” said Virgilio. For the next few minutes he examined the Víctor Mataix book with fascination, licking his lips at every page, stroking each illustration, and savoring every engraving as if it were some fiendishly choice dish.
“Virgilio, you’re making me nervous. Say something, for God’s sake!”
The man turned around, his ice-blue eyes amplified by the magnifier of those watchmaker’s lenses. “I suppose you can’t tell me where you found it,” he began.
“That’s right.”
“This is a collector’s piece. If you like, I can tell you who you could sell it to for a very good price, although you’d have to be careful because this is a censored book, not only by the government but also by the Holy Mother Church.”
“This one and hundreds of others. What can you tell me about it that I can’t imagine?”
Virgilio removed his magnifier glasses and drank half a Fanta in one gulp. “I’m sorry, I got all emotional,” he confessed. “I haven’t seen one of these treats for at least twenty years . . .”
He leaned back in his moth-eaten armchair, his eyes shining. Alicia knew that the day prophesied by Bermeo Pumares had arrived.
14
“As far as I know,” Virgilio explained, “eight books of the series The Labyrinth of the Spirits were published in Barcelona between 1931 and 1938. I can’t tell you much about the author, Víctor Mataix. I know he worked occasionally as an illustrator of children’s books and that he published a few novels under a pseudonym in a third-rate publishing house called Barrido & Escobillas. It was rumored that he was the illegitimate son of an industrialist from Barcelona who had made his fortune in South America and disowned both Víctor and his mother—a relatively popular actress at the time in the theaters of the Paralelo district. Mataix also worked as a set designer and produced catalogs for a toy manufacturer in Igualada. In 1931 he published the first installment of The Labyrinth of the Spirits, under the title Ariadna and the Underwater Cathedral. Published by Orbe, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Does the expression ‘the entrance to the labyrinth’ mean anything to you?”
Virgilio tilted his head. “Well, in this case, the labyrinth is the city.”
“Barcelona.”
“The other Barcelona. The Barcelona of the books.”
“A kind of hell.”
“Whatever.”
“And where is the entrance?”
Virgilio shrugged, looking pensive. “A city has a lot of entrances. I don’t know. Can I think about it?”
Alicia nodded. “What about Ariadna? Who is she?”
“Read the book. It’s worth it.”
“Give me a preview.”
“Ariadna is a girl, the protagonist of all the novels in the series. Ariadna was the name of Mataix’s eldest daughter, for whom he presumably wrote the books. The character is a reflection of his daughter. Mataix was also partially inspired by the Alice in Wonderland books, which were his daughter’s favorites. Don’t you find that fascinating?”
“Can’t you see how I’m trembling with emotion?”
“When you behave like this, you’re insufferable.”
“But you do suffer me. That’s why I love you so much. Go on, tell me more.”
“Oh, what a cross I have to bear. Celibate and with even fewer prospects than Le Fanu’s Carmilla . . .”
“The book, Virgilio, back to the book . . .”
“Well, the thing is that Ariadna was Mataix’s Alice, and instead of a Wonderland, he invented a Barcelona of horrors, an infernal town, a nightmare. With every book the backdrop—which is as much a protagonist as Ariadna and the extravagant characters she comes across during her adventures, or perhaps more so—becomes increasingly sinister. The last known book of the series, Ariadna and the Machines of the Averno, published in the middle of the civil war, is about a besieged city that in the end is invaded by the enemy. The resulting carnage makes the fall of Constantinople look like a Laurel and Hardy film.”
“Did you say the last known book?”
“There are those who think that when he disappeared after the war, Mataix was concluding his ninth and last book of the series. In fact, years ago large sums were being offered among book collectors to anyone who could get hold of that manuscript, but as far as I know, it was never found.”
“And how did Mataix disappear?”
The Labyrinth of the Spirits Page 16
