The gaze of a small boy pulled her out of her daydreaming. He couldn’t have been more than two or three years old and was installed inside a white wooden playpen next to the counter. Crowned by a mass of fine fair hair that shone like gold, he had risen to his feet, holding on to the edge of the playpen and looking straight at Alicia, studying her as if she were some exotic specimen. Alicia melted into one of those honest smiles she could summon up on cue. The little boy seemed to be sizing up her smile while he played with a rubber crocodile. Then, in a notable feat of air acrobatics, he proceeded to fire off the toy in a parabolic flight that left it at her feet. Alicia knelt down to pick up the crocodile, and then she heard the voice.
“For heaven’s sake, Julián! What are you up to . . . ”
Alicia heard footsteps approaching around the counter, and when she stood up she saw her. Beatriz. Close up, she seemed as beautiful as she was described by fools and busybodies who, as expected, felt inclined to say little else about her. She was graced with the unassuming and youthful femininity of a woman who has experienced motherhood before reaching twenty, but the look in her eyes was that of a woman twice her age, penetrating and inquisitive. In that brief instant in which their hands touched, when Alicia handed her little Julián’s toy and their eyes met, they both felt they were confronting a looking glass through time.
Alicia gazed at the child and told herself that, in another life, she could well have been that young woman with her serene angelic appearance, a woman who surely must give rise to longings and sighs in the neighborhood, the very image of the perfect wife in fashion ads. Beatriz, virtue incarnate, also gazed at the stranger, a dark reflection of her own self, a Bea she could never or would never dare be.
“I’m sorry about the boy,” said Bea. “He’s quite determined that everyone should like crocodiles as much as he does. You’d think he could like puppies or teddy bears like other children, but no . . .”
“A sign of good taste,” said Alicia. “All those other children are silly, aren’t they?”
The child nodded a few times, as if at last he’d found a sane person in the universe. Bea frowned. The way that woman looked reminded her of the stylized, exquisitely evil witches in the storybooks Julián loved so much. Her son must have thought likewise, because he had stretched his arms out as if he wanted her to pick him up.
“It looks like you’ve made a friend,” said Bea. “And don’t imagine Julián will go off with just anyone . . .”
Alicia looked at the boy. Having never held a baby or child, she had no idea how to do it.
Bea must have sensed her bewilderment, because she took Julián in her arms. “Don’t you have children?”
The visitor shook her head.
She probably eats them, thought Bea, lapsing into spite. Julián was still looking at Alicia, entranced.
“Julián, is that his name?”
“Yes.”
Alicia stepped closer to the child and leaned forward so that their eyes were level. Julián smiled, delighted.
* * *
Surprised at her son’s reaction, Bea let him stretch out his hand to the woman’s face. Julián touched her cheek and her lips. When he stroked her, Bea thought the customer’s eyes were filling with tears, or perhaps it was just the reflection of the midday sun. The woman moved away swiftly and turned around.
She was wearing gorgeous clothes, and as far as Bea could see, very expensive. The sort of clothes she would sometimes stop to look at in the most exclusive shop windows in Barcelona, only to walk away daydreaming about them. She was pencil-slim, and her expression was vaguely theatrical. And she wore a glossy red lipstick that Bea would never have dared show off in public. Only occasionally had she painted her lips that color for Daniel in private, when he got her a bit tipsy with muscatel and asked her to do what he called “a fashion parade.”
“I love your shoes,” said Bea.
The woman turned around again and smiled, her teeth flashing. Julián was trying to clap, a clear indication that he liked everything about her, from the shoes whose price could not even be asked to the velvety eyes that seemed to hypnotize like the eyes of a snake.
“Were you looking for anything in particular?”
“Well, I’m not sure. I had to leave almost all my books behind when I moved, and now that I’ve returned to Barcelona, I feel as if I’ve been shipwrecked.”
“Are you local?”
“Yes, but I’ve been away a few years.”
“In Paris?”
“Paris? No.”
“I said that because of your clothes. And your look. You have a Parisian look.”
Alicia swapped glances with little Julián. Still besotted with her, he nodded as if that business of her Parisian origins had been his idea, not his mother’s.
“Do you know Paris?” asked Alicia.
“No. Well, only from books. But next year we’ll go and celebrate our anniversary there.”
“That’s what I call a good husband.”
“Oh, he doesn’t know yet.” Bea laughed nervously. Something in that woman’s gaze made her speak too much.
Alicia gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Even better. Some things are far too important to be left in men’s hands.”
“Is this your first time in the bookshop?” asked Bea, wanting to change the subject.
“No. In fact, when I was a child, I used to come here with my parents. This is where my father bought me my first book. . . . Although that was many years ago. Before the war. But I have very good memories, and I told myself it was the best place to begin rebuilding my lost library.”
Bea felt butterflies in her stomach at the thought of imminent business. For a long time now sales had been poor, and those words sounded like celestial music.
“Well, we’re here to assist you in anything you need. What we don’t have in the shop we can find for you in a matter of days or even hours.”
“That’s good to know. Are you the owner?”
“I’m Bea. This is my father-in-law’s bookshop, but we all work here, all the family . . .”
“Your husband also works with you? How lucky.”
“I’m not sure if I agree with you,” joked Bea. “Are you married?”
“No.”
Bea swallowed hard. Once more she’d said too much. That was the second personal question she had asked that promising customer for no reason.
Alicia read her thoughts and smiled. “Don’t worry, Bea. My name is Alicia.”
She held out her hand, and Bea shook it. Julián, who didn’t miss a thing, also lifted his hand, trying his luck. Alicia shook it too.
Bea laughed. “You have such a knack with them, you should have kids yourself.”
As soon as she’d said those words she bit her tongue. Bea, please shut up.
The woman called Alicia didn’t seem to have heard her. She was gazing absently at the full bookshelves, lifting her hand and almost caressing the books without touching them. Bea took advantage of the fact that she had her back turned to have another good look at her.
“You might like to know that we offer special prices for collections . . .”
“May I stay and live here?” asked Alicia.
Bea laughed again, this time without much conviction. She looked at her son, who would clearly have handed over the shop keys to the stranger.
“Steinbeck . . . ,” she heard her murmur.
“We have an entire new series that includes a number of his novels. It has just arrived . . .”
Alicia picked up one of the volumes, opened it, and read a few lines at random. “It’s like reading a musical score.”
Bea thought she was talking to herself, lost among the books, and had forgotten about her and the child. She left her alone and let her wander through the bookshop undisturbed. Alicia would pick up a book here and there and leave it on the counter. A quarter of an hour later she had piled up a respectable tower of books.
“We also do deliveries . . .”
<
br /> “Don’t worry, Bea. I’ll send someone around to collect them this afternoon. But I’ll take this one with me. This card has convinced me. It says: ‘Recommended by Fermín: The Grapes of Wrath, by the roguish Johnny Steinbeck, is a symphony of words suitable for alleviating cases of stubborn stupidity and favoring the prophylaxis of the meninx in cases of cerebral constipation provoked by an excess of adherence to the norms of official idiocy.’”
Bea rolled her eyes and pulled the card off the cover. “Forgive me, this business of recommendation cards is one of Fermín’s latest ideas. I try to find them all and pull them off before the customers discover them, but he keeps on hiding them all over the place . . .”
Alicia laughed. Her laughter was cold, like crystal. “Is this Fermín one of your employees?”
Bea nodded. “Something like that. He describes himself as literary adviser and bibliographic detective for Sempere & Sons.”
“He sounds like quite a character.”
“You have no idea. Isn’t it true, Julián, that Uncle Fermín is quite something?”
The child clapped.
“One is as bad as the other,” Bea explained. “I don’t know who is the more childish of the two . . .”
Bea started to look at the prices of the different volumes, noting them down in the sales ledger. Alicia observed her: she showed a confidence that left no doubt as to who was in charge of the accounts in that household.
“With our discount, that will come to . . .”
“No discounts, please. Spending money on books is a pleasure that I don’t want you to lessen.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Alicia paid for the purchase, which Bea started to wrap up for its collection that afternoon.
“You’re taking quite a few treasures,” said Bea.
“I hope they’ll be the first of a long list.”
“Well, here we are, at your service.”
Alicia held out her hand. Bea shook it.
“It’s been a pleasure. I’ll be back soon.”
Bea nodded contentedly, though she thought that Alicia’s remark sounded vaguely threatening.
“Any time. We’ll be here for anything you may need . . .”
Alicia blew a kiss to Julián, who looked as if he was in a trance. They both watched her put on her gloves with catlike movements and make her way to the door, drumming out a rhythm with those high heels. Just as Alicia was leaving, Daniel arrived. Bea watched her husband, openmouthed, holding the door for Alicia and melting into a smile that deserved at least a slap in the face. Bea rolled her eyes and sighed. Julián, next to her, made the noises he usually made when he was delighted with something, whether it was one of Uncle Fermín’s stories or a hot bath.
“You’re all the same,” Bea murmured.
Daniel stepped into the bookshop, to be met by Bea’s icy look.
“That woman, who was she?” he asked.
27
Alicia didn’t pause until she reached the corner of Puerta del Ángel. Only then, hiding among the crowds, did she stop by one of the Casa Jorba department store window displays and dry the tears falling down her face. This is my life, she thought. She faced her image in the glass and let the anger burn her inside.
“You idiot,” she said out loud.
On her way back she abandoned herself to what, years ago, had been her favorite walk, covering twenty centuries in twenty minutes. She walked down from Puerta del Ángel to the cathedral, and from there she slipped around the curve of Calle de la Paja, bordering the remains of the Roman walls, and descended toward Calle Aviñón through the Call, the old Jewish Quarter. She had always preferred the streets she didn’t have to share with trams and cars. There, in the heart of old Barcelona, where neither machines nor their disciples could penetrate, Alicia wanted to believe that time flowed in circles and that if she didn’t venture beyond those narrow streets through which the sun only dared to tiptoe, perhaps she would never grow old and would be able to return to a hidden time, rediscover the path she should never have left. Perhaps her moment hadn’t yet passed. Perhaps there was still a reason for her to go on living.
Before the war, when she was a child, Alicia had often taken that route, holding on to her parents’ hands. She remembered walking past the shop window of Sempere & Sons with her mother and stopping for a moment to meet the gaze of a sad-faced boy observing her from behind the glass pane. Daniel, perhaps? She remembered the day her mother bought her her first book, an anthology of poems and legends by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. She remembered all those nights she was unable to sleep, believing that Maese Pérez, the ghostly organist, would be hovering by her door at midnight. She recalled how she longed to return to the enchanted book bazaar where a thousand and one stories awaited her. Perhaps in that other lost life Alicia would now have been on the other side of that counter, putting books in other people’s hands, making a note of the title and its price in the accounts book, and dreaming about that journey to Paris with Daniel.
* * *
As she approached her home, she began to feel a dark resentment rising in her again: a bitterness that dragged her down to that shadowy room of her soul, with no mirrors or windows, in which she lived. For a moment she imagined herself turning around and returning to the bookshop to meet that woman straight out of a story, Beatriz the Pure, and her smiley cherub. She saw herself holding Beatriz by the neck against the wall, digging her nails into that velvety skin, putting her own face so close to that white soul that Bea could peep into the chasm hiding in Alicia’s eyes. And then she saw herself licking Bea’s lips to taste the honeyed happiness blessing the lives of people among whom Leandro had always said Alicia could never count herself: normal people.
She stopped at the intersection of Calle Aviñón and Calle Fernando, just a few meters from her home, and hung her head, filled with shame. She could almost hear Leandro laughing at her in some corner of her mind. My dear Alicia, creature of the shadows, don’t hurt yourself by dreaming you can be that little house princess waiting for her champion to come home, filled with joy as she takes care of her adorable children. You and I are what we are, and the less we look at ourselves in the mirror, the better.
“Are you feeling all right, Señorita Alicia?”
She opened her eyes to discover a familiar face, a fragment from the past. “Fernandito?”
A warm smile spread over the lips of her loyal old admirer. Time had taken with it a poor boy with a feverish mind and a fast-beating heart, and returned a good-looking young man. And yet, despite all the years gone by, his gaze was still as entranced as on the day he had come to bid her farewell in the Estación de Francia.
“It’s such a joy to see you again, Señorita Alicia. You look just the same. What am I saying? Even better.”
“It’s only because you see me with favorable eyes, Fernandito. You’re the one who has changed.”
“That’s what people tell me,” the boy agreed, seemingly happy with the improvement.
“You’ve put on a load of muscle,” said Alicia. “I’m not sure I can go on calling you Fernandito. Now you look like Don Fernando.”
Fernandito blushed and looked down. “You can call me whatever you like, Señorita Alicia.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, which was beginning to show a stubble. Fernandito froze in astonishment and then, in a fit of rapture, threw his arms around her. “I’m glad you’ve come back home. We’ve all missed you a lot.”
“Can I treat you to a . . . ?” Alicia said quickly. “Do you still like cinnamon milk shakes so much?”
“I’ve moved on to rum carajillo.”
“What testosterone can’t achieve . . .”
Fernandito laughed. Despite his newly developed muscles, the hint of a beard, and his new deep voice, he still laughed like a child. Alicia took his arm and dragged him to the Gran Café, where she asked for a carajillo coffee with the best Cuban rum in the house, and a glass of Alella white
wine. They toasted for the years of absence, and Fernandito, intoxicated by the rum and Alicia’s presence, told her he had a part-time job doing deliveries for a grocer’s shop in the neighborhood, and a girlfriend called Candela he’d met at the parish Sunday school.
“Promising,” Alicia remarked. “When are you getting married?”
“Married? Those are Aunt Jesusa’s fancies. I’ve barely managed to get Candela to kiss me. She thinks that if there isn’t a priest present, it’s a sin.”
“If there’s a priest present, it spoils the fun.”
“That’s what I say. Besides, with the small amount I earn at the grocer’s, I can’t save a duro for the wedding. Imagine, I signed forty-eight installment payments for the Vespa . . .”
“You’ve got a Vespa?”
“A beauty. It’s thirdhand, but I’ve had it painted and it looks amazing. One of these days I must take you for a ride. It cost me an arm and a leg, and it will go on costing me. We’re a bit tight—the whole family is—since my father got ill and had to leave his job at the rayon factory. All those fumes from the acid. Poor man, they’ve eaten his lungs away.”
“I’m so sorry, Fernandito.”
“That’s life. But for the moment my salary is all that comes into our home, and I’m going to have to find something better.”
“What would you like to do?”
He smiled enigmatically. “Do you know what I’ve always wanted to do? Work with you.”
“But you don’t even know what I do, Fernandito.”
“I’m not as stupid as I look, Señorita Alicia.”
“I never thought you were stupid.”
“A bit of a dreamer, and a bit naive, sure—what can I say that you haven’t experienced yourself? But I have enough brains to know that you’re in the business of mysteries and intrigues.”
She smiled. “I suppose that’s one way of putting it.”
“And don’t think I go around talking out of school, eh? Mum’s the word.”
The Labyrinth of the Spirits Page 32
