FOUR DAYS WENT by before Alicia could get out of bed without help. Time seemed to have stopped in mid-air since she’d arrived in that place. She spent most of the day swaying between wakefulness and sleep, without leaving the room where she’d been installed. The room had a brazier, which Isaac fed every few hours, and the gloom was barely broken by the light of a candle or an oil lamp. The medication Dr. Soldevila had left to ease the pain plunged her into a heavy drowsiness from which she occasionally emerged to find Fermín or Daniel watching over her. Money might not buy you happiness, but chemicals can sometimes perform miracles.
When she did recover a vague sense of who and where she was, she would try to utter a few words. Most of her questions were answered before she asked them. No, nobody was going to find her there. No, the dreaded infection had not happened, and Dr. Soldevila thought Alicia was making good progress, although she was still weak. Yes, Fernandito was safe and sound. Señor Sempere had offered him a part-time job making deliveries and picking up sets of books bought from private owners. He was always asking after her, but, according to Fermín, not quite as much since he’d bumped into Sofía in the bookshop. He had managed to beat what seemed impossible: his own infatuation track record.
Alicia was happy for him. If he was going to suffer, let it be for someone worthwhile.
“He does fall in love easily, poor thing,” said Fermín. “He’ll have a dreadful time during his stay on this planet.”
“Those who aren’t able to fall in love suffer all the more,” Alicia let drop.
“I think the medication is affecting your cerebellum, Alicia. If you start picking up a guitar and singing Sunday-school songs, I’ll have to ask the medicine man to reduce your dosage to that of baby aspirin.”
“Don’t take away the only good thing I’ve got.”
“What a fiend you can be, Mother of God.”
The virtues of vice were underestimated. Alicia missed her glasses of white wine, her imported cigarettes and her space for solitude. The medication kept her sufficiently dazed to allow the days to go by in the warm company of those good people who had conspired to save her life and seemed more anxious about her survival than she herself was. Sometimes, when she was submerged in that chemical balm, she told herself that the best thing would be to touch bottom and remain there in a never-ending stupor. But sooner or later she would wake up again and remember that only people who have settled all their debts deserve to die.
More than once she had woken up in the dim room to find Fermín sitting in a chair opposite her, looking thoughtful.
“What time is it, Fermín?”
“Your time: the witching hour.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?”
“I’ve never been one for naps. What I go for is insomnia elevated to an art form. I’ll catch up on sleep when I die.” Fermín gazed at her with a mixture of tenderness and suspicion that exasperated her.
“Haven’t you forgiven me yet, Fermín?”
“Remind me what it is I must forgive you for. I’m vaguely confused.”
Alicia sighed. “That I let you believe I’d died that night during the war. That I let you live with the guilt of thinking that you’d failed me and my parents. That when I returned to Barcelona, and you recognized me in the train station, I pretended not to know you and allowed you to think you were going mad or seeing ghosts.”
“Ah, that.” Fermín gave her a caustic smile, but his eyes shone with tears in the candlelight.
“Are you going to forgive me, then?”
“I’ll take it into consideration.”
“I need you to forgive me. I don’t want to die carrying this burden.”
They gazed mutely at one another.
“You’re a lousy actress.”
“I’m a great actress. The trouble is that with all the junk the doctor is prescribing, I keep forgetting my lines.”
“I don’t feel at all sorry for you, you know.”
“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, Fermín. Not you, nor anyone else.”
“You’d rather they were afraid of you.”
Alicia smiled, baring her teeth.
“Well, I’m not scared of you either,” he declared.
“That’s because you don’t know me well enough.”
“I liked you better before, when you played the part of a poor dying damsel.”
“So, do you forgive me?”
“What does it matter to you?”
“I don’t like to think that it’s because of me that you go around being the guardian angel of people – of Daniel and his family.”
“I’m the bibliographic adviser to the Sempere & Sons bookshop. The angelic attributes are your invention.”
“Are you sure you don’t think that if you save someone decent, you’ll save the world, or at least the possibility that something good might be left in it?”
“Who said you’re someone decent?”
“I was talking about the Semperes.”
“Don’t you do the same thing, deep down, my dear Alicia?”
“I don’t think there is anything decent to save in the world, Fermín.”
“Even you don’t believe that. The trouble is that you’re afraid of finding out that there is.”
“Or the opposite, in your case.”
Fermín let out a grunt and dug his hand in his raincoat pocket in search of sweets. “Let’s not get all corny. You stick to your nihilism, and I’ll stick to my Sugus sweets.”
“Two unmistakable values.”
“And no two ways about it.”
“Go on, give me a goodnight kiss, Fermín.”
“You and your kisses!”
“On the cheek.”
Fermín hesitated, but in the end he leaned over and brushed her forehead with his lips. “Go to sleep, for Christ’s sake, you demon woman.”
Alicia closed her eyes and smiled. “I love you very much, Fermín.”
When she heard him crying quietly, she stretched out her hand until she found his. And so, holding each other, they fell asleep in the warmth of a dying candle.