FERNANDITO LAY ON the bed in his room, his gaze lost in the small window that gave onto the inner courtyard. The room, or cupboard, as everyone called it, shared a wall with the laundry room and had always reminded him of scenes set in submarines he sometimes saw in the matinee shows of the Capitol Cinema – only far gloomier and less cosy. Even so, that afternoon, thanks to the wondrous alchemy of hormones, which he tended to mistake for a spiritual or mystical experience, Fernandito floated in seventh heaven. Love, with a capital L and a tight skirt, had knocked on his door. Technically it hadn’t knocked; it had just walked past his door, to be precise. Yet he believed that, like a stubborn toothache, fate didn’t let go of you until you faced it with courage. All the more so where love was concerned.
The epiphany that had managed to banish, once and for all, the ghost of the treacherous Alicia and the entire spectral femme-fatale number that had ensnared him since early adolescence, had taken place a few days ago. Love, even when it implodes, leads to another. That’s what the boleros certified. Their lyrics might be as sickly sweet as a cream cake, but they were almost always well grounded when it came to the science of loving. His unholy infatuation with Señorita Alicia had led him to meet the Sempere family and be offered a job by the kind bookseller. And from there to paradise, only chance had played a part.
It happened the morning he arrived at the bookshop to report for duty as delivery-boy-at-large. As fate would have it, at that precise moment a creature of disturbing charms and a slippery accent was running about the shop. From the conversation the Semperes were having, Fernandito gathered that her name was Sofía, and after a few enquiries he discovered that the girl in question was none other than the niece of Sempere the bookseller and a cousin of Daniel. It appeared that Daniel’s mother, Isabella, was of Italian descent, and Sofía, who hailed from the city of Naples, was spending some time with the Semperes while she studied at Barcelona University and perfected her Spanish. All these minutiae, of course, were but a mere technicality.
Eighty-five percent of Fernandito’s cerebral matter, not to mention other lesser parts, became devoted to the contemplation and adoration of Sofía. The girl must have been about nineteen, give or take a year. Nature, with her infinite cruelty towards timid young men of a marriageable age, had opted to endow her with such fulsome and suggestive shapeliness, and such a pert little walk, that the mere sight of it all drove Fernandito into a paroxysm of near cardiac arrest. Her eyes, the shape of those lips, and the white teeth and pink tongue he glimpsed when she smiled dazzled the poor boy. He could spend hours imagining his fingers caressing that Renaissance mouth and moving down that pale throat on their way to the valley of paradise, emphasized by those tight woollen sweaters the signorina wore, which proved beyond a doubt that Italians had always been the true masters of architecture.
Fernandito half closed his eyes and ignored the noise of the radio in the dining room of his family home and the shouts of neighbours, conjuring up instead the image of Sofía languidly reposing on a bed of roses, or any other vegetable equipped with petals, offering herself to him in the full blossom of youth so that he, with firm hands expert in all kinds of fasteners, zips, and other mysteries of the eternal feminine, could strip her bit by bit by means of kisses, or maybe bites, and end up burying his face in that incomparable oasis of perfection that heaven had so kindly placed right below the belly button of all women. Fernandito remained in his daydream, convinced that if the Lord above struck him dead at that very moment with a destructive bolt for such lewd thoughts, it would have been worth it.
But instead of a purifying shaft of lightning, the phone rang. Footsteps, heavy as a digging machine, traipsed up the corridor, and the door of the cabin opened suddenly to reveal the large silhouette of Fernandito’s father, sporting a vest and loose trousers and holding a chorizo sandwich in one hand. “Get up, you useless twit,” he announced. “It’s for you.”
Torn away from the clutches of paradise, Fernandito dragged himself to the end of the corridor. There, in a hidden corner, stood the telephone beneath a plastic figure of Christ his mother had bought in the monastery of Montserrat. The figure’s eyes lit up when you pressed the switch, lending it a supernatural glow that had given Fernandito years of nightmares. As soon as he picked up the receiver, his brother Fulgencio poked his head around to pry on him and make faces, his one great talent.
“Fernandito?” asked a voice on the line.
“Speaking.”
“It’s Alicia.”
His heart missed a beat.
“Can you speak?” she asked.
Fernandito threw a rope-soled shoe at Fulgencio, who ran off to hide in his room. “Yes. Are you all right? Where are you?”
“Listen carefully, Fernandito. I need to be away for a while.”
“That doesn’t sound at all good.”
“I need you to do me a favour. It’s important.”
“Anything you ask.”
“Do you still have the papers that were in the box I asked you to take from my apartment?”
“Yes. They’re in a safe place.”
“I want you to look for a handwritten notebook that has ‘Isabella’ written on the cover.”
“I know the one. I haven’t opened it, eh? I don’t want you to think . . .”
“I know you haven’t. What I want you to do is give it to Daniel Sempere. Only to him. Have you understood?”
“Yes . . .”
“Tell him that I told you to give it to him. That it belongs to him and nobody else.”
“Yes, Señorita Alicia. Where are you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you in danger?”
“Don’t worry about me, Fernandito.”
“Of course I worry . . .”
“Thanks for everything.”
“This sounds like a goodbye.”
“You and I know that only corny people say goodbye.”
“And you could never be corny. Even if you tried.”
“You’re a good friend, Fernandito. And a good man. Sofía is a very lucky woman.”
Fernandito turned to steaming crimson. “How do you know?”
“I’m happy to see that at last you’ve found someone who deserves you.”
“Nobody will ever be like you, Señorita Alicia.”
“Will you do what I asked?”
“Of course.”
“I love you, Fernandito. Keep the keys to the flat. You’ll need a place to take your girl to. It’s your home now. Be happy. And forget me.”
Before he could say another word, Alicia had hung up. Fernandito swallowed hard and, drying his tears, put down the receiver.