SLOWLY FERMÍN WALKED up the narrow staircase, and with each step he could feel his determination and courage evaporating. He had to confront Lucía and tell her that the man she loved, the father of her daughter and the face she had been hoping to see for over a year, had died in a prison cell in Seville. On the third-floor landing he waited by the door, not daring to knock. He sat on the steps and buried his head in his hands. He remembered Lucía’s precise words spoken thirteen months earlier. She had held his hands and, looking into his eyes, had said, “If you love me, don’t let anything happen to him. Bring him back to me.”
Fermín pulled the envelope out of his pocket and stared at the pieces in the dark. He crumpled them between his fingers and threw them into the shadows. He had got up and was about to flee down the stairs when he heard the door open behind him. Then he paused.
*
A girl of about seven or eight was watching him from the doorway. She was carrying a book in her hands and had one finger between the pages as a bookmark. Fermín smiled at her and raised a hand in greeting.
“Hello, Alicia,” he said. “Do you remember me?”
The girl looked at him a little distrustfully, doubting.
“What are you reading?”
“Alice in Wonderland.”
“You don’t say! Can I see?”
She showed him the book but didn’t let him touch it. “It’s one of my favourites,” she said, still a little suspicious.
“One of mine too,” replied Fermín. “Anything to do with falling down a hole and bumping into madmen and mathematical problems is something I consider highly autobiographical.”
The girl bit her lips to hold back the laughter provoked by the peculiar visitor’s words. “Yes, but this one was written for me,” she said mischievously.
“Of course it was. Tell me, Alicia, is your mother at home?”
She didn’t answer, but opened the door a bit farther, turned, and walked into the flat without saying a word.
Fermín paused in the doorway. The flat was dark inside, except for what looked like the glimmer of an oil lamp at the end of a narrow corridor.
“Lucía?” he called, his voice trailing off in the shadows. He rapped on the door with his knuckles and waited. “Lucía? It’s me.”
He waited another few seconds, and when no reply came, he stepped into the flat and advanced along the corridor. All the doors were closed. When he reached the end of the passage, he found himself in a living room that doubled as a dining room. The oil lamp rested on the table, projecting a soft, yellowish halo. He could see the outline of an old woman facing the window. She sat on a chair, her back turned to him.
Fermín stopped. Only then did he recognize her. “Doña Leonor . . .”
The woman who had seemed so old couldn’t have been more than forty-five. Her face was lined with bitterness and her eyes looked glazed, tired of hating and weeping in solitude. Leonor was looking at him without saying a word. Fermín took a chair and sat down next to her. He held her hand and smiled almost imperceptibly.
“She should have married you,” she murmured. “You’re ugly, but at least you’ve got a head on your shoulders.”
“Where’s Lucía, Doña Leonor?”
The woman looked away. “They took her. About two months ago.”
“Where to?”
Leonor didn’t reply.
“Who were they?”
“That man . . .”
“Fumero?”
“They didn’t ask for Juan Antonio. They were looking for her.”
Fermín hugged her, but Leonor didn’t move.
“I’ll find her, Doña Leonor. I’ll find her and bring her home.”
The woman shook her head. “He’s dead, isn’t he? My son?”
Fermín remained silent for a few moments.
“I don’t know, Doña Leonor.”
She looked at him angrily and slapped his face. “Liar.”
“Doña Leonor . . .”
“Go,” she moaned.
Fermín stood up and moved away a few steps. Little Alicia watched him from the corridor. He smiled at her, and the girl walked slowly over to him. Then she took his hand and held it tight. He knelt down in front of her. He was about to tell her that he’d been a friend of her mother’s, hoping to come up with some story with which to placate the look of abandonment that had taken hold of her, but at that very instant, while Leonor drowned her tears in her hands, Fermín heard a faraway rumble raining down from the sky. When he looked up towards the window, he noticed that the glass was beginning to tremble.