THE YEAR ALICIA GRIS arrived in Madrid, her mentor and puppet master Leandro Montalvo taught her that to keep your sanity, you must have a place in the world where you can lose yourself if necessary. That place, that last refuge, is a small annexe of the soul, and when the world reverts to its absurd comedy, you can always run there, lock yourself in and throw away the key. One of Leandro’s most irritating habits was that he was always right. In time, Alicia ended up bowing to the evidence, deciding that perhaps she did need to find her own protected space. The absurdities of the world no longer seemed the stuff of comedy: they had become mere routine. And for once, destiny chose to deal her a good hand of cards. Like all great discoveries, it happened when she least expected it.
One faraway day during her first autumn in Madrid, when a downpour caught her strolling down Paseo de Recoletos, Alicia noticed a classical-style palace through the trees. Thinking it must be a museum, she decided to shelter there until the storm was over. Soaked to the skin, she walked up the grand staircase bordered by regal-looking statues, not noticing the name written on the lintel. A man with a listless gait and the piercing look of an owl had peeped out of the main door to watch the spectacle offered by the storm when he saw her arrive. Those bird eyes settled on Alicia as if she were a small rodent.
“Hello there,” Alicia improvised. “What do you exhibit in here?”
Clearly unimpressed by her opening, the man inspected her through enlarged pupils. “We exhibit patience, young lady, and sometimes astonishment at the audacity of ignorance. This is the National Library.”
Be it out of compassion or boredom, the gentleman with the owlish look informed her that she’d just set foot in one of the greatest libraries in the world, that over twenty-five million volumes awaited her inside. But if she’d come with the idea of using the bathrooms or reading fashion magazines, she had better turn around and catch pneumonia in the outdoor world.
“May I ask Your Lordship who you are?” asked Alicia.
“I haven’t seen any lordships for years, but if you’re referring to this humble person, let it be known that I’m the director of this house, and that one of my favourite pastimes is chucking out bumpkins and intruders.”
“I understand, but I wish to become a member.”
“And I wish I’d written David Copperfield, yet here I am, getting old and with no decent body of work to show for it. What’s your name, dear?”
“Alicia Gris, at your service, and Spain’s, sir.”
“Not having given birth to any contemporary classic doesn’t stop me from appreciating irony or impertinence. I can’t answer for Spain, there being too many voices pretending to speak for her out there already, but I can’t see how you could serve me, except to remind me that the years are advancing. However, I don’t consider myself an ogre, and if your wish to become a member is sincere, I won’t be the one to keep you in total illiteracy. My name is Bermeo Pumares.”
“It’s an honour, sir. I place myself in your expert hands to receive the guidance that will rescue me from ignorance and allow me, under your command, to cross the threshold of this Arcadia.”
Bermeo Pumares raised his eyebrows and reconsidered his opponent.
“I’m beginning to get the vague impression that you can rescue yourself very well on your own, and that your ignorance is less sizable than your boldness, Señorita Gris. I’m also well aware that encyclopaedic gluttony has ended up warping my speech, making it veer towards the baroque, but there’s no need to make fun of an old teacher, either.”
“It would never occur to me to do such a thing.”
“I see. By their words ye shall know them. I like you, Alicia, even though I may not give that impression. Come inside and go over to the counter. Tell Puri that Pumares said to issue a card for you.”
“How can I thank you?”
“By dropping by and reading good books, whichever you feel like reading, not what I or anyone else says you’ve got to read. I may be a touch dogmatic, but I’m not a pedant.”
“You can be quite sure I will.”
That afternoon Alicia got her reader’s card and passed the first of many afternoons in the main reading room, getting acquainted with some of the treasures that centuries of human ingenuity had managed to conjure up. More than once she looked up from her page and found the owlish gaze of Don Bermeo Pumares, who liked ambling around the room to see what everyone was reading. He would gruffly eject those who had nodded off or were whispering, because, as he said, for slumbering minds and inane conversations the big outdoor world offered plenty of opportunity.
One day, after Alicia had proved her interest and voracious reading throughout an entire year, Bermeo Pumares invited her to follow him to the back room of the palatial building, into a section closed to the general public. There, he explained, lay the library’s most precious volumes. The only readers allowed in were certain academics and scholars distinguished enough to obtain a special reader’s card for their research work.
“You’ve never told me what you do in your more worldly activities, but I have a sneaking suspicion you may be a researcher yourself, and I’m not talking about inventing new penicillin treatments, or even unearthing incunabula among the ruins of Cistercian monasteries.”
“You’re on the right track.”
“I’ve never been on the wrong track in my life. The problem with this dear country of ours is with the tracks themselves, not with those of us walking along them. The mysterious ways of our Lord, as they say.”
“In my case, the mysterious ways are not those of the Lord, but what Your Eminence would call the machinery of state security.”
Bermeo Pumares nodded slowly. “You’re full of surprises, Alicia. A box of surprises one doesn’t dare open, just in case.”
“Wise decision.”
Pumares handed her a card with her name on it. “In any case, I wanted to make sure, before leaving, that you had a researcher’s card, so you can come along here whenever you feel in the mood.”
“Before leaving?”
Pumares’s expression turned serious. “Don Mauricio Valls’s secretary has seen fit to inform me that I’ve been retroactively removed from my post, and that my last day at the head of this institution was yesterday, Wednesday. It seems that the minister’s decision is the result of various factors, notable among which are, on the one hand, the minimal enthusiasm exhibited by my person towards the revered principles of the regime, whatever those may be, and on the other, the interest shown by the brother-in-law of one of our country’s most prominent men in taking over the reins of this fine institution. Some cretin must believe that the title of chief librarian is as impressive in certain circles as an invitation to the presidential box at Real Madrid.”
“I’m very sorry, Don Bermeo. I really am.”
“Don’t be sorry. Rarely in our country’s history has a qualified person – or at least someone not completely incompetent – found himself heading a cultural institution. Strict controls and numerous specialized staff are in place to prevent this from happening. Meritocracy and the Mediterranean climate are by necessity incompatible. I suppose it’s the price we pay for having the best olive oil in the world. The fact that an experienced librarian has actually run the National Library, even if only for fourteen months, was an unforeseen accident that the illustrious minds guiding our destinies have remedied, all the more so when there’s no end of cronies and relatives to fill the post. All I can say is that I’ll miss you. Alicia. You, your mysteries and your jibes.”
“I return to my beautiful Toledo, or what they’ve left of it, hoping I can rent a room in some peaceful country house on a hill with a decent view of the city. A place where I can spend the rest of my wasted existence peeing on the banks of the Tajo and rereading Cervantes and all his bitter rivals – most of which didn’t live far from Toledo and failed to alter the course of this ship in the slightest, despite all the gold and all the verse of their century.”
“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 towards oblivion, one more drop amid the unending flood of lives shipwrecked in grey 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.