A LEGEND IS a lie that has been whipped up to explain a universal truth. Places where lies and fantasy pepper the earth are particularly apt for the development of these tales. The first time Alicia Gris lost her way in the dark corridors of the library basements in search of the supposed vampire and its legend, all she found was a subterranean city peopled by hundreds of thousands of books, waiting silently among cobwebs and echoes.
Few are the occasions when life allows us to stroll through our dreams, caressing a lost memory with our hands. More than once, while she explored that place, Alicia stopped in the dark, expecting to hear once again the explosion of the bombs and the metallic roar of the aeroplanes. After two hours spent wandering about, floor after floor, she didn’t meet a soul: only a couple of gourmet bookworms making their way up the spine of a collection of Schiller verse in search of a snack. On her second incursion, this time armed with a torch she’d bought at an ironmonger’s in Plaza de Callao, she didn’t even meet her friends the worms, but as she was leaving, after an exploratory hour and a half, she discovered a note pinned on the door that said:
Pretty torch.
But don’t you ever change your colours?
In this country that is almost an eccentricity.
Yours sincerely,
Virgilio
The following day, Alicia stopped at the ironmonger’s again to buy another torch, just like hers, and a packet of batteries. Sporting the same blue coat, she walked into the farthest part of the bottom floor and sat down next to a collection of novels by the Brontë sisters, her favourite books since her years at the orphanage. There she pulled out the marinated porkloin sandwich and the beer she’d bought at the Café Gijón and tucked into her lunch. Afterwards, with a full stomach, she nodded off.
The sound of footsteps in the shadows roused her. Soft steps, like feathers being dragged along the dust. She opened her eyes and saw needles of amber light filtering through the books on the other side of the corridor. The bubble of light moved along slowly, like a jellyfish. Alicia sat up and brushed the breadcrumbs off her lapels. Seconds later, a dark profile turned the corner of the corridor and kept moving forward in her direction, the steps faster now. The first thing Alicia noticed was the eyes, blue and reared in a world of darkness. The skin was as pale as the pages of an unread book, the hair straight and combed back.
“I’ve brought you a torch,” said Alicia. “And batteries.”
“What a kind gesture.”
The voice was hoarse and oddly high-pitched.
“My name is Alicia Gris. You must be Virgilio.”
“Touché.”
“This is just a formality, but I need to ask you whether you’re a vampire.”
Virgilio smiled questioningly. Alicia thought he looked like a moray eel when he did that.
“If I were, I’d be dead by now, given the garlicky stench emanating from the sandwich you’ve just polished off.”
“So you don’t drink human blood.”
“I prefer orange Fanta. Are you making up these questions as you go, or did you write them down in advance?”
“I’m afraid I’ve been the object of a practical joke.”
“And who isn’t? That’s the essence of life. Tell me, how can I help you?”
“Señor Bermeo Pumares told me about you.”
“That’s what I imagined. Scholastic humour.”
“He mentioned that you might be able to help me if I ever needed help.”
“And do you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then that means you don’t. May I see the torch?”
“It’s yours.”
Virgilio accepted the gift and inspected it.
“How many years have you been working here?”
“About thirty-five. I started with my father.”
“Did your father also live down in these depths?”
“I think you’re mistaking us for a family of crustaceans.”
“Is that how the legend of the vampire-librarian began?”
Virgilio’s laughter sounded like sandpaper. “There’s never been such a legend,” he assured her.
“So Señor Pumares invented it to pull my leg?”
“Technically speaking, he didn’t invent it. He got it out of a novel by Julián Carax.”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“Most people haven’t. It’s very entertaining. It’s about a diabolical murderer who lives in hiding in the basement of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and uses his victims’ blood to write a demonic book with which he hopes to ward off Satan himself. A delight. If I manage to find it, I’ll lend it to you. Tell me, are you a policewoman or something like that?”
“Something like that.”
*
During that year, in between the shady tasks and other dirty jobs Leandro pressed on her, Alicia visited Virgilio in his underground domain whenever she had the chance. Eventually, the librarian became her only real friend in town. Virgilio always had books ready to lend her, and his choices were always perfect.
“Listen, Alicia, don’t misunderstand me, but one of these evenings, would you like to come to the cinema with me?”
“So long as it’s not to see a film about saints or exemplary lives.”
“May the immortal spirit of Don Miguel de Cervantes strike me down right now, should it ever occur to me to suggest we see an epic film on the triumph of the human spirit.”
“Amen,” said Alicia.
Sometimes, when Alicia had no assignment, they’d stroll over to one of the cinemas on Gran Vía to catch the last show. Virgilio loved Technicolor, biblical stories and films about Romans, which allowed him to see the sun and enjoy the muscular torsos of the gladiators without restraint. One night, when he was walking her back to the Hotel Hispania after they’d watched Quo Vadis, Alicia stopped in front of a bookshop window on Gran Vía. He stood there, looking at her.
“Alicia, if you were a young boy I’d ask for your hand, to indulge in illicit cohabitation.”
She held out her hand to him, and he kissed it.
“What lovely things you say, Virgilio.”
The man smiled, with all the sadness of the world in his eyes.
“That’s what comes from being well read. One already knows all the verses and all the tricks of fate.”
Some Saturday afternoons, Alicia would buy a few bottles of orange Fanta and go over to the library to listen to Virgilio’s stories about obscure authors nobody had ever heard of, authors whose ill-fated biographies were sealed in the book-lined crypt of the lowest basement floor.
“Alicia, I know it’s none of my business, but this thing with your hip . . . What happened?”
“The war.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t like to talk about it.”
“I can imagine. But that’s precisely why. Tell me. It will do you good.”
Alicia had never told anybody the story of how a stranger had saved her life the night Mussolini’s air force, recruited to support the Nacionales, had bombed Barcelona without pity. She surprised herself as she listened to her tale and realized that she’d forgotten nothing. She could still perceive the smell of sulphur and burned flesh in the air.
“And you never found out who that man was?”
“A friend of my parents. Someone who really loved them.”
She didn’t realize until Virgilio handed her a handkerchief that she’d been crying, and that, however embarrassed and angry she felt, she couldn’t stop herself.
“I’ve never seen you cry.”
“Nor has anyone else. And you’d better hope it doesn’t happen again.”
*
That afternoon, after visiting Villa Mercedes and sending Vargas off to sniff around police headquarters, Alicia walked over to the National Library. As they knew her well, she didn’t even have to show her card. She crossed the reading room and headed for the wing reserved for researchers. A large number of academics were daydreaming at their desks when Alicia passed discreetly by on her way to the black door at the far end. Over the years she’d learned to decipher Virgilio’s habits. It was early afternoon, so he would probably be putting away the incunabula used by the scholars that morning on the third floor. There he was, armed with the torch she had given him, whistling to a melody on the radio and absentmindedly swaying his pale skeleton in time to the music. The uniqueness of the scene made such an impression on her she felt it worthy of its own legend.
“Your tropical rhythm is fascinating, Virgilio.”
“The clave tempo does get under your skin. Have they let you out early today, or have I got the day wrong?”
“I’m on a semi-official visit.”
“Don’t tell me I’m being arrested.”
“No, but your knowledge is being sequestered temporarily to be put at the service of the national interest.”
“If that’s the case, tell me how I can help.”
“I’d like you to have a quick look at something.”
Alicia pulled out the book she’d found hidden in Valls’s desk and handed it to him. Virgilio took it and switched on the torch. As soon as he saw the design of the coiled staircase on the cover, he looked Alicia straight in the eyes. “But have you even the remotest idea of what this is?”
“I was hoping you’d be able to enlighten me.”
Virgilio looked over his shoulder, as if he feared there might be someone else in the passageway, and motioned with his head towards a door. “We’d better go to my office.”
Virgilio’s office was a cubicle squeezed into the end of a corridor on the lowest floor. One got the feeling that the room had grown out of the walls as a result of the pressure of those millions of volumes stacked floor upon floor, a sort of cabin formed of books, lever-arch files and all sorts of peculiar objects, from glasses full of paintbrushes and sewing needles to spectacles, magnifying glasses and tubes of pigments. Alicia guessed that this was where Virgilio undertook the occasional emergency surgery on damaged volumes. The cubicle’s pièce de resistance was a small fridge, full of orange Fanta. Virgilio pulled a couple of bottles out and served them. Then, armed with his special magnifying glasses, he placed the book on a piece of red velvet and slipped on a pair of silk gloves.
“From all this ceremonial, I deduce the volume is a rare one—”
“Shhh,” said Virgilio. For the next few minutes he examined the Víctor Mataix book with fascination, licking his lips at every page, stroking each illustration, and savouring every engraving as if it were some fiendishly choice dish.
“Virgilio, you’re making me nervous. Say something, for God’s sake!”
The man turned around, his ice-blue eyes amplified by the magnifier of those watchmaker’s lenses. “I suppose you can’t tell me where you found it,” he began.
“That’s right.”
“This is a collector’s piece. If you like, I can tell you who you could sell it to for a very good price, although you’d have to be careful because this is a censored book, not only by the government but also by the Holy Mother Church.”
“This one and hundreds of others. What can you tell me about it that I can’t imagine?”
Virgilio removed his magnifier glasses and drank half a Fanta in one gulp. “I’m sorry, I got all emotional,” he confessed. “I haven’t seen one of these treats for at least twenty years . . .”
He leaned back in his moth-eaten armchair, his eyes shining. Alicia knew that the day prophesied by Bermeo Pumares had arrived.