GRANDFATHER SEMPERE LIVED in a small apartment just above the bookshop on Calle Santa Ana. For as far back as the family could remember, the Semperes had always lived in that building. Daniel had been born there, and grew up in the apartment. When he married Bea, he moved only a few floors up, to the attic flat. Perhaps one day Julián would also settle in the same block. The Semperes travelled through books, not maps.
Old Sempere’s apartment was a modest-looking home, haunted by memories. Like so many other homes in the old city, it exuded a vaguely depressing atmosphere, insistent on preserving that nineteenth-century-style furniture to protect the innocents from the dreams of the present.
Gazing at the scene, with Isabella Gispert’s words still fresh in her mind, Alicia couldn’t help feeling her presence in that room. She saw Isabella stepping on the same tiles, sharing the bed with Señor Sempere in the tiny bedroom she’d noticed as she walked down the corridor. Alicia had stopped for a moment as she passed the half-open door, imagined Isabella giving birth to Daniel in that very bed and dying in it, poisoned, barely four years later.
“Please, go in, Alicia, and I’ll introduce you to the rest,” Bea urged her as she closed the bedroom door behind her.
Joining two tables together – which filled the dining room from one end to the other and even part of the corridor – Bea had achieved the miracle of seating the eleven guests invited to celebrate the patriarch’s birthday. Daniel was still downstairs, closing the bookshop, while his father, Julián, and Bea had accompanied Alicia up the stairs. Bernarda, Fermín’s wife, was already waiting there. She had set the table and was giving the last touches to a stew that sent out a heavenly aroma.
“Bernarda, come, let me introduce you to Señorita Alicia Gris.”
Bernarda wiped her hands on her apron and folded her arms around her.
“Do you know when Fermín is coming?” Bea asked her.
“Oh, Señora Bea, I’m up to my back teeth with that scoundrel’s tale about the bubbly wine he says is full of pee. Forgive me, Señorita Alicia, but my husband is as pigheaded as a fighting bull and doesn’t stop talking nonsense. You must pay no attention to him.”
“If he takes much longer, I can see us toasting with tap water,” said Bea.
“No, you won’t,” boomed a theatrical voice from the dining-room doorway.
The owner of that resonant instrument turned out to be a family friend called Don Anacleto who lived in the same block, a secondary school teacher and, according to Bea, a man of verse in his free time. Don Anacleto proceeded to kiss Alicia’s hand with a formality that would have looked outdated at Kaiser Wilhelm’s wedding. “At your service, beautiful stranger.”
“Don Anacleto, don’t bother our visitors,” Bea interrupted him. “Did you say you’d brought something to drink?”
Don Anacleto showed her two bottles wrapped in brown paper. “Forewarned is forearmed,” he said. “Being privy to the controversy arisen between Fermín and that grocer of notorious Fascist sympathies, I decided to come armed with a couple of bottles of sweet moonshine passing for aniseed from the bar across the street, in order to solve any temporary shortage of bubbly spirits.”
“It’s not Christian to toast with aniseed,” said Bernarda. “Much less moonshine.”
Don Anacleto, who couldn’t keep his eyes off Alicia, smiled with a worldly-wise air, to imply that such considerations only worried provincial people.
“So it will be a pagan toast, under Venus’s influence,” the teacher argued, giving Alicia a wink. “And tell me, would you, damsel of such remarkable presence, do me the honour of sitting next to me?”
Bea pushed the teacher to the other end of the room. “Don Anacleto,” she warned him, “move along and don’t overwhelm Alicia with your windy talk. You’re sitting there at the junior end of the table until you prove you can join the adults.”
Don Anacleto shrugged and went over to express his best wishes to the birthday man while two more guests entered the room. One of them was a fine-looking man in a suit, trim and dapper as a model, who introduced himself as Don Federico Flaviá, the neighbourhood watchmaker, and displayed exceedingly polished manners.
“I adore your shoes,” he told her. “You must tell me where you got them.”
“Calzados Summun, on Paseo de Gracia,” Alicia replied.
“Of course. They couldn’t come from anywhere else. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to wish my friend Sempere a happy birthday.”
With Don Federico came a cheery-looking young girl called Merceditas who was clearly and quite naively smitten with the elegant watchmaker. When she was introduced to Alicia, the girl looked her up and down, assessing her with alarm. After praising Alicia’s good looks, elegance and style, she ran off to Don Federico’s side, to keep him as far away from her as was humanly possible in that limited space. If the dining room already looked crowded, when Daniel came through the door and had to slip in among the guests, any moving about began to look precarious. The last person to arrive was a young girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty and radiated the shining spirit and easy beauty of the very young.
“This is Sofía, Daniel’s cousin,” Bea explained.
“Piacere, signorina,” Sofía said.
“In Spanish, Sofía,” Bea corrected her, explaining that the girl came from Naples and was living with her uncle while she studied at Barcelona University.
“Sofía is a niece of Daniel’s mother, who died years ago,” murmured Bea, who obviously didn’t wish to mention Isabella’s name.
It was painful for Alicia to see Granddad Sempere’s devotion and sadness as he hugged her. It didn’t take her long to find a framed photograph in the display cabinet, in which she recognized Isabella in her wedding dress, next to a Señor Sempere looking centuries younger. Sofía was the spitting image of Isabella. Out of the corner of her eye, Alicia saw Sempere gazing at her so adoringly and with such sadness that she had to look away.
Bea, who had noticed Alicia making the connection when she saw the wedding photograph, muttered something under her breath, then said to Alicia, “She doesn’t do him any good. She’s a lovely girl, but I can’t wait for her to go back to Naples.”
Alicia just nodded in response.
“Why don’t you start sitting down?” ordered Bernarda from the kitchen. “Sofía, darling, come over and give me a hand. I need a bit of young blood here.”
“Daniel, what about the cake?” asked Bea.
Daniel huffed and rolled his eyes. “I forgot . . . I’ll go down right now.”
Looking sideways at Don Anacleto, Alicia noticed that he was trying hard to creep towards her end of the dining room. She instantly hit on a plan. When Daniel walked past her on his way to the door, she followed him.
“I’ll come with you. The cake’s on me.”
“But—”
“I insist.”
A moment later Bea was left staring at them, frowning, as they disappeared through the door.
“Everything all right?” asked Bernarda next to her.
“Yes, of course . . .”
“I’m sure she’s a saint,” whispered Bernarda, “but I don’t want her sitting next to my Fermín. And if you don’t mind my saying so, neither do I want to see her next to Danielito, bless him.”
“Don’t be silly, Bernarda. We’ve got to seat her somewhere.”
“Better be safe than sorry, is all I’m saying.”
*
They walked in silence down the stairs. Daniel led the way. When he reached the ground floor, he stepped ahead and held the front door open for Alicia.
“The cake shop is right here, near the corner,” he said, as if it weren’t obvious; the shop’s neon sign was clearly visible, just a few steps away.
Inside the shop, the woman in charge raised her hands to the heavens with relief. “Thank goodness. I thought you weren’t coming, and we’d have to eat the cake ourselves . . .” Her voice trailed off as she became aware of Alicia. “How can I help you, miss?”
“We’re together, thanks,” said Alicia.
The shop owner’s eyebrows catapulted halfway up her forehead. Her look, brimming with mischief, was mirrored on the faces of her two assistants, who had peeped over the counter for the occasion.
“Look at Danielito,” murmured one of them in a flattering tone. “And there we were, thinking he was born yesterday.”
“Shut your trap, Gloria, and bring out Señor Sempere’s cake,” the boss cut in, letting her underlings know that even the use of slander had to observe proper seniority in her establishment.
The other assistant, a catlike creature with a chubby figure – no doubt the result of eating too many leftover sponge fingers and custard tarts – watched Daniel with delight, enjoying his embarrassment.
“Felisa, have you nothing better to do?” the boss asked her.
“No.”
By then Daniel’s blush had turned the colour of a ripe raspberry, and he couldn’t wait to get out of there, with or without the cake. The two confectioners didn’t stop shooting glances at Alicia and Daniel – sizzling glances that could have fried doughnuts in mid-air. At last Gloria appeared with the cake, a prize-entry exhibit, which the confectionery trinity proceeded to protect with cardboard arches before carefully placing it in a large pink box.
“Cream, strawberry, and lots of chocolate,” said the cake-maker. “I’ve put the candles in the box.”
“My father loves chocolate,” Daniel told Alicia, as if it needed an explanation.
“Mind the chocolate, Daniel, it can make you blush,” said Gloria, still poking fun at him.
“And get you all excited,” Felisa finished off.
“How much is that?” Alicia stepped forward and placed a twenty-five-peseta note on the counter.
“And on top of it, she’s paying . . .” murmured Gloria.
The manageress dawdled over the counting of the change, giving it to Alicia a coin at a time. Daniel picked up the box and walked over to the door.
“Say hello to Bea,” was Gloria’s parting shot.
The cake-makers’ giggles followed them as they stepped out into the street, their eyes glued to them like soft fruit on an Easter cake.
“Tomorrow you’ll be the talk of the entire neighbourhood,” Daniel predicted.
“I hope I haven’t got you into trouble, Daniel.”
“Don’t worry. Generally speaking, I’m quite good at getting into trouble on my own. Pay no attention to the Medusa trio. Fermín says the meringue has gone to their heads.”
This time Daniel let Alicia walk ahead, waiting until she’d gone up a whole flight of stairs before following her. Clearly he didn’t want to be climbing up two storeys with his eyes caught on her swaying hips.
The arrival of the cake was greeted with an ovation and shouts reminiscent of a great sporting victory. Daniel raised the box for all to see as if he were displaying an Olympic medal, and then took it to the kitchen. Alicia noticed that Bea had kept a place for her between Sofía and little Julián, who was sitting next to his grandfather. She took her seat, aware that the guests were casting her sidelong glances. When Daniel returned from the kitchen, he sat at the other end of the table, next to Bea.
“Shall I serve the soup, then, or shall we wait for Fermín?” Bernarda asked.
“I’d say he’s the one who’ll land in the soup if we don’t eat soon,” proclaimed Don Anacleto.
Bernarda had begun to fill the soup bowls when they heard a crash behind the door and the echo of various glass bottles tumbling down. A few seconds later, a triumphant Fermín materialized, carrying, two in each hand, the bottles of champagne, miraculously saved.
“Fermín, you had us drinking sour muscatel,” protested Don Anacleto.
“Throw out that foul drink that is tarnishing your goblets, ladies and gentlemen,” announced Fermín, “for the wine vendor hath just arrived from yonder vineyard to delight your palate with a beverage that will make you urinate flowers.”
“Fermín!” cried Bernarda. “Your language!”
“But, my little rosebud, don’t you know that on this riverbank micturating to leeward is as natural and pleasurable as—”
Fermín’s loquacity and rhetoric suddenly froze. Stock-still, he was staring at Alicia as if he’d just seen a ghost. Daniel grabbed his arm and forced him to sit down.
“Come on, let’s eat,” announced Señor Sempere, who had also noticed Fermín’s momentary lapse.
The choreography of glasses, laughter and jokes began to take over, but Fermín, who held his empty spoon in his hand and couldn’t keep his eyes off Alicia, was as silent as a tomb. Alicia pretended to be unaware, but even Bea was beginning to look uncomfortable. Daniel nudged Fermín and whispered something quickly in his ear. Tensely, Fermín sipped a spoonful of soup. Fortunately, although the trademark eloquence of the bibliographic adviser to Sempere & Sons had been silenced by Alicia’s presence, Don Anacleto’s tongue was living a second youth thanks to the champagne, and soon they were all regaled with his customary analysis of the country’s ills.
The teacher, who saw himself as the sentimental heir and bearer of the eternal flame of Don Miguel de Unamuno (with whom he shared a more than remarkable physical resemblance), began, as usual, to present an apocalyptic panorama, announcing the imminent sinking of the Iberian Peninsula into the oceans of the blackest ignominy. Fermín, who normally enjoyed undercutting Don Anacleto’s improvised table talk with sly remarks like “The index of punditry in a society is inversely proportional to its intellectual solvency” and “When people choose overheated opinions over cold facts, the social order reverts to a moronocracy”, was so unforthcoming that the teacher, having no rivals or opposition, tried to wind him up.
“The fact is,” he said, “that our country’s leaders have run out of ideas on how to brainwash its people. Don’t you agree, Fermín?”
Fermín shrugged. “I don’t know why they bother. In most cases a quick rinse does the job.”
“There goes the anarchist,” Merceditas blurted out.
Don Anacleto smiled happily, seeing that at last he’d kick-started the debate, his favourite hobby.
Fermín puffed up. “Look, Merceditas, only because I know for a fact that your reading of the newspaper begins and ends on the horoscope page, and today we’re celebrating the birthday of the elder of this house—”
“Fermín, could you pass the bread, please?” interrupted Bea, trying to keep the party from falling into discord.
Fermín nodded and beat a retreat. Don Federico, the watchmaker, came to the rescue by breaking the tense silence.
“So tell us, Alicia, what is your profession?”
Merceditas, who didn’t look favourably upon the deference and attention everyone was paying to the surprise guest, threw herself into the ring. “And why should a woman have a profession? Isn’t it enough to take care of a home, a husband and children, just as our parents taught us to do?”
Fermín was about to say something, but Bernarda put her hand on his wrist and he bit his tongue.
“Yes, but Alicia is single. Isn’t that right?” Don Federico insisted.
Alicia smiled demurely.
“Not even a boyfriend?” asked Don Anacleto in disbelief.
She smiled modestly, shaking her head.
“This is a scandal! Indelible proof that there are no more worthwhile young men in the country. If I were twenty years younger . . .” said Don Anacleto.
“Better make that fifty years younger,” Fermín interjected.
“Manhood is ageless,” replied Don Anacleto.
“Let’s not mix heroics with urology.”
“Fermín, there are minors at the table,” Señor Sempere warned.
“If you mean Merceditas . . .”
“You should wash your mouth and your thoughts with bleach, or you’ll end up in hell,” Merceditas assured him.
“Well, I’ll save on heating.”
Don Federico raised his hands to silence the discussion. “Come on . . . with everyone talking at once, we’re not letting her speak.”
Calm was restored, and they all turned to Alicia.
“So,” Don Federico invited her again, “you were going to tell us what you do for a living . . .”
Alicia gazed at the audience, all hanging on her words. “The fact is that today was my last day at work. And I don’t know what I’m going to do from now on.”
“You must have thought of something,” remarked Señor Sempere.
She looked down. “I thought I would like to write. Or at least try to.”
“Bravo!” cried the bookseller. “You’ll be our new Laforet.”
“Rather our Pardo Bazán,” intervened Don Anacleto, who shared the widespread national opinion that living writers, unless they were in their death throes and had one leg already in the grave, deserved no esteem whatsoever. “Don’t you agree, Fermín?”
“I would agree, dear friend, were it not because I have a feeling that when Pardo Bazán looked herself in the mirror, she noticed a certain air of the gun dog about her, whereas our Señorita Gris here looks more like a heroine from the darkest night, and I don’t imagine she can quite see her image in a mirror.”
There was a deep silence.
“And what could you possibly mean by that, you know-all?” Merceditas chided him.
Daniel grabbed Fermín’s arm and dragged him into the kitchen.
“It means that if men moved their brains a tenth of the times they move their mouths, this world would work much better,” said Sofía, who until that moment seemed to have had her head in the clouds, observing proper adolescent etiquette.
Señor Sempere turned his eyes towards that niece life had sent him to bless or torment his golden years. As so often happened, for a moment he thought he was seeing and hearing his Isabella through the ocean of time.
“Is that what they teach these days in the arts faculty?” asked Don Anacleto.
Sofía shrugged and returned to her limbo.
“God almighty, what a world awaits us,” the teacher said.
“Don’t worry, Don Anacleto. The world is always the same,” Señor Sempere reassured him. “The truth is, it doesn’t wait for anyone, and races past you at the first hurdle. How about a toast for the past, the future, and those of us who are between the two?”
Little Julián raised his glass of milk enthusiastically, seconding the proposal.
Meanwhile Daniel had cornered Fermín in the kitchen, far from the sight and hearing of the guests. “Can you tell me what the hell’s the matter with you, Fermín?”
“That woman isn’t what she says she is, Daniel. There’s something fishy going on here.”
“And what’s that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out what shady ruse she’s plotting. I can smell it from here, like that cheap perfume Merceditas has showered herself with, vainly hoping to confuse the watchmaker and get him to leave fairyland.”
“And how do you plan to find out?”
“With your help.”
“No way. Don’t you dare get me mixed up in this.”
“You already are. Don’t let yourself be dazzled by the insidious femme fatale routine. She’s a minx, as sure as my name is Fermín.”
“May I remind you that the minx is my dear father’s guest of honour?”
“Aaaah . . . And have you asked yourself how this all too convenient coincidence came about?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t care. Coincidences don’t get questioned. That’s why they are coincidences.”
“Is that your meagre intellect speaking, or your post-teenage glands?”
“What is speaking is common sense, which you must have had removed the same day as your shame.”
Fermín laughed sarcastically.
“She doesn’t do things by halves,” he declared. “She’s buttered up your father and you at the same time, and all in the presence of your beautiful wife.”
“Stop talking nonsense. They’re going to hear us.”
“Let them hear me,” cried Fermín, raising his voice. “Loud and clear.”
“Fermín, I beg you. Let’s have my father’s birthday in peace.”
Fermín screwed up his eyebrows and tightened his lips. “On one condition.”
“All right. What?”
“That you help me unmask her.”
Daniel rolled his eyes and sighed.
“How do you propose to do that? By dint of more verses?”
Fermín lowered his voice.
“I have a plan . . .”
*
True to his promise, Fermín showed exemplary manners for the rest of the dinner. He laughed at Don Anacleto’s jokes, treated Merceditas as if she were Marie Curie, and every now and then cast Alicia altar-boy glances. When the moment came for the toast and the cutting of the cake, Fermín delivered a long, impassioned speech that he’d prepared, eulogizing the host. This brought about a round of applause and a heartfelt embrace from the man who was being honoured.
“My grandson will help me blow out the candles, won’t you, Julián?” the bookseller announced.
Bea turned off the dining-room lamps, and for a few moments, they were all caught in the candles’ flickering light.
“Make a wish, my friend,” Don Anacleto reminded him. “If possible in the shape of a plump widow in the flower of maturity and vigour.”
Bernarda delicately removed the teacher’s champagne glass and replaced it with a glass of mineral water, exchanging glances with Bea, who nodded.
Alicia watched that spectacle almost in a trance. She feigned a friendly calm, but her heart was beating fast. She had never been in a gathering like this. All the birthdays she remembered had been spent with Leandro or alone, usually hidden in a cinema, the same one in which she hid almost every New Year’s Eve, only to curse that awful habit they had of interrupting the film at midnight and turning on the lights for ten minutes before going back to the film. As if it weren’t insulting enough having to spend the night in the empty stalls of a cinema, with six or seven other solitary souls with nobody and nowhere to go back to, they had to rub their noses in it. That feeling of camaraderie, of belonging and affection that went far beyond the jokes and discussions, was something Alicia didn’t know how to handle.
Julián had taken her hand under the table, and was pressing it hard, as if, of all those present, only a child could understand how she felt. Had it not been for him, she would have burst into tears.
When all the toasts were over, Bernarda was offering coffee or tea, and Don Anacleto was doling out cigars, Alicia stood up. Everyone looked at her in surprise.
“I wanted to thank you all for your hospitality and your kindness. And very particularly you, Señor Sempere. My father always held you in great esteem, and I know that he would have been very happy that I was able to share this special evening with all of you. Thank you very much.”
They all looked at her with what seemed like pity, or perhaps she only saw in others what she herself felt inside. She gave little Julián a kiss and headed for the door. Bea got up and followed her, still holding her napkin.
“I’ll come with you, Alicia . . .”
“No, please. Stay here with your family.”
Before leaving, Alicia walked past the display cabinet and took one last look at Isabella’s photograph. She sighed with relief as she disappeared down the stairs. She needed to get out of that place before she started believing that it could be hers one day.
*
Alicia’s departure provoked a wave of murmurs among the guests. Grandfather Sempere had put Julián on his knees and was observing the boy. “Have you fallen in love so soon?” he asked.
“I think it’s time our little Casanova went off to bed,” said Bea.
“And I should follow his example,” Don Anacleto added, rising from the table. “You young wild things, stay on at the party. Life is too short . . .”
Daniel was about to heave a sigh of relief when Fermín gripped his arm and stood up. “Oh, Daniel, we’d forgotten to bring up those boxes from the basement.”
“What boxes?”
“Those boxes.”
The two slipped out towards the door before the sleepy and surprised eyes of the bookseller.
“Every day I understand this family less,” he said.
“I thought I was the only one,” murmured Sofía.
*
When they stepped out of the front door, Fermín took a quick look at the bluish passageway sketched out by the streetlamps on Calle Santa Ana and signalled to Daniel to follow him.
“What now?”
“Now we hunt the vamp,” replied Fermín.
“No way.”
“Burying your empty head in the sand will only make it worse. Let’s move it before she gives us the slip.”
Without waiting for an answer, Fermín set off towards the corner of Puerta del Ángel. There he took shelter under the canopy of the Casa Jorba department store and scanned the dark night, strewn with low clouds that crept over the rooftops. Daniel joined him.
“There she goes, the serpent of paradise.”
“For goodness sake, Fermín, don’t do this to me.”
“Hey, I held up my part of the deal. Are you a man of your word or a wimp?”
Daniel cursed his bad luck, and the two, going back to their golden days as second-rate detectives, set off on the trail of Alicia Gris.