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Half an hour later he was installed in the hotel, from where he called with his cellphone while he was lying down. A thousand conjectures went through his head that told him that he shouldn’t continue with that, but for some reason, none seemed powerful enough to leave aside the thing that his grandfather had taken care so much.
—Mar? —he answered quickly when he heard that someone answered at the other side—. Do you hear me?
—Yes Jonás —she didn’t seem cross, but tired for sure—. Where are you?
—I’m still here —he confirmed.
After a brief and uncomfortable silence, Jonás decided to drop it all at once, not to go in for half-measures.
—Honey, I think I’m not going to be there this night.
Mar continued without saying a word, and Jonás thought that she had hanged. A slight breathing indicated him that it wasn’t like that.
—Mar, you don’t know...
—Shut up. —she suggested in a low voice—. I don’t know what it’s happening, but you promised me that you were going to spend Christmas Eve with me and my family.
—Yes, I already know it honey, but this is something related to my grandpa and the heritage —he excused— I’ve already mentioned it to you.
—You mentioned it —she corroborated— But you said that it was only a one-day thing.
—Mar, listen to me —he asked, that was becoming to sound desperate—. Today I’ll finish all the formalities and tomorrow I’ll be there. We can move Christmas Eve dinner to a Christmas lunch.
—Really? —she cheered—. Look if I tell my parents that you are going to come and you not...
—I’ll be there.
—I forgive you! —she exclaimed with enthusiasm—. I’ll talk with my parents to fix everything.
—All right.
—Jonás —she warned—. Don’t fail me.
—I will not.
After hanging down, Jonás intuited that he had just lied in a shameless way to his girlfriend. He repeated himself again and again that it was not logical to stay there, that he should take that train and spend Christmas Eve with her girlfriend and his family, but something in those letters —and in the keys—, didn’t allow him to run away. The small label with that title store 266 kept him intrigued. He decided to visit a place that he hadn’t been since he was ten.
****
A huge sign nailed to an old wooden fence indicate that the passage was totally prohibited. He put to aside the fence’s broken lateral that was joining the fence with the palisade with the wire fence, and he went through a hole. The floor was covered with alcohol broken bottles and condoms half decomposed by the sun. He tried to avoid the crystals, but the great quantity that was spread over the floor made it difficult for him. Although it was very early, the dock was full of old fishermen that had arrive and they had thrown their rods through the concrete laterals. Jonás felt uncomfortable, but no one of them lend him the slightest bit of attention. He tried to locate between the multitude of bricks and rocks’ waste that came off the old constructions, but he couldn’t recognize the old wagon’s railway. When he was about to go he observed the line of old sheds that lasted half collapsed were waiting that time finished with them and in that moment his heart skipped a beat. In one of those old doors there was a sign —the only one that had survived to the pass of the time—, it indicated: Store number 266.
He palped the key that he carried in his pocket and read the colorless numbers —partially due to the sun—, that have been painted sometime in the past century on top of one of those doors. Most of them were bulged and chipped, and others completely shattered. As he moved along inside one of the tunnels by those who formerly the wagons had transported mineral or esparto grass to the dock, the filth increased and accumulated in the borders full of spiny bushes. Jonás was on the point of returning almost a dozen times. At last he arrived up to the store’s door with the number 266. It was in a better condition that the other ones, but only partially. The facade seemed yellowish and colorless like the other ones, and big chips gave them an abandonment aspect as similar as to those half-demolished deposits. He realized that the lock was new, and he grabbed the key with strength against his palm. It cost him at least three attempts, but when he could introduce it through the groove, the mechanism rotated with an amazing softness. The inside was in a complete darkness and smelled like dust in suspension, but Jonás had been expecting that rancid smell that things have when they have been kept locked, and this was not the case. He groped for a switch, but for the fear of tripping with something, he connected the Iphone’s lantern application. As he inspected the walls he found an old plug and he activated it. Instantly, a light bulb big as a fist and naked, that was hanging, lighted the gloom of the small shed. Jonás was breathless.
****
What outside seemed one more of those calamities that populated that ruined construction, inside was more like a little studio from any office. The walls, perfectly plastered and painted with a light blue, contrasted with the vermilion tones of the upholstery of the two chairs and the little desk that were all the furniture there. The small dimensions of the store had obliged his grandfather to use all the inventiveness he could to be able to move inside that reduced room. The desk could be folded, and it didn’t occupy more than a square meter, just like the chairs, that were folded too and saved under the table. The four walls almost totally covered with wooden shelves that gave shape to an intricated labyrinth, and were crowded with books, magazines and old newspapers. Besides the table and the two chairs, the only furniture that was not nailed to the wall was a small stool that had a padded seat. Jonás took off the dust with the hand. “Let’s see what you had to say to me grandpa”.
He spent the rest of the afternoon in the store, looking at his grandpa’s wonders and reading old published articles. The books’ collection was practically based on historical themes and the civil war, I which between figured the classics “Greta battles of the civil war”, “The myths of the July 18th” or the acclaimed “Myth of Franco’s crusade”. His grandfather had made notes in several pages, and many papers had been stuck on the edges with a tight calligraphy.
In another shelf hundreds of essays about journalism were accumulated. Jonás took with care one of them, “Essay on old journalism”. Jonás went to a pile of old newspapers that were tied up with a sting with the name: “The Weekly patriot”, by Manuel José Quintana. He realized that it dated from 1815, and he left it again with care where it was.
After more than an hour of inspection, Jonás realized that his grandfather had in that shed a treasure mine for collectors. From books, articles and essays, to letters and poems that had several centuries of antiquity.
When the sun’s light evaporated, he decided to leave. He put inside his backpack a series of folders that he had been separating in a pile with several of those copies and he left the little shed, without even imagine that he was not going to see it again.
He decided to take a walk along the roundabout’s stores to kill the time before dinner and bought many presents for Mar and her parents —surely to silence the feeling of guilty that kept on rumbling in his head because he was not with her that night—.
In the hotel’s dining he had dinner with Luis, the owner and Laura his wife, that had prepared a roasted suckling pig worthy of the best Segovia’s restaurants. A Belgian former pilot of the French army sat down to the table with them, and a couple of Galicians that spent their second honey moon due to their silver weddings. The dinner went between jokes and anecdotes, in which Luis had the singing voice and Gerard, the retired pilot contributed with his battles. For Jonás that atypical Christmas Eve’s dinner made him forget the strange events that occurred on that nonsensical day. At next morning —and after giving thanks to Luis for the wonderful attention—, Jonás took the train that would take him again to Madrid.