I sighed. Lux Aeterna had been written on that very same typewriter and probably, I imagined, at that same desk.
4
The following morning I went out to have my breakfast in a café opposite Santa María del Mar. The Borne neighborhood was heaving with carts and people going to the market, with shopkeepers and wholesalers opening their stores. I sat at one of the outdoor tables, asked for a café con leche, and adopted an orphaned copy of La Vanguardia that was lying on the next table. While my eyes slid over the headlines and leads, I noticed a figure walking up the steps to the church door and sitting down at the top to observe me on the sly. The girl must have been about sixteen or seventeen and was pretending to jot things down in a notebook while she stole glances at me. I sipped my coffee calmly. After a while I beckoned to the waiter.
“Do you see that young lady sitting by the church door? Tell her to order whatever she likes. It’s on me.”
The waiter nodded and went up to her. When she saw him approaching she buried her head in her notebook, assuming an expression of total concentration that made me smile. The waiter stopped in front of her and cleared his throat. She looked up from her notebook and stared at him. He explained his mission and pointed in my direction. The girl looked at me in alarm. I waved at her. She went crimson. She stood up and came over to my table, with short steps, her eyes lowered.
“Isabella?” I asked.
The girl looked up and sighed, annoyed at herself.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“Supernatural intuition,” I replied.
She held out her hand and I shook it without much enthusiasm.
“May I sit down?” she asked.
She sat down without waiting for a reply. In the next half a minute the girl changed positions about six times until she returned to the original one. I observed her with a calculated lack of interest.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Señor Martín?”
“Should I?”
“For years I delivered your weekly order from Can Gispert.”
The image of the girl who for so long had brought my food from the grocer’s came into my mind, then dissolved into the more adult and slightly more angular features of this Isabella, a woman of soft shapes and steely eyes.
“The little girl I used to tip,” I said, although there was little or nothing left of the girl in her.
Isabella nodded.
“I always wondered what you did with all those coins.”
“I bought books at Sempere & Sons.”
“If only I’d known …”
“I’ll go if I’m bothering you.”
“You’re not bothering me. Would you like something to drink?”
The girl shook her head.
“Señor Sempere tells me you’re talented.”
Isabella smiled at me skeptically.
“Normally, the more talent one has, the more one doubts it,” I said. “And vice versa.”
“Then I must be quite something,” Isabella replied.
“Welcome to the club. Tell me, what can I do for you?”
Isabella took a deep breath.