“He’s still young. Let him have fun for a few more years.”
“That’s a good one! If he’d at least have some fun. At his age, if I’d had that chorus of young girls after me, I’d have sinned like a cardinal.”
“The Lord gives bread to the toothless.”
“That’s what he needs: teeth. And a desire to bite.”
Something else seemed to be going round his mind. He was looking at me and smiling.
“Maybe you could help …”
“Me?”
“You’re a man of the world, Martín. And don’t give me that expression. I’m sure that if you apply yourself you’ll find a good woman for my son. He already has a pretty face. You can teach him the rest.”
I was speechless.
“Didn’t you want to help me?” the bookseller asked. “Well, there you are.”
“I was talking about money.”
“And I’m talking about my son, the future of this house. My whole life.”
I sighed. Sempere took my hand and pressed it with what little strength he had left.
“Promise you’ll not allow me to leave this world before I’ve seen my son set up with a woman worth dying for. And who’ll give me a grandson.”
“If I’d known this was coming, I’d have stayed at the Novedades Café for lunch.”
Sempere smiled.
“Sometimes I think you should have been my son, Martín.”
I looked at the bookseller, who seemed more fragile and older than ever before, barely a shadow of the strong, impressive man I remembered from my childhood, and I felt the world crumbling around me. I went up to him and before I realized it, did what I’d never done in all the years I’d known him. I gave him a kiss on his forehead, which was spotted with freckles and touched by a few gray hairs.
“Do you promise?”
“I promise,” I said, as I walked to the door.
20
Señor Valera’s office occupied the top floor of an extravagant Modernist building at 442 Avenida Diagonal, just round the corner from Paseo de Gracia. The building looked like a cross between a giant grandfather clock and a pirate ship and was adorned with huge French windows and a roof with green dormers. Anywhere else the baroque and byzantine structure would have been proclaimed either as one of the seven wonders of the world or as the freakish creation of a mad artist possessed by demons. In Barcelona’s Ensanche quarter, where similar buildings cropped up everywhere like clover after rain, it barely raised an eyebrow.
I walked into the hallway and was shown to a lift that reminded me of something a giant spider might have left behind if it were weaving cathedrals instead of cobwebs. The doorman opened the cabin and imprisoned me in the strange capsule that began to rise through the middle of the stairwell. A severe-looking secretary opened the carved oak door at the top and showed me in. I gave her my name and explained that I had not made an appointment but that I was there to discuss a matter relating to the sale of a building in the Ribera quarter. Something changed in her expression.
“The tower house?” she asked.
I nodded. The secretary led me to an empty office. I sensed that this was not the official waiting room.
“Please wait, Señor Martín. I’ll let Señor Valera know you’re here.”
I spent the next forty-five minutes in that office, surrounded by bookshelves packed with volumes the size of tombstones bearing inscriptions on the spines such as “1888–1889, B.C.A. Section One. Second Title.” It seemed like irresistible reading matter. The office had a large window looking onto Avenida Diagonal that provided an excellent view over the city. The furniture smelled of fine wood, weathered and seasoned with money. Carpets and leather armchairs were reminiscent of those in a British club. I tried to lift one of the lamps presiding over the desk and guessed that it must have weighed at least thirty kilos. A huge oil painting, resting over a hearth that had never been used, portrayed the rotund and expansive presence of none other than Don Soponcio Valera y Menacho. The titanic lawyer sported a moustache and sideburns like the mane of an old lion, and his stern eyes, with the fire and steel of a hanging judge, dominated every corner of the room from the great beyond.
“He doesn’t speak, but if you stare at the portrait for a while he looks as if he might do so at any moment,” said a voice behind me.
Sebastián Valera was a man with a quiet demeanor who looked as if he’d spent the best part of his life attempting to crawl out from his father’s shadow and now, at fifty plus, was tired of trying. He had penetrating, intelligent eyes and that exquisite manner enjoyed only by princesses and the most expensive lawyers. He offered me his hand and I shook it.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I wasn’t expecting your visit,” he said, pointing to a seat.