Brians shrugged his shoulders.
‘So then David Martín is alive?’
‘I don’t know, Fermín. Nobody knows.’
12
Barcelona, 1957
Fermín was speaking in a feeble voice and looked disconsolate. Conjuring up those memories seemed to have left him lifeless. I poured him one last glass of wine and watched him dry his tears with his hands. I handed him a napkin but he ignored it. The rest of the Can Lluís clientele had gone home some time ago, and I imagined that it must be past midnight, but nobody had wanted to disturb us and they’d left us alone in the dining room. Fermín looked at me exhausted, as if having revealed the secrets he’d kept for so many years had robbed him of his will to live.
‘Fermín …’
‘I know what you’re going to ask me. The answer is no.’
‘Fermín, is David Martín my father?’
Fermín looked at me severely.
‘Your father is Señor Sempere, Daniel. You must never be in any doubt about that. Never.’
I nodded. Fermín remained anchored in his chair, looking absent, staring into space.
‘What about you, Fermín? What happened to you?’
Fermín took a while to reply, as if that part of the story were completely unimportant.
‘I went back to the streets. I couldn’t stay there, with Brians. Nor could I stay with Rociíto. Nor with anyone else …’
Fermín broke off his account, and I took up the thread of the narrative for him.
‘You returned to the streets, a beggar without a name, with nobody and nothing in the world, a man whom everyone thought was mad and who would have wished to die, had it not been for a promise he had made …’
‘I’d promised Martín I’d take care of Isabella and her son … of you. But I was a coward, Daniel. I was in hiding for so long, I was so frightened of returning, that when I did your mother was no longer there …’
‘And is that why I found you that night in Plaza Real? It wasn’t a coincidence? How long had you been following me?’
‘Months. Years.’
I imagined him following me as a child, when I went to school, wh
en I played in Ciudadela Park, when I stopped with my father in front of that shop window to gaze at the pen I believed blindly had belonged to Victor Hugo, when I sat in Plaza Real to read to Clara and caress her with my eyes thinking nobody could see me. A beggar, a shadow, a figure nobody noticed and all eyes avoided. Fermín, my protector and friend.
‘And why didn’t you tell me the truth years later?’
‘At first I wanted to, but then I realised that it would do you more harm than good. Nothing could change the past. I decided to hide the truth because I thought it best for you to be more like your father and less like me.’
We fell into a long silence during which we eyed each other furtively, not knowing what to say.
‘Where’s Valls?’ I asked at last.
‘Don’t even think of it,’ Fermín cut in.
‘Where is he now?’ I asked again. ‘If you don’t tell me I’ll find out myself.’
‘And what will you do? Will you turn up at his house, ready to kill him?’
‘Why not?’