Pancho Carmona enjoyed a reputation as the provider of the bibliographical jewels most in demand. His business card pompously introduced him as a specialist in rare and valuable books, although his commercial tentacles reached into adjacent areas, including the plastic arts, furniture, Tiffany jewellery and the most eclectic of antiques. Three times a week Pancho provided a range of legal delights in the plaza de Armas, and on the other three days, in the reception room of his own home, on calle Amargura, he’d organize a kind of bookshop only open to trustworthy or highly recommended customers. One month he’d invite them to sit on Louis XVI furniture, another on Second Empire armchairs and the next on comfortable Liberty sofas, always in the shadow of classic Cuban painting or drawing, lit by restored art nouveau lamps and surrounded by Murano or Bohemian glassware, keen to voyage to foreign parts. All his trade colleagues knew that neither place exhibited his most sought-after books, although nobody knew for sure where Carmona, a man whose best contacts came straight to him, as soon they arrived from Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Miami and New York, kept his secret hoard.
Pancho had lived for twenty-five years on his salary as an industrial designer and had begun to specialize in the book trade when it took off as a profitable line, and the sales of records, his business at the time, took a turn for the worse, coinciding with the start of a Crisis that soon resulted in a bountiful harvest as far as he was concerned. Unlike other booksellers, Carmona had had the foresight from the start to see that the real money would never be in the modest exercise of buying books for two pesos to sell them for ten. The real challenge, he believed, was to take a leap into the void of really serious investment. Consequently, soon after embarking on this trade, he risked taking out a loan, once he’d sold his all-Soviet television, refrigerator and air conditioning acquired thanks to his former status as a model worker, in order to assemble the necessary funds to purchase bibliographical rarities that had been hidden for years and were now being disinterred by desperate hunger. He paid good prices to dispel the doubts of skeletal owners and fend off rival competition. Within a few months Pancho had accumulated several dozen exquisite volumes, which he put on sale at fair but high prices and, endlessly patient, on the verge of starvation, he sat down and waited for the spark to ignite. Fate smiled on him on one day in 1994 when he was close to suicide: a buyer flew in from Madrid and handed over $12,000 for a small job-lot that included A General and Natural History of the Indies, by Fernández de Oviedo, published in Madrid in 1851; the Picturesque Island of Cuba, by Andueza, also from Madrid, but from 1841; the Political Essay on the Island of Cuba, by Baron Humboldt, in two 1826 Parisian tomes; the classic Types and Customs from the Island of Cuba, illustrated by Víctor Patricio de Landaluze, in its 1891 Havana edition; the extraordinary Cuban edition of The Comedies of Don Pedro Calderón de la Barca, published in Havana in 1839 and illustrated by Alejandro Moreau and Federico Mialhe; and the six beautiful, much sought after volumes of the History of Cuban Families, written by Francisco Javier de Santa Cruz y Mallén, the Count of Jaruco and Santa Cruz del Mopox, in the substantial 1940-43 edition.
From then on the omnipotent Carmona specialized in buying and selling books that could fetch healthy prices in European and North American auctions. He would be visited at home, almost daily, by desperate owners of family relics that had survived previous earthquakes, now eager, at the very least, to hear decent estimates for their books, furniture and adornments, and, along the path he’d cleared for them, by the most serious buyers who’d come to the island in search of the young girls in blossom only Carmona could confidently supply.
Years in the catacombs of business had turned Pancho Carmona into a vademecum colleagues consulted to get their bearings in terms of prices, and the possible existence, whereabouts and potential sources of supply or sale. As a genuine specialist, this bookseller only offered advice on the three days of the week he worked in the plaza de Armas, and charged his colleagues a modest, set fee: an invitation to a coffee on the terrace of La Mina restaurant, down a side street leading from the plaza de Armas.
“One coffee and two beers,” Yoyi Pigeon ordered when they’d sat down at the table nearest the entrance. From there Pancho could keep a watchful eye on his stall that was being looked after by his nephew whose job it was to set up and to take the books back at the end of the day to his house on calle Amargura where belying that street name he at least had little reason to feel bitterness.
“The coffee’s for me, Lento,” Pancho told the waiter to avoid the torture of an over-watery infusion. “We’ve not seen you for a while, Conde,” he said, lighting the cigarette he always started to smoke before drinking coffee.
“Trade’s going downhill, Pancho. It’s very hard to find the necessary-”
“Yes, it’s getting hard. There’s nowhere to mine any more. Tutto è finito,” he agreed, but Pigeon euphorically interrupted his lamentation.
“Well, Conde’s found a little gold mine.”
“Really?” responded Pancho, long since immune to rushes of excitement.
“How do you fancy a first edition of Voltaire’s Candide?” Pigeon exclaimed. “Or a Las Casas from 1552, or The Inca’s La Florida from 1605, and Valdés’s History of the Island of Cuba? And how about the thirteen volumes of Ramón de la Sagra’s History, all shiny and new, with all the illustrations intact?…
The gleam in Pancho Carmona’s eyes expanded at the mention of each title and he finally blurted out: “Fuck! When do I get a list of what you’ve got?”
“Nothing Pigeon just referred to is for sale,” interjected the Count. “We’ve got other things to interest you-”
“Within the week,” retorted Pigeon, ignoring his partner’s murderous looks. “When I say it’s a mine…”
“See if you can find a copy with illustrations intact of The Book of Sugar Mills and the 1832 edition of Heredia’s poetry. I’ve got a buyer who’s desperate for them and he’ll pay the asking price without protesting… I’ll seal the deal for ten percent.”
“What might the Heredia fetch then?” enquired the Count.
“That edition, the most complete and set by Heredia himself, now fetches upwards of a $1,000 in Cuba. Abroad… 3,000 plus. And if it’s signed… So, where the hell did you find this library?”
Pigeon smiled, glanced at the Count and then at Pancho.
“What’s the look on my face telling you, Panchón?”
The other smiled as well.
“I get you. When among sharks…”
“The only problem is that this fellow doesn’t want to get his fingers dirty.” said Yoyi pointing at the Count.
“And never did want to,” the Count retorted, pouring the icecold beer into his glass.
“Come on, Pancho, give him a reason to change his mind,” pleaded Pigeon and the bookseller smiled.
“To change his mind or give himself a heart attack?… How about this then: guess what I flogged the other day?” he lowered his voice. “Both volumes of the 1851 and 1856 first edition of Felipe Poey’s Reminiscences on the Natural History of the Island of Cuba… with the ex libris of Julián del Casal.”