“What brings you here? Still chasing tourists?”
I laughed. “Those days are over.”
“Not yet, surely?”
“No, I mean it.”
“How’s business?”
“It’s OK, amazingly enough. I always think most people read very little, if they read at all. And yet there are some who buy quite a few books, thank God.”
“Yes.” Ahmed smiled. “Hamdul-lah! Look.” He showed me a book with a black cover, from the Tusquets New Sacred Texts list. “Have you read it?”
It was Jorge Riechmann’s Conversations Between Alchemists, and I hadn’t read it.
“It’s not bad,” said Ahmed, “for a Spaniard.”
There might be something else in the mix, with a name like that, I thought. But I didn’t want to argue.
“Here, it’s a present.” He handed me the book. “See what you think.”
“Thank you. Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
Ahmed wasn’t in the habit of giving away books. I thought, unfairly, that it must be very bad. I looked at the price on the back; it was worth a simple lunch for two.
“Let’s go eat somewhere. My treat.”
Ahmed accepted, and a few moments later we left the store and started walking up Sucia Street to the arcades around Parque Central.
“This part of La Antigua,” said Ahmed, “reminds me of Ksarel-Kebir.”
“I can’t really see why, but then, why not?” I must have been in a good mood; Ksar had always seemed a horrible place to me.
“I guess they’re both old colonial cities.”
We sat down at an iron table on the patio of a restaurant, and I opened Riechmann’s book at random.
“We have no money. .” I read. “So this book made you think of me, did it, Ahmed?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But the way I see it, you and I, we’re like alchemists.”
I didn’t quite understand his reasoning, but I was inclined to agree with him.
“So,” he said after a while, “what’s the mystery?”
“There actually is a mystery that I think you could help me solve.”
He raised his eyebrows. He looked puzzled. I guess he was amused by my declaration.
“OK then,” he said.
I didn’t want to give it all away, partly because I was worried that there might have been something between Ahmed and Ana, as there had been between Ana and me. So I passed over the erotic aspect of the story, concentrated on the stolen books, and finished with a little embellishment: I told Ahmed that I’d seen him with Ana and Señor Blanco at the airport when I was going to catch a flight to Flores.
“Who was the old man?”
“It’s her husband,” he said, and sat there watching me with a blank expression. Then his dark, narrow eyes sparkled with something that I took to be a hint of mockery. “Did you think he was her father? Well, he’s not. If you ask me, it’s what they call a marriage of convenience.”
He had noticed the effect of his words. My hands were shaking slightly.
“I had no idea. I’d rather she was single, I admit.”
“Did she steal many books from you?”
“Quite a few. To tell the truth, I let her steal them, so I can’t really complain.”
“It could happen to anyone,” he said. “But they’re not going to get away with it, not with me, sidi. No sir. They owe me a packet, those two. And they’re going to pay, I’m telling you. It may take a while, but sooner or later, they’ll pay.”
“Did you have any dealings with her?”
“Dealings?” Ahmed laughed. “She tried to seduce me, if that’s what you mean. Hah!” he said smugly. “That woman is a thief. She stole books from me too. Lots! Too many! I caught her one day with a first edition of Laoust’s stories, you know? That’s right. A treasure. I called the police. They arrested her. The old guy had to come and buy her out. A bribe, and he paid me cash for the book. He tried to make excuses, saying that she suffered from some kind of illness, that books were the only thing she stole, and that she read them. He asked me to let her come back to Alfarabi and said that he’d pay for anything she took. She didn’t know about this arrangement, and he asked me to keep it secret. And so the game began. She knew my hours, and she used to come in the morning, when I wasn’t there. She could always fool my employees and she took three or four books each time. I’d arrive at midday, check the shelves to see what was missing, and call her husband, who’d come to pay in the afternoon. The last time she took a lot more books than usual. I don’t know how she did it; she must have filled a backpack. I called her hotel, and they told me she’d gone. I gave up on the books, of course. But then I had a stroke of luck. The travel agent who sold them the tickets is a friend of mine. I had told him the story, and since he knew the old guy by sight, he tipped me off. I went to the airport to catch them.”
“Did he pay you?”
“In part. He promised they’d be back and gave me an IOU for the rest.”
“When are they coming back?”
“In December.” He calculated. “Nine months, right?”
A feeling of relief flooded through me: there was still a possibility that I might see her again.
“That’s good news. I’ll be looking forward to December. Will you let me know if you find out they’re back?”
Ahmed laughed before promising: “Of course, my friend.”
How many nights did I spend fantasizing about our next encounter? I imagined her traveling from country to country, visiting bookstore after bookstore.
More than once I thought about talking to Ahmed. I wanted to know which books she had stolen from him, apart from the Berber stories. But I was too embarrassed to call.
I kept going over the books that she had taken from me and trying to imagine the complete list of every title she had ever stolen. It was as if I thought this would help solve the mystery of a life that seemed bizarre and fantastic to me.
Ahmed had spoken of an illness. But I felt that there must have been another explanation, which I associated with an uncompromising approach to life: absolute freedom, a radical realization of the ideal that I too had adopted one fine day — the ideal of living by and for books.
There were black days when those fantasies faded away, leaving me prey to despondency and remorse for a life half-lived. I would think: “You’re kidding yourself; she’s just a common thief, or, at best, a sad case, a kleptomaniac.”
One night toward the end of June I dreamed of her. It was a happy dream, a typical dream of making love, devoid of the anxiety that generally infuses dreaming. I woke in the darkness and silence with a pleasant feeling of gratitude, which soon gave way to a sense of loss and absence. I went back to sleep with the vain hope of finding her again in the next dream and wishing, simply and absurdly, that December would hurry up and come.
I met other women. I traveled. I read, bought, and sold many books. I celebrated another birthday, and finally December came. I couldn’t say I was miserable, but something essential to happiness was certainly missing from my life.
There were readings at La Entretenida on the first two Mondays of the month, and I attended both as if going on a date. I went to bed early the night before, so as not to have bags under my eyes; I did a bit of exercise, put on my best pair of trousers and shoes, my best shirt and jacket. She didn’t show, of course. On the fifteenth of December I called Ahmed. He told me he didn’t have any news. Because of the New Year vacation, there wouldn’t be any more poetry readings until the end of January. I did my best to resign myself to never seeing her again.