Andreas Corelli
The gift was the same copy of Great Expectations that Señor Sempere had given me when I was a child, the same copy I had returned to him before my father could find it and the same copy that, years later, when I had wanted to recover it at any price, had disappeared only hours before in the hands of a stranger. I stared at the bundle of paper which to me, in a not so distant past, had seemed to contain all the magic and light of the world. The cover still bore my bloodstained fingerprints.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered.
9
Señor Sempere put on his reading spectacles to examine the book closely. He placed it on a cloth he had spread out on his desk in the back room and pulled down the reading lamp so that its beam focused on the volume. His examination lasted a few minutes, during which I maintained a reverential silence. I watched him turn over the pages, smell them, stroke the paper and the spine, weigh the book with one hand and then the other, and finally close the cover and examine with a magnifying glass the bloodstained fingerprints left by me twelve or thirteen years earlier.
‘Incredible,’ he mused, removing his spectacles. ‘It’s the same book. How did you say you recovered it?’
‘I really couldn’t tell you, Señor Sempere. Do you know anything about a French publisher called Andreas Corelli?’
‘For a start he sounds more Italian than French, although the name Andreas could be Greek…’
‘The publishing house is in Paris. Éditions de la Lumière.’
Sempere looked doubtful.
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t ring a bell. I’ll ask Barceló. He knows everything; let’s see what he says.’
Gustavo Barceló was one of the senior members of the second-hand booksellers’ guild in Barcelona and his vast expertise was as legendary as his somewhat abrasive and pedantic manner. There was a saying in the trade: when in doubt, ask Barceló. At that very moment Sempere’s son put his head round the door and signalled to his father. Although he was two or three years older than me he was so shy that he could make himself invisible.
‘Father, someone’s come to collect an order that I think you took.’
The bookseller nodded and handed me a thick, worn volume.
‘This is the latest catalogue of European publishers. Why don’t you have a look at it and see if you can find anything while I attend to the customer?’ he suggested.
I was left alone in the back room, searching in vain for Éditions de la Lumière, while Sempere returned to the counter. As I leafed through the volume, I could hear him talking to a female voice that sounded familiar. I heard them mention Pedro Vidal. Intrigued, I put my head round the door to find out more.
Cristina Sagnier, the chauffeur’s daughter and my mentor’s secretary, was going through a pile of books which Sempere was noting down in his ledger. When she saw me she smiled politely, but I was sure she did not recognise me. Sempere looked up and when he noticed the silly expression on my face he took a quick X-ray of the situation.
‘You do know each other, don’t you?’ he said.
Cristina raised her eyebrows in surprise and looked at me again, unable to place me.
‘David Martín. A friend of Don Pedro’s,’ I said.
‘Oh, of course,’ she replied. ‘Good morning.’
‘How is your father?’ I asked.
‘Fine, fine. He’s waiting for me on the corner with the car.’
Sempere, who never missed a trick, quickly interjected.
‘Señorita Sagnier has come to collect some books Señor Vidal ordered. As they are so heavy, perhaps you could help her take them to the car…’
‘Please don’t worry…’ protested Cristina.
‘But of course,’ I blurted out, ready to lift the pile of books that turned out to weigh as much as the luxury edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, appendices included.
I felt something go crunch in my back and Cristina gave me an embarrassed look.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Don’t worry, miss. My friend Martín here might be a man of letters, but he’s as strong as a bull,’ said Sempere. ‘Isn’t that right, Martín?’
Cristina was looking at me unconvinced. I offered her my ‘strong man’ smile.
‘Pure muscle,’ I said. ‘This is just a warm-up exercise.’
Sempere’s son was about to offer to carry half the books, but his father, in a display of great diplomacy, held him back. Cristina kept the door open for me and I set off to cover the fifteen or twenty metres that separated me from the Hispano-Suiza parked on the corner of Puerta del Ángel. I only just managed to get there, my arms almost on fire. Manuel, the chauffeur, helped me unload the books and greeted me warmly.
‘What a coincidence, meeting you here, Señor Martín.’
‘Small world.’
Cristina gave me a grateful smile and got into the car.
‘I’m sorry about the books.’
‘It was nothing. A bit of exercise lifts the spirit,’ I volunteered, ignoring the tangle of knots I could feel in my back. ‘My regards to Don Pedro.’
I watched them drive off towards Plaza de Cataluña, and when I turned I noticed Sempere at the door of the bookshop, looking at me with a cat-like smile, and gesturing to me to wipe the drool off my chin. I went over to him and couldn’t help laughing at myself.
‘I know your secret now, Martín. I thought you had a steadier nerve in these matters.’
‘Everything gets a bit rusty.’
‘I should know! Can I keep the book for a few days?’
I nodded.
‘Take good care of it.’
10
A few months later I saw her again, in the company of Pedro Vidal, at the table that was always reserved for him at La Maison Dorée. Vidal invited me to join them, but a quick look from her was enough to tell me that I should refuse the offer.
‘How is the novel going, Don Pedro?’
‘Swimmingly.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it. Bon appétit.’
My meetings with Cristina were always by chance. Sometimes I would bump into her in the Sempere & Sons bookshop, where she often went to collect books for Vidal. If the opportunity arose, Sempere would leave me alone with her, but soon Cristina grew wise to the trick and would send one of the young boys from Villa Helius to pick up the orders.
‘I know it’s none of my business,’ Sempere would say. ‘But perhaps you should stop thinking about her.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Señor Sempere.’
‘Come on, Martín, we’ve known each other for a long time…’
The months seemed to slip by in a blur. I lived at night, writing from evening to dawn, and sleeping all day. Barrido and Escobillas couldn’t stop congratulating themselves on the success of City of the Damned, and when they saw me on the verge of collapse they assured me that after a couple more novels they would grant me a sabbatical so that I could rest or devote my time to writing a personal work, which they would publish with much fanfare and with my real name printed in large letters on the cover. It was always just a couple of novels away. The sharp pains, the headaches and the dizzy spells became more frequent and intense, but I attributed them to exhaustion and treated them with more injections of caffeine, cigarettes and some tablets tasting of gunpowder that contained codeine and God knows what else, supplied on the quiet by a chemist in Calle Argenteria. Don Basilio, with whom I had lunch on alternate Thursdays in an outdoor café in La Barceloneta, urged me to go to the doctor. I always said yes, I had an appointment that very week.
Apart from my old boss and the Semperes, I didn’t have much time to see anybody else except Vidal, and when I did see him it was more because he came to see me than through any effort on my part. He didn’t like my tower house and always insisted that we go out for a stroll, to the Bar Almirall on Calle Joaquín Costa, where he had an account and held literary gatherings on Friday evenings. I was never invited to them because he knew that all those attending, frustrated poetasters and arse-lickers who laughed at his jokes in the hope of some charity – a recommendation to a publisher or a compliment to soothe their wounded pride – hated me with an unswerving vigour and determination that were quite absent from their more artistic endeavours, which were persistently ignored by the fickle public. There, knocking back absinthe and puffing on Caribbean cigars, he spoke to me about his novel, which was never finished, about his plans for retiring from his life of retirement, and about his romances and conquests: the older he got, the younger and more nubile they became.