Bad ideas always come in twos. To celebrate the fact that I’d discovered some sort of camera obscura hidden in my home, I went to Sempere & Sons with the idea of taking the bookseller to lunch at La Maison Dorée. Sempere the elder was reading a beautiful edition of Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa and wouldn’t even hear of it.
‘I don’t need to pay to see snobs and halfwits congratulating one another, Martín.’
‘Don’t be grumpy. I’m buying.’
Sempere declined. His son, who had witnessed the conversation from the entrance to the back room, looked at me, hesitating.
‘What if I take your son with me? Will you stop talking to me?’
‘It’s up to you how you waste your time and money. I’m staying here to read: life’s too short.’
Sempere’s son was the very model of discretion. Even though we’d known one another since we were children, I couldn’t remember having had more than three or four short conversations with him. I didn’t know of any vices or weaknesses he might have, but I had it on good authority that among the girls in the quarter he was considered to be quite a catch, the official golden bachelor. More than one would drop by the bookshop with any old excuse and stand sighing by the shop window. But Sempere’s son, even if he did notice, never tried to cash in on these promises of devotion and parted lips. Anyone else would have made a brilliant career in seduction with only a tenth of the capital. Anyone but Sempere’s son who, one sometimes felt, deserved to be called a saint.
‘At this rate, he’s going to end up on the shelf,’ Sempere complained from time to time.
‘Have you tried throwing a bit of chilli pepper into his soup to stimulate the blood flow in key areas?’ I would ask.
‘You can laugh, you rascal. I’m close to seventy and I don’t have a single grandson.’
We were received by the same head waiter I remembered from my last visit, but without the servile smile or welcoming gesture. When I told him we hadn’t made a reservation he nodded disdainfully, clicking his fingers to summon a young waiter, who guided us unceremoniously to what I imagined was the worst table in the room, next to the kitchen door and buried in a dark, noisy corner. During the following twenty-five minutes nobody came near our table, not even to offer us the menu or pour us a glass of water. The staff walked past, banging the door and utterly ignoring our presence and our attempts to attract their attention.
‘Don’t you think we should leave?’ Sempere’s son said at last. ‘I’d be happy with a sandwich in any old place…’
He’d hardly finished speaking when I saw them arrive. Vidal and his wife were advancing towards their table escorted by the head waiter and two other waiters who were falling over themselves to offer their congratulations. The Vidals sat down and a couple of minutes later the royal audience began: one after the other, all the diners in the room went over to congratulate Vidal. He received these obeisances with divine grace and sent each one away shortly afterwards. Sempere’s son, who had become aware of the situation, was observing me.
‘Martín, are you all right? Why don’t we leave?’
I nodded slowly. We got up and headed for the exit, skirting the edges of the dining room on the opposite side from the Vidals’ table. Before we left the restaurant we passed by the head waiter, who didn’t even bother to look at us, and as we reached the main door I saw, in the mirror above the doorframe, that Vidal was leaning over and kissing Cristina on the lips. Once outside, Sempere’s son looked at me, mortified.
‘I’m sorry, Martín.’
‘Don’t worry. Bad choice. That’s all. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell your father about all this…’
‘Not a word,’ he assured me.
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it. What do you say if I treat you to something more plebeian? There’s an eatery in Calle del Carmen that’s a knockout.’
I’d lost my appetite, but I gladly accepted.
‘Sounds like a plan.’
The place was near the library and served good homemade meals at inexpensive prices for the people of the area. I barely touched my food, which smelled infinitely better than anything I’d smelled at La Maison Dorée in all the years it had been open, but by the time dessert came round I had already drunk, on my own, a bottle and a half of red wine and my head was spinning.
‘Tell me something, Sempere. What have you got against improving the human race? How is it that a young, healthy citizen, blessed by the Lord Almighty with as fine a figure as yours, has not yet taken advantage of the best offers on the market?’
The bookseller’s son laughed.
‘What makes you think that I haven’t?’
I touched my nose with my index finger and winked at him. Sempere’s son nodded.
‘You will probably take me for a prude, but I like to think that I’m waiting.’
‘Waiting for what? For your equipment to get rusty?’
‘You sound just like my father.’
‘Wise men think and speak alike.’
‘There must be something else, surely?’ he asked.
‘Something else?’
Sempere nodded.
‘What do I know?’ I said.
‘I think you do know.’
‘Fat lot of good it’s doing me.’
I was about to pour myself another glass when Sempere stopped me.
‘Moderation,’ he murmured.
‘See what a prude you are?’
‘We all are what we are.’
‘That can be cured. What do you say if you and I go out on the town?’
Sempere looked sorry for me.
‘Martín, I think the best thing you can do is go home and rest. Tomorrow is another day.’
‘You won’t tell your father I got plastered, will you?’
On my way home I stopped in at least seven bars to sample their most potent stock until, for one reason or another, I was thrown out; each time I walked on down the street in search of my next port of call. I had never been a big drinker and by the end of the afternoon I was so drunk I couldn’t even remember where I lived. I recall that a couple of waiters from the Hostal Ambos Mundos in Plaza Real took me by the arms and dumped me on a bench opposite the fountain, where I fell into a deep, thick stupor.
I dreamed that I was at Vidal’s funeral. A blood-filled sky glowered over the maze of crosses and angels surrounding the large mausoleum of the Vidal family in Montjuïc Cemetery. A silent cortège peopled with black veils encircled the amphitheatre of darkened marble that formed the portico of the tomb. Each figure carried a long white candle. The light from a hundred flames sculpted the contours of a great marble angel on a pedestal overcome with grief and loss. At the angel’s feet lay the open grave of my mentor and, inside it, a glass sarcophagus. Vidal’s body, dressed in white, lay under the glass, his eyes wide open. Black tears ran down his cheeks. The silhouette of his widow, Cristina, emerged from the cortège; she fell on her knees next to the body, drowning in grief. One by one, the members of the procession walked past the deceased and dropped black roses on his glass coffin, until it was almost completely covered and all one could see was his face. Two faceless gravediggers lowered the coffin into the grave, the base of which was flooded with a thick, dark liquid. The sarcophagus floated on the sheet of blood, which slowly filtered through the cracks in the glass cover, until little by little, it filled the coffin, covering Vidal’s dead body. Before his face was completely submerged, my mentor moved his eyes and looked at me. A flock of black birds took to the air and I started to run, losing my way among the paths of the endless city of the dead. Only the sound of distant crying enabled me to find the exit and to avoid the laments and pleadings of the dark, shadowy figures who waylaid me, begging me to take them with me, to rescue them from their eternal darkness.