‘I’m looking for a lawyer.’
‘You’ve come to the right place. We don’t know how to get rid of them here. There seem to be more every day. They multiply like rabbits.’
‘It’s the modern world. The one I’m looking for is called, or was called, Valera, S. Valera, with a V.’
The little man disappeared into a labyrinth of filing cabinets, muttering under his breath. I waited, leaning on the counter, my eyes wandering over a decor infused with the inexorable weight of the law. Five minutes later the man returned with a folder.
‘I’ve found ten Valeras. Two with an S. Sebastián and Soponcio.’
‘Soponcio?’
‘You’re very young, but years ago this was a name with a certain cachet, and ideal for the legal profession. Then along came the Charleston and ruined everything.’
‘Is Don Soponcio still alive?’
‘According to the folder and the date he stopped paying his membership of this association, Soponcio Valera y Menacho was received into the glory of Our Lord in the year 1919. Memento mori. Sebastián is his son.’
‘Still practising?’
‘Fully, and constantly. I sense you will want the address.’
‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
The little man wrote it down on a small piece of paper which he handed to me.
‘Number 442, Diagonal. It’s just a stone’s throw away. But it’s two o’clock, and by now most top lawyers will be at lunch with rich widows or manufacturers of fabrics and explosives. I’d wait until four o’clock.’
I put the address in my jacket pocket.
‘I’ll do that. Thank you for your help.’
‘That’s what we’re here for. God bless.’
I had a couple of hours to kill before paying a visit to Señor Valera, so I took a tram down Vía Layetana and got off when it reached Calle Condal. The Sempere & Sons bookshop was just a step away and I knew from experience that – contravening the immutable tradition of local shops – the old bookseller didn’t close at midday. I found him, as usual, standing at the counter, cataloguing books and serving a large group of customers who were wandering around the tables and bookshelves hunting for treasure. He smiled when he saw me and came over to say hello. He looked thinner and paler than the last time I’d seen him. He must have noticed my anxiety because he shrugged his shoulders as if to make light of the matter.
‘Some win; others lose. You’re looking fit and well and I’m all skin and bones, as you can see,’ he said.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fresh as a daisy. It’s the damned angina. Nothing serious. What brings you here, Martín, my friend?’
‘I thought I’d take you out to lunch.’
‘Thank you, but I can’t abandon ship. My son has gone to Sarriá to appraise a collection and business isn’t so good that we can afford to close the shop when there are customers about.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re having financial problems.’
‘This is a bookshop, Martín, not an investment broker’s. The world of letters provides us with just enough to get by, and sometimes not even that.’
‘If you need help…’
Sempere held up his hand.
‘If you want to help me, buy a book or two.’
‘You know that the debt I owe you can never be repaid with money.’
‘All the more reason not even to think about it. Don’t worry about us, Martín. The only way they’ll get me out of here is in a pine box. But if you like, you can come and share a tasty meal of bread, raisins and fresh Burgos cheese. With that, and the Count of Montecristo, anyone can live to be a hundred.’
19
Sempere hardly tasted his food. He smiled wearily and pretended to be interested in my comments, but I could see that from time to time he was having trouble breathing.
‘Tell me, Martín, what are you working on?’
‘It’s difficult to explain. A book I’ve been commissioned to write.’
‘A novel?’
‘Not exactly. I wouldn’t know how to describe it.’
‘What’s important is that you’re working. I’ve always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don’t have a brain.’
‘But some people work more than is reasonable, Señor Sempere. Shouldn’t you take a break? How many years have you been here, always hard at work, never stopping?’
Sempere looked around him.
‘This place is my life, Martín. Where else would I go? To a sunny bench in the park, to feed pigeons and complain about my rheumatism? I’d be dead in ten minutes. My place is here. And my son isn’t ready to take up the reins of the business, even if he thinks he is.’
‘But he’s a good worker. And a good person.’
‘Between you and me, he’s too good a person. Sometimes I look at him and wonder what will become of him the day I go. How is he going to cope…? ’
‘All fathers say that, Señor Sempere.’
‘Did yours? Forgive me, I didn’t mean to…’
‘Don’t worry. My father had enough worries of his own without having to worry about me as well. I’m sure your son has more experience than you think.’
Sempere looked dubious.
‘Do you know what I think he lacks?’
‘Malice?’
‘A woman.’
‘He’ll have no shortage of girlfriends with all the turtle doves who cluster round the shop window to admire him.’
‘I’m talking about a real woman, the sort who makes you become what you’re supposed to be.’
‘He’s still young. Let him have fun for a few more years.’
‘That’s a good one! If he’d at least have some fun. At his age, if I’d had that chorus of young girls after me, I’d have sinned like a cardinal.’
‘The Lord gives bread to the toothless.’
‘That’s what he needs: teeth. And a desire to bite.’
Something else seemed to be going round his mind. He was looking at me and smiling.
‘Maybe you could help…’
‘Me?’
‘You’re a man of the world, Martín. And don’t give me that expression. I’m sure that if you apply yourself you’ll find a good woman for my son. He already has a pretty face. You can teach him the rest.’
I was speechless.
‘Didn’t you want to help me?’ the bookseller asked. ‘Well, there you are.’
‘I was talking about money.’
‘And I’m talking about my son, the future of this house. My whole life.’
I sighed. Sempere took my hand and pressed it with what little strength he had left.
‘Promise you’ll not allow me to leave this world before I’ve seen my son set up with a woman worth dying for. And who’ll give me a grandson.’
‘If I’d known this was coming, I’d have stayed at the Novedades Café for lunch.’
Sempere smiled.
‘Sometimes I think you should have been my son, Martín.’
I looked at the bookseller, who seemed more fragile and older than ever before, barely a shadow of the strong, impressive man I remembered from my childhood days, and I felt the world crumbling around me. I went up to him and, before I realised it, did what I’d never done in all the years I’d known him. I gave him a kiss on his forehead, which was spotted with freckles and touched by a few grey hairs.
‘Do you promise?’
‘I promise,’ I said, as I walked to the door.
20
Señor Valera’s office occupied the top floor of an extravagant modernist building located at number 442 Avenida Diagonal, just round the corner from Paseo de Gracia. For want of a better description, the building looked like a cross between a giant grandfather clock and a pirate ship, and was adorned with huge French windows and a roof with green dormers. In any other part of the world the baroque and Byzantine structure would have been proclaimed either as one of the seven wonders of the world or as the freakish creation of a mad artist who was possessed by demons. In Barcelona’s Ensanche quarter, where similar buildings cropped up everywhere, like clover after rain, it barely raised an eyebrow.