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“You rascal,” he whispered as he went by, not without admiration. “What a looker.”
I waited until Bea had gone into the building and then set off briskly, turning to glance back at every step. Slowly I became possessed by the absurd conviction that everything was possible, and it seemed to me that even those deserted streets and that hostile wind smelled of hope. When I reached Plaza de Cataluña, I noticed that a flock of pigeons had congregated in the center of the square. They covered it all with a blanket of white feathers that swayed silently. I thought of going around them, but at that moment I noticed that the pigeons parted to let me pass, without flying off. I felt my way forward, as the pigeons broke ranks in front of me and re-formed behind me. When I got to the middle of the square, I heard the peal of the cathedral bells ringing out midnight. I paused for a moment, stranded in an ocean of silvery birds, and thought how this had been the strangest and most marvelous day of my life.
·22·
THE LIGHT WAS STILL ON IN THE BOOKSHOP WHEN I CROSSED THE street toward the shop window. I thought that perhaps my father had stayed on until late, getting up to date with his correspondence or finding some other excuse to wait up for me and pump me for information about my meeting with Bea. I saw a silhouette making a pile of books and recognized the gaunt, nervous profile of Fermín, lost in concentration. I rapped on the pane with my knuckles. Fermín looked out, pleasantly surprised, and signaled to me to pop in through the back-room door.
“Still working, Fermín? It’s terribly late.”
“I’m really just killing time until I go over to poor Don Federico’s and watch over him. I’m taking turns with Eloy from the optician’s. I don’t sleep much anyhow. Two or three hours at the most. Mind you, you can’t talk either, Daniel. It’s past midnight, from which I infer that your meeting with the young lady was a roaring success.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “The truth is I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Did you get to feel her up?”
“No.”
“A good sign. Never trust girls who let themselves be touched right away. But even less those who need a priest for approval. Good sirloin steak—if you’ll excuse the comparison—needs to be cooked until it’s medium rare. Of course, if the opportunity arises, don’t be prudish, and go for the kill. But if what you’re looking for is something serious, like this thing with me and Bernarda, remember the golden rule.”
“Is your thing serious?”
“More than serious. Spiritual. And what about you and this pumpkin, Beatriz? You can see a mile off that she’s worth a million bucks, but the crux of the matter is this: is she the sort who makes one fall in love or the sort who merely stirs up the lower parts?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I pointed out. “Both things, I’d say.”
“Look, Daniel, this is like indigestion. Do you notice something here, in the mouth of the stomach—as if you’d swallowed a brick? Or do you just feel a general feverishness?”
“The brick thing sounds more like it,” I said, although I didn’t altogether discard the fever.
“That means it’s a serious matter. God help us! Come on, sit down and I’ll make you a linden-blossom tea.”
We settled down around the table in the back room, surrounded by books. The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows. Fermín handed me a steaming hot cup and smiled at me a little awkwardly. Something was bothering him.
“May I ask you a personal question, Daniel?”
“Of course.”
“I beg you to answer in all frankness,” he said, and he cleared his throat. “Do you think I could ever be a father?”
He must have seen my puzzled expression, and he quickly added, “I don’t mean biologically—I may look a bit rickety, but by good luck Providence has endowed me with the potency and the fury of a fighting bull. I’m referring to the other sort of father. A good father, if you see what I mean.”
“A good father?”
“Yes. Like y
ours. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he’s his father but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.”
“Why are you asking me this, Fermín? I thought you didn’t believe in marriage and families. The yoke and all that, remember?”
Fermín nodded. “Look, all that’s for amateurs. Marriage and family are only what we make of them. Without that they’re just a nest of hypocrisy. Garbage and empty words. But if there is real love, of the sort one doesn’t go around telling everyone about, the sort that is felt and lived…”
“You’re a changed man, Fermín.”
“I am. Bernarda has made me want to be a better man.”
“How’s that?”
“So that I can deserve her. You cannot understand such things right now, because you’re young. But in good time you’ll see that sometimes what matters isn’t what one gives but what one gives up. Bernarda and I have been talking. She’s quite a mother hen, as you know. She doesn’t say so, but I think the one thing in life that would make her truly happy is becoming a mother. And I fancy that woman more than peaches in syrup. Suffice it to say that for her I’m prepared to enter a church after thirty-two years of clerical abstinence and recite the psalms of Saint Seraph or whatever needs to be done.”
