The Antiquarian (41 page)

“Everything else was just a matter of time. Eric prolonged his stay in Paris, and a few months later, our relationship was what could be considered stable. But we had to make a decision; his office was in Manhattan, and he couldn't neglect it any longer. It was sad, but he went back, although as soon as the school year ended I moved in with him with the excuse of perfecting my English over the summer. We made the decision in a matter of months: we would get married as soon as possible and I would go to work in his office.

“I came back from New York with Eric. At home the news went over like a lead balloon, as you can imagine. What I know now is how much it hurt my parents, especially my mother. But in this life we make lots of decisions that hurt our loved ones; this was one of them.

“We got married in a small ceremony, practically eloping, I guess you'd say. And then a new life began in New York. A good job that I was qualified for, and a husband who traveled the world, who I could only accompany on rare occasions. At first, like always, everything went wonderfully. But the chemistry between us broke down over time; I got to a point where I felt that this man I occasionally made love to was really a stranger I pretended to love. I needed more—not money or pleasure, but to identify myself with him, share with him, be him. And Eric couldn't give me any of that. He tried, but he didn't know how. We were finished. When I explained how I felt, he
understood. Fortunately, there were no kids. We got a divorce with mutual consent, no bitterness, no fighting. He took it worse, because in his way, he still loved me. I came back to Barcelona with a heavy heart: sad for Eric, sad for my parents, and sad for myself. I was alone and didn't want to be. But obviously, I got over it and here I am.”

“Do you stay in touch?”

“In the ordinary ways: Christmas cards, New Years wishes. If I'm ever in New York we meet for lunch. Not much else.”

“It's not good to keep up contact. The past is the past.”

“You're not exactly in a position to say that.”

Enrique picked up Mariola's insinuation.

“Bety only came to help me. There's nothing between us. And do you honestly think I could be with both of you at once?”

Mariola thought before she answered.

“No, not you. But men are perverse. And most wouldn't have had any qualms about doing it, or at least trying.”

“Well, thanks for the trust.”

“You're welcome. Anyway, I wanted to … well, I don't want you to get angry, but you should understand that …”

It was obvious that Mariola knew how to say what she meant but didn't trust the reaction it would cause in Enrique.

“I get it. You want Bety to go back to San Sebastián.”

“Yes,” she assented, relieved. “You should understand; even if there's nothing between you two, you're living under the same roof, and you were together for years. It's hard for me to say it, but that's how I feel.”

Enrique could see she felt truly uncomfortable, and more than that, perhaps hurt by the situation. Although she wasn't blaming him, it didn't change how she felt.

“Don't worry. She's leaving soon.”

Mariola nodded. Her eyes were moist.

“I just can't understand it,” she whispered, her voice failing. “I can see her coming to help you when you were alone, but now it just doesn't make sense. I don't understand why she's still here, unless she wants to get back together with you.”

From her standpoint, Mariola was right. It may have been that, at some point, the magic that once united them had resurfaced, but that had long since passed. If Bety was still in Barcelona, it was to unravel the mystery of the manuscript. There was no other solution than to tell her everything—or nearly everything, since the details were not that important.

“Look, Bety hasn't left Barcelona because she's working on an important translation. You know she's a university professor of classical philology. Artur was working on the translation of an old manuscript, whose author we've identified as a man named Casadevall, a master builder from the late fourteenth century. It appeared to contain the keys to a strange mystery that Artur had apparently solved: a letter he sent me the very weekend of his death said as much. It looks like it's some kind of object that we know nothing about. And for now, after an initial translation, we haven't made any progress. There's a list of possible hiding places of whatever it is: they're buildings from that period, of which, naturally, very few are still standing. Many have been rebuilt or drastically altered; others, torn down. But we're still at it, hoping to find the solution, though I'm afraid it's very difficult. Most likely, the object is gone forever.”

“I'm speechless.” She partially recovered her smile. “Do you mean to say that if Bety's still in your house it's because of an investigation you're working on? Just that? You don't think she has any ulterior motive?”

“Just that. But even so, I'll tell her what's going on, and that way we'll set everything straight. Or if you'd rather,” Enrique offered enthusiastically, “I could stay with you, at your house. That way we'd avoid the whole problem.”

Mariola didn't answer right away. She seemed to weigh Enrique's proposal.

“Not yet,” she answered. She looked him straight in the eyes, her head slightly tilted and a captivating, cryptic smile on her lips. “Not yet. It's too soon.”

“Okay. Then in that case, she'll have to go.”

“I wouldn't want to disrupt your—”

“No, it's not a problem,” Enrique cut her off. “She was planning to return to San Sebastián around Wednesday. Does that sound all right?”

Mariola nodded, satisfied.

“Yes, it does.” She sent him an air kiss over the table. “I'd rather she did it today, tonight even, but I understand the situation. I'll wait until Wednesday. Well then, I have to go. It's late, and I've been out of the shop all day.”

They gathered their things and went down to the ground floor, where Enrique paid the check. They parted ways on the Ramblas: Mariola was headed to the shop, while Enrique had to stop by his publisher's office.

“Enrique, I want you to know how much I appreciate your understanding, that you listen to me.”

“You don't need to thank me.”

“I think I do,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. “And one more thing: Are you upset that I didn't let you come stay with me?”

“I would've liked to be with you, but I understand that maybe I'm moving too fast.”

“No you're not; it'll be soon, sooner than you think,” said Mariola, and kissed him on the lips. “Come over this evening, around eight. I'd rather you didn't stay, but that doesn't mean we can't spend some time together.”

“I will.” Enrique smiled happily.

Mariola walked away among the multitude of pedestrians streaming through the neighborhood. As she did, Enrique congratulated himself on such a woman being a part of his life.

The Scholar rummaged around a table so cluttered with hundreds of books it looked as if it would collapse at any minute. The librarian, an older woman with a demeanor that was serious and so strict it made her seem snooty, took occasional glances at him with a mix of curiosity and something like worry, mainly owing to the chaotic mess occupying the worktable. This outlandish character, in a fit of fertile creativity, took incessant notes, without ever stopping his activity, except to request new and extremely rare documents not once taken out in the past thirty years, the time in which she had been working in that oasis of peace that was the library of the Crown of Aragon's archive. She wasn't the only one disconcerted by the invasion of a preestablished, rarely disturbed order: the other researchers honoring the world of the past with their presence also watched the disheveled young man rifling through the papers and books at a frantic pace. The proof was to be found in their surreptitious glances, or trips to the restroom with detours made to walk behind the researcher and see what books the strange intruder was consulting.

The librarian remembered him from other visits: they hadn't been too frequent, as it was easy to identify such a peculiar subject from among the rest of his fellow researchers. The majority were men getting on in years, old retired professors or professional researchers. Among that community, the Scholar, as she called him, broke the archive's usual working paradigm. The first time she saw him, years ago, she had even been indignant at what she considered an offensive presence: a youngster in blue jeans so tight they left nothing to the imagination, and a shirt so overprinted with flowers it hurt to look at, in the company of one of the most venerable philologists of
the Barcelonese academic community, who introduced him as his brightest student. It had been a less than positive impression against which she could do little, as the letters of recommendation from that professor were enough to open the doors of any private library in the country to him. Yet after watching him at work, overflowing with enthusiasm and faith, she ended up changing her opinion of him: he may have had a sloppy appearance, but the way his eyes shone as he studied the old sheaves was truly special. That's why she had christened him “the Scholar.” The others were scholarly as well, there could be no question, but this young man whose name she didn't know reflected a true joy, a rare happiness at being surrounded by the past in its purest form. Moreover, he was polite to a fault, and always sincerely thanked her for the efforts she devoted to him.

Still, acknowledging his professional capabilities was not equivalent to tolerating the mess he made when he worked. It was always the same: it began with an endless string of requests that always ended up overwhelming the expert, normally sedate librarian: titles that hadn't been taken off the shelf since 1950. Dossiers in places she barely remembered, that she had almost forgotten existed, were stacked in a mingled heap on the table, making her yearn for the order with which the rest of the researchers did their work: methodically organized, document by document, never fourteen at a time. On his lectern were the
Chronicle of the Rationale of the City,
the
Book of the Solemnities of Barcelona,
the
Diary of the General Council,
the
Private Diary of Jaume Safont, Boscà's Memorial
, and many others, all jumbled about.

In any event, the librarian had grown accustomed to his presence, and to tolerating his confused work system based on comparative analysis. It was nothing new to her to see him rushing through document after document with a storm of energy while around him, the Scholar's whirlwind activity made the rest of researchers seem to work in slow
motion. What was truly extraordinary and disrupting was the sudden word that resounded throughout the reading room, raising the incredulous faces of the other researchers:

“Fuck!”

It was an abrupt, categorical “fuck.” It bore the unmistakable aura of final conclusion, of discovered evidence, of victory achieved, but most of all, it was a “fuck” of genuine surprise. With the echo of the word still indolently bouncing off the walls of the library, Manolo Álvarez Pinzón hurriedly gathered up his notes and the manuscript; he stacked all his working documents into a single pile and ran to the entrance, stopping only briefly to justify his departure.

“Excuse me, ma'am, I won't be able to pick up all the books; I'm in too big a hurry,” he said, and left the archive with a dumbfounded librarian in his wake.

Still stunned by the evidence, his slender body nearly lost its balance on his way down the dark stairway as he tried to take the steps two by two. The sun was shining bright, forcing him to squint as he left the building. Temporarily blinded, he cut a pathetic figure, and again tripped and nearly fell down the steps that led from the archive to the street. The stumble made him regain his senses, and despite his anxiety, he calmed his gait as much as possible. He had to walk only fifteen yards before finding the majestic building he sought: he raised his gaze to view it in its fullness and smiled to himself. The truth was, it hadn't taken that much effort to discover the building where Casadevall had hidden the Stone of God: all he had to do was apply pure logic. Could it be anywhere but that place? He checked the time: it was ten minutes to one. There was no need to hurry. He had enough time to put his contacts into motion before they closed the building to the public. With his work notes in hand he entered through a side door,
fully convinced he would find the wondrous object. He hadn't noticed the figure following him at a distance. After all, why would he have to worry about such a thing?

And that's what sealed his fate.

* * *

After finding the manuscript's hidden key, he had cast himself into a frenzy of activity. He needed authorization to move around the parts of the building that were off limits to normal citizens, because not just anyone could visit certain areas of the Cathedral of Barcelona, where Casadevall had concealed the Stone of God. There was no more logical place: the master builder knew it perfectly, like the back of his hand. After all, he had spent thirty years working on its construction. And not only that, in Christian societies, cathedrals became imperishable symbols, above and beyond the infighting that rattled a world in constant evolution. No one dared desecrate them, unless the world order changed to such a degree that the planet ceased to exist. If there was any sacred symbol accepted by Christian civilization, it had to be a cathedral. That's why he'd hidden the Stone there. Such bitter irony, thought Manolo: hiding one of the most important symbols of Judaism in the very heart of Barcelonese Christianity. He imagined Casadevall with the Stone in his power. Just possessing it must have been a shock difficult to overcome. He had accepted the mission to hide it, something unusual in itself, and he was aware of its value, as S. had shown it to him in the
gahal
. What happened when its secret name was pronounced wasn't reported in the manuscript, but it must have been truly overpowering to steel his resolve as it had. And now he, Manolo Álvarez Pinzón, scholar, researcher, so often vilified by peers and professors, was literally on the path to unraveling an enviable mystery.