The Antiquarian (6 page)

“Where else could I go? Sailing!” Enrique made no attempt to hide his enthusiasm. “I just finished the book! Now I'm free to ply the seas!”

Mikel let out an honest belly laugh that spread to Enrique.

“Kid, the wind's not going to up and disappear all of a sudden! You ought to take it easy!”

“Forget that!” His honest smile earned him, as always, an immediate tenderness from the retired fisherman. “I haven't sailed—or so much as been out of the house—for two months! And it's been six days since I've moved from my desk, because I couldn't
finish the damned book. But now I have and it's time for payback and then some! So get back on that tub you call a squid boat and let me cast off.”

“Where are you headed?” asked Mikel, now serious. “The northwester's starting to blow like a son of a bitch. Weather report says it'll be worse come evening, force six. With wind like that, we'll be getting waves—ten-, thirteen-footers. A good old-fashioned squall's brewing. I don't need a weather report to tell me that. I can feel it in these old, rheumatic bones of mine, and in the air. Feel how pure it is.”

The port's high breakwater, even at low tide, could not keep the rising gusts from sweeping over Enrique's face, covering it with a longing anticipation.

“I don't know,” answered Enrique with an unmistakable twinkle in his eye. “I'll go wherever the wind takes me.”

“Nuts as always,” Mikel confirmed. “Be careful. This wind's gonna blow like a bastard, the kind that kicks even old-timers' asses. So watch the shifts. And keep your radio on!”

Enrique nodded. He started the engine, cast off the lines that moored the
Hispaniola
to the berth, and headed toward the mouth of the port. He raised the mainsail, then the jib. He sailed around the bay in farewell tribute to the beauty that surrounded him, from the foot of Mount Urgull to Ondarreta Beach, and returned to cross the sandbar in the direction of the open sea.

Three days later, early in the morning, Enrique returned to the port of San Sebastián. He had sailed without direction, driven by a powerful wind he felt had been sent for him to enjoy exclusively.

As Mikel had predicted, with the wind came the waves, and the sailing got rough. But that only made Enrique enjoy it that much more. It demanded he use all his skills, and he had a deep stock of them. He could hardly sleep on board, but it was just what he
needed to get rid of the tension of finishing another book. He didn't feel exhausted, simply a light, floating fatigue that, as he had found on other occasions, awaited his arrival on shore before it became overwhelming. His mind was so alert that he even came upon the right title for his work—something he was usually bad at, as all of his editors modified his title proposals for the better.

“Not this one,” he said to himself proudly, “this will be the title.”

The port of San Sebastián was small, and didn't offer much space for pleasure craft. Sailing hadn't quite caught on among the locals; the few vessels worthy of being called sailboats were moored at the innermost part of the port, gunwale to gunwale, in a small space that in any other marina would have been used for small motorboats before sailing yachts. Enrique maneuvered with utmost slowness; he fished out the mooring line with a gaff and tied it to the bow of the
Hispaniola
. After arranging the lines on the deck, he locked the companionway hatch and walked over the decks of the other boats until he reached the stairs that took him back to the pier. Before returning home, he stopped at a pastry shop near city hall, where he purchased a generous supply of sweet cakes, enough for two people. On his way back to Igueldo, he noticed a foul odor inside the car, and was surprised to discover that he was causing it. Three days of constant exertion without any washing, along with as much seawater as had splashed him, were taking their toll. But that only heightened his anticipation of the bath he planned to take as soon as he got home.

It didn't take him long to find a parking space in front of his building. He stopped to pick up his mail before going up to his apartment, and quickly sorted it into three groups: no interest whatsoever—from banks, publishers, and advertisers; undetermined—from strangers, possibly readers of his books; and interesting—letters
from friends and fellow writers. In any case, one stood out above all others: it was from his adoptive father, Artur Aiguader.

Enrique turned on the hot water to let the tub fill before undressing. He used the time it took for the bath to run to eat all of the sweet pastries and open the letters. He always started with those of least interest: he preferred to get the dull news out of the way to better savor the pleasures the good letters would offer him afterward. He had time to make a stack of bills, payment reminders, mortgage slips, account statements, and the like before getting into the water. In normal circumstances, he would have opened the letters from his readers next, but the prospect of spending a long, pleasant spell submerged in hot water made him take his father's letter, break the seal the old man used to show off his style, and slip into the tub, careful not to dampen any of its several pages.

He prepared to read its content closely. The long letters his father sent were wonderful things: intelligent reads with just the right balance of culture and gossip to satisfy a discerning reader. Factoring in the natural affection Enrique felt for him, nothing could keep him from devoting all his concentration to the letter and staving off the drowsiness that threatened to overtake him. Enrique always thought that his father should have been a writer, but Artur answered that his world was the past, and the past interested no one. The only thing that truly satisfied him was his work as a historian and bibliophile, and for that there could be nothing better than what he did.

Dear Godson,

First, forgive me for being so tardy in answering your last letter. You sent it long ago, and as is custom, the blend of laziness toward my personal affairs and a heavy workload typical of those who love what we do are to blame. I should say, as you well know, our relationship is much more interesting and enriching than could be
expected from a mere family tie, and that despite that, I couldn't help but break my promise to answer your missives in less than three or four months. I hope you will excuse me as I promise that such a long delay has occurred for the first, and I hope the last, time. By the way, let me reaffirm my intention to stay true to the written word, above and beyond the modern trappings of electronic mail, the handiness of which is beyond all doubt, but that along with other similar things will, most certainly, eventually do away with anything that is special or distinct in life. So get used to the idea of living with these remains from a majestic past that survive even in these times of mediocrity that so-called modernity is bringing upon us.

But let's change the subject and forget the peeves of the undersigned, who loves you so.

In your letter you included an outline—too detailed, by the way, to be called that—of the plot and characters of your most recent novel. I found your choice of subject matter very intriguing, definitely original, and not excessively dealt with previously: “… exploring the relationship of a couple living together, despite being interested in different things, and analyzing their feelings and reactions as if they were experimental laboratory animals.” Interesting. Curious, even.

Do you really think you could fiddle around with some characters and pull such a thing off? Playing about this way with topics you have no expertise in is a folly that only a naive mind, little-trained and with obvious structural limitations such as yours, could be so bold as to try. Such recklessness could have only one result: disaster. You have never stood out for your intelligence when it has come to establishing and maintaining personal relationships—I mean romantic relationships, of course. Do you really intend to explore a universe unknown to you? Your specialty is doing whatever it takes to ruin everything, not the opposite. (By the way, how's Bety? Have you heard from her?) So your intention to make a constructive, objective analysis of a couple seems to me difficult, if not impossible. If your editor
has given you carte blanche to delve into such a subject matter, I am sure he's as crazy as you … or that he owes you too much to deny your every whim.

I picture you seated before your computer, in a contrived attempt to create a plot that catches the reader's attention, and what comes to my mind are the expeditions led by the valiant (though they were little more than a motley crew of killers bent on rape and pillage) New World explorers from the early sixteenth century: not the ones who achieved their aims like Pizarro, Cortés, or Jiménez de Quesada, but the others, like Dortal, Ordás, Dalfinger, Federmann, and Benalcázar—remember those stories you loved for me to tell you when you were just a boy?—who failed. They had no idea where they were going, and their ignorance led them, by several days' march, to miss their intended target and end up in lands devoid of anything of profit, where they found every imaginable disaster, and ultimately, the one final destiny that we all share. Yes, you will search, but you will not find your destination, simply because it is not within your reach.

Still, another explanation for your outrageous project does occur to me. Is it not something personal? Are you not airing out your problems, your own personal miseries, turning what should be a simple literary exercise into a justification or exploration of your personal woes? It wouldn't surprise me at all, given your natural inclination to self-vindication. You've always been too indulgent with yourself. I've been telling you that since you were old enough to understand what the words meant. What's more, if you didn't wallow so much in what you were, instead of exploring what you could be, I am sure that your place in the literary world would take a qualitative leap that would surprise critics and the public alike. Instead, you are settling for being a good writer in the midst of other good writers, but still so distant from the literary greats.

I don't know at what point this letter will find you. You've probably already finished your work, and my prognosis will prove wrong, something that would thrill me to no end; however, in the worst scenario, it will prove true. If that is the case, I
hope to have helped you as much as I did when you landed in Barcelona with your second manuscript—or was it the third? I'm losing my memory in old age—for us to revise together. Let me know as soon as possible; don't follow the example of this forgetful, absentminded old fool.

Let's put our literary affairs aside to move on to more mundane matters. I wanted to tell you that four months ago I was appointed vice president of the Antiquarians' Association of Barcelona. They had been trying to get me to accept the post for years, and I had refused time and again. As you know, I've never been fond of having my picture up on the wall or holding pompous (and worthless) titles. But lately the state of the association has taken a turn for the worse, especially regarding its capacity for adaptation to modern times. The market can't absorb the offering that we old dealers have as well as that of the wave of new antiquarians who have recently set up shop in the area. So many shops have opened down there lately that La Palla is starting to look like a Turkish bazaar. These shops have every indication of being fronts for another activity that I'd rather not mention, but I have no choice. Rumor has it that they launder money from illegal activities, and it's better not to conjecture further about it, so as to keep from discovering too much unpleasantness.

The shops are so well-manicured on the outside but poorly tended on the inside that I cannot believe they belong to new colleagues recently introduced into the antiques world in which, as you're well aware, we all know each other. Therefore, and as a provisional measure, I agreed to take the open post on the association's board of directors, with the intention of finding out as much as possible about the people and investors behind the new shops. Old man Puigventós insisted that I was just right for the job, owing to my “experience, skill, and contacts”; the last being far more valuable than the former two, no doubt. He may be right, but I'm less than thrilled.

For now, my investigations haven't revealed anything. I'm sure you remember Captain Fornells, that conceited old card I used to run around with in my student days, and who now works in the Raval Precinct. Well, Fornells hasn't managed to make any inroads either, despite his many contacts. And if he can't do it, we'll have to appeal to higher powers because it seems obvious that this is more than just a neighborhood gang. Fornells discussed the case with some people at the Financial Crimes Unit down at police headquarters. I gave them all the information available on the new shops, and they promised to make the “relevant inquiries.” I'll let you in on something: except for Fornells and a couple of fellow old-school police, our new law enforcement leadership is made up of nothing but a bunch of bureaucrats who are all photocopies of each other, as much in the way they talk as in the way they act: they say the same things and they dress the same way. Let's hope that their investigation is successful and allows us to unmask the newcomers before any untoward filth taints our old profession.

My dear godson, I must stop here. Don't forget to write soon. Your letters are, and I mean this with all my heart, a true source of joy for this old antiquarian.

Yours,

Artur

P.S.: I am writing this several days after finishing the letter, on my way to send it. Just a few days ago I purchased a lot that includes all the contents of an old, noble mansion belonging to a historic Catalan clan, the Bergués family. I've found something unbelievable in their library, something that could surpass even a mad antiquarian's expectations. I can't tell you anything until I've determined what it is, until I've made sure that it's not just the imagination of an old man, and that the foundation of it proves true. For some reason I can't understand, I'm uneasy. For the first time in many years, I feel I'm in over my head. Should anything happen to
me—who knows, one of those funny illnesses that befall us old folk, a heart attack or anything of the sort—I recommend you read
The Practice of Christian Perfection
, volume one. It contains all the information necessary to continue my work. You'll find it in the library of my shop.