If the little mouse disagreed, he showed no signs of it. Theirs was a friendly coexistence, neither of them searching for a dominant role: a gentlemanly agreement. During the day they heard the sound of the sailors’ footsteps and voices reverberating in the bilge. On the rare occasions when a member of the crew ventured down there, normally to steal something, Fermín would hide again in the rifle crate he’d just vacated and, lulled by the sea and the aroma of gunpowder, surrender to a little nap. On his second day on board, while exploring the bazaar of wonders hidden in the stomach of that leviathan, Fermín, a modern Jonah and a free-thinking scholar of the Holy Scriptures during his spare time, discovered a box full of beautifully bound Bibles. The discovery struck him as daring and colorful, to put it mildly, but since there was no other literary menu to choose from, he borrowed a copy and, with the help of a candle also on loan from the cargo, read aloud to himself and his traveling companion, highlighting hand-picked fragments, especially from the juicier Old Testament, which he had always considered far more entertaining and gruesome than the New.

“Pay attention, sir, for now cometh an ineffable parable of deep symbolism, spiced up with enough cases of incest and mutilation to scare the feces out of the Brothers Grimm themselves.”

The two whiled away the hours and the days sheltered by the sea until, at dawn on March 17, 1938, Fermín opened his eyes and discovered that his friend the rodent was gone. Perhaps listening to a few episodes of the Revelation of Saint John on the previous night had frightened the little mouse, or maybe he could sense that the journey was coming to an end and it was advisable to make oneself scarce. Feeling stiff after another night encased in the icy cold that drilled into his bones, Fermín staggered over to the viewpoint provided by one of the portholes, through which poured the breath of a scarlet dawn. The circular window was only about a foot and a half above the waterline, and Fermín could see the sun rising over a wine-colored sea. He walked across the hold, dodging crates of munitions and a pile of rusty bicycles tied together with ropes, until he reached the opposite side and had a look. The hazy beam of the harbor’s lighthouse swept across the ship’s hull, projecting momentary flashes of light through all the portholes in the hold. Farther on lay the city of Barcelona, enveloped in a halo of mist that crept between watchtowers, domes, and spires. Fermín smiled to himself, briefly forgetting the cold, as well as the bruises covering his body, a consequence of brawls and misfortunes experienced in his previous port of call.

“Lucía . . . ,” he murmured, recalling the face whose memory had kept him alive during the worst predicaments.