“You say you have a Mataix book? Of the Labyrinth series?”

“Ariadna and the Scarlet Prince.”

“I thought there were only three copies left.”

“Mine must be the fourth.”

“And you say Gustavo Barceló sends you?”

“Yes. He told me he was a great friend of yours.”

Vilajuana laughed. Alicia could hear the hustle and bustle in the newsroom at the other end of the line.

“I’ll be in the library of the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, after twelve o’clock,” he said at last. “Do you know it?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Ask for me in the secretary’s office. And bring the book.”

34

Lost in a square hidden beneath the shadow of the cathedral stands a stone portico. An inscription on its arch reads:

Real Academia de Buenas Letras

de Barcelona

Alicia had occasionally heard about the place, but like most of her fellow citizens, she knew almost nothing about that institution housed behind the walls of an old palace, a relic of medieval Barcelona. She knew, or guessed, that the academy was made up of an illustrious company of wise men, scribes, and serious addicts to literature and the arts, sworn to protect learning and the written word, who had been gathering there since the end of the eighteenth century, determined to ignore the outside world’s enthusiastic efforts to oppose and disdain such eccentricities.

A perfume of stones and the mandatory aura of mystery followed her as she stepped through the doorway into the inner patio, where a wide stairway led up to the reception room. There she was intercepted by an individual with a leathery face who looked as if he’d been there since the dawn of the last century. He regarded her with suspicion and asked her whether she was Señorita Gris.

“That’s me.”

“I thought so. Señor Vilajuana is in the library,” he said, pointing inside. “We ask visitors to be silent.”

“Don’t worry, I took my vows this very morning.”

The guard dog showed no intention of smiling at her joke. She decided to thank him and set off in search of the library, as if she knew where to find it. That was always the most efficient way of slipping into any place with restricted access: behave as if you know where you’re going and require no clearance or directions. The strategy of gaining entry is not unlike seduction: if you ask for permission, you’ve lost before you’ve begun.

Alicia wandered at ease, nosing around halls filled with statues and strolling down palatial corridors until she stumbled across a kindly bookworm who identified himself as Polonio and offered to guide her to the library.

“I’ve never seen you around here,” he remarked. His experience with the feminine gender did not seem to have ventured beyond Petrarch’s verses.

“It’s your lucky day.”

She found Sergio Vilajuana in the company of the muses and the almost fifty thousand volumes that made up the academy’s library. The journalist had settled down at one of the tables and was facing a small citadel of sheets of paper covered in marginal notes and crossed-out words. Vilajuana had the pensive poise of a British scholar relocated to the fairer climes of the Mediterranean. He wore a gray wool suit, a tie with a pattern of golden nibs, and a saffron-colored scarf over his shoulders. Nibbling the top of a fountain pen, he murmured under his breath as he tried to trap a sentence that refused to land on the page.