She looked into Fernandito’s eyes and smiled at him.

“Don’t let me die here,” she whispered.

31

The storm had swept the street of passersby and left the bookshop bereft of customers. Fermín decided to devote the day to assorted menial undertakings and a dash of low-level philosophizing. Taking no notice of the lightning flashes and the crashing rain, which seemed determined to knock down the shop window, he turned on the radio. Patiently, as if he were coaxing the lock of a safe, he turned the dial until he came across the sound of a big band that was launching into the first bars of “Siboney.” At the first roll of the timbale drums, Fermín began to sway to the Caribbean rhythm and went back to the repair and restoration work of a six-volume edition of The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue, with Daniel as his kitchen boy and helper.

“I used to kill this tune on the dance floor and sweep the chorus girls off their feet at the Tropicana when I was young and still had a good hip movement. What memories it brings. . . . If instead of good looks I’d had a talent for literature, I would have written The Mysteries of Havana,” he proclaimed.

“Eros won, and Parnassus lost,” Bea remarked.

Fermín walked over to her, keeping step with the music, his arms wide open, swinging his hips to the clave rhythm.

“Señora Bea, come, I’ll show you the basic steps of the son montuno. Your husband dances as if he were wearing cement clogs, and you haven’t been able to properly experience the frenzy of Afro-Cuban tempo. Let’s go . . .”

Bea ran to hide in the back room, where she hoped to finish squaring the accounts and keep her distance from Fermín’s bopping and crooning.

“Your wife can sometimes be as dull as the small print on a land-registry list,” Fermín said.

“You’re telling me,” replied Daniel.

“Sound travels here,” warned Bea’s voice from the back room.

This pleasant atmosphere was broken when they heard a car braking suddenly on the wet street. When they looked up, they saw a taxi stop in the pouring rain outside the Sempere & Sons shop window. There was a sudden flash of lightning, and for a split second the car looked like a carriage made of molten lead smoldering in the rain.

“Leave it to a taxi driver . . . ,” said Fermín.

The rest happened at the speed of disaster. A young boy soaked to the skin, face flattened by terror, came out of the taxi and when he saw the closed notice on the door started banging the glass with his fists. Fermín and Daniel swapped glances.

“And they say nobody wants to buy books anymore,” said Fermín.

Daniel walked over to the door and opened it. The boy, who looked as if he was on the verge of collapse, put his hand on his chest, took a deep breath, and asked, almost shouting, “Which of you is Fermín Romero de Torres?”