“Alicia,” she murmured.

“I’m Isaac.”

With a look of concern, the man examined the wound throbbing in the little girl’s hip. He covered her with a blanket and, holding up her head, brought a glass of fresh water to her lips. Alicia sipped avidly. The keeper’s hands settled her head on a pillow. Isaac smiled at her, but his eyes betrayed deep anguish. Behind him, forming what she thought was a basilica erected out of all the libraries in the world, rose the labyrinth she had seen from the summit.

Isaac sat on a chair next to her and held her hand. “Now you must rest.”

He extinguished the lantern, and a bluish darkness engulfed them, sprinkled with small flashes of fire that trickled down from above. The seemingly impossible geometry of the book-labyrinth faded into the vastness, and Alicia thought she was dreaming all this, that the bomb had exploded in her grandmother’s sitting room, that she and her friend had never escaped from that blazing building.

Isaac watched her with sadness. Through the walls came the sound of the bombs, of the sirens and the fire spreading death through Barcelona. A nearby explosion shook the walls and the floor beneath them, bringing up clouds of dust. In her bed, Alicia shuddered. The keeper lit a candle and left it resting on a low table next to her. The candlelight outlined the prodigious structure rising in the center of the hall, a vision that lit up Alicia’s eyes moments before she lost consciousness.

Isaac sighed.

“Alicia,” he said at last. “Welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.”

17

Fermín opened his eyes to an immensity of celestial white. A uniformed angel was bandaging his thigh. Beyond, a corridor full of stretchers disappeared into infinity.

“Is this purgatory?” he asked.

The nurse raised her eyes and looked at him askance. She did not appear to be a day older than eighteen, and Fermín thought that for an angel on the divine payroll, she was much better looking than the pictures given out at first communions and christenings suggested. The presence of impure thoughts could only mean one of two things: improvement on the physical front or imminent eternal condemnation.

“It goes without saying that I renounce my villainous unbelief and subscribe word for word to both Testaments, the New and the Old, in whatever order Your Angelical Grace esteems best.”

When she noticed that the patient was regaining consciousness and could speak, the nurse made a sign, and a doctor who looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week walked over to the stretcher. Lifting Fermín’s eyelids with his fingers, the doctor examined his eyes.

“Am I dead?” asked Fermín.

“Don’t exaggerate. You’re a little beat-up, but in general quite alive.”

“So this isn’t purgatory?”

“Wishful thinking. You’re in the Hospital Clínico. In other words, in hell.”

While the doctor was examining his wound, Fermín considered the turn of events and tried to remember how he’d gotten there.

“How are you feeling?” asked the doctor.