Holding Alicia’s gaze, Fermín stretched out one of his arms.

“O negative, universal and top quality.”

32

In those days, science had yet to unravel the enigma of why time slows to a fraction of its cruising speed inside hospitals. Once Fermín had emptied himself of what he deemed, at a glance, a barrel of blood, he and Fernandito settled down in a waiting room with a view of the beach. From the window they could see the citadel of shacks of the Somorrostro, a vast shantytown beached between a sea and a sky sealed together by leaden clouds. Farther on lay the mosaic of crosses, angels, and pantheons of the Pueblo Nuevo Cemetery. The sight offered an ominous reminder to the poor souls enduring endless hours in the hospital waiting room. Fernandito gazed at the scene like a condemned man, while the more prosaic Fermín devoured a gigantic spicy sausage sandwich he’d managed to secure at the coffee shop, washing it down with a Moritz beer.

“I don’t know how you can eat now, Fermín.”

“Having donated eighty percent of my bloodstream and probably the sum total of my liver, I need to restock. Like Prometheus, but without those big ugly birds.”

“Prometheus?”

“One must read, Fernandito. Not everything in adolescence is jerking off like a monkey. Besides, being a man of action, I have a very swift metabolism that requires me to consume over three times my body weight in prime steak every week in order to maintain this stupendous physique in combat form.”

“Señorita Alicia barely eats,” ventured Fernandito. “Drinking, well, that’s another matter . . .”

“We each have to wrestle with our appetites. In my case, for example, since the war, I’m constantly ravenous. You’re young and can’t understand that.”

Fernandito watched in resignation as Fermín proceeded to devour his feast. After a while, an individual who looked like a district lawyer poked his head around the waiting-room door, carrying a file, and cleared his throat to announce his presence. “Are you relatives of the patient?”

Fernandito sought Fermín’s gaze, who put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to imply that from then on he would take care of the talking. “The word ‘relative’ doesn’t quite do justice to the bond that unites us to her,” he said, shaking the crumbs off his jacket.

“And what word would you use to define such a bond, if it’s not too much to ask?”

Fernandito had naively assumed that he had begun to master the art of fibbing until he witnessed the performance given by the master at work, Fermín Romero de Torres, while Alicia was plunging into the darkness of surgery. As soon as the individual had introduced himself as assistant to the hospital management and made clear his intention of inquiring what had happened and asking for documentation, Fermín fired off a rhapsody of such fine embroidery that he reduced the bureaucrat to a state of babbling stupefaction.

The first thing he did was to identify himself as the right-hand man to the civil governor of Barcelona, the regime’s blue-eyed boy in the province. “We cannot be discreet enough concerning what I have to tell Your Excellency,” he pronounced.