Methuselah, who always managed to push his broom under Vilajuana’s feet while the journalist was trying to navigate through folders and boxes of documents, finally took pity on him. “What in heaven’s name are you looking for, my good man?”

“I’m beginning to think it’s the Holy Shroud.”

Thanks to a few coins and the companionship generated by ostracism, Methuselah ended up telling him that, in fact, what he was looking for was not papers but a person.

“Doña María Luisa. Things were different when she ran things around here. Don’t get me started.”

The attempts at finding this Doña María Luisa ran smack into the same wall.

“That person has retired,” the new director told him, in a tone that implied that if he knew what was good for him, he’d leave the matter well alone and take a walk along La Barceloneta to enjoy the views.

It took a couple of weeks to locate her. María Luisa Alcaine lived near Plaza Real in a tiny apartment at the top of a block of flats with no elevator and no hope of having one, surrounded by dovecotes and unfinished terraced roofs, with boxes of papers piled up from floor to ceiling. The years of retirement had not been kind to her. The woman who opened the door looked vanquished.

“Doña María Luisa Alcaine?”

“Who are you?”

Vilajuana had anticipated the question and prepared an answer, which he hoped would keep that door open, even if only for a few seconds.

“My name is Sergio Vilajuana, and I’m a journalist working for La Vanguardia. I’ve been sent to see you by a friend of an old acquaintance of yours, Captain Vargas. Do you remember him?”

Doña María Luisa gave a deep sigh and turned around, leaving the door open behind her. She clearly lived alone in that hole and was dying of cancer, or of neglect. She chain-smoked as if the cigarettes were jelly beans, and when she coughed, she sounded as if she was bringing up her soul in bits.

“It won’t make any difference now,” she said. “Sit down. If you can find a spot.”

That afternoon María Luisa told him how, years before, when she was still secretary to the director, a captain from the police force called Vargas had come to the Civil Registry. “A handsome man, the sort you rarely see nowadays.”

Vargas had shown her a list with numbers of death and birth certificates that seemed to correlate—the same list Vilajuana had received years later, neatly typed out.

“So you remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

“Do you know where I could find the registry books containing those records prior to 1944?”

Maria Luisa lit another cigarette and took a drag that Vilajuana thought would finish her off. When she emerged from a cloud of smoke that looked as if something inside her had exploded, she signaled to him to follow her.

“Help me,” she said, pointing at a mountain of boxes piled up in one of the kitchen cupboards. “It’s the two at the back. I brought them home to prevent them from being destroyed. I thought Vargas would come back for them one day and that, with luck, he’d come back for me too. After all these years, I imagine that good old Captain Vargas must have beaten me in the race to paradise.”