“Hasn’t Carax done that already?” asked Valentina.

“Everything in life has been done by someone before, at least anything worth doing,” I said. “The trick is to try to do it a bit better.”

“And there you go, with all the modesty of youth.”

Accustomed as I was to having jugs of ice-cold water poured on me by my beloved iceberg, I continued with my presentation, as determined as a soldier jumping out of his trench and advancing with a shout against the hail of machine guns.

According to my infallible plan, the first volume would focus on the story of a reader, in this case my father: on how, when he was young, he’d discovered the world of books—and, by extension, life—through an enigmatic novel by an unknown author concealing a huge mystery, the sort that leaves you drooling at the mouth. All that would provide the foundation for building, in one stroke of the pen, a novel that would combine all known and unknown forms.

“While you’re at it, it could also cure the flu and the common cold,” remarked Valentina.

The second volume, replete with a morbid, sinister aftertaste, seeking to goad the mainstream reader, would narrate the macabre wanderings of an ill-fated novelist, courtesy of David Martín, who would chart, in the first person, how he loses his mind, and drag us along in his descent into the hell of his own madness, thus becoming an even less reliable narrator than the Prince of Hell, who would also stroll around the novel’s pages. Or perhaps he wouldn’t, because it would all be a game in which the reader is the one who must finish the jigsaw puzzle and decide what kind of book it is.

“What if you’re left in the lurch, and nobody feels like taking part in this game?”

“It will have been worthwhile all the same,” I said. “There will always be someone who will take up the challenge.”

“Writing is for optimists,” Valentina declared.

The third volume, assuming some charitable reader had managed to survive the first two and not decided to board a different tram heading for a happy ending, would save us momentarily from the underworld and offer us the story of a character, the character par excellence and the voice of the official conscience of the story, that is to say, my adoptive uncle, Fermín Romero de Torres. His story would show us, with picaresque spirit, how he became the person he was, and his many misadventures in the most turbulent years of the century would reveal the lines connecting all the parts of the labyrinth.

“At least here we’ll have a good laugh.”

“Fermín to the rescue,” I agreed.

“And how does this monstrosity end?”

“With fireworks, a grand orchestra, and stage machinery, special effects in full force.”

The fourth installment, fierce and enormous, spiced with perfumes from all the earlier ones, would lead us at last to the center of the mystery, uncovering all the puzzles with the help of my favorite fallen angel of mist, Alicia Gris. The saga would contain villains and heroes, and a thousand tunnels through which the reader would be able to explore a kaleidoscopic plot resembling that mirage of perspectives I’d discovered with my father in the heart of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.