“I thought you were dead,” he declared.

“I’m doing my best. You look as fit as a bull.”

“It’s the Sugus sweets, they caramelize me.”

“It must be that.”

“A birdie told me you’re going to make us famous,” Fermín let drop.

“Especially you. When you get offers to model for an advertising campaign, don’t think twice about consulting me. I still know a lot about all that.”

“I’m only planning to accept the racy ones for male underwear,” replied Fermín.

“Do I have your permission, then?”

“You have my blessing, given out to the four corners of the world. But I don’t think that’s the only reason why you came.”

“Why do you always suppose I have hidden motives, Fermín?”

“Because your mind is as twisted as a spring. I mean it as a compliment.”

“So why do you think I’ve come?”

“Probably to marvel at my still fertile wit, and perhaps for an account we have that is still pending.”

“Which of them?”

Fermín took me to a room he always kept under lock and key to protect it from the onslaught of his many offspring. He asked me to sit down in a large armchair he’d bought at the Encantes flea market. He sat down on a chair next to me, took a cardboard box, and placed it on his knees.

“Do you remember Alicia?” he asked. “It’s a rhetorical question.”

I could feel my heart missing a beat.

“Is she alive? Have you heard from her?”

Fermín opened the box and pulled out a handful of letters.

“I never told you, because I felt that it was best for us all, but Alicia returned to Barcelona in 1960 before leaving forever. It was Sant Jordi Day, the twenty-third of April. She came back to say good-bye, in her own way.”

“I remember it perfectly. I was very young.”

“And you still are.”

We looked at one another in silence.

“Where did she go?”

“I said good-bye to her on the docks and saw her board a ship that was sailing to the Americas. Since then, every Christmas, I’ve received a letter with no sender’s address.”

Fermín handed me the wad with over thirty letters, one for every year. “You can open them.”

All the envelopes had a photograph inside. The stamp showed that each one had been sent from a different place: New York, Washington, DC, Seattle, Denver, Santa Fe, Portland, Philadelphia, Key West, New Orleans, Santa Monica, Chicago, San Francisco . . .

I looked at Fermín in astonishment. He began to hum the national anthem of the United States of America, which on his lips sounded like a sardana. Each photograph had been taken with the sun behind her and showed a shadow, the silhouette of a woman, outlined against a panoramic view of parks, skyscrapers, beaches, deserts, or forests.

“Was there nothing else?” I asked. “A note? Something?”

Fermín shook his head. “Not until the last one. It arrived last Christmas.”

I frowned. “How do you know it was the last one?”