“I’ll do so, as a toast to your health.”

“Better to the health of the world, which is in the doldrums. Take good care of yourself, Alicia. I hope you find the path that I missed.”

And that was how, without saying another word, Don Bermeo Pumares crossed the researchers’ gallery one last time and then the large reading room of the National Library and continued through its doors without once turning his head to look back until he’d stepped out through the entrance on Paseo de Recoletos and set off, walking toward oblivion, one more drop amid the unending flood of lives shipwrecked in gray ancestral Spain.

And that was also how, months later, the day came when her curiosity was greater than her prudence, and Alicia decided to go through that black door and dive into the shadows of the basement floors hidden beneath the library, to unravel its secrets.

13

A legend is a lie that has been whipped up to explain a universal truth. Places where lies and fantasy pepper the earth are particularly apt for the development of these tales. The first time Alicia Gris lost her way in the dark corridors of the library basements in search of the supposed vampire and its legend, all she found was a subterranean city peopled by hundreds of thousands of books, waiting silently among cobwebs and echoes.

Few are the occasions when life allows us to stroll through our dreams, caressing a lost memory with our hands. More than once, while she explored that place, Alicia stopped in the dark, expecting to hear once again the explosion of the bombs and the metallic roar of the airplanes. After two hours spent wandering about, floor after floor, she didn’t meet a soul: only a couple of gourmet bookworms making their way up the spine of a collection of Schiller verse in search of a snack. On her second incursion, this time armed with a flashlight she’d bought at an ironmonger’s in Plaza de Callao, she didn’t even meet her friends the worms, but as she was leaving, after an exploratory hour and a half, she discovered a note pinned on the door that said:

Pretty flashlight.

But don’t you ever change your colors?

In this country that is almost an eccentricity.

Yours sincerely,

Virgilio

The following day, Alicia stopped at the ironmonger’s again to buy another flashlight, just like hers, and a packet of batteries. Sporting the same blue coat, she walked into the farthest part of the bottom floor and sat down next to a collection of novels by the Brontë sisters, her favorite books since her years at the orphanage. There she pulled out the marinated porkloin sandwich and the beer she’d bought at the Café Gijón and tucked into her lunch. Afterward, with a full stomach, she nodded off.

The sound of footsteps in the shadows roused her. Soft steps, like feathers being dragged along the dust. She opened her eyes and saw needles of amber light filtering through the books on the other side of the corridor. The bubble of light moved along slowly, like a jellyfish. Alicia sat up and brushed the bread crumbs off her lapels. Seconds later, a dark profile turned the corner of the corridor and kept moving forward in her direction, the steps faster now. The first thing Alicia noticed was the eyes, blue and reared in a world of darkness. The skin was as pale as the pages of an unread book, the hair straight and combed back.