The Antiquarian

by Julián Sánchez

  A number of leading figures from the city’s cultural elite were on hand in the Montjuïc Cemetery: politicians, bigwigs from the Antiquarians’ Association, owners from surrounding businesses (such as the art galleries on Petritxol Street), and a diverse showing of the offbeat habitués from the peculiar Plaça del Pi scene who had known Artur so many years. The casket sat in front of the Aiguader vault, surrounded by several wreaths of flowers.

  The mourners sat on benches arranged in front of the entrance to the vault. Samuel began the ceremony by describing the life and personality of Artur in simple terms imbued with an emotion that eventually spread to all present. Artur, there could be no doubt, was much loved in his world. Once he had finished, Samuel gave the floor to Enrique, who limited his remarks to words of thanks to all for their attendance. He would have liked to have said more—something literary, something brilliant—but he lacked the strength. The cemetery caretakers placed the casket in the vault. When they came back out and closed the door, an indescribable sorrow grasped Enrique’s soul.

  It was the final good-bye.

  The mourners slowly dispersed, giving Enrique their condolences and wrapped up in the conversations of those who have not seen each other in years, and who only met on such occasions. Fornells was nearly the last to leave, and in the end, only Samuel and Enrique remained before the vault.

  “I want to thank you, Samuel. Your eulogy was so beautiful, so subtle and sincere. I know he would have loved it.”

  Samuel shook his head before he spoke.

  “Yes, he may have …” He left the phrase hanging in the air a few seconds before continuing. “Listen, Enrique, I want you to know something. Everyone’s time comes sooner or later, and the only thing we’re left with is knowing whether the ones we’ve raised are doing well in life, going through it with their head high. Let me tell you that no man has ever been prouder of his son, I promise you. Let’s go now, my boy. It’s time we left this place.”

  “You’re right.” They walked out together, arm in arm. “I’m leaving a big part of my life behind in that vault. But it was Artur himself who taught me, after my parents died, that we always have to move on.”

  “That’s good. That’s the way it should be. Death is part of life, and while many may fall, the rest of us must continue. We have to live with his memory, keep it alive in our minds. That’s the best tribute we can pay him, not drowning in our own misery or obsessing over the inevitability of death.”

  Later, Enrique parked the car in Artur’s usual space. They walked along the Ramblas to Pla de la Boqueria and then crossed to the Gothic Quarter and stopped in front of Artur’s shop.

  “Why would anybody do this?” Enrique asked. “I just don’t get it.”

  “Nobody does,” Samuel said with a gesture of indifferent skepticism. “Let’s hope the police catch the killer as soon as possible. And Enrique …”

  “What?”

  “This probably isn’t the right time, but I wanted to tell you as soon as possible, because I assume you’ll be going back to San Sebastián before long. I imagine you won’t want to continue with your father’s business; literature is your world. So I want you to know that if you decide to liquidate the antiques, I’m willing to take them off your hands at a fair price. I’d even buy the shop. Take your time, I don’t need an answer now.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that. I guess I will end up selling it all, but right now I don’t think I’d be capable. I’ll let you know before I leave. Now then—”

  “I understand, believe me. Don’t worry. Well, I’ve got some errands to run. If you need anything, you know where to find me. Don’t hesitate to call no matter the hour.”

  “Thank you, Samuel.”

  The most daunting moment of his return was at hand. He had to go to the shop and face the place where Artur had been murdered. He opened the door and disconnected the alarm. Right in the middle, visible from any viewpoint, stood the altar. On it, the outline of a dark stain marked the site of the tragedy. The splintered railing of the loft was the other telltale reminder of the crime. He crossed the shop, averting his gaze from any place that held evidence of the murder, and ascended to the loft. Atop the study table was a mass of books and manuscripts that had undoubtedly been rifled through by the murderer and left there by Fornells and Samuel.

  Enrique looked for The Practice of Christian Perfection on the table but couldn’t find it. It was too obvious a hiding place, given all of Artur’s precautions. He must have hidden it in his beautiful book collection, consisting of some four hundred volumes of various sizes, subjects, and conditions. Over four decades, Artur had accumulated a significant number of old tomes with which to sate his double thirst for books and knowledge. Most of them were in the Vallvidrera house, though he always kept a healthy sample on hand in the shop, to consult when the need arose. The books would have to join their counterparts in Vallvidrera. If he did sell the shop, as was likely, under no circumstances would the books be included. He too thought of himself as a bibliophile, though still only a novice; he had a few books, whimsical gifts to himself, nothing compared to the spectacular majesty now before him. Many of them were true gems, the legacy of a distant past, significant for their content or craftsmanship.

  He found The Practice of Christian Perfection on one of the shelves in the study. It was made up of three old volumes with covers of dark, timeworn leather. The title was a blurred golden thread nearly impossible to make out against the grime that had built up over three centuries of handling. He took down the first volume with a curiosity not devoid of reverence. In his hands was Artur’s fabulous discovery, and, by his own hunch, the cause of his death. He gently touched the wrinkled leather of the cover and surrendered to his inner senses. A conviction rose up inside him. Yes, he was sure of it now. With a strength even he hadn’t been aware of, his intuition told him that Artur’s killer was searching for the book he now held. It had been no neighborhood crook, no mob retaliation. Someone who knew of Artur’s discovery had done away with him to take it for themselves, without stopping to imagine that, thanks to his sixth sense, Artur had concealed the book under the guise of a code of religious perfection, turning it into another nondescript book among hundreds; literature disguised as literature. In Artur’s study, lined with shelves overflowing with old books, no one could ever have found the manuscript hidden in a different cover. Now it was in his power. The hunch had become truth with force and prodigious transparency.

  Now with his wits about him for the first time since he had arrived in Barcelona, fully alert, Enrique settled in to Artur’s favorite chair and examined the book. His godfather had removed the original pages and replaced them with others, a manuscript with a number of notes in the margins. Enrique knew then that he was holding the object his godfather had been murdered for. Why else would he have camouflaged the book to look like something else? What did it contain that was so worth hiding? He tried to read the complex scrawl of the author, but his Latin was too rusty to allow a coherent reading of the text. He could translate the odd phrase, but the overall meaning was beyond him. The notes, written in a sort of Old Catalan, were not easy to decipher either. It would take him time to translate the book, unless he asked for help, something he did not wish to do. If, as he believed, someone had been willing to kill over its contents, making the text known to a third party would automatically put them at risk. At that moment he assumed that he too was in danger, as he was the only person who, by pure logic, managed to find the manuscript, although the killer could not know whether Artur had shared the secret with anyone before he died.

  With the book in his pocket, he locked up the shop and left for the parking garage. An in-depth study of the text was fundamental, and to do that he would need peace and quiet, as well as time. Vallvidrera was just the place.

  4

  Despite his exhaustion and rusty Latin, Enrique made headway translating the Casadevall manuscript. With his initial pains subsiding as he refreshed his knowledge of
the classical languages that Artur had insisted on teaching him years ago, Enrique delved into amazing events from centuries ago.

  There was no presentation or formal authorship to the text, but it was easy enough to recognize the author of the manuscript through his repeated references to his milieu. He belonged to the Casadevall family and held a ranking office in the architectural world of his day. Through a direct reference in the text, Enrique eventually identified him as the assistant to the master builder, and it did not take long to situate him historically. One of the old books from Artur’s library, entitled Hiftory of the Building of the Cathedral of Barcelona, “published in the noble city of Tortosa in the Year of Our Lord Seventeen-Hundred and Sixty,” enabled him to identify Casadevall. Architect Pere Casadevall had been among those responsible for the works executed during construction of the Cathedral of Barcelona over a span of forty-six years, from 1368 to 1414. The list of his works did not include much of relevance, aside from the significant progress made on construction of the cathedral—which was stalled until then, thanks to the work of Bishop Planelles—and his strange death: his body was found in unusual circumstances that were never explained.

  His job was to assist the master builders of the cathedral in their tasks. He supervised the economic and administrative dealings behind the construction of Barcelona’s most important building. Like a modern architect, he looked after the countless details behind a project, though he had never worked independently. His occupation boiled down to directing specific works in certain sections of the cathedral, as well as others in civil buildings of the booming city.

  Once he confirmed Casadevall’s historical existence, Enrique went back to his translation. The first thirty pages revealed nothing in particular. They were a compilation of the main activities performed in the exercise of his office. Yet, as the months went by, the architect began to write in the pages of his book more about the general impressions he got from doing the work than merely listing them. In a way, the log turned into a diary. And the diary became something else: a place for confession, reverie, and doubt.

  The entries had not been made on a daily basis. He only took down his impressions in cases of apparently common, or especially significant, events: a daughter’s illness, problems on the site … There were also references to the archbishop, visits of papal emissaries, and resistance and quality tests for several types of quarry rock, among other things. As the text went on, it gradually abandoned any professional musings to focus on the fate of his family, and the Black Death that devastated Barcelona in 1393.

  On page sixty, for the first time, and coinciding with the appearance of a mysterious character identified only as S., Enrique came across the side notes.

  Enrique’s translation suddenly became more difficult, not because there was more to translate, but because of how cryptic much of the original was. The side notes, written in Old Catalan, had him racking his brain more than once, because some of the brief comments were simply bizarre. He got little if anything from them, and he decided to turn to the Latin text, even it was rendered confusing and fragmented by his deficient translation. In any case, it seemed obvious to him that the notes were closely related to the presence of S., as they could be found on any page where S. was mentioned.

  In the attempt to simplify his work, Enrique began a draft list of pages with a summary of the notes. If he did not understand them, he transcribed them literally; unfortunately, most completely baffled him.

  At last, skipping forward, on page ninety-four Enrique came across the first reference to “the object.” The architect had written that the meeting—he used the term gahal, the Hebrew word from which Call was derived—would be held at Ángel Martín’s house in the old Call, Barcelona’s Jewish Quarter, where they would show it for the first time. Enrique felt a rush of excitement, sure that he had come upon the first reference to Artur’s enigmatic discovery. Next, for reasons unexplained by the text, a major disappointment had occurred: something had gone wrong, since nothing had been shown at the gathering. As Casadevall had understood it, it might have been done out of caution, a test to check the master builder’s trustworthiness. His next entries spoke of the incredible effect that the existence of “it” had had on him, but without any mention of what in the world “it” really was. The side notes continued as before, rife with abbreviations and contractions, but they were also full of question marks and exclamation points that hadn’t appeared until then.

  The deeper he went into the manuscript, the more confused Enrique felt. The text explained nothing but the odd relationship between the architect Casadevall and the mysterious S., and the Jews of Barcelona’s Call, which in itself was intriguing, as the social prominence of a master builder would have made it unthinkable for him to associate with anyone outside his circle of ecclesiastic obligations, let alone people of other religions. It would not be long until the Catholic Monarchs expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492, but even by then the Christian majority could hardly stand their presence, and they were certainly frowned upon by the nobles and clergy who had become deeply indebted to Jewish financiers. In the case of Barcelona, the Jews were officially driven out of the Call in 1424. All of Spain had witnessed the pogroms against the Jews in 1391, and Barcelona had been one of the cities where they were most ardently persecuted. Therefore, the social status of the Jewish community was that of an isolated, barely tolerated, and even officiously persecuted minority. And so, how could it be understood that a person of standing in those days had such close contact with Jews of the Call, even if they wore the guise of converts, the so-called conversos? Even they were social outcasts, called marranos—swine—and looked down on by public opinion as untrustworthy traitors to their faith.

  The confusion that the complex text was generating in Enrique’s imaginative mind was of such magnitude that he became lost in abstraction, letting the hours pass and forgetting the obligations made in and to the real world. The sudden ring of the telephone snapped him back to reality. He knew who it was even before he picked up the receiver.

  “Enrique?”

  “Yes, Bety.” Submerged in the hidden world of the manuscript, he had forgotten the promise he had made on leaving San Sebastián.

  “Sometimes I think you’re a real son of a bitch.” Her pleasant tone could not hide a true loathing that gave her words the cutting effect of a brand-new scalpel. “You promised you’d call, and you didn’t. I read about the funeral in the paper. Oh, and because I called Fornells. Some guy named Rodríguez confirmed the ceremony was yesterday.”

  The word given and not upheld, the value of the commitment accepted and violated: this was where Bety’s condemnation lay. Enrique struggled to free himself from a conversation that, despite the good intentions that now governed Bety’s acts, did not appeal to him in the least, even if the reason was different from what she may have imagined.

  “I’m sorry Bety, I truly am. You have no idea what shape I’m in. I didn’t forget. I just feel like I’m living in a haze, that all of this is bigger than me. Time just slips away without me realizing it. Plus, I haven’t felt like talking to anyone.” He listened to himself lie, although he knew the lie would be discovered, just like they always used to be. “Artur’s not here anymore.” He kept up the deception, having decided that once begun, he would see it through to the end.

  “Well, if you don’t feel well … ,” Bety granted.

  “Being at home without him just feels so strange,” Enrique continued. “I’m still not accustomed to him not being here, and the truth is, it’s really hard on me.”

  “I see,” said Bety, believing more in the reasons than Enrique’s honesty.

  Enrique had no desire to keep talking. He thought it was the perfect time to end the conversation. But he also knew that if he did, his curtness would only fan the flames of Bety’s curiosity. In the end, it was Bety who decided to steer the conversation away from personal matters.

  “What have you heard about the investigation? R
odríguez said he wasn’t at liberty to tell me anything, but that you knew how it was going.”

  Enrique outlined the possibilities that Fornells had been over with him, without going into his own opinions. Going that far would only make Bety worry, and worry was the last thing he wanted to convey to her. But somehow, his ex-wife seemed to pick up, with that peculiar instinct honed over their years of living together, that he was hiding something.

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” he lied again, tossing himself into the abyss of ever-expanding perjury. “I don’t care who did it. I just want them caught as soon as possible.”

  Following another silence, talk turned to the inheritance. Bety was surprised to learn that Artur had included her, even if only to give her what could be considered a gift, though not exactly a small one. She had always felt drawn to an old book dated 1544, a Latin compilation of several works of Aristophanes, who Bety considered one of the great Greek comic playwrights. Artur was aware of her fondness for the book, and had decided to leave it to her to remember him by. The gesture moved her to tears that the distance could not hide. She told Enrique to keep her posted and hung up.

  Enrique thought about going back to the translation, but his mood had changed. He wanted to do it as much as he wished he had not fibbed his way through the conversation with Bety. He felt confused and angry with himself, prisoner of a lie he wished he had not told, no matter how necessary. It was always the same; he always pushed her away when she could have helped him the most. He could never share the recesses of his inner world, perhaps because he himself found them surprising and excessive, even knowing that it only added to the distance between them.