When he was sure he was fit to make another move, the Count went over to the shelf that was looking him in the eye and, without asking for permission, opened the glass doors. He reviewed at random some of the book spines, and spotted the ruddy leather jacket of Miró Argenter’s Chronicles of the War in Cuba, in the 1911 princeps edition. After wiping the sweat from his hands, he took out the volume and found it was signed and dedicated by the warriorwriter “To my warm friend, my dear General Serafín Montes de Oca”. Next to Miró’s Chronicles lay the two imposing volumes of the much prized Alphabetical Index of Demises in the Cuban Liberation Army, by Major-General Carlos Roloff, from its rare 1901 single printing in Havana and, his hands shaking even more violently, Conde dared remove from the adjacent space the volumes of the Notes Towards the History of Letters and Public Education on the Island of Cuba, the classic by Antonio Bachiller y Morales, published in Havana between 1859 and 1861. Conde’s finger caressed even more lingeringly the lightweight spine of The Coffee Plantation, Domingo Malpica de la Barca’s novel, published by the Havana printers Los Niños Huérfanos in 1890, and the pleasantly muscular, soft leather covers of the five volumes of José Antonio Saco’s History of Slavery, in the 1936 edition from the Alfa printing house, until, like a man possessed, he fished out the next book. The spine was only engraved with the initials C.V., and opening it he felt his legs give way, for it really was a first edition of The Young Woman with the Golden Arrow, Cirilo Villaverde’s novel, in that first, mythical edition printed by the famous Oliva print shop, in 1842…

Conde felt that space was like a sanctuary lost in time, and for the first time wondered whether he wasn’t committing an act of profanation.