The Count felt he was treading on typically swampy ground, but with no choice but to press on.
“And your Mother?…”
“She’s still alive. She’ll be ninety-one this year. And the poor thing is…”
Conde didn’t dare keep on: the first part of the confession was on its way and he waited in silence. The rest would come of its own accord.
“The old girl’s past it… she’s been a bundle of nerves for a long time. And the fact is we need some money,” spat Dionisio waving at the books. “You know what things are like these days, the pension goes nowhere…”
Conde nodded: yes, he did know about that. His eyes followed the man’s hand towards the shelves crammed with books and he felt the hunch that he was on the verge of something big, still there, rudely pricking him under the nipple, making his hands sweat. He wondered why it hadn’t gone away. He knew he was surrounded by valuable books, so why should the alarm-call still sound so loudly? Could it be there was a book that was too much to hope for? That must be it, he told himself, and if that were true it would only stop when he’d inspected every shelf from top to bottom.
“I’ve no wish to pry, but… But when was the last time anyone touched this library?” he asked.
“Forty… Forty-three years ago,” the woman answered and the Count shook his head incredulously.
“Hasn’t a single book left here in all that time?”
“Not one,” interjected Dionisio, confident he was upping the value of the library’s contents by making such a statement. “Mummy asked us to air it once a month and clean it with a feather duster, just along the tops…”
“Look, I’ll be frank with you,” Mario Conde decided to issue a warning, aware he was about to betray the most hallowed rules of his profession: “I have a hunch, in a manner of speaking. I’m quite sure there are books here worth lots of money, and others so valuable that they can’t or shouldn’t be sold… If I might explain myself: there could be books, particularly Cuban books, that shouldn’t leave Cuba and almost nobody in Cuba has the money to pay out what they’re really worth.