principles, poverty and dignity, scarcity and pride are difficult pairings to reconcile.
“Let’s see then,” he said. “Today we picked out two hundred and eighteen books . . . Some will sell for a very good price, but we’ll have to work hard to get a good price for others. We’re looking at twelve, fifteen dollars, although it won’t be easy, and others might make two or three . . . If we go by the thirty percent rule, my colleague and I have decided to offer you a flat price: three dollars a book.”
Amalia and Dionisio glanced at each other. Were they hoping for more? Had they got too fond of the good life? Yoyi Pigeon sensed they were suspicious and, armed with a calculator, walked over.
“Let’s see then . . . 218 books, at three dollars apiece . . . makes 654 greenbacks . . . Six, five five, rounded up. At twenty-six pesos to the dollar . . .” he paused theatrically, knowing full well it would clear away any doubts, and underscoring the point, he pretended he too was surprised. “Hell! Seventeen thousand pesos! I can tell you, no buyer will give you that much, because selling books has got difficult recently . . . What’s more: what you’ve got in there will sort your problems for the rest of your lives . . .”
Conde knew the undernourished legs, stomachs and brains of Amalia and Dionisio Ferrero must be quaking at the sound of such figures, as his own had quaked that afternoon when he’d imagined himself as the happy owner of ten or twelve thousand pesos, which would pay his bills for half a year if properly eked out . . . They’d only been through a seventh or eighth of the library, too, and his hunch still throbbed, telling him that something extraordinary, something beyond his grasp would happen in that room. Would this deal really leave him a rich man, thanks to the discovery of incunabula whose magnetic pull – in monetary terms – not even he and his moral sense could resist?
“How do you want your money, in pesos or dollars?” Pigeon tried to wrap the deal up. As ever, brother and sister consulted each other visually and the Count spotted a poison in those glances that hadn’t previously shown itself: the poison of ambition.
“Four dollars a book,” spat Dionisio, recovering the verbal power of command he must have deployed in his glory days as a military leader on the battlefield.
Yoyi smiled and looked at the Count, as if to say: “You see? they’re bastards, not poor wretches. Who are you kidding . . .”
“Half in Cuban pesos and half in dollars,” added Dionisio, fully in control of the situation. “It’s a fair offer and no arguments . . .”
“OK,” said Yoyi, not daring to contradict him, but showing he was none too happy. “That makes twenty-two thousand six hundred and seventy pesos. I’ll pay you ten thousand now and the remainder and the dollars tomorrow.”
And he held out a hand to the Count who put in it the wad of three thousand he’d given him the previous day and added the money he’d taken from the bumbag hanging under his stomach. He separated out the two bundles and gave them to Dionisio, tapping the notes against his open hand.
“5,000 per wad. Please count them. I still owe you 1,300 pesos and 436 dollars,” he spelt out to the ex-soldier, whose cockiness had evaporated on sight of the banknotes.
While Dionisio concentrated on counting the money, Amalia didn’t know where to point her watery gaze: it kept sliding over the money her brother was sorting into piles of hundreds and then thousands, on the table in the centre of the room. She couldn’t stop herself, lifted a finger to her mouth and began biting the skin around the nail that was shredded beyond the edge of the finger, as a shadow of painful, cannibalistic satisfaction flitted across her face.
“By the way, Amalia,” the Count had been resisting putting the question but decided to take advantage of her moment of ecstasy, “Have you ever heard of Violeta del Río?”
The
Henry James, Ann Radcliffe, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Gertrude Atherton