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not carrying enough money on me . . .”
    Amalia looked at her brother and took the initiative: “Look, we can see you are a decent, honest fellow . . .”
    “It’s years since I’ve heard that phrase,” the Count responded. “A decent, honest . . .”
    “Yes, we can tell,” the translucent woman assured him. “Can you imagine the number of bandits we’ve had to deal with to sell the vases and other adornments? And how often they offered a pittance for things that were really valuable? Look, just make us an offer, take a few books and . . . pay us what you can. How about it? You can come back, draw up whatever inventory you want and take the books you then decide to buy . . .”
    Conde noticed that while Amalia was talking, Dionisio reacted almost defensively as if he wanted to shield himself from the words he was hearing. He discreetly averted his gaze in the direction of the library, whose mirrored doors remained open, as if inviting him to walk in and help himself to the royal banquet spread out there.
    “I’ve got five hundred pesos on me . . . Four hundred and ninety, to be exact. If I’m going to take a few books with me now I’ll need ten for a minicab.”
    “That will do . . .” she replied, unable to rein in her eagerness.
    Conde preferred to walk into the library rather than return Amalia’s look, let alone Dionisio’s. Able to obliterate the remnants of pride and an old pledge, their despair was the last scrap of dignity to be destroyed by the calamities that had destroyed those lives. Yet again, he regretted the sordid side of his trade, but soon found relief from remorse in his quest for books that would easily sell on the market. Two volumes of population censuses prior to 1940 that an Italian was after, a client of his partner Yoyi Pigeon, were the first he put aside. He then picked out three first editions of works by Fernando Ortiz – that were always easy to place with readers keen on rumbling the mysteries of the world of Afro-Cubans; a first edition of The Slave-trader , by Lino Novás Calvo; and, after putting to one side several books printed in the nineteenth century whose value he needed to check out, he bagged several historical monographs published in Havana, Madrid and Barcelona in the twenties and thirties, that didn’t have tremendous bibliographical value, but were coveted by the non-Cuban buyers who flitted from one second-hand bookseller’s stall to another. He was about to shut his bag and tot up the total, when he saw before his eyes a book that practically screamed at him: it was an intact, sturdy, healthy, well-nourished copy of My Pleasure? with the secondary title of An indispensable . . . culinary guide , printed by Úcar y García in 1956, and illustrated by the great cartoonist, Conrado Massaguer. Ever since that remote afternoon when the Count had seen that book for the first time in the hands of a nouveau riche owner of several of those private restaurants that sprang up in the first days of dire shortages, as a compulsive buyer of gastronomic literature, he’d tried to track it down, thrilled by its wonderful recipes for Creole and international cuisine, compiled to satisfy the most aristocratic kitchens in an era when aristocratic kitchens still existed in Cuba. However, the Count’s persistent search wasn’t driven by bibliophilic or even commercial goals, but the grandiose, self-interested idea that he might present that wonder to old Josefina, the only person the Count knew with a magical ability to conjure up miracles – even in times of Crisis – and convert those dream dishes into edible realities.
    With his bag of books over his shoulder and his stomach gurgling in joyful anticipation, Mario Conde returned to the reception room, where the Ferreros awaited him looking grave and anxious. He only then noticed how the fingers of Amalia, who was at that moment wiping the sweat from her hands, were atrophied and sore around the cuticle edges, like frog