The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman (38 page)

Atticus led his wife hastily down the hall, under the portraits of the Craftsman grandparents, opened the library door, settled Soleá on to the sofa, and went to light the fire, which immediately burst into life with yellow flames.

She got up silently and went to stroke the leather-bound volumes. She and her colleagues at
Librarte
had always dreamed of living surrounded by books like these, some of which were hundreds of years old.

“One day,” Berta liked to say, “we're going to get an amazing
library together. We'll fill it with all the books we've read. It'll be like Borges's library, a metaphor for the universe: circular, with hexagonal walls, and infinite. And even if the world ends and the human race becomes extinct, our library will endure, ‘illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless, equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret.' ”

The others would close their eyes and imagine a place that was different for each of them and yet identical: exactly like the library in the house in Kent.

While Atticus lit the fire, Soleá wandered around the room, her hands gently stroking the spines of the books, until one in particular caught her attention because its red leather was so hot.

“This book's on fire,” she said in surprise.

Atticus left the bellows on the floor and went over to his wife.

“Let me see,” he said with a strange tremor in his voice.

Among the innocent novels of Jack London, an anonymous book was pulsating, as red and furtive as its five erotic siblings.

“I've never told you about my private library, have I?”

“The five books piled up on your bedside table?”

“Yes,” said Atticus. “Well, it seems that you've just found the sixth.”

They opened it together, burning the tips of their fingers, and discovered, not the least bit surprised, that it was no less than Richard Francis Burton's translation of the
Kama Sutra
, with hand-drawn illustrations inserted into the book on creased pieces of card.

“The man who owned this collection was a talented artist as well as an avid reader,” Atticus managed to say.

“Or the woman,” whispered Soleá.

But Atticus had already ripped off her dress and let it fall to
the carpet. And Soleá had lain down on top of it, in front of the fire; she had let her hair down, removed her shoes, peeled off her tights, and adopted one of the positions cataloged by Vatsyayana in around the year 300 of the Christian Era. Atticus was trying to adapt to her movements when, unexpectedly, the library door opened and there appeared the rigid, statuesque face of Moira Craftsman. She had been looking for them everywhere, irritated at finding them missing, and, guided only by her prison officer's instincts, had found them in the library.

Soleá and Atticus were completely unaware that for the first time in her life, Moira watched a couple so entwined that it would have been difficult to separate one from the other or identify the body parts that belonged to each one. If at that moment the fire had raged out of control and they had both burned to death, the only way to tell them apart would have been with a DNA test of the charred flesh and, given the challenge presented by that task, it would have been better to put their ashes into the same urn and grieve for them together: one of life's ironies.

Moira stood with her hand on the door frame, paralyzed, and looked over at the corner of the room where she saw a wise-looking man of about eighty, smoking a pipe and accompanied by a little hobbit. The man greeted her affably, lifting his hat. “It's been a long time, dear Moira,” he said wordlessly. “How we've changed since those distant times when you and Marlow shared your illicit love in his room in Exeter College. You were able to reach ecstasy in under ten minutes, simply by reading passages from the six erotic books that he gave you, young and inexperienced as you were, when he realized how poorly your imagination matched your desire. How we three enjoyed those forbidden games, Moira Craftsman, and what a shame that we so quickly
forget how exciting love can be when it's no longer clandestine. My hobbit and I prefer these two; they're thoroughbreds, they're Formula One, they're like pressure cookers.”

Moira didn't want to stay to the end of the scene. Tolkien had lost interest in her and was concentrating on the lovers writhing on the carpet. She carefully closed the door to the library, and in the hallway, short of breath, she felt the same ecstasy as all the guests that starry night, a feeling that not one of them would be able to forget for as long as they lived, no matter how many loves and pleasures they experienced.

Atticus and Soleá, exhausted and conjoined, cemented together, lived a hundred years in a single body, a single flesh, united forever, man and woman, just as God imagined, sculpted, and breathed life into them: in his image and his likeness.

Mamen Sánchez
is a deputy editor at
¡Hola!
magazine and editor of
¡Hola! México.
A bestselling author in Spain, she has published three books for children and the novels
Gafas de sol para días de lluvia
,
Agua del limonero
,
Juego de damas,
and
La felicidad es un té contigo.
She lives in Madrid and is married with five children.

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Lucy Greaves translates from Spanish and Portuguese. She won the 2013 Harvill Secker Young Translators' Prize and was Translator in Residence at London's Free Word Center during 2014. She lives in Bristol.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by Mamen Sánchez

English language copyright © 2015 by Lucy Greaves

Originally published in Spanish
as La felicidad es un té contigo
in 2013 in Spain by Espasa

Originally published in English in Great Britain in 2015 by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers

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Interior design by Dana Sloan

Jacket design and illustration by Chris Silas Neal

Author photograph by Jesús Cordero

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sánchez, Mamen, author. | Greaves, Lucy, translator.

Title: The altogether unexpected disappearance of Atticus Craftsman / Mamen Sánchez ; translated from the Spanish by Lucy Greaves.

Other titles: Felicidad es un té contigo. English

Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015046644 (print) | LCCN 2016002234 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: English—Spain—Fiction. | Missing persons—Fiction. | Madrid (Spain)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Humorous.

Classification: LCC PQ6719.A5275 F4513 2016 (print) | LCC PQ6719.A5275 (ebook) | DDC 863/.7—dc23

LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046644

ISBN 978-1-5011-1885-2

ISBN 978-1-5011-1889-0 (ebook)