The Antiquarian by Julián Sánchez

intelligent reads with just the right balance of culture and gossip to satisfy a discerning reader. Factoring in the natural affection Enrique felt for him, nothing could keep him from devoting all his concentration to the letter and staving off the drowsiness that threatened to overtake him. Enrique always thought that his father should have been a writer, but Artur answered that his world was the past, and the past interested no one. The only thing that truly satisfied him was his work as a historian and bibliophile, and for that there could be nothing better than what he did.
    Dear Godson,
    First, forgive me for being so tardy in answering your last letter. You sent it long ago, and as is custom, the blend of laziness toward my personal affairs and a heavy workload typical of those who love what we do are to blame. I should say, as you well know, our relationship is much more interesting and enriching than could beexpected from a mere family tie, and that despite that, I couldn’t help but break my promise to answer your missives in less than three or four months. I hope you will excuse me as I promise that such a long delay has occurred for the first, and I hope the last, time. By the way, let me reaffirm my intention to stay true to the written word, above and beyond the modern trappings of electronic mail, the handiness of which is beyond all doubt, but that along with other similar things will, most certainly, eventually do away with anything that is special or distinct in life. So get used to the idea of living with these remains from a majestic past that survive even in these times of mediocrity that so-called modernity is bringing upon us.
    But let’s change the subject and forget the peeves of the undersigned, who loves you so.
    In your letter you included an outline—too detailed, by the way, to be called that—of the plot and characters of your most recent novel. I found your choice of subject matter very intriguing, definitely original, and not excessively dealt with previously: “… exploring the relationship of a couple living together, despite being interested in different things, and analyzing their feelings and reactions as if they were experimental laboratory animals.” Interesting. Curious, even.
    Do you really think you could fiddle around with some characters and pull such a thing off? Playing about this way with topics you have no expertise in is a folly that only a naive mind, little-trained and with obvious structural limitations such as yours, could be so bold as to try. Such recklessness could have only one result: disaster. You have never stood out for your intelligence when it has come to establishing and maintaining personal relationships—I mean romantic relationships, of course. Do you really intend to explore a universe unknown to you? Your specialty is doing whatever it takes to ruin everything, not the opposite. (By the way, how’s Bety? Have you heard from her?) So your intention to make a constructive, objective analysis of a couple seems to me difficult, if not impossible. If your editorhas given you carte blanche to delve into such a subject matter, I am sure he’s as crazy as you … or that he owes you too much to deny your every whim.
    I picture you seated before your computer, in a contrived attempt to create a plot that catches the reader’s attention, and what comes to my mind are the expeditions led by the valiant (though they were little more than a motley crew of killers bent on rape and pillage) New World explorers from the early sixteenth century: not the ones who achieved their aims like Pizarro, Cortés, or Jiménez de Quesada, but the others, like Dortal, Ordás, Dalfinger, Federmann, and Benalcázar—remember those stories you loved for me to tell you when you were just a boy?—who failed. They had no idea where they were going, and their ignorance led them, by several days’ march, to miss their intended