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tightrope of a childhood before penicillin. In those days death was not yet anonymous and one could see and smell it everywhere, devouring souls that had not even had time enough to sin.

    Even at that time, my only friends were made of paper and ink. At school I had learned to read and write long before the other children. Where my school friends saw notches of ink on incomprehensible pages, I saw light, streets, and people. Words and the mystery of their hidden science fascinated me, and I saw in them a key with which I could unlock a boundless world, a safe haven from that home, those streets and those troubled days in which even I could sense that only a limited fortune awaited me. My father didn’t like to see books in the house. There was something about them - apart from the letters he could not decipher - that offended him. He used to tell me that as soon as I was ten he would send me off to work and that I’d better get rid of all my scatterbrained ideas because otherwise I’d end up being a loser, a nobody. I used to hide my books under the mattress and would wait for him to go out or fall asleep so that I could read. Once he caught me reading at night and flew into a rage. He tore the book from my hands and flung it out of the window.
    ‘If I catch you wasting electricity again, reading all this nonsense, you’ll be sorry.’
    My father was not a miser and, despite the hardships we suffered, whenever he could he gave me a few coins so that I could buy myself some treats like the other children. He was convinced that I spent them on liquorice sticks, sunflower seeds or sweets, but I would keep them in a coffee tin under the bed and, when I’d collected four or five reales, I’d secretly rush out to buy myself a book.
    My favourite place in the whole city was the Sempere & Sons bookshop on Calle Santa Ana. It smelled of old paper and dust and it was my sanctuary, my refuge. The bookseller would let me sit on a chair in a corner and read any book I liked to my heart’s content. He hardly ever allowed me to pay for the books he placed in my hands but, when he wasn’t looking, I’d leave the coins I’d managed to collect on the counter before I left. It was only small change - if I’d had to buy a book with that pittance, I would probably only have been able to afford a booklet of cigarette papers. When it was time for me to leave, I would do so dragging my feet, a weight on my soul. If it had been up to me, I would have stayed there forever.
    One Christmas Sempere gave me the best gift I have ever received. It was an old volume, read and experienced to the full.
    ‘ Great Expectations , by Charles Dickens . . .’ I read on the cover.
    I was aware that Sempere knew a few authors who frequented his establishment and, judging by the care with which he handled the volume, I thought that perhaps this Mr Dickens was one of them.
    ‘A friend of yours?’
    ‘A lifelong friend. And from now on, he’s your friend too.’
    That afternoon I took my new friend home, hidden under my clothes so that my father wouldn’t see it. It was a rainy winter, with days as grey as lead, and I read Great Expectations about nine times, partly because I had no other book at hand, partly because I did not think there could be a better one in the whole world and I was beginning to suspect that Mr Dickens had written it just for me. Soon I was convinced that I didn’t want to do anything else in life but learn to do what Mr Dickens had done.
    One day I was suddenly awoken at dawn by my father shaking me. He had come back from work early. His eyes were bloodshot and his breath smelled of spirits. I looked at him in terror as he touched the naked bulb that hung from the ceiling.
    ‘It’s warm.’
    He fixed his eyes on mine and threw the bulb angrily against the wall. It burst into a thousand pieces that fell on my face, but I didn’t dare brush them away.
    ‘Where it is?’ asked my father, his voice cold and calm.
    I shook my