Javier Cercas - Soldiers of Salamis

'I haven't found Miralles yet.'

'We'll find him,' said Conchi, with absolute conviction. ' Where did you say Bolaiño said he lived?'

'In Dijon,' I said. 'Or somewhere around there.'

'Well, that's where we'll have to start looking.'

That evening I called Telefónica's international directory enquiries. The operator told me that in the city of Dijon and in the whole of Department 21, to which Dijon belonged, there was no one called Antoni or Antonio Miralles. I then asked if there were a Maria Miralles; the operator said there was not. I asked if there were any Miralles, and was surprised to hear her say there were five: one in the city of Dijon and four in villages of the Department: one in Longuic, another in Marsannay, another in Nolay and another in Genlis. I asked her to give me their names and telephone numbers. 'Impossible,' she said. 'I can only give out one name and one number per call. You'd have to call back another four times for us to give you all of them.'

During the following days I phoned the Miralles who lived in Dijon (Laurent, he was called) and the other four, whose names were Laura, Danielle, Jean-Marie and Bienvenido. Two of them (Laurent and Danielle) were brother and sister, and all except Jean-Marie spoke correct (or broken) Castilian, since they came from Spanish families, but none of them were remotely related to Miralles, and none had ever heard of him.

I didn't give up. Perhaps driven by the blind faith Conchi had instilled in me, I phoned Bolaiño. I brought him up to date with my investigation and asked him if he could think of any other trail I could follow up. Not a single one occurred to him.

'You'll have to make it up,' he said.

'Make what up?'

'The interview with Miralles. It's the only way you can finish the novel.'

It was at that moment I remembered the story from my first book that Bolaño had recalled in our first conversation, in which a man induces another to commit a crime so he can finish his novel, and I believed I understood two things. The first surprised me; the second did not. The first was that finishing the book mattered much less to me than being able to talk to Miralles; the second was that, contrary to what Bolaño had believed up till now (and contrary to what I'd believed when I wrote my first book), I wasn't a real writer, because if I were, talking to Miralles would have mattered much less than finishing the book. I decided not to remind Bolaño again that my book wasn't meant to be a novel, but a true tale, and that making up the interview with Miralles would amount to a betrayal of its nature, and sighed:

'Yeah.'

The answer was laconic, not affirmative; Bolaño didn't take it that way.

'It's the only way,' he repeated, sure he had convinced me. 'Besides, it's the best way. Reality always ends up betraying us; it's best not to give her the chance and get in there first. The real Miralles would only disappoint you. Better to make him up; the invented one will surely be more real than the real one. You're not going to find him. Who knows where he might be: dead, in a home, in his daughter's house. Forget him.'

'It's best we just forget about Miralles,' I told Conchi that night, having survived a terrifying trip to her house in Quart followed by a hurried tumble in the living room, under the devoted gaze of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the melancholic gaze of the copies of my two books that flanked her. 'Who knows where he might be: dead or in a home or in his daughter's house.'

'Have you looked for his daughter?'

'Yes. But I haven't found her.'

We stared at each other for a second — two — three. Then, without another word, I got up, went to the phone, dialled Telefonica's international directory enquiries. I told the operator (I think I recognized her voice; I think she recognized mine) that I was looking for a person who lived in an old people's home in Dijon and I asked her how many old people's homes there were in Dijon. 'Oh,' she said after a pause, 'loads.' 'How many's loads?' 'Thirty odd. Maybe forty.' 'Forty old people's homes!' I looked at Conchi who, sitting on the floor, and barely covered by her T-shirt, held back her laughter. 'Is there no one but old people in that city?' 'The computer doesn't specify whether they're old people's homes,' the operator clarified. 'It just says residential home.' 'And how many are there in the Department?' After another pause she replied: 'More than twice as many.' Slightly sarcastically she added: 'I can only give you one number per call. Should I start alphabetically?' I thought this was the end of my search; making sure Miralles didn't live at any of these eighty some residential homes could take me months and I could end up broke — not to mention that I didn't have the slightest reason to believe he did live in any of them, and even less that he was the soldier of Líster's I was looking for. I looked at Conchi, who looked back at me drumming her fingers impatiently on her bare knees; I looked at my books beside the Virgin of Guadalupe and — I don't know why — I thought of Daniel Angelats. Then, as if getting even with someone, I said: 'Yes. Alphabetically please.'

That was how a telephonic pilgrimage began, a pilgrimage that would last for a month of daily long-distance calls, first to the residential homes of the city of Dijon and then to those of the entire Department. The procedure was always the same. I called international directory inquiries, asked for the next name and number on the list (Abrioux, Bagatelle, Cellerier, Chambertin, Chanzy, Eperon, Fontainemont, Kellerman, Lyautey were the first lot), I called the home, asked the switchboard operator for Monsieur Miralles, they answered that there was no Monsieur Miralles there, I phoned international directory inquiries again, asked for another telephone number, and so on until I got tired of it; and the next day (or the one after, because sometimes I couldn't find the time or the will to go back into my obsessive roulette) took up the trail again. Conchi helped me, luckily: I now think that, if not for her, I would have abandoned the search early on. We called in our spare time, almost always secretly, me from the editorial offices, her from the television studio. Then, every night, we'd compare notes on the day, exchange the names of ruled out residential homes, and during those conversations I realized that for Conchi, the monotony of daily telephone calls in search of a man who we didn't even know was alive was an unexpected and exciting adventure; and as for me, at first infected by Conchi's investigative drive and straightforward conviction, I bent to the task enthusiastically, but after I'd surveyed the first thirty homes I began to suspect that I was doing it more out of inertia or stubbornness (or so as not to let Conchi down) than because I still held some hope of finding Miralles.

But one night the miracle happened. I'd finished writing a short article and we were putting the paper to bed when I started my round of calls by dialling the number of the Nimphéas Residential Home in Fontaine-Lès-Dijon, and, when I asked for Miralles, instead of the usual negative, the switchboard operator answered me with silence. I thought she'd hung up and I was about to do the same, routinely, when a masculine voice stopped me in my tracks.

Allô?

I repeated the question that I'd just asked the operator and that we'd spent more than ten days asking in an absurd tour of all the residential homes in Department 21.

'Miralles here,' said the man in Spanish: the surprise kept me from noticing that my rudimentary French had given me away. 'Who am I speaking to?'

'Antoni Miralles?' I managed to mumble.

'Antoni or Antonio, whatever,' he said. 'But call me Miralles; everybody calls me Miralles. Who am I speaking to?'

It strikes me as incredible now but, no doubt because deep down I never really thought I'd end up talking to Miralles, I hadn't thought through how I'd introduce myself to him.