'Did you kill Sanmarti?' I murmured.
'Does anyone miss him?'
We spoke in whispers, under the attentive gaze of the solitary men who were dotted around the stalls, green with envy at the apparent success of their shadowy rival. I asked him where he'd been hiding, but he didn't reply.
'There's another copy of The Shadow of the Wind,' he murmured. 'Here, in Barcelona.'
'You're wrong, Julian. You destroyed them all.'
'All but one. It seems that someone more clever than I hid it in a place where I would never be able to find it. You.'
That's how I first came to hear about you. Some bigmouthed bookseller called Gustavo Barcelo had been boasting to a group of collectors about having located a copy of The Shadow of the Wind. The world of rare books is like an echo chamber. In less than two months, Barcelo was receiving offers for the book from collectors in London, Paris, and Rome. Julian's mysterious flight from Paris after a bloody duel and his rumoured death in the Spanish Civil War had conferred on his works an undreamed-of market value. The black legend of a faceless individual who searched for them in every bookshop, library, and private collection and then burned them only added to the interest and the price. 'We have the circus in our blood,' Barcelo would say.
Julian, who continued to pursue the shadow of his own words, soon picked up the rumour. This is how he learned that Gustavo Barcelo didn't have the book: apparently the copy belonged to a boy who had discovered it by chance and who, fascinated by the novel and its mysterious author, refused to sell it and guarded it as his most precious possession. That boy was you, Daniel.
'For heaven's sake, Julian, don't tell me you're going to harm a child...' I whispered, not quite sure of his intentions.
Julian then told me that all the books he'd stolen and destroyed had been snatched from people who felt nothing for them, from people who just did business with them or kept them as curiosities. Because you refused to sell the book at any price and tried to rescue Carax from the recesses of the past, you awoke a strange sympathy in him, and even respect. Unbeknownst to you, Julian observed you and studied you.
'Perhaps, if he ever discovers who I am and what I am, he, too, will decide to burn the book.'
Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense.
'Who is this boy?'
'His name is Daniel. He's the son of a bookseller whose shop Miquel used to frequent in Calle Santa Ana. He lives with his father in an apartment above the shop. He lost his mother when he was very young.'
'You sound as if you were speaking about yourself.'
'Perhaps. This boy reminds me of myself.'
'Leave him alone, Julian. He's only a child. His only crime has been to admire you.'
'That's not a crime, it's a misconception. But he'll get over it. Perhaps then he'll return the book to me. When he stops admiring me and begins to understand me.'
A minute before the end of the film, Julian stood up and left. For months we saw each other like that, in the dark, in cinemas or alleyways, at midnight. Julian always found me. I felt his silent presence without seeing him and was always vigilant. Sometimes he mentioned you. Every time I heard him talk about you, I sensed a rare tenderness in his voice that confused him, a tenderness that, for years now, I had thought lost. I found out that he'd returned to the Aldaya mansion and that he now lived there, halfway between a ghost and a beggar, watching over Penelope's remains and those of their son. It was the only place that he still felt was his. There are worse prisons than words.
I went there once a month to make sure he was all right, or at least alive. I would jump over the tumbled-down wall at the back of the property, that couldn't be seen from the street. Sometimes I'd find him there, other times Julian had disappeared. I left food for him, money, books.... I would wait for him for hours, until it got dark. A few times I began to explore the rambling old house. That is how I discovered that he'd destroyed the tombstones in the crypt and taken out the coffins. I no longer thought Julian was mad, nor did I view that desecration as a monstrous act, just a tragic one. When I did find him there we would speak for hours, sitting by the fire. Julian confessed that he had tried to write again but was unable to. He vaguely remembered his books as if they were the work of some other person that he'd happened to read. The pain of his attempts to write was visible. I discovered that he burned the pages he had written feverishly while I was not there. Once, taking advantage of his absence, I rescued a pile of them from the ashes. They spoke about you. Julian had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise. For some time now, Julian had been wondering whether he'd gone out of his mind. Does the madman know he is mad? Or are the madmen those who insist on convincing him of his unreason in order to safeguard their own idea of reality? Julian observed you, watched you grow, and wondered who you were. He wondered whether your presence was perhaps a miracle, a pardon he had to win by teaching you not to make the same mistakes he'd made. More than once I asked myself whether Julian hadn't reached the conclusion that you, in that twisted logic of his universe, had become the son he had lost, a blank page on which to restart a story that he could not invent but could remember.
Those years in the old mansion went by, and Julian became increasingly watchful of you, of your progress. He talked to me about your friends, about a woman called Clara with whom you had fallen in love, about your father, a man he admired and esteemed, about your friend Fermin, and about a girl in whom he wanted to see another Penelope - your Bea. He spoke about you as if you were his son. You were both looking for one another, Daniel. He wanted to believe that your innocence would save him from himself. He had stopped chasing his books, stopped wanting to destroy them. He was learning to see the world again through your eyes, to recover the boy he had once been, in you. The day you came to my apartment for the first time, I felt I already knew you. I feigned distrust so I could hide the fear you inspired in me. I was afraid of you, of what you might discover. I was afraid of listening to Julian and starting to believe, as he did, that we were all bound together in a strange chain of destiny, afraid of recognizing in you the Julian I had lost. I knew that you and your friends were investigating our past, that sooner or later you would discover the truth, but I hoped that it would be in due course, when you were able to understand its meaning. And I knew that sooner or later you and Julian would meet. That was my mistake. Because someone else knew it, someone who sensed that, in time, you would lead him to Julian: Fumero.
I only understood what was happening when there was no turning back, but I never lost hope that you might lose the trail, that you might forget about us, or that life - yours and not ours - might take you far away, to safety. Time has taught me not to lose hope, yet not to trust too much in hope either. Hope is cruel, and has no conscience. For a long time, Fumero has been watching me. He knows I'll fall, sooner or later. He's in no hurry. He lives to avenge himself. Without vengeance, without anger, he would melt away. Fumero knows that you and your friends will take him to Julian. He knows that after almost fifteen years, I have no more strength or resources. He has watched me die for years, and he's only waiting for the moment when he will deal me the final blow. I have never doubted that I will die by his hand. Now I know the moment is drawing near. I will give these pages to my father, asking him to make sure they reach you if anything should happen to me. I pray to that God who never crossed my path that you will never have to read them, but I sense that my fate, despite my wishes and my vain hopes, is to hand you this story. Yours, despite your youth and your innocence, is to set it free.
When you read these words, this prison of memories, it will mean that I will no longer be able to say goodbye to you as I would have wished, that I will not be able to ask you to forgive us, especially Julian, and to take care of him when I am no longer there to do so. I know I cannot ask anything of you, but I can ask you to save yourself. Perhaps so many pages have managed to convince me that whatever happens, I will always have a friend in you, that you are my only hope, my only real hope. Of all the things that Julian wrote, the one I have always felt closest to my heart is that as long as we are remembered, we remain alive. As so often happened to me with Julian, years before meeting him, I feel that I know you and that if I can trust in anyone, that someone is you. Remember me, Daniel, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go.
Nuria Monfort
THE SHADOW OF THE WIND 1955
Day was breaking when I finished reading Nuria Monfort's manuscript. That was my story. Our story. In Carax's lost footsteps, I now recognized my own, irretrievable. I stood, devoured by anxiety, and began to pace up and down the room. All my reservations, my suspicions and fears, seemed insignificant; I was overwhelmed by exhaustion, remorse, and dread, but I felt incapable of remaining there, hiding from the trail left by my actions. I slung on my coat, thrust the folded manuscript into the inside pocket, and ran down the stairs. As I stepped out of the front door, it had started to snow, and the sky was melting into slow tears of light that seemed to lie on my breath before fading away. I ran up to Plaza de Cataluna. It was almost deserted but in the centre of the square stood the lonely figure of an old man, with long white hair and clad in a wonderful grey overcoat. King of the dawn, he raised his eyes to heaven and tried in vain to catch the snowflakes with his gloves, laughing to himself. As I walked past him, he looked at me and smiled gravely. His eyes were the colour of gold, like magic coins at the bottom of a fountain.
'Good luck,' I thought I heard him say.
I tried to cling to that blessing and quickened my step, praying that it would not be too late and that Bea, the Bea of my story, would still be waiting for me.
My throat was burning with the cold when, panting after the run, I reached the building where the Aguilars lived. The snow was beginning to settle. I had the good fortune of finding Don Saturno Molleda stationed at the entrance. Don Saturno was the caretaker of the building and (from what Bea had told me) a secret surrealist poet. He had come out to watch the spectacle of the snow, broom in hand, wrapped in at least three scarves and wearing combat boots.
'It's God's dandruff,' he said, marvelling, offering the snow a preview of his unpublished verse.
'I'm going up to the Aguilar's apartment,' I announced.
'We all know that the early bird catches the worm, but you're trying to catch an elephant, young man.'
'It's an emergency. They're expecting me.'
'Ego te absolvo,' he recited, blessing me.
I ran up the stairs. As I ascended, I weighed up my options with some caution. If I was lucky, one of the maids would open the door, and I was ready to break through her blockade without bothering about the niceties. However, if the fates didn't favour me, perhaps Bea's father would open the door, given the hour. I wanted to think that in the intimacy of his home, he would not be armed, at least not before breakfast. I paused for a few moments to recover my breath before knocking and tried to conjure up words that never came. Little did it matter. I struck the door hard with the knocker three times. Fifteen seconds later I repeated the operation, and went on doing this, ignoring the cold sweat that covered my brow and the beating of my heart. When the door opened, I was still holding the knocker in my hand.
'What do you want?'
The eyes of my old friend Tomas, cold with anger, bored through me.
'I've come to see Bea. You can smash my face in if you feel like it, but I'm not leaving without speaking to her.'
Tomas observed me with a fixed stare. I wondered whether he was going to cleave me in two there and then. I swallowed hard.
'My sister isn't here.'
'Tomas...'
'Bea's gone.'
There was despondency and pain in his voice, which he was barely able to disguise as wrath.
'She's gone? Where?'
'I was hoping you would know.'
'Me?'
Ignoring Tomas's closed fists and the threatening expression on his face, I slipped into the apartment.
'Bea?' I shouted. 'Bea, it's me, Daniel___'
I stopped halfway along the corridor. The apartment threw back the echo of my voice. Neither Senor Aguilar nor his wife nor the servants appeared in response to my cries.
'There's no one here. I've told you,' said Tomas behind me. 'Now get out and don't come back. My father has sworn he'll kill you, and I'm not going to be the one to stop him.'
'For God's sake, Tomas. Tell me where your sister is.'
He looked at me as if he wasn't sure whether to spit at me or ignore me.
'Bea has left home, Daniel. My parents have been looking everywhere for her, desperately, for two days, and so have the police.'
'But...'
'The other night, when she came back after seeing you, my father was waiting for her. He slapped her so much he made her mouth bleed. But don't worry, she refused to give him your name. You don't deserve her.'
'Tomas...'
'Shut up. The following day my parents took her to the doctor.'
'What for? Is Bea ill?'
'She's ill because of you, you idiot. My sister is pregnant. Don't tell me you didn't know.'
I felt my lips quivering. An intense cold spread through my body, my voice stolen, my eyes fixed. I dragged myself toward the front door, but Tomas grabbed me by the arm and threw me against the wall.
'What have you done to her?'
'Tomas, I....'
His eyes flashed with impatience. The first blow cut my breath in two. I slid to the floor, my back against the wall, my knees giving way. A powerful grip seized me by the throat and held me up, nailed to the wall.
'What have you done to her, you son of a bitch?'
I tried to get away, but Tomas knocked me down with another punch to the face. I fell into blackness, my head wrapped in a blaze of pain. I collapsed onto the corridor tiles. I tried to crawl away, but Tomas grasped my coat collar and dragged me to the landing. He tossed me onto the staircase like a piece of rubbish.
'If anything has happened to Bea, I swear I'll kill you,' he said from the doorway.
I got up on my knees, begging for a moment of time, for an opportunity to recover my voice. But the door closed, abandoning me to the darkness. There was a sharp pain in my left ear, and I put my hand to my head, twisting with agony. I could feel warm blood. I stood up as best I could. My stomach muscles, where Tomas's first blow had landed, were smarting - that was just the beginning. I slid down the stairs. Don Saturno shook his head when he saw me.
'Here, come inside for a minute, until you feel better.'
I shook my head, holding my stomach with both hands. The left side of my head throbbed, as if the bones were trying to detach themselves from the flesh.
'You're bleeding,' said Don Saturno with a concerned look.
'It's not the first time___'
'Well, if you keep on fooling around, you won't have many chances left. Here, come in and I'll call a doctor, please.'
I managed to get to the main door and escape the caretaker's kindness. It was now snowing hard and the pavements were covered in veils of white mist. The icy wind whistled through my clothes and stung the bleeding wound on my face. I don't know whether I was crying with pain, anger, or fear. The indifferent snow silenced my cowardly weeping, and I walked away slowly into the dawn, one more shadow leaving his tracks in God's dandruff.
As I approached the crossing with Calle Balmes, I noticed that a car was following me, hugging the pavement. The pain in my head had given way to a feeling of vertigo that made me reel, so that I had to walk holding onto the walls. The car stopped, and two men got out. A sharp, whistling sound had filled my ears, and I couldn't hear the engine or the calls of the two figures in black who grabbed hold of me, one on either side, and dragged me hurriedly to the car. I fell into the back seat, drunk with nausea. Floods of blinding light came and went inside my brain. I felt the car moving. A pair of hands touched my face, my head, my ribs. Coming upon the manuscript of Nuria Monfort, which was hidden inside my coat, one of the figures snatched it from me. I tried to stop him with jellylike arms. The other silhouette leaned over me. I knew he was talking when I felt his breath on my face. I waited to see Fumero's face light up and feel the blade of his knife on my throat. Two eyes rested on mine, and as the curtain of consciousness fell, I recognized the toothless, welcoming smile of Fermin Romero de Torres.
I woke up in a sweat that stung my skin. Two hands held my shoulders firmly and settled me into a small bed surrounded by candles, as in a wake. Fermin's face appeared on my right. He was smiling, but even in my delirium I could sense his anxiety. Next to him, standing, I recognized Don Federico Flavia, the watchmaker.
'He seems to be coming round, Fermin,' said Don Federico. 'Shall I go and prepare some broth to revive him?'
'It won't do him any harm. While you're at it, could you make me a sandwich? Whatever you can find. A double-decker, if you please. All this excitement has suddenly revived my appetite.'
Federico scurried off, and we were left alone.
'Where are we, Fermin?'
'In a safe place. Technically speaking, we're in a small apartment on the left side of the Ensanche quarter, the property of some friends of Don Federico, to whom we owe our lives and more. Slanderers would describe it as a love nest, but for us it's a sanctuary.'
I tried to sit up. The pain in my ear was now a burning throb.
'Will I go deaf?'
'I don't know about that, but a bit more beating and you'd certainly have been left a borderline vegetable. That troglodyte Senor Aguilar almost pulped your grey cells.'
'It wasn't Senor Aguilar who beat me. It was Tomas.'
'Tomas? Your friend? The inventor?'
I nodded.
'You must have done something to deserve it.'
'Bea has left home...' I began.
Fermin frowned. 'Go on.'
'She's pregnant.'
Fermin was looking at me open-mouthed. For once his expression was impenetrable.
'Don't look at me like that, Fermin, please.'
'What do you want me to do? Start handing out cigars?'
I tried to get up, but the pain and Fermin's hands stopped me.
'I've got to find her, Fermin.'
'Steady, there. You're not in any fit state to go anywhere. Tell me where the girl is, and I'll go and find her.'
'I don't know where she is.'
'I'm going to have to ask you to be more specific'
Don Federico appeared carrying a cup of steaming broth. He smiled at me warmly.
'How are you feeling, Daniel?'
'Much better, thanks, Don Federico.'
'Take a couple of these pills with the soup.'
He glanced briefly at Fermin, who nodded.
'They're painkillers.'
I swallowed the pills and sipped the cup of broth, which tasted of sherry. Don Federico, the soul of discretion, left the room and closed the door. It was then that I noticed that Fermin had Nuria Montfort's manuscript on his lap. The clock ticking on the bedside table showed one o'clock - in the afternoon, I supposed.
'Is it still snowing?'
'That's an understatement. This is a powdery version of the Flood.'
'Have you read it?' I asked.
Fermin simply nodded.
'I must find Bea before it's too late. I think I know where she is.'
I sat up in bed, pushing- Fermin's arms aside. I looked around me. The walls swayed like weeds at the bottom of a pond and the ceiling seemed to be moving away. I could barely hold myself upright. Fermin effortlessly laid me back on the bed again.
'You're not going anywhere, Daniel.'
'What were those pills?'
'Morpheus's liniment. You're going to sleep like a log.'
'No, not now, I can't...'
I continued to blabber until my eyelids closed and I dropped into a black, empty sleep, the sleep of the guilty.
It was almost dusk when the tombstone was lifted from me. I opened my eyes to a dark room watched over by two tired candles flickering on the bedside table. Fermin, defeated on an armchair in the corner, snored with the fury of a man three times his size. At his feet, scattered like a flood of tears, lay Nuria Monfort's manuscript. The headache had lessened to a slow, tepid throb. I tiptoed over to the bedroom door and went out into a little hall with a balcony and a door that seemed to open onto the staircase. My coat and shoes lay on a chair. A purplish light came in through the window, speckled with iridescence. I walked over to the balcony and saw that it was still snowing. Half the roofs of Barcelona were mottled with white and scarlet. In the distance the towers of the Industrial College looked like needles in the haze, clinging to the last rays of sun. The windowpane was coated with frost. I put my index finger on the glass and wrote:
Gone to find Bea. Don't follow me. Back soon.
The truth had struck me as soon as I woke up, as if some stranger had whispered it to me in a dream. I stepped out onto the landing and rushed down the stairs and out of the front door. Calle Urgel was like a river of shiny white sand as the wind blew the snow about in gusts. Streetlamps and trees emerged like masts in the fog. I walked to the nearest subway station, Hospital Clinico, past the stand of afternoon papers carrying the news on the front page, with photographs of the Ramblas covered in snow and the Canaletas fountain bleeding stalactites. snowfall of the century, the headlines blared. I fell onto a bench on the platform and breathed in that perfume of tunnels and soot that trains bring with them. On the other side of the tracks, on a poster proclaiming the delights of the Tibidabo amusement park, the blue tram was lit up like a street party, and behind it you could just make out the outline of the Aldaya mansion. I wondered whether Bea had seen the same image and realized she had nowhere else to go.
When I came out of the subway tunnel, it was starting to get dark. Avenida del Tibidabo lay deserted, stretching out in a long line of cypress trees and mansions. I glimpsed the shape of the blue tram at the stop and heard the conductor's bell piercing the wind. A quick run, and I jumped on just as it was pulling away. The conductor, my old acquaintance, took the coins, mumbling under his breath, and I sat down inside the carriage, a bit more sheltered from the snow and the cold. The sombre mansions filed slowly by, behind the tram's icy windows. The conductor watched me with a mixture of suspicion and bemusement, which the cold seemed to have frozen on his face.
'Number thirty-two, young man.'
I turned and saw the ghostly silhouette of the Aldaya mansion advancing towards us like the prow of a dark ship. The tram stopped with a shudder. I got off, fleeing from the conductor's gaze.
'Good luck,' he murmured.
I watched the tram disappear up the avenue, leaving behind only the echo of its bell. Darkness fell around me. I hurried along the garden wall, looking for the gap at the back, where it had tumbled down. As I climbed over, I thought I could hear footsteps on the snow approaching on the opposite pavement. I stopped for a second and remained motionless on top of the wall. The sound of footsteps faded in the wind. I jumped down to the other side and entered the garden. The weeds had frozen into stems of crystal. The statues of the fallen angels were covered in shrouds of ice. The water in the fountain had frozen over, forming a black, shiny mirror, from which only the stone claw of the sunken angel protruded, like an obsidian sword. Tears of ice hung from the index finger. The accusing hand of the angel pointed straight at the main door, which stood ajar.
I ran up the steps without bothering to muffle the sound of my footsteps. Pushing the door open, I walked into the entrance hall. A procession of candles lined the way towards the interior. They were Bea's candles but had almost burned down to the floor. I followed their trail and stopped at the foot of the grand staircase. The path of candles continued up the steps to the first floor. I ventured up the stairs, following my distorted shadow on the walls. When I reached the first-floor landing, I saw two more candles set along the corridor. A third one flickered outside the room that had once been Penelope's. I went up to the door and rapped gently with my knuckles.
'Julian?' came a shaky voice.
I grabbed hold of the doorknob and slowly opened the door. Bea gazed at me from a corner of the room, wrapped in a blanket. I ran to her side and held her. I could feel her dissolving into tears.
‘I didn't know where to go,' she murmured. 'I called your home a few times, but there was no answer. I was scared....'
Bea dried her tears with her fists and fixed her eyes on mine. I nodded; there was no need to reply with words.
'Why did you call me Julian?'
Bea cast a glance at the half-open door. 'He's here. In this house. He comes and goes. He discovered me the other day, when I was trying to get into the house. Without my saying anything, he knew who I was and what was happening. He set me up in this room, and he brought me a blanket, water, and some food. He told me to wait. He said that everything was going to turn out all right, that you'd come for me. At night we talked for hours. He talked to me about Penelope, about Nuria - above all he spoke about you, about us two. He told me I had to teach you to forget him....'
'Where is he now?'
'Downstairs. In the library. He said he was waiting for someone, and told me not to move from here.'
'Waiting for who?'
'I don't know. He said it was someone who would come with you, that you'd bring him....'
When I peered into the corridor, I could already hear footsteps below, near the staircase. I recognized the spidery shadow on the walls, the black raincoat, the hat pulled down like a hood, and the gun in his hand shining like a scythe. Fumero. He had always reminded me of someone, or something, but until then I hadn't understood what.
I snuffed out the candles with my fingers and made a sign to Bea to keep quiet. She grabbed my hand and looked at me questioningly. Fumero's slow steps could be heard below us. I led Bea back inside the room and signalled to her to stay there, hiding behind the door.
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