The Shadow of the Wind (11 page)

A
T THE BEGINNING OF THAT YEAR,
T
OMÁS AND
F
ERMÍN DECIDED
to pool their respective brains on a new project that, they predicted, would get us both out of being drafted. Fermín, in particular, did not share Mr. Aguilar's enthusiasm for the army experience.

“The only use for military service is that it reveals the number of morons in the population,” he would remark. “And that can be discovered in the first two weeks; there's no need for two years. Army, Marriage, the Church, and Banking: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yes, go on, laugh.”

Fermín Romero de Torres's anarchist-libertarian leanings were to be shaken one October afternoon when, in a twist of fate, we had a visit from an old friend. My father had gone to Argentona, to price a book collection, and would not be back until the evening. I was left in charge of the counter while Fermín insisted on climbing up a ladder like a tightrope walker to tidy up the books on the top shelf, just inches from the ceiling. Shortly before closing time, when the sun had already set, Bernarda's profile appeared at the shop window. She was dressed in her Thursday clothes—Thursday was her day off—and she waved at me. My heart soared just to see her, and I signaled to her to come in.

“My goodness, how you've grown!” she said from the entrance. “I would hardly have recognized you…why, you're a man now!”

She embraced me, shedding a few tears and touching my head, shoulders, and face, as if to make sure I hadn't broken anything during her absence.

“You're really missed in the house, Master Daniel,” she said, with downcast eyes.

“I've missed you, too, Bernarda. Come on, give me a kiss.”

She kissed me shyly, and I planted a couple of noisy kisses on each cheek. She laughed. In her eyes I could see she was waiting for me to ask her about Clara, but I had decided not to.

“You're looking very pretty today, and very elegant. How come you've decided to pay us a visit?”

“The truth is, I've been wanting to come for a long time, but you know how things are, we're all busy, and, for all his learning, Mr. Barceló is as demanding as a child. You just have to rise above it and get on with things. But what brings me here today is that, well, tomorrow is my niece's birthday, the one from San Adrián, and I'd like to give her a present. I thought I could get her a good book, with a lot of writing and few pictures, but as I'm such a dimwit and don't understand—”

Before I could answer, a whole hardback set of the complete works of Blasco Ibáñez plummeted from on high, and the place shook with a ballistic roar. Bernarda and I looked up anxiously. Fermín was sliding down the ladder, like a trapeze artist, a secretive smile lighting up his face, his eyes filled with rapturous lust.

“Bernarda, this is—”

“Fermín Romero de Torres, bibliographic adviser for Sempere and Son, at your service, madam,” Fermín proclaimed, taking Bernarda's hand and kissing it ceremoniously.

“You must be confused, I'm no madam—”

“Marquise, at the very least,” interrupted Fermín. “I should know. I have stepped out with the finest ladies on Avenida Pearson. Allow me the honor of accompanying you to our classics section for children and young adults, where I notice that by good fortune we have an anthology of the best of Emilio Salgari and his epic tale of Sandokan.”

“Oh dear, I don't know, I'm not sure about lives of saints. The girl's father used to be very left wing, you know….”

“Say no more, for here I have none other than Jules Verne's
The Mysterious Island,
a tale of high adventure and great educational content, because of all the science.”

“If you think so…”

I followed them quietly, noticing how Fermín was drooling over Bernarda and how she seemed overwhelmed by the attentions showered upon her by the little man with scruffy looks and the tongue of a barker. He was devouring her with his eyes as greedily as if she were a piece of chocolate.

“What about you, Master Daniel? What do you think?”

“Fermín Romero de Torres is the resident expert here. You can trust him.”

“Well, then, I'll take the one about the island, if you'd be kind enough to wrap it for me. What do I owe you?”

“It's on the house,” I said.

“No it isn't, I won't hear of it.”

“If you'll allow me, madam, it's on me, Fermín Romero de Torres. You'd make me the happiest man in Barcelona.”

Bernarda looked at us both. She was speechless.

“Listen, I'm paying for what I buy, and this is a present I want to give my niece—”

“Well, then, perhaps you'll allow me, in exchange, to invite you to an afternoon tea,” Fermín quickly interjected, smoothing down his hair.

“Go on, Bernarda,” I encouraged her. “You'll enjoy yourself. Look, while I wrap this up, Fermín can go and get his jacket.”

Fermín hurried off to the back room to comb his hair, splash on some cologne, and put on his jacket. I slipped him a few duros from the till.

“Where shall I take her?” he whispered to me, as nervous as a child.

“I'd take her to Els Quatre Gats,” I said. “I know for a fact that it's a lucky place for romance.”

I handed Bernarda the packet and winked at her.

“What do I owe you then, Master Daniel?”

“I'm not sure. I'll let you know. The book didn't have a price on it, and I have to ask my father,” I lied.

I watched them leave arm in arm and disappear down Calle Santa Ana, hoping there was somebody on duty up in heaven who, for once, would grant the couple a lucky break. I hung the
CLOSED
notice in the shop window. I had just gone into the back room for a moment to look through my father's order book when I heard the tinkle of the doorbell. I thought Fermín must have forgotten something, or perhaps my father was back from his day trip.

“Hello?”

A few seconds passed, and no answer came. I continued to leaf through the order book.

I heard slow footsteps in the shop.

“Fermín? Father?”

No answer. I thought I heard a stifled laugh, and I shut the order book. Perhaps some client had ignored the
CLOSED
sign. I was about to go and serve whoever it was when I heard the sound of several books falling from the shelves. I swallowed. Grabbing hold of a letter opener, I slowly moved toward the door of the back room. I didn't dare call out a second time. Soon I heard the steps again, walking away. The doorbell sounded, and I felt a draft of air from the street. I peered into the shop. There was no one there. I ran to the front door and double-locked it, then took a deep breath, feeling ridiculous and cowardly. I was returning to the back room when I noticed a piece of paper on the counter. As I got closer, I realized it was a photograph, an old studio picture of the sort that were printed on thick cardboard. The edges were burned, and the smoky image seemed to have charcoal finger marks over it. I examined it under the lamp. The photograph showed a young couple smiling at the camera. He didn't look much older than seventeen or eighteen, with light-colored hair and delicate, aristocratic features. She may have been a bit younger than him, one or two years at the most. She had pale skin and a finely chiseled face framed by short black hair. She looked intoxicated with happiness. The man had his arm around her waist, and she seemed to be whispering something to him in a teasing way. The image conveyed a warmth that drew a smile from me, as if I had recognized two old friends in those strangers. Behind them I could make out an ornate shop window, full of old-fashioned hats. I concentrated on the couple. From their clothes I could guess that the picture was at least twenty-five or thirty years old. It was an image full of light and hope, rich with the promise that exists only in the eyes of the young. Fire had destroyed almost all of the area surrounding the photograph, but one could still discern a stern face behind the old-style counter, a suggestion of a ghostly figure behind the letters engraved on the glass.

S
ONS OF
A
NTONIO
F
ORTUNY

Established in 1888

The night I returned to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, Isaac had told me that Carax used his mother's surname, not his father's, which was Fortuny. Carax's father had a hat shop on Ronda de San Antonio. I looked again at the portrait of that couple and knew for sure that the young man was Julián Carax, smiling at me from the past, unable to see the flames that were closing in on him.

1954

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
F
ERMÍN CAME TO WORK BORNE ON
the wings of Cupid, smiling and whistling boleros. In any other circumstances, I would have inquired about his outing with Bernarda, but that day I was not in the mood for his poetic outbursts. My father had arranged to have an order of books delivered to Professor Javier Velázquez at eleven o'clock in his study at the university. The very mention of the professor made Fermín wince, so I offered to take the books myself.

“That sorry specimen is both pedantic and corrupt. A fascist buttock polisher,” Fermín declared, raising his fist and striking the pose he reserved for his avenging moods. “With the pitiful excuse of his professorship and final exams, he would even have it off with Gertrude Stein, given the chance.”

“Calm down, Fermín. Velázquez pays well, always in advance, and besides, he recommends us to everyone,” my father said.

“That's money stained with the blood of innocent virgins,” Fermín protested. “For the life of God, I hereby swear that I have never lain with an underage woman, and not for lack of inclination or opportunities. Bear in mind that what you see today is but a shadow of my former self, but there was a time when I cut as dashing a figure as they come. Yet even then, just to be on the safe side, or if I sensed that a girl might be overly flighty, I would not proceed without seeing some form of identification or, failing that, a written paternal authorization. One has to maintain certain moral standards.”

My father rolled his eyes. “It's pointless to argue with you, Fermín.”

“Well, if I'm right, I'm right.”

Sensing a debate brewing, I picked up the parcel, which I had prepared the night before—a couple of Rilkes and an apocryphal essay attributed to a disciple of Darwin claiming Spaniards came from a more evolved simian ancestor than their French neighbors. As the door closed behind me, Fermín and my father were deep in argument about ethics.

It was a magnificent day; the skies were electric blue, and a crystal breeze carried the cool scent of autumn and the sea. I will always prefer Barcelona in October. It is when the spirit of the city seems to stroll most proudly through the streets, and you feel all the wiser after drinking water from the old fountain of Canaletas—which, at this time of year only, doesn't taste of chlorine. I was walking along briskly, dodging bootblacks, pen pushers returning from their midmorning coffee, lottery vendors, and a whole ballet of street sweepers who seemed to be polishing the streets with paintbrushes, unhurriedly and with a pointillist's strokes. Barcelona was already beginning to fill up with cars in those days, and when I reached the traffic lights at the crossing with Calle Balmes, I noticed a brigade of gray office clerks in gray raincoats staring as hungrily at a bloodred Studebaker sedan as they would ogle a music-hall siren in a negligee. I went on up Balmes toward Gran Vía, negotiating traffic lights, cars, and even motorcycles with sidecars. In a shop window, I saw a Philips poster announcing the arrival of a new messiah, the TV set. Some predicted that this peculiar contraption was going to change our lives forever and turn us all into creatures of the future, like the Americans. Fermín Romero de Torres, always up to date on state-of-art technology, had already prophesied a grimmer outcome.

“Television, my dear Daniel, is the Antichrist, and I can assure you that after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to living in caves, to medieval savagery, and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.”

Professor Velázquez's office was on the second floor of the Literature Faculty, in Plaza Universidad, at the end of a gallery paved with hypnotic chessboard tiling and awash in powdery light that spilled down onto the southern cloister. I found the professor at the door of a lecture room, pretending to be listening to a female student while considering her spectacular figure. She wore a dark red suit that drew attention to her waistline and revealed classically proportioned calves covered in fine nylon stockings. Professor Velázquez enjoyed a reputation as a Don Juan, and there were those who considered that the sentimental education of a respectable young lady was never complete without a proverbial weekend in some small hotel on the Sitges promenade, reciting Alexandrines tête-à-tête with the distinguished academic.

My commercial instincts advised me against interrupting his conversation, so I decided to kill time by conjuring up an X ray of the pupil. Perhaps the brisk walk had raised my spirits, or perhaps it was just my age, not to mention the fact that I spent more time among muses that were trapped in the pages of old books than in the company of girls of flesh and bone—who always seemed to me beings of a far lower order than Clara Barceló. Whatever the reason, as I cataloged each and every detail of her enticing and exquisitely clad anatomy—which I could see only from the back, but which in my mind I had already visualized in its full glory—I felt a vaguely wolfish shiver run down my spine.

“Why, here's Daniel,” cried Professor Velázquez. “Thank goodness it's you, not that madman who came last time, the one with the bullfighter's name. He seemed drunk to me, or else eminently certifiable. He had the nerve to ask me whether I knew the etymology of the word ‘prick,' in a sarcastic tone that was quite out of place.”

“It's just that the doctor has him under some really strong medication. Something to do with his liver.”

“No doubt because he's smashed all day,” said Velázquez. “If I were you, I'd call the police. I bet you he has a file. And God, how his feet stank—there are lots of shitty leftists on the loose who haven't seen a bathtub since the Republic fell.”

I was about to come up with some other plausible excuse for Fermín when the student who had been talking to Professor Velázquez turned around, and it was as if the world had stopped spinning. She smiled at me, and my ears went up in flames.

“Hello, Daniel,” said Beatriz Aguilar.

I nodded at her, tongue-tied. I realized I'd been drooling over my best friend's sister, Bea. The one woman I was completely terrified of.

“Oh, so you know each other?” asked Velázquez, intrigued.

“Daniel is an old friend of the family,” Bea explained. “And the only one who ever had the courage to tell me to my face that I'm stuck up and vain.”

Velázquez looked at me with astonishment.

“That was years ago,” I explained. “And I didn't mean it.”

“Well, I'm still waiting for an apology.”

Velázquez laughed heartily and took the parcel from my hands.

“I think I'm in the way here,” he said, opening it. “Ah, wonderful. Listen, Daniel, tell your father I'm looking for a book called
Moorslayer: Early Reminiscences of the Generalissimo in the Moroccan War
by Francisco Franco Bahamonde, with a prologue and notes by Pemán.”

“Consider it done. We'll let you know in a couple of weeks.”

“I take your word for it, and now I'll be off. Thirty-two blank minds await me.”

Professor Velázquez winked at me and disappeared into the lecture room. I didn't know where to look.

“Listen Bea, about that insult, I promise I—”

“I was only teasing you, Daniel. I know that was kid stuff, and besides, Tomás gave you a good enough beating.”

“It still hurts.”

Bea's smile looked like a peace offering, or at least an offer of a truce.

“Besides, you were right, I'm a bit stuck up and sometimes a little vain,” she said. “You don't like me much, do you, Daniel?”

The question took me completely by surprise. Disarmed, I realized how easily you can lose all animosity toward someone you've deemed your enemy as soon as that person stops behaving as such.

“No, that's not true.”

“Tomás says it's not that you don't like me, it's that you can't stand my father and you make me pay for it, because you don't dare face up to him. I don't blame you. No one dares cross my father.”

I felt the blood drain from my cheeks, but after a few seconds I found myself smiling and nodding. “Anyone would say Tomás knows me better than I do myself.”

“I wouldn't put it past him. My brother knows us all inside out, only he never says anything. But if he ever decides to open his mouth, the whole world will collapse. He's very fond of you, you know.”

I raised my shoulders and looked down.

“He's always talking about you, and about your father and the bookshop, and this friend you have working with you. Tomás says he's a genius waiting to be discovered. Sometimes it's as if he considers you his real family, instead of the one he has at home.”

My eyes met hers: hard, frank, fearless. I did not know what to say, so I just smiled. I felt she was ensnaring me with her honesty, and I looked down at the courtyard.

“I didn't know you studied here.”

“It's my first year.”

“Literature?”

“My father thinks science is not for the weaker sex.”

“Of course. Too many numbers.”

“I don't care, because what I like is reading. Besides, you meet interesting people here.”

“Like Professor Velázquez?”

Bea gave me a wry smile. “I might be in my first year, but I know enough to see them coming, Daniel. Especially men of his sort.”

I wondered what sort I was.

“Besides, Professor Velázquez is a good friend of my father's. They both belong to the Society for the Protection and Promotion of Spanish Operetta.”

I tried to look impressed. “A noble calling. And how's your boyfriend, Lieutenant Cascos Buendía?”

Her smile left her. “Pablo will be here on leave in three weeks.”

“You must be happy.”

“Very. He's a great guy, though I can imagine what you must think of him.”

I doubt it, I thought. Bea watched me, looking slightly tense. I was about to change the subject, but my tongue got ahead of me.

“Tomás says you're getting married and you're going off to live in El Ferrol.”

She nodded without blinking. “As soon as Pablo finishes his military service.”

“You must be feeling impatient,” I said, sensing a spiteful note in my voice, an insolent tone that came from God knows where.

“I don't mind, really. His family has properties out there, a couple of shipyards, and Pablo is going to be in charge of one of them. He has a great talent for leadership.”

“It shows.”

Bea forced a smile. “Besides, I've seen quite enough of Barcelona, after all these years….” Her eyes looked tired and sad.

“I hear El Ferrol is a fascinating place. Full of life. And the seafood is supposed to be fabulous, especially the spider crabs.”

Bea sighed, shaking her head. She looked as if she wanted to cry with anger but was too proud. Instead she laughed calmly.

“After ten years you still enjoy insulting me, don't you, Daniel? Go on, then, don't hold back. It's my fault for thinking that perhaps we could be friends, or pretend to be, but I suppose I'm not as good as my brother. I'm sorry I've wasted your time.”

She turned around and started walking down the corridor that led to the library. I saw her move away along the black and white tiles, her shadow cutting through the curtains of light that fell from the gallery windows.

“Bea, wait.”

I cursed myself and ran after her. I stopped her halfway down the corridor, grabbing her by the arm. She threw me a burning look.

“I'm sorry. But you're wrong: it's not your fault, it's mine. I'm the one who isn't as good as your brother. And if I've insulted you, it's because I'm jealous of that idiot boyfriend of yours and because I'm angry to think that someone like you would follow him to El Ferrol. It might as well be the Congo.”

“Daniel…”

“You're wrong about me, because we can be friends if you let me try, now that you know how worthless I am. And you're wrong about Barcelona, too, because you may think you've seen everything, but I can guarantee that's not true. If you'll allow me, I can prove it to you.”

I saw a smile light up and a slow, silent tear fall down her cheek.

“You'd better be right,” she said. “Because if you're not, I'll tell my brother, and he'll pull your head off like a stopper.”

I held out my hand to her. “That sounds fair. Friends?”

She offered me hers.

“What time do you finish your classes on Friday?” I asked.

She hesitated for a moment. “At five.”

“I'll be waiting for you in the cloister at five o'clock sharp. And before dark I'll prove to you that there's something in Barcelona you haven't seen yet, and that you can't go off to El Ferrol with that idiot whom I don't believe you love, because if you go, the memory of this city will pursue you and you'll die of sadness.”

“You seem very sure of yourself, Daniel.”

I, who was never even sure what the time was, nodded with the conviction of the ignorant. I stood there watching her walk away down that endless corridor until her silhouette blended with the darkness. I asked myself what on earth I had done.