The Shadow of the Wind (49 page)

A
S
I
WAS APPROACHING THE CROSSING WITH
C
ALLE
B
ALMES,
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 on to the walls. The car stopped, and two men came out of it. 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 backseat, 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 gap-toothed, welcoming smile of Fermín Romero de Torres.

 

I
WOKE UP IN A SWEAT THAT STUNG MY SKIN.
T
WO HANDS HELD MY
shoulders firmly and settled me into a small bed surrounded by candles, as in a wake. Fermín'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 Flaviá, the watchmaker.

“He seems to be coming around, Fermín,” 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, you could make me a sandwich of whatever you find. Double-decker, if you please. All these nerves have suddenly revived my appetite.”

Federico scurried off, and we were left alone.

“Where are we, Fermín?”

“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 have certainly been left bordering on the vegetative. That troglodyte Mr. Aguilar almost pulped your gray cells.”

“It wasn't Mr. Aguilar who beat me. It was Tomás.”

“Tomás? Your friend? The inventor?”

I nodded.

“You must have done something to deserve it.”

“Bea has left home…” I began.

Fermín frowned. “Go on.”

“She's pregnant.”

Fermín was looking at me openmouthed. For once his expression was impenetrable.

“Don't look at me like that, Fermín, please.”

“What do you want me to do? Start handing out cigars?”

I tried to get up, but the pain and Fermín's hands stopped me.

“I've got to find her, Fermín.”

“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 around the door 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 Fermín, 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 I noticed that Fermín had Nuria Monfort'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.

Fermín simply nodded.

“I must find Bea before it's too late. I think I know where she is.”

I sat up in bed, pushing Fermín's arms aside. I looked around me. The walls swayed like weeds at the bottom of a pond. The ceiling seemed to be moving away. I could barely hold myself upright. Fermín 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.

 

I
T WAS ALMOST DUSK WHEN THAT TOMBSTONE WAS LIFTED OFF ME.
I opened my eyes to a dark room watched over by two tired candles flickering on the bedside table. Fermín, 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 veiled 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 when 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, and the wind blew the snow about in gusts. Streetlamps and trees emerged like masts in a fog. I walked to the nearest subway station, Hospital Clínico, past the stand of afternoon papers carrying the news on the front page, with photographs of the Ramblas covered in snow and the fountain of Canaletas 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 the sound of trains brings with it. 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 one could just make out the outline of the Aldaya mansion. I wondered whether Bea had seen the same image and had realized she had nowhere else to go.

W
HEN
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 somber 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 toward us like the prow of a dark ship in the mist. 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 in the back, where it had tumbled down. As I climbed over, I thought I heard footsteps on the snow approaching on the opposite pavement. I stopped for a second and remained motionless on the top of the wall. The sound of footsteps faded in the wind's wake. 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 iced 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 lobby. A procession of candles lined the way toward the interior. They were Bea's candles, almost burned down to the ground. 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 Penélope's. I went up to the door and rapped gently with my knuckles.

“Julián?” 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 Julián?”

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 Penélope, 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 not to move.”

“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 signaled to her to stay there, hiding behind the door.

“Don't go out of this room, whatever happens,” I whispered.

“Don't leave me now, Daniel. Please.”

“I must warn Carax.”

Bea gave me an imploring look, but I went out into the corridor. I tiptoed to the top of the main staircase. There was no sign of Fumero. He had stopped at some point of the darkness and stood there, motionless, patient. I stepped back into the corridor and walked down it, past the row of bedrooms, until I got to the front of the mansion. A large window coated in frost refracted two blue beams of light, cloudy as stagnant water. I moved over to the window and saw a black car stationed in front of the main gate, its lights on. I recognized it as the car of Lieutenant Palacios. The glowing ember of a cigarette in the dark gave away his presence behind the steering wheel. I went slowly back to the staircase and began to descend, step by step, placing my feet with infinite care. Stopping halfway down, I scanned the darkness that had engulfed the ground floor.

Fumero had left the front door open as he came in. The wind had blown out the candles and was spitting whirls of snow and frozen leaves across the hall. I went down four more steps, hugging the wall, and caught a glimpse of the large library windows. There was still no sign of Fumero. I wondered whether he had gone down to the basement or to the crypt. The powdery snow that blew in from outside was fast erasing his footprints. I slipped down to the base of the stairs and peered into the corridor that led to the main door. An icy wind hit me. The claw of the submerged angel was just visible in the dark. I looked in the other direction. The entrance to the library was about ten yards from the foot of the staircase. The anteroom that led to it was sunk in shadows, and I realized that Fumero could be watching me only a few yards from where I was standing. I looked into the darkness, as impenetrable as the waters of a well. Taking a deep breath and almost dragging my feet, I blindly crossed the distance that separated me from the entrance to the library.

The large oval hall was submerged in a dim, vaporous light, speckled with shadows that were cast by the snow falling heavily on the other side of the windows. My eyes skimmed over the empty walls in search of Fumero—could he be standing by the entrance? An object protruded from the wall just a couple of yards on my right. For a moment I thought I saw it move, but it was only the reflection of the moon on the blade. A knife, perhaps a double-bladed penknife, had been sunk into the wood paneling. It pierced a square of paper or cardboard. I stepped closer and recognized the stabbed image. It was an identical copy of the half-burned photograph that a stranger had once left on the bookshop counter. In the picture, Julián and Penélope, still adolescents, smiled in happiness. The knife went through Julián's chest. I understood then that it hadn't been Laín Coubert, or Julián Carax, who had left that photograph like an invitation. It had been Fumero. The photograph had been poisoned bait. I raised my hand to snatch it away from the knife, but the icy touch of Fumero's gun on my neck stopped me.

“An image is worth more than a thousand words, Daniel. If your father hadn't been a shitty bookseller, he would have taught you that by now.”

I turned slowly and faced the barrel of the pistol. It stank of fresh gunpowder. Fumero's face was contorted into a dreadful grimace.

“Where's Carax?” he demanded.

“Far from here. He knew you would come for him. He's left.”

Fumero observed me without blinking. “I'm going to blow your head into small pieces, kid.”

“That's not going to help you much. Carax isn't here.”

“Open your mouth,” ordered Fumero.

“What for?”

“Open your mouth or I'll open it myself with a bullet.”

I parted my lips. Fumero stuck the revolver in my mouth. I felt nausea rising in my throat. Fumero's thumb tensed on the hammer.

“Now, you bastard, think about whether you have any reason to go on living. What do you say?”

I nodded slowly.

“Then tell me where Carax is.”

I tried to mumble. Fumero slowly pulled out the gun.

“Where is he?”

“Downstairs. In the crypt.”

“You lead the way. I want you to be present when I tell that son of a bitch how Nuria Monfort moaned when I dug the knife into—”

Glancing over Fumero's shoulder, I thought I saw the darkness stirring and a figure without a face, his eyes burning, gliding toward us in absolute silence, as if barely touching the floor. Fumero saw the reflection in my tear-filled eyes, and his face slowly became distorted.

When he turned and shot at the mantle of blackness that surrounded him, two deformed leather claws gripped his throat. They were the hands of Julián Carax, grown out of the flames. Carax pushed me aside and crushed Fumero to the wall. The inspector clutched his revolver and tried to place it under Carax's chin. Before he could pull the trigger, Carax grabbed his wrist and hammered it with great strength against the wall, again and again, but Fumero didn't drop the gun. A second shot burst in the dark and hit the wall, making a hole in the wood paneling. Tears of burning gunpowder and red-hot splinters spattered over the inspector's face. A stench of singed flesh filled the room.

With a violent jerk, Fumero tried to get away from the force that was immobilizing his neck and the hand holding the gun. Carax wouldn't loosen his grip. Fumero roared with anger and tilted his head until he was able to bite Carax's fist. He was possessed by an animal fury. I heard the snap of his teeth as he tore at the dead skin, and saw Fumero's lips dripping with blood. Ignoring the pain, or perhaps unable to feel it, Carax grabbed hold of the dagger on the wall. He pulled it out and, under Fumero's terrified gaze, skewered the inspector's right wrist to the wall with a brutal blow that buried the blade in the wooden panel almost to the hilt. Fumero let out a terrible cry of pain as his hand opened in a spasm, and the gun fell to his feet. Carax kicked it into the shadows.

The horror of that scene passed before my eyes in just a few seconds. I felt paralyzed, incapable of acting or even thinking. Carax turned to me and fixed his eyes on mine. As I looked at him, I was able to reconstruct his lost features, which I had so often imagined from photographs and old stories.

“Take Beatriz away from here, Daniel. She knows what you must do. Don't let her out of your sight. Don't let anyone take her from you. Anyone or anything. Look after her. More than your own life.”

I tried to nod, but my eyes turned to Fumero, who was struggling with the knife that pierced his wrist. He yanked it out and collapsed on his knees, holding the wounded arm that was pouring blood onto his side.

“Leave,” Carax murmured.

Fumero watched us from the floor, blinded by hatred, holding the bloody knife in his left hand. Carax turned to him. I heard hurried footsteps approaching and realized that Palacios was coming to the aid of his boss, alerted by the shots. Before Carax was able to seize the knife from Fumero, Palacios entered the library holding his gun up high.

“Move back,” he warned.

He threw a quick glance at Fumero, who was getting up with some difficulty, and then he looked at us—first at me and then at Carax. I could see horror and doubt in that look.

“I said move back.”

Carax paused and withdrew. Palacios observed us coldly, trying to work out what to do. His eyes rested on me.

“You, get out of here. This isn't anything to do with you. Go.”

I hesitated for a moment. Carax nodded.

“No one's leaving this place,” Fumero cut in. “Palacios, hand me your gun.”

Palacios didn't answer.

“Palacios,” Fumero repeated, stretching out his blood-drenched hand, demanding the weapon.

“No,” mumbled Palacios, gritting his teeth.

Fumero, his maddened eyes filled with disdain and fury, grabbed Palacios's gun and pushed him aside with a swipe of his hand. I glanced at Palacios and knew what was going to happen. Fumero raised the gun slowly. His hand shook, and the revolver shone with blood. Carax drew back a step at a time, in search of shadows, but there was no escape. The revolver's barrel followed him. I felt all the muscles in my body burn with rage. Fumero's deathly grimace, and the way he licked his lips like a madman, woke me up like a slap in the face. Palacios was looking at me, silently shaking his head. I ignored him. Carax had given up by now and stood motionless in the middle of the room, waiting for the bullet.

Fumero never saw me. For him only Carax existed and that bloodstained hand holding the revolver. I leaped upon him. I felt my feet rise from the ground, but I never regained contact with it. The world froze in midair. The blast of the shot reached me from afar, like the echo of a receding storm. There was no pain. The bullet went through my ribs. At first there was a blinding flash, as if a metal bar had hit me with indescribable force and propelled me through the air for a couple of yards, then knocked me down to the floor. I didn't feel the fall, although I thought I saw the walls converging and the ceiling descending at great speed to crush me.

A hand held the back of my head, and I saw Julián Carax's face bending over me. In my vision Carax appeared exactly as I'd imagined him, as if the flames had never torn off his features. I noticed the horror in his eyes, without understanding. I saw how he placed his hand on my chest, and I wondered what that smoking liquid was flowing between his fingers. It was then I felt that terrible fire, like the hot breath of embers, burning my insides. I tried to scream, but nothing surfaced except warm blood. I recognized the face of Palacios next to me, full of remorse, defeated. I raised my eyes and then I saw her. Bea was advancing slowly from the library door, her face suffused with terror and her trembling hands on her lips. She was shaking her head without speaking. I tried to warn her, but a biting cold was coursing up my arms, stabbing its way into my body.

Fumero was hiding behind the door. Bea didn't notice his presence. When Carax leaped up and Bea turned, the inspector's gun was already almost touching her forehead. Palacios rushed to stop him. He was too late. Carax was already there. I heard his faraway scream, which bore Bea's name. The room lit up with the flash of the shot. The bullet went through Carax's right hand. A moment later the man without a face was falling upon Fumero. I leaned over to see Bea running to my side, unhurt. I looked for Carax with eyes that were clouding over, but I couldn't find him. Another figure had taken his place. It was Laín Coubert, just as I'd learned to fear him reading the pages of a book, so many years ago. This time Coubert's claws sank into Fumero's eyes like hooks and pulled him away. I managed to see the inspector's legs as they were hauled out through the library door. I managed to see how his body shook with spasms as Coubert dragged him without pity toward the main door, saw how his knees hit the marble steps and the snow spit on his face, how the man without a face grabbed him by the neck and, lifting him up like a puppet, threw him into the frozen bowl of the fountain; I saw how the hand of the angel pierced his chest, spearing him, how the accursed soul was driven out like black vapor, falling like frozen tears over the mirror of water.

I collapsed then, unable to keep my eyes focused any longer. Darkness became tinted with a white light, and Bea's face receded from me. I closed my eyes and felt her hands on my cheeks and the breath of her voice begging God not to take me, whispering in my ear that she loved me and wouldn't let me go. All I remember is that I let that mirage go and that a strange peace enveloped me and took away the pain of the slow fire that burned inside me. I saw myself and Bea—an elderly couple—walking hand in hand through the streets of Barcelona, that bewitched city. I saw my father and Nuria Monfort placing white roses on my grave. I saw Fermín crying in Bernarda's arms, and my old friend Tomás, who had fallen silent forever. I saw them as one sees strangers from a train that is moving away too fast. It was then, almost without realizing, that I remembered my mother's face, a face I had lost so many years before, as if an old cutting had suddenly fallen out of the pages of a book. Her light was all that came with me as I descended.