“For what?”
“ForThe Shadow of the Wind. ”
“What makes you think I have it?”
“That’s beyond discussion, Daniel. It’s just a question of price. I’ve known you have it for a long time. People talk. I listen.”
“Well, you must have heard wrong. I don’t have that book. And if I did, I wouldn’t sell it.”
“Your integrity is admirable, especially in these days of sycophants and ass lickers, but you don’t have to pretend with me. Say how much. A thousand duros? Money means nothing to me. You set the price.”
“I’ve already told you: it’s not for sale, and I don’t have it,” I replied. “You’ve made a mistake, you see.”
The stranger remained silent and motionless, enveloped in the blue smoke of a cigarette that never seemed to go out. I realized he didn’t smell of tobacco, but of burned paper. Good paper, the sort used for books.
“Perhaps you’re the one who’s making a mistake now,” he suggested.
“Are you threatening me?”
“Probably.”
I gulped. Despite my bravado, the man frightened me out of my skin.
“May I ask why you are so interested?”
“That’s my business.”
“Mine, too, if you are threatening me about a book I don’t have.”
“I like you, Daniel. You’ve got guts, and you seem bright. A thousand duros? With that you could buy a huge amount of books. Good books, not that rubbish you guard with such zeal. Come on, a thousand duros and we’ll remain friends.”
“You and I are not friends.”
“Yes we are, but you haven’t yet realized it. I don’t blame you, with so much on your mind. Your friend Clara, for instance. A woman like that…anyone could lose his senses.”
The mention of Clara’s name froze the blood in my veins. “What do you know about Clara?”
“I daresay I know more than you, and that you’d do best to forget her, although I know you won’t. I too have been sixteen….”
Suddenly a terrible certainty hit me. That man was the anonymous stranger who pestered Clara in the street. He was real. Clara had not lied. The man took a step forward. I moved back. I had never been so frightened in my life.
“Clara doesn’t have the book; you should know that. Don’t you ever dare touch her again.”
“I’m not in the least bit interested in your friend, Daniel, and one day you’ll share my feeling. What I want is the book. And I’d rather obtain it by fair means, without harming anyone. Do you understand?”
Unable to come up with anything better, I decided to lie through my teeth. “Someone called Adrián Neri has it. A musician. You may have heard of him.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell, and that’s the worst thing one can say about a musician. Are you sure you haven’t invented this Adrián Neri?”
“I wish I had.”
“In that case, since you seem to be so close, maybe you could persuade him to return it to you. These things are easily solved between friends. Or would you rather I asked Clara?”
I shook my head. “I’ll speak to Neri, but I don’t think he’ll give it back to me. Perhaps he doesn’t even have it anymore. Anyhow, what do you want the book for? Don’t tell me it’s to read it.”
“No. I know it by heart.”
“Are you a collector?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you have other books by Carax?”
“I’ve had them at some point. Julián Carax is my specialty, Daniel. I travel the world in search of his books.”
“And what do you do with them if you don’t read them?”
The stranger made a stifled, desperate sound. It took me a while to realize that he was laughing.
“The only thing that should be done with them, Daniel,” he answered.
He pulled a box of matches out of his pocket. He took one and struck it. The flame showed his face for the first time. My blood froze. He had no nose, lips, or eyelids. His face was nothing but a mask of black scarred skin, consumed by fire. It was the same dead skin that Clara had touched.
“Burn them,” he whispered, his voice and his eyes poisoned by hate.
A gust of air blew out the match he held in his fingers, and his face was once again hidden in darkness.
“We’ll meet again, Daniel. I never forget a face, and I don’t think you will either,” he said calmly. “For your sake, and for the sake of your friend Clara, I hope you make the right decision. Sort this thing out with Mr. Neri—a rather pretentious name. I wouldn’t trust him an inch.”
With that, the stranger turned around and walked off toward the docks, a shape melting into the shadows, cocooned in his hollow laughter.
·8·
A REEF OF CLOUDS AND LIGHTNING RACED ACROSS THE SKIES FROM the sea. I should have run to take shelter from the approaching downpour, but the man’s words were beginning to sink in. My hands were shaking, and my mind wasn’t far behind. I looked up and saw the storm spilling like rivers of blackened blood from between the clouds, blotting out the moon and covering the roofs and façades of the city in darkness. I tried to pick up the pace, but I was consumed with fear and walked with leaden feet and legs, chased by the rain. I took refuge under the canopy of a newspaper kiosk, trying to collect my thoughts and decide what to do next. A clap of thunder roared close by, and I felt the ground shake under my feet. A few seconds later, the weak current of the lighting system, which had defined the shapes of buildings and windows, faded away. On the flooding sidewalks, the streetlamps blinked, then went out like candles snuffed by the wind. There wasn’t a soul to be seen in the streets, and the darkness of the blackout spread with a fetid smell that rose from the sewers. The night became opaque, impenetrable, as the rain folded the city in its shroud.
“A woman like that…anyone could lose his senses.”
I started to run up the Ramblas with only one thought in mind: Clara.
Bernarda had said Barceló was away on business. It was her day off, and she usually spent the night with her aunt Reme and her cousins in the nearby town of San Adrián del Besós. That left Clara alone in the cavernous Plaza Real apartment and that faceless, menacing man unleashed in the storm with heaven knows what in mind. As I hurried under the downpour toward Plaza Real, all I could think was that I had placed Clara in danger by giving her Carax’s book. When I reached the entrance to the square, I was soaked to the bone. I rushed to take shelter under the arches of Calle Fernando. I thought I saw shadowy forms creeping up behind me. Beggars. The front door was closed. I searched in my pockets for the keys Barceló had given me. One of the tramps came up, petitioning me to let him spend the night in the lobby. I closed the door before he’d had time to finish his sentence.
THE STAIRCASE WAS A WELL OF DARKNESS. FLASHES OF LIGHTNING BLED through the cracks in the front door, lighting up the outline of the steps for a second. I groped my way forward and found the first step by tripping over it. Holding on to the banister, I slowly ascended. Soon the steps gave way to a flat surface, and I realized I had reached the first-floor landing. I felt the marble walls, cold and hostile, and found the reliefs on the oak door and the aluminum doorknobs. After fumbling about for a bit, I managed to insert the key. When the door of the apartment opened, a streak of blue light blinded me for an instant and a gust of warm air graced my skin. Bernarda’s room was in the back of the apartment, by the kitchen. I went there first, although I was sure the maid wasn’t home. I rapped on the door with my knuckles and, as there was no answer, allowed myself to enter. It was a simple room, with a large bed, a cupboard with tinted mirrors, and a chest of drawers on which Bernarda had placed enough effigies and prints of saints and the Virgin Mary to start a holy order. I closed the door, and when I turned around, my heart almost stopped: a dozen scarlet eyes were advancing toward me from the end of the corridor. Barceló’s cats knew me well and tolerated my presence. They surrounded me, meowing gently, but as soon as they realized that my drenc
hed clothes did not give out the desired warmth, they abandoned me with indifference.
Clara’s room was at the other end of the apartment, next to the library and the music room. The cats’ invisible steps followed me through the passageway. In the flickering darkness of the storm, Barceló’s residence seemed vast and sinister, altered from the place I had come to consider my second home. I reached the front of the apartment, where it faced the square. The conservatory opened before me, dense and impassable. I penetrated its jungle of leaves and branches. For a moment it occurred to me that if the faceless stranger had managed to sneak into the apartment, this was where he would probably choose to wait for me. I almost thought I could perceive the smell of burned paper he left in the air around him, but then I realized that what I had detected was only tobacco. A burst of panic needled me. Nobody in the household smoked, and Barceló’s unlit pipe was purely ornamental.
When I reached the music room, the glow from a flash of lightning revealed spirals of smoke that drifted in the air like garlands of vapor. Next to the gallery, the piano keyboard displayed its endless grin. I crossed the music room and went over to the library door. It was closed. I opened it and was welcomed by the brightness from the glass-covered balcony that encircled Barceló’s personal library. The walls, lined with packed bookshelves, formed an oval in whose center stood a reading table and two plush armchairs. I knew that Clara kept Carax’s book in a glass cabinet by the arch of the balcony. I crept up to it. My plan, or my lack of it, was to lay my hands on the book, take it out of there, give it to that lunatic, and lose sight of him forever after. Nobody would notice the book’s absence, except me.
Julián Carax’s book was waiting for me, as it always did, its spine just visible at the end of a shelf. I took it in my hands and pressed it against my chest, as if embracing an old friend whom I was about to betray. Judas, I thought. I decided to leave the place without making Clara aware of my presence. I would take the book and disappear from Clara Barceló’s life forever. Quietly, I stepped out of the library. The door of her bedroom was just visible at the end of the corridor. I pictured her lying on her bed, asleep. I imagined my fingers stroking her neck, exploring a body I had conjured up from my fantasies. I turned around, ready to throw away six years of daydreaming, but something halted my step before I reached the music room. A voice whistling behind me, behind a door. A deep voice that whispered and laughed. In Clara’s room. I walked slowly up to the door. I put my fingers on the doorknob. My fingers trembled. I had arrived too late. I swallowed hard and opened the door.
·9·
CLARA’S NAKED BODY LAY STRETCHED OUT ON WHITE SHEETS that shone like washed silk. Maestro Neri’s hands slid over her lips, her neck, and her breasts. Her white eyes looked up to the ceiling, her eyelids shuddering as the music teacher charged at her, entering her body between her pale and trembling thighs. The same hands that had read my face six years earlier in the gloom of the Ateneo now clutched the maestro’s sweat-glazed buttocks, the nails digging into them, as they guided him toward her with desperate, animal desire. I couldn’t breathe. I must have stayed there, paralyzed, watching them for almost half a minute, until Neri’s eyes, disbelieving at first, then aflame with anger, became aware of my presence. Still panting, astounded, he stopped. Clara grabbed him, not understanding, rubbing her body against his, licking his neck.
“What’s the matter?” she moaned. “Why are you stopping?”
Adrián Neri’s eyes burned with rage. “Nothing,” he murmured. “I’ll be right back.”
Neri stood up and threw himself at me, clenching his fists. I didn’t even see him coming. I couldn’t take my eyes off Clara, wrapped in sweat, breathless, her ribs visible under her skin and her breasts quivering. The music teacher grabbed me by the neck and dragged me out of the bedroom. My feet were barely touching the floor, and however hard I tried, I was unable to escape Neri’s grip, as he carried me like a bundle through the conservatory.
“I’m going to break your neck, you wretch,” he muttered.
He hauled me toward the front door, opened it, and flung me with all his might onto the landing. Carax’s book slipped out of my hands. He picked it up and threw it furiously at my face.
“If I ever see you around here again, or if I find out that you’ve gone up to Clara in the street, I swear I’ll give you such a beating you’ll end up in the hospital—and I don’t give a shit how young you are,” he said in a cold voice. “Understood?”
I got up with difficulty. In the struggle Neri had torn my jacket and my pride.
“How did you get in?”
I didn’t answer. Neri sighed, shaking his head. “Come on,” he barked, barely containing his fury. “Give me the keys.”
“What keys?”
He punched me so hard I collapsed. When I got up, there was blood in my mouth and a ringing in my left ear that bored through my head like a policeman’s whistle. I touched my face and felt the cut on my lips burning under my fingers. A bloodstained signet ring shone on the music teacher’s finger.
“I said the keys.”
“Piss off,” I spit out.
I didn’t see the next blow coming. I just felt as if a jackhammer had torn my stomach out. I folded up, like a broken puppet, unable to breathe, staggering back against the wall. Neri grabbed me by my hair and rummaged in my pockets until he found the keys. I slid down to the floor, holding my stomach, whimpering with agony and anger.
“Tell Clara that—”
He slammed the door in my face, leaving me in complete darkness. I groped around for the book. I found it and slid down the stairs with it, leaning against the walls, panting. I went outside spitting blood and gasping for breath. The biting cold and the wind tightened around my soaking clothes. The cut on my face was stinging.
“Are you all right?” asked a voice in the shadow.
It was the beggar I had refused to help a short time before. Feeling ashamed, I nodded, avoiding his eyes. I started to walk away.
“Wait a minute, at least until the rain eases off,” the beggar suggested.
He took me by the arm and led me to a corner under the arches where he kept a bundle of possessions and a bag with old, dirty clothes.
“I have a bit of wine. It’s not too bad. Drink a little. It will help you warm up. And disinfect that…”
I took a swig from the bottle he offered me. It tasted of diesel oil laced with vinegar, but its heat calmed my stomach and my nerves. A few drops sprinkled over my wound, and I saw stars in the blackest night of my life.
“Good, isn’t it?” The beggar smiled. “Go on, have another shot. This stuff can raise a person back from the dead.”
“No thanks. You have some,” I mumbled.
The beggar had a long drink. I watched him closely. He looked like some gray government accountant who had been sleeping in the same suit for the last fifteen years. He stretched out his hand, and I shook it.
“Fermín Romero de Torres, currently unemployed. Pleased to meet you.”
“Daniel Sempere, complete idiot. The pleasure is all mine.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. On nights like this, everything looks worse than it is. You’d never guess it, but I’m a born optimist. I have no doubt at all that the present regime’s days are numbered. All intelligence points toward the Americans invading us any day now and setting Franco up with a peanut stand down in Melilla. Then my position, my reputation, and my lost honor will be restored.”
“What did you work at?”
“Secret service. High espionage,” said Fermín Romero de Torres. “Suffice it to say that I was President Maciá’s man in Havana.”
I nodded. Another madman. At night Barcelona gathered them in by the handful. And idiots like me, too.
“Listen, that cut doesn’t look good to me. They’ve given you quite a tanning, eh?”
I touched my mouth with my fingers. It was still bleeding.
“Woman trouble?” he asked. “You could have saved yourself
the effort. Women in this country—and I’ve seen a bit of the world—are a sanctimonious, frigid lot. Believe me. I remember a little mulatto girl I left behind in Cuba. No comparison, eh? No comparison. The Caribbean female draws up to you with that island swing of hers and whispers ‘Ay, papito,gimme pleasure, gimme pleasure.’ And a real man, with blood in his veins…well, what can I say?”
It seemed to me that Fermín Romero de Torres, or whatever his true name was, longed for lighthearted conversation almost as much as he longed for a hot bath, a plate of stew, and a clean change of clothes. I got him going for a while, as I waited for my pain to subside. It wasn’t very difficult, because all the man needed was a nod at the right moment and someone who appeared to be listening. The beggar was about to recount the details of a bizarre plan for kidnapping Franco’s wife when I saw that the rain had abated and the storm seemed to be slowly moving away toward the north.
“It’s getting late,” I mumbled, standing up.
Fermín Romero de Torres nodded with a sad look and helped me get up, making as if he were dusting down my drenched clothes.
“Some other day, then,” he said in a resigned tone. “I’m afraid talking is my undoing. Once I start…Listen, this business about the kidnapping, it should go no further, understand?”
“Don’t worry. I’m as silent as a grave. And thanks for the wine.”
I set off toward the Ramblas. I stopped by the entrance to the square and turned to look at the Barcelós’ apartment. The windows were still in darkness, weeping with rain. I wanted to hate Clara but was unable to. To truly hate is an art one learns with time.
I swore to myself that I would never see her again, that I wouldn’t mention her name or remember the time I had wasted by her side. For some strange reason, I felt at peace. The anger that had driven me out of my home had gone. I was afraid it would return, and with renewed vigor, the following day. I was afraid that jealousy and shame would slowly consume me once all the pieces of my memory of that night fell into place. But dawn was still a few hours away, and there was one more thing I had to do before I could return home with a clean conscience.