The Shadow of the Wind (4 page)

5

There was a time, in my childhood, when, perhaps because I had been raised among books and booksellers, I dreamed of becoming a novelist. The root of my literary ambitions, apart from the marvellous simplicity with which one sees things at the age of five, lay in a prodigious piece of craftsmanship and precision that was exhibited in a fountain pen shop on Calle Anselmo Clave, just behind the Military Government building. The object of my devotion, a plush black pen, adorned with heaven knows how many refinements and flourishes, presided over the shop window as if it were the crown jewels. A baroque fantasy magnificently wrought in silver and gold that shone like the lighthouse at Alexandria, the nib was a wonder in its own right. When my father and I went out for a walk, I wouldn't stop pestering him until he took me to see the pen. My father declared that it must be, at the very least, the pen of an emperor. I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopaedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations. Written with that pen, they would surely reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.

One day we decided to go into the shop and inquire about the blessed artefact. It turned out to be the queen of all fountain pens, a Montblanc Meisterstuck in a numbered series, that had once belonged, or so the shop attendant assured us, to Victor Hugo himself. From that gold nib, we were informed, had sprung the manuscript of Les Miserables.

'Just as Vichy Catalan water springs from the source at Caldas,' the clerk swore.

He told us he had bought it personally from the most serious collector from Paris, and that he had assured himself of the item's authenticity.

'And what is the price of this fountain of marvels, if you don't mind telling me?' my father asked.

The very mention of the sum drew the colour from his face, but I had already fallen under its spell. The clerk, who seemed to think we understood physics, began to assail us with incomprehensible gibberish about the alloys of precious metals, enamels from the Far East and a revolutionary theory on pistons and communicating chambers, all of which contributed to the Teutonic science underpinning the glorious stroke of that champion of scrivening technology. I have to say in his favour that, despite the fact that we must have looked like two poor devils, the clerk allowed us to handle the pen as much as we liked, filled it with ink for us, and offered me a piece of parchment so that I could write my name and thus commence my literary career in the footsteps of Victor Hugo. Then, after polishing it with a cloth to restore its shiny splendour, he returned the pen to its throne.

'Perhaps another day,' mumbled my father.

Once we were out in the street again, he told me in a subdued voice that we couldn't afford the asking price. The bookshop provided just enough to keep us afloat and send me to a decent school. The great Victor Hugo's Montblanc pen would have to wait. I didn't say anything, but my father must have noticed my disappointment.

'I tell you what we'll do,' he proposed. 'When you're old enough to start writing, we'll come back and buy it.'

'What if someone buys it first?'

'No one is going to take this one, you can be quite sure. And if not, we can ask Don Federico to make us one. That man has the hands of a master.'

Don Federico was the local watchmaker, an occasional customer at the bookshop, and probably the most polite and courteous man in the whole of the Northern Hemisphere. His reputation as a craftsman preceded him from the Ribera quarter to the Ninot Market. Another reputation haunted him as well, this one of a less salubrious nature, related to his erotic proclivity for muscular young men from the more virile ranks of the proletariat, and to a certain penchant for dressing up like the music-hall star Estrellita Castro.

'What if Don Federico doesn't have the right tools for the job?' I asked, unaware that to less innocent ears, the phrase might have had a salacious echo.

My father arched an eyebrow, fearing perhaps that some foul rumours might have sullied my innocence.

'Don Federico is very knowledgeable about all things German and could make a Volkswagen if he put his mind to it. Besides, I'd like to find out whether fountain pens existed in Victor Hugo's day. There are a lot of con artists about.'

My father's zeal for historical fact checking left me cold. I believed obstinately in the pen's illustrious past, even though I didn't think it was such a bad idea for Don Federico to make me a substitute. There would be time enough to reach the heights of Victor Hugo. To my consolation, and true to my father's predictions, the Montblanc pen remained for years in that shop window, which we visited religiously every Saturday morning.

'It's still there,' I would say, astounded.

'It's waiting for you,' my father would say. 'It knows that one day it will be yours and that you'll write a masterpiece with it.'

‘I want to write a letter. To Mummy. So that she doesn't feel lonely.'

My father regarded me. 'Your mother isn't lonely, Daniel. She's with God. And with us, even if we can't see her.'

This very same theory had been formulated for me in school by Father Vicente, a veteran Jesuit expert at expounding on all the mysteries of the universe - from the gramophone to a toothache -quoting the Gospel According to Matthew. Yet on my father's lips, the words sounded hollow.

'And what does God want her for?'

'I don't know. If one day we see Him, we'll ask Him.'

Eventually I discarded the idea of the celestial letter and concluded that, while I was at it, I may as well begin with the masterpiece - that would be more practical. In the absence of the pen, my father lent me a Staedtler pencil, a number two, with which I scribbled in a notebook. Unsurprisingly, my story told of an extraordinary fountain pen, remarkably similar to the one in the shop, though enchanted. To be more precise, the pen was possessed by the tortured soul of its previous owner, a novelist who had died of hunger and cold. When the pen fell into the hands of an apprentice, it insisted on reproducing the author's last work, which he had not been able to finish in his lifetime. I don't remember where I got that idea from, but I never again had another one like it. My attempts to re-create the novel on the pages of my notebook turned out to be disastrous. My syntax was plagued by an anaemic creativity, and my metaphorical flights reminded me of the advertisements for fizzy footbaths that I used to read in tram stops. I blamed the pencil and longed for the pen, which was bound to turn me into a master writer.

My father followed my tortuous progress with a mixture of pride and concern,

'How's your story going, Daniel?'

'I don't know. I suppose if I had the pen, everything would be different.'

My father told me that sort of reasoning could only have occurred to a budding author. 'Just keep going, and before you've finished your first work, I'll buy it for you.'

'Do you promise?'

He always answered with a smile. Luckily for my father, my literary dreams soon dwindled and were minced into mere oratory. What contributed to this was the discovery of mechanical toys and all sorts of tin gadgets you could find in the bric-a-brac stalls of the Encantes Market, at prices that were better suited to our finances. Childhood devotions make unfaithful and fickle lovers, and soon I had eyes only for Meccano and wind-up boats. I stopped asking my father to take me to see Victor Hugo's pen, and he didn't mention it again. That world seemed to have vanished, but for a long time the image I had of my father, which I still preserve today, was that of a thin man wearing an old suit that was too large for him and a secondhand hat he had bought on Calle Condal for seven pesetas, a man who could not afford to buy his son a wretched pen that was useless but seemed to mean everything to him.

When I returned from Clara and the Ateneo that night, my father was waiting for me in the dining room, wearing his usual expression of anxiety and defeat.

'I was beginning to think you'd got lost somewhere,' he said. 'Tomas Aguilar phoned. He said you'd arranged to meet. Did you forget?'

'It's Barcelo. When he starts talking there's no stopping him,' I replied, nodding as I spoke. 'I didn't know how to shake him off.'

'He's a good man, but he does go on. You must be hungry. Merceditas brought down some of the soup she made for her mother. That girl is an angel'

We sat down at the table to savour Merceditas's offering. She was the daughter of the lady on the third floor, and everyone had her down to become a nun and a saint, although more than once I'd seen her with an able-handed sailor who sometimes walked her back to the shop. She always drowned him with kisses.

'You look pensive tonight,' said my father, trying to make conversation.

'It must be this humidity, it "dilates" the brain. That's what Barcelo says.'

'It must be something else. Is anything worrying you, Daniel?'

'No. Just thinking.'

'What about?'

'The war.'

My father nodded gloomily and quietly sipped his soup. He was a very private person, and although he lived in the past, he hardly ever mentioned it. I had grown up convinced that the slow procession of the postwar years, a world of stillness, poverty, and hidden resentment, was as natural as tap water, that the mute sadness that seeped from the walls of the wounded city was the real face of its soul. One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep. That evening in early summer, as I walked back through the sombre, treacherous twilight of Barcelona, I could not blot out Clara's story about her father's disappearance. In my world death was like a nameless and incomprehensible hand, a door-to-door salesman who took away mothers, beggars, or ninety-year-old neighbours, like a hellish lottery. But I couldn't absorb the idea that death could actually walk by my side, with a human face and a heart that was poisoned with hatred, that death could be dressed in a uniform or a raincoat, queue up at a cinema, laugh in bars, or take his children out for a walk to Ciudadela Park in the morning, and then, in the afternoon, make someone disappear in the dungeons of Montjuic Castle or in a common grave with no name or ceremony. Going over all this in my mind, it occurred to me that perhaps the papier-mache world that I accepted as real was only a stage setting. Much like the arrival of Spanish trains, in those stolen years you never knew when the end of childhood was due.

We shared the soup, a broth made from leftovers with bits of bread in it, surrounded by the sticky droning of radio soaps that filtered out through open windows into the church square.

'So tell me. How did things go with Gustavo today?'

'I met his niece, Clara.'

'The blind girl? I hear she's a real beauty.'

'I don't know. I don't notice things like that.'

'You'd better not.'

'I told them I might go to their house tomorrow, after school, to read to her for a while - as she's so lonely. If you'll let me.'

My father looked at me askance, as if he were wondering whether he was growing old prematurely or whether I was growing up too quickly. I decided to change the subject, and the only one I could find was the one that was consuming me.

'Is it true that during the war people were taken to Montjuic Castle and were never seen again?'

My father finished his spoonful of soup unperturbed and looked closely at me, his brief smile slipping away from his lips.

'Who told you that. Barcelo?'

'No. Tomas Aguilar. He sometimes tells stories at school.'

My father nodded slowly.

'When there's a war, things happen that are very hard to explain, Daniel. Often even I don't know what they really mean. Sometimes it's best to leave things alone.'