The Shadow of the Wind (2 page)

DAYS OF ASHES 1945-1949

1

A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept. My first thought on waking was to tell my best friend about the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Tomas Aguilar was a classmate who devoted his free time and his talent to the invention of wonderfully ingenious but bizarre contraptions such as the aerostatic dart or the dynamo spinning top. I pictured us both, equipped with torches and compasses, uncovering the mysteries of those bibliographic catacombs. Who better than Tomas to share my secret? Then, remembering my promise, I decided that circumstances advised me to adopt what in detective novels is termed a different 'modus operandi'. At noon I approached my father to quiz him about the book and about Julian Carax - both of which must be famous, I assumed. My plan was to get my hands on the complete works and read them all by the end of the week. To my surprise, I discovered that my father, a natural-born librarian and a walking lexicon of publishers' catalogues and oddities, had never heard of The Shadow of the Wind or Julian Carax. Intrigued, he examined the printing history on the back of the title page for clues.

'It says here that this copy is part of an edition of two thousand five hundred printed in Barcelona by Cabestany Editores, in June 1936.'

'Do you know the publishing house?'

'It closed down years ago. But, wait, this is not the original. The first edition came out in November of 1935, but was printed in Paris. . .. Published by Galiano & Neuval. Doesn't ring a bell.'

'So is this a translation?'

'It doesn't say so. From what I can see, the text must be the original one.'

'A book in Spanish, first published in France?'

'It's not that unusual, not in times like these,' my father put in. 'Perhaps Barcelo can help us. . . .'

Gustavo Barcelo was an old colleague of my father's who now owned a cavernous establishment on Calle Fernando with a commanding position in the city's secondhand-book trade. Perpetually affixed to his mouth was an unlit pipe that impregnated his person with the aroma of a Persian market. He liked to describe himself as the last romantic, and he was not above claiming that a remote line in his ancestry led directly to Lord Byron himself. As if to prove this connection, Barcelo fashioned his wardrobe in the style of a nineteenth-century dandy. His casual attire consisted of a cravat, white patent leather shoes, and a plain glass monocle that, according to malicious gossip, he did not remove even in the intimacy of the lavatory. Flights of fancy aside, the most significant relative in his lineage was his begetter, an industrialist who had become fabulously wealthy by questionable means at the end of the nineteenth century. According to my father, Gustavo Barcelo was, technically speaking, loaded, and his palatial bookshop was more of a passion than a business. He loved books unreservedly, and - although he denied this categorically - if someone stepped into his bookshop and fell in love with a tome he could not afford, Barcelo would lower its price, or even give it away, if he felt that the buyer was a serious reader and not an accidental browser. Barcelo also boasted an elephantine memory allied to a pedantry that matched his demeanour and the sonority of his voice. If anyone knew about odd books, it was he. That afternoon, after closing the shop, my father suggested that we stroll along to the Els Quatre Gats, a cafe on Calle Montsio, where Barcelo and his bibliophile knights of the round table gathered to discuss the finer points of decadent poets, dead languages, and neglected, moth-ridden masterpieces.

Els Quatre Gats was just a five-minute walk from our house and one of my favourite haunts. My parents had met there in 1932, and I attributed my one-way ticket into this world in part to the old cafe's charms. Stone dragons guarded a lamplit facade. Inside, voices seemed to echo with shadows of other times. Accountants, dreamers, and would-be geniuses shared tables with the spectres of Pablo Picasso, Isaac Albeniz, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Salvador Dali. There any poor devil could pass for a historical figure for the price of a small coffee.

'Sempere, old man,' proclaimed Barcelo when he saw my father come in. 'Hail the prodigal son. To what do we owe the honour?'

'You owe the honour to my son, Daniel, Don Gustavo. He's just made a discovery.'

'Well, then, pray come and sit down with us, for we must celebrate this ephemeral event,' he announced.

'Ephemeral?' I whispered to my father.

'Barcelo can only express himself in frilly words,' my father whispered back. 'Don't say anything, or he'll get carried away.'

The lesser members of the coterie made room for us in their circle, and Barcelo, who enjoyed flaunting his generosity in public, insisted on treating us.

'How old is the lad?' inquired Barcelo, inspecting me out of the corner of his eye.

'Almost eleven,' I announced.

Barcelo flashed a sly smile.

'In other words, ten. Don't add on any years, you rascal. Life will see to that without your help.'

A few of his chums grumbled in assent. Barcelo signalled to a waiter of such remarkable decreptitude that he looked as if he should be declared a national landmark.

'A cognac for my friend Sempere, from the good bottle, and a cinnamon milkshake for the young one - he's a growing boy. And bring us some bits of ham, but spare us the delicacies you brought us earlier, eh? If we fancy rubber, we'll call for Pirelli tyres.'

The waiter nodded and left, dragging his feet.

'I hate to bring up the subject,' Barcelo said, 'but how can there be jobs? In this country nobody ever retires, not even after they're dead. Just look at El Cid. I tell you, we're a hopeless case.'

He sucked on his cold pipe, eyes already scanning the book in my hands. Despite his pretentious facade and his verbosity, Barcelo could smell good prey the way a wolf scents blood.

'Let me see,' he said, feigning disinterest. 'What have we here?'

I glanced at my father. He nodded approvingly. Without further ado, I handed Barcelo the book. The bookseller greeted it with expert hands. His pianist's fingers quickly explored its texture, consistency, and condition. He located the page with the publication and printer's notices and studied it with Holmesian flair. The rest of us watched in silence, as if awaiting a miracle, or permission to breathe again.

'Carax. Interesting,' he murmured in an inscrutable tone.

I held out my hand to recover the book. Barcelo arched his eyebrows but gave it back with an icy smile.

'Where did you find it, young man?'

'It's a secret,' I answered, knowing that my father would be smiling to himself. Barcelo frowned and looked at my father. 'Sempere, my dearest old friend, because it's you and because of the high esteem I hold you in and in honour of the long and profound friendship that unites us like brothers, let's call it at forty duros, end of story.'

'You'll have to discuss that with my son,' my father pointed out. 'The book is his.'

Barcelo granted me a wolfish smile. 'What do you say, laddie? Forty duros isn't bad for a first sale. . . . Sempere, this boy of yours will make a name for himself in the business.'

The choir cheered his remark. Barcelo gave me a triumphant look and pulled out his leather wallet. He ceremoniously counted out two hundred pesetas, which in those days was quite a fortune, and handed them to me. But I just shook my head. Barcelo scowled.

'Dear boy, greed is most certainly an ugly, not to say mortal, sin. Be sensible. Call me crazy, but I'll raise that to sixty duros, and you can open a retirement fund. At your age you must start thinking of the future.'

I shook my head again. Barcelo shot a poisonous look at my father through his monocle.

'Don't look at me,' said my father. 'I'm only here as an escort.'

Barcelo sighed and peered at me closely.

'Let's see, junior. What is it you want?'

'What I want is to know who Julian Carax is and where I can find other books he's written.'

Barcelo chuckled and pocketed his wallet, reconsidering his adversary.

'Goodness, a scholar. Sempere, what do you feed the boy on?'

The bookseller leaned towards me confidentially, and for a second I thought he betrayed a look of respect that had not been there a few moments earlier.

'We'll make a deal,' he said. 'Tomorrow, Sunday, in the afternoon, drop by the Ateneo library and ask for me. Bring your precious find with you so that I can examine it properly, and I'll tell you what I know about Julian Carax. Quid pro quo.'

'Quid pro what?'

'Latin, young man. There's no such thing as a dead language, only dormant minds. Paraphrasing, it means that you can't get something for nothing, but since I like you, I'm going to do you a favour.'

The man's oratory could kill flies in midair, but I suspected that if I wanted to find out anything about Julian Carax, I'd be well advised to stay on good terms with him. I proffered my most saintly smile in delight at his Latin outpourings.

'Remember, tomorrow, in the Ateneo,' pronounced the bookseller. 'But bring the book, or there's no deal.'

'Fine.'

Our conversation slowly merged into the murmuring of the other members of the coffee set. The discussion turned to some documents found in the basement of El Escorial that hinted at the possibility that Don Miguel de Cervantes had in fact been the nom de plume of a large, hairy lady of letters from Toledo. Barcelo seemed distracted, not tempted to claim a share in the debate. He remained quiet, observing me from his fake monocle with a masked smile. Or perhaps he was only looking at the book I held in my hands.

2

That Sunday, clouds spilled down from the sky and swamped the streets with a hot mist that made the thermometers on the walls perspire. Halfway through the afternoon, the temperature was already grazing the nineties as I set off towards Calle Canuda for my appointment with Barcelo, carrying the book under my arm and with beads of sweat on my forehead. The Ateneo was - and remains - one of the many places in Barcelona where the nineteenth century has not yet been served its eviction notice. A grand stone staircase led up from a palatial courtyard to a ghostly network of passageways and reading rooms. There, inventions such as the telephone, the wristwatch, and haste, seemed futuristic anachronisms. The porter, or perhaps it was a statue in uniform, barely noticed my arrival. I glided up to the first floor, blessing the blades of a fan that swirled above the sleepy readers melting like ice cubes over their books.

Don Gustavo's profile was outlined against the windows of a gallery that overlooked the building's interior garden. Despite the almost tropical atmosphere, he sported his customary foppish attire, his monocle shining in the dark like a coin at the bottom of a well. Next to him was a figure swathed in a white alpaca dress who looked to me like an angel.

When Barcelo heard the echo of my footsteps, he half closed his eyes and signalled for me to come nearer. 'Daniel, isn't it?' asked the bookseller. 'Did you bring the book?'

I nodded on both counts and accepted the chair Barcelo offered me next to him and his mysterious companion. For a while the bookseller only smiled placidly, taking no notice of my presence. I soon abandoned all hope of being introduced to the lady in white, whoever she might be. Barcelo behaved as if she wasn't there and neither of us could see her. I cast a sidelong glance at her, afraid of meeting her eyes, which stared vacantly into the distance. The skin on her face and arms was pale, almost translucent. Her features were sharp, sketched with firm strokes and framed by a black head of hair that shone like damp stone. I guessed she must be, at most, twenty, but there was something about her manner that made me think she could be ageless. She seemed trapped in that state of perpetual youth reserved for mannequins in shop windows. I was trying to catch any sign of a pulse under her swan's neck when I realized that Barcelo was staring at me.

'So are you going to tell me where you found the book?' he asked.

'I would, but I promised my father I would keep the secret,' I explained.

'I see. Sempere and his mysteries,' said Barcelo. 'I think I can guess where. You've hit the jackpot, son. That's what I call finding a needle in a field of lilies. May I have a look?'

I handed him the book, and Barcelo took it with infinite care. 'You've read it, I suppose.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I envy you. I've always thought that the best time to read Carax is when one still has a young heart and a blank soul. Did you know that this was the last novel he wrote?'

I shook my head.

'Do you know how many copies like this one there are on the market, Daniel?'

'Thousands, I suppose.'

'None,' Barcelo specified. 'Only yours. The rest were burned.'

'Burned?'

For an answer Barcelo only smiled enigmatically while he leafed through the book, stroking the paper as if it were a rare silk. The lady in white turned slowly. Her lips formed a timid and trembling smile. Her eyes groped the void, pupils white as marble. I gulped. She was blind.

'You don't know my niece, Clara, do you?' asked Barcelo.

I could only shake my head, unable to take my eyes off the woman with the china doll's complexion and white eyes, the saddest eyes I had ever seen.

'Actually, the expert on Julian Carax is Clara, which is why I brought her along,' said Barcelo. In fact I think I'll retire to another room, if you don't mind, to examine this tome while you get to know each other. Is that all right?'

I looked at him aghast. The scoundrel gave me a little pat on the back and left with my book under his arm.

'You've impressed him, you know,' said the voice behind me.

I turned to discover the faint smile of the bookseller's niece. Her voice was pure crystal, transparent and so fragile I feared that her words would break if I interrupted them.

'My uncle said he offered you a good sum of money for the Carax, but you refused it,' Clara added. 'You have earned his respect.'

'All evidence to the contrary,' I sighed.

I noticed that when she smiled, Clara leaned her head slightly to one side and her fingers played with a ring that looked like a wreath of sapphires.

'How old are you?' she asked.

'Almost eleven,' I replied. 'How old are you, Miss Clara?'

Clara laughed at my cheeky innocence.

'Almost twice your age, but even so, there's no need to call me Miss Clara.'

'You seem younger, miss,' I remarked, hoping that this would prove a good way out of my indiscretion.

'I'll trust you, then, because I don't know what I look like,' she answered. 'But if I seem younger to you, all the more reason to drop the "miss".'

'Whatever you say, Miss Clara.'

I observed her hands spread like wings on her lap, the suggestion of her fragile waist under the alpaca folds, the shape of her shoulders, the extreme paleness of her neck, the line of her lips, which I would have given my soul to stroke with the tip of my fingers. Never before had I had a chance to examine a woman so closely and with such precision, yet without the danger of meeting her eyes.

'What are you looking at?' asked Clara, not without a pinch of malice.

'Your uncle says you're an expert on Julian Carax, miss,' I improvised. My mouth felt dry.

'My uncle would say anything if that bought him a few minutes alone with a book that fascinates him,' explained Clara. 'But you must be wondering how someone who is blind can be a book expert'

'The thought had not crossed my mind.'

'For someone who is almost eleven, you're not a bad liar. Be careful, or you'll end up like my uncle.'

Fearful of making yet another faux pas, I decided to remain silent. I just sat gawking at her, imbibing her presence.

'Here, come, get closer,' Clara said.

'Pardon me?'

'Come closer, don't be afraid. I won't bite you.'

I left my chair and went over to where she was sitting. The bookseller's niece raised her right hand, trying to find me. Without quite knowing what to do, I, too, stretched out my hand towards her. She took it in her left hand and, without saying anything, offered me her right hand. Instinctively I understood what she was asking me to do, and guided her to my face. Her touch was both firm and delicate. Her fingers ran over my cheeks and cheekbones. I stood there motionless, hardly daring to breathe, while Clara read my features with her hands. While she did, she smiled to herself, and I noticed a slight movement of her lips, like a voiceless murmuring. I felt the brush of her hands on my forehead, on my hair and eyelids. She paused on my lips, following their shape with her forefinger and ring finger. Her fingers smelled of cinnamon. I swallowed, feeling my pulse race, and gave silent thanks that there were no eyewitnesses to my blushing, which could have set a cigar alight even a foot away.