The Shadow of the Wind (34 page)

The police and Jausa's lawyers were responsible for closing the file on the case, but the nabob Jausa wanted to continue. It was at this point that he met Don Ricardo Aldaya - by then a rich industrialist with a colourful reputation for his womanizing and his leonine temper - who offered to buy the property off him with the intention of knocking it down and reselling it at a healthy profit: the value of land in that area was soaring. Jausa did not agree to sell, but he invited Ricardo Aldaya to visit the house and observe what he called a scientific and spiritual experiment. No one had entered the property since the investigation had ended. What Aldaya witnessed in there left him speechless. Jausa had completely lost his mind. The dark shadow of Marisela's blood still covered the walls. Jausa had summoned an inventor, a pioneer in the technological novelty of the moment, the cinematograph. His name was Fructuos Gelabert, and he'd agreed to Jausa's demands in exchange for funds with which to build a film studio in the Valles region, for he felt sure that, during the twentieth century, moving pictures would supplant organized religion. Apparently Jausa was convinced that the spirit of Marisela had remained in the house. He asserted that he could feel her presence, her voice, her smell, and even her touch in the dark. When they heard these stories, Jausa's servants had immediately fled in search of less stressful employment in the neighbouring Sarria district, where there were plenty more mansions and families incapable of filling up a bucket of water or darning their own socks.

Jausa, left on his own, sank further into his obsession with his invisible spectres. He decided that the answer to his woes lay in making the invisible visible. He had already had a chance to see some of the results of the invention of cinematography in New York, and he shared the opinion of the deceased Marisela that the camera swallowed up souls. Following this line of reasoning, he commissioned Fructuos Gelabert to shoot yards and yards of film in the corridors of The Angel of Mist, in search of signs and visions from the other world. Despite the cinematographer's noble efforts, the scientific pursuit of Jausa's phantoms proved futile.

Everything changed when Gelabert announced that he'd received a new type of sensitive film straight from the Thomas Edison factory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. The new stock made it possible to shoot in extremely low light conditions - below candlelight - something unheard of at the time. Then, in circumstances that were never made clear, one of the assistants in Gelabert's laboratory accidentally poured some sparkling Xarelo wine from the Penedes region into the developing tray. As a result of the chemical reaction, strange shapes began to appear on the exposed film. This was the film Jausa wanted to show Don Ricardo Aldaya the night he invited him to his ghostly abode at number 32, Avenida del Tibidabo.

When Aldaya heard this, he supposed that Gelabert was afraid of losing Jausa's funding and had resorted to such an elaborate ruse to keep his patron's interest alive. Whatever the truth, Jausa had no doubt about the reliability of the results. Moreover, where others saw only shapes and shadows, he saw revenants. He swore he could see the silhouette of Marisela materializing under a shroud, a shadow that then mutated into a wolf and walked upright. Alas, all Ricardo Aldaya could see during the screening was large stains. He also maintained that both the film itself and the technician who operated the projector stank of wine and other entirely earthly spirits. Nonetheless, being a sharp businessman, the industrialist sensed that he could turn the situation to his advantage. A mad millionaire who was alone and obsessed with capturing ectoplasm on film constituted the ideal victim. So Aldaya agreed with him and encouraged him to continue with his enterprise. For weeks Gelabert and his men shot miles of film that was then developed in different tanks using chemical solutions diluted with exotic liqueurs, red wine blessed in the Ninot parish church, and all kinds of cava from the Tarragona vineyards. Between screenings, Jausa transferred powers, signed authorizations, and conferred the control of his financial reserves to Ricardo Aldaya.

Jausa vanished one November night of that year during a storm. Nobody knew what had become of him. Apparently he was developing one of Gelabert's special rolls of film himself when he met with an accident. Don Ricardo Aldaya asked Gelabert to recover the roll. After viewing it in private, Aldaya personally opted to set fire to it. Then, with the aid of a very generous cheque, he suggested to the technician that he forget all about the incident. By then Aldaya was already the owner of most of the properties belonging to the vanished Jausa. There were those who said that the deceased Marisela had returned to take Jausa with her to hell. Others pointed out that a beggar, who greatly resembled the deceased millionaire, was seen for a few months afterwards in the grounds of Ciudadela Park, until a black carriage with drawn curtains ran over him in the middle of the day, without bothering to stop. The stories spread: the dark legend of the rambling mansion, like the invasion of Cuban music in the city's dance halls, could not be contained.

A few months later, Don Ricardo Aldaya moved his family into the house in Avenida del Tibidabo, where, two weeks after their arrival, the couple's youngest child, Penelope, was born. To celebrate the occasion, Aldaya renamed the house 'Villa Penelope'. The new name, however, never stuck. The house had its own character and proved immune to the influence of its new owners. The recent arrivals complained about noises and banging on the walls at night, sudden putrid smells and freezing draughts that seemed to roam through the house like wandering sentinels. The mansion was a compendium of mysteries. It had a double basement, with a sort of crypt, as yet unused, on the lower level. On the higher floor, a chapel was dominated by a large polychrome figure of the crucified Christ, which the servants thought looked disturbingly like Rasputin - a very popular character in the press of the time. The books in the library were constantly being mysteriously rearranged, or turned back to front. There was a room on the third floor, a bedroom that was never used because of the unaccountable damp stains that showed up on the walls and seemed to form blurry faces, where fresh flowers would wilt in just a few minutes and where you could always hear the drone of flies, although it was impossible to see them.

The cooks swore that certain items, such as sugar, disappeared from the larder as if by magic and that the milk took on a red hue at every new moon. Occasionally they found dead birds at the doors of some of the rooms, or small rodents. Other times things went missing, especially jewels and buttons from clothes kept in cupboards and drawers. Sometimes the missing objects would mysteriously reappear, months later, in remote corners of the house or buried in the garden. But usually they were never found again. Don Ricardo was of the opinion that these incidents were nothing but pranks and nonsense. In his view a week's fasting would have curbed his family's fears. What he didn't regard so philosophically were the thefts of his dear wife's jewellery. More than five maids were sacked when different items from the lady's jewellery box disappeared, though they all cried their hearts out, swearing they were innocent. Those in the know tended to think there was no mystery involved: the explanation lay in Don Ricardo's regrettable habit of slipping into the bedrooms of the younger maids at midnight for some extramarital fun and games. His reputation in. this field was almost as notorious as his fortune, and there were those who said that at the rate his exploits were taking place, the illegitimate children he left behind would be able to organize their own union.

The fact was that not only jewels disappeared. In time the family lost its joie de vivre entirely. The Aldaya family was never happy in the house that had been acquired through Don Ricardo's dark arts of negotiation. Senora Aldaya pleaded constantly with her husband to sell the property and move them to a home in the town, or even return to the residence that Puig i Cadafalch had built for grandfather Simon, the patriarch of the clan. Ricardo Aldaya flatly refused. Since he spent most of his time travelling or in the family's factories, he saw no problem with the house. On one occasion little Jorge disappeared for eight hours inside the mansion. His mother and the servants looked for him desperately, but without success. When he reappeared, pale and dazed, he said he'd been in the library the whole time, in the company of a mysterious black woman who had been showing him old photographs and had told him that all the women in the family would die in that house to atone for the sins of the men. The mysterious woman even revealed to little Jorge the date on which his mother would die: 12 April 1921. Needless to say, the so-called black lady was never found, but years later, on 12 April 1921, at first light, Senora Aldaya would be discovered lifeless on her bed. All her jewels had disappeared. When the pond in the courtyard was drained, one of the servant boys found them in the mud at the bottom, next to a doll that had belonged to her daughter, Penelope.

A week later Don Ricardo Aldaya decided to get rid of the house. By then his financial empire was already in its death throes, and there were those who insinuated that it was all due to that accursed house, which brought misfortune to whoever occupied it. Others, the more cautious ones, simply asserted that Aldaya had never understood the changing trends of the market and that all he had accomplished during his lifetime was to ruin the robust business created by the patriarch Simon. Ricardo Aldaya announced that he was leaving Barcelona and moving with his family to Argentina, where his textile industries were allegedly doing splendidly. Many believed he was fleeing from failure and shame.

In 1922 The Angel of Mist was put up for sale at a ridiculously low price. At first there was strong interest in buying it, as much for its notoriety as for the growing prestige of the neighbourhood, but none of the potential buyers made an offer after visiting the house. In 1923 the mansion was closed. The deed was transferred to a real-estate company high up on the long list of Aldaya's creditors, so that it could arrange for its sale or demolition. The house was on the market for years, but the firm was unable to find a buyer. The said company, Botell i Llofre S.L., went bankrupt in 1939 when its two partners were sent to prison on unknown charges. After the unexplained fatal accident that befell both men in the San Vicens jail in 1940, it was taken over by a financial group, among whose shareholders were three fascist generals and a Swiss banker. This company's executive director turned out to be a certain Senor Aguilar, father of Tomas and Bea. Despite all their efforts, none of Senor Aguilar's salesmen were able to place the house, not even by offering it far beneath its already low asking price. Nobody had been back to the property for over ten years.

'Until today,' said Bea quietly, withdrawing into herself for a moment. ‘I wanted to show you this place, you see? I wanted to give you a surprise. I told myself I had to bring you here, because this was part of your story, the story of Carax and Penelope. I borrowed the key from my father's office. Nobody knows we're here. It's our secret. I wanted to share it with you. And I was asking myself whether you'd come.'

'You knew I would.'

She smiled as she nodded. 'I believe that nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their own secret plan, even though we don't understand it. Like you finding that novel by Julian Carax in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, or the fact that you and I are here now, in this house that belonged to the Aldayas. It's all part of something we cannot comprehend, something that owns us.'

While she spoke, my hand had slipped awkwardly down to Bea's ankle and was sliding towards her knee. She watched it as if she were watching an insect climbing up her leg. I asked myself what Fermin would have done at that moment. Where was his wisdom when I needed it most?

'Tomas says you've never had a girlfriend,' said Bea, as if that explained me.

I removed my hand and looked down, defeated. I thought Bea was smiling, but I preferred not to check.

'Considering he's so quiet, your brother is turning out to be quite a bigmouth. What else does the newsreel say about me?'

'He says that for years you were in love with an older woman and that the experience left you broken-hearted.'

'All I had broken was a lip and my pride.'

'Tomas says you haven't been out with any other girl since then because you compare them all with that woman.'

Good old Tomas and his hidden blows. 'Her name is Clara,' I proffered.

'I know. Clara Barcelo.'

'Do you know her?'

'Everyone knows someone like Clara Barcelo. The name is the least of it.'

We fell silent for a while,. watching the fire crackle.

'After I left you, I wrote a letter to Pablo,' said Bea.

I swallowed hard. 'To your lieutenant boyfriend? What for?'

Bea took an envelope out of her blouse and showed it to me. It was closed and sealed.

'In the letter I told him I wanted us to get married very soon, in a month's time, if possible, and that I want to leave Barcelona forever.'