The Shadow of the Wind (37 page)

'You're right. I'm not a relative of Senora Coronado, but I need to speak to her. It's a matter of the utmost importance.'

The old man came up to me. He had a wicked, catlike smile the smile of a mischievous child, and his eyes were full of cunning.

'Can you help me?' I begged.

'That depends on how much you can help me.'

'If it's in my power, I'd be delighted to help you. Would you like me to deliver a message to your family?'

The old man laughed bitterly. 'My family were the ones who stuck me in this hole. They're a load of leeches; they'd steal my underpants while they're still warm. To hell with them. I've kept them and put up with them for long enough. What I want is a woman.'

'Excuse me?'

The old man looked at me impatiently.

'Being young is no excuse for slow wit, child. I'm telling you I want a woman. A female, a maid, or a well-bred young filly. Young - under fifty-five, that is - and healthy, with no sores or fractures.'

'I'm not sure if I understand.

'You understand me perfectly. I want to have it off with a woman who has teeth and won't pee on me, before I depart for the other world. I don't mind whether she's good-looking or not; I'm half blind, and at my age any girl who has anything to hold onto is a Venus. Am I making myself clear?'

'Crystal. But I don't see how I'm going to find a woman for you. . . .'

'When I was your age, there was something in the service sector called "ladies of easy virtue". I know the world changes, but never in essence. Find one for me, plump and fun-loving, and we'll do business. And if you're asking yourself about my ability to enjoy a woman, I want you to know I'm quite content to pinch her backside and feel up her bumpers. That's the advantage of experience.'

'Technicalities are your affair, sir, but I can't bring a woman to you here right now.'

'I might be a dirty old man, but I'm not stupid. I know that. Your promise is good enough for me.'

'And how do you know I won't say yes just to get you to tell me where Jacinta Coronado is?'

The old man gave me a sly smile. 'You give me your word, and leave any problems of conscience to me.'

I looked around me. Juanito was starting on the second half of his recital. Hope was ebbing away. Fulfilling this horny granddad's request seemed to be the only thing that made any sense in that purgatory. 'I give you my word. I'll do what I can.'

The old man smiled from ear to ear. I counted three teeth.

'Blonde, even if it's peroxide. Pneumatically endowed and good at talking dirty, if possible. Of all the senses, the one that still works the best is my hearing.'

'I'll see what I can do. Now, tell me where I can find Jacinta Coronado.'

31

'You've promised what to that old Methuselah?'

'You heard.'

'You were joking, I hope.'

'I can't lie to an old man who is at death's door, no matter how fresh he turns out to be.'

'And that does you credit, Daniel, but how do you think you're going to slip a whore into this holy house?'

'By paying her three times as much, I suppose. I leave all the specifics to you.'

Fermin shrugged resignedly. 'Oh, well, a deal's a deal. We'll think of something. But remember, next time a negotiation of this nature turns up, let me do the talking.'

'Agreed.'

Just as the crafty old devil had instructed, we found Jacinta Coronado in a loft that could only be reached by a staircase on the third floor. According to the old man, the attic was the refuge for the few patients whom fate had not yet had the decency to deprive of understanding. Apparently this hidden wing had, in its day, housed the rooms of Baltasar Deulofeu, aka Laszlo de Vicherny, from which he governed The Tenebrarium's activities and cultivated the loving arts newly arrived from the East, amid clouds of perfume and scented oils. And there was no lack of scent now, though of a very different nature. A woman who could only be Jacinta Coronado sagged in a wicker chair, wrapped in a blanket.

'Senora Coronado? I asked, raising my voice, in case the poor thing was deaf, half-witted, or both.

The elderly woman examined us carefully, with some reserve. Her eyes looked bleary, and only a few wisps of whitish hair covered her head. I noticed that she gave me a puzzled look, as if she'd seen me before but couldn't remember where. I was afraid Fermin was going to rush into introducing me as the son of Carax or some similar lie, but all he did was kneel down next to the old lady and take her trembling, wrinkled hand.

'Jacinta, I'm Fermin, and this handsome young lad is my friend Daniel. Father Fernando Ramos sent us. He wasn't able to come today because he had twelve masses to say - you know what the calendar of saints' days is like — but he sends you his best regards. How are you feeling?'

The old woman smiled sweetly at Fermin. My friend stroked her face and her forehead. She appreciated the touch of another skin like a purring cat. I felt a lump in my throat.

'A stupid question, wasn't it?' Fermin went on. 'What you'd like is to be out there, dancing a foxtrot. You look like a dancer; everyone must tell you that.'

I had never seen him treat anyone with such delicacy, not even Bernarda. His words were pure flattery, but the tone and expression on his face were sincere.

'What pretty things you say,' she murmured in a voice that was broken from not having had anyone to speak to or anything to say.

'Not half as pretty as you, Jacinta. Do you think we could ask you some questions? Like on a radio contest, you know?'

The old woman just blinked in response.

'I'd say that's a yes. Do you remember Penelope, Jacinta? Penelope Aldaya? It's her we'd like to ask you about.'

Jacinta's eyes suddenly lit up and she nodded.

'My girl,' she murmured, and it looked like she was going to burst into tears.

'The very one. You do remember, don't you? We're friends of Julian. Julian Carax, the one who told scary stories. You remember that, too, don't you?'

The old woman's eyes shone, as if those words and the touch on her skin were bringing her back to life by the minute.

'Father Fernando, from San Gabriel's, told us you adored Penelope. He loves you very much, too, and thinks of you every day, you know. If he doesn't come more often, it's just because the new bishop, a social climber, loads him with such a quota of masses that his voice gives out.'

'Are you sure you eat enough?' the old lady suddenly asked, with a worried expression.

'I eat like a horse, Jacinta. The trouble is, I have a very manly metabolism and I burn it all up. But believe me, under these clothes it's all pure muscle. Feel, feel. Like Charles Atlas, only hairier.'

Jacinta nodded and looked reassured. She couldn't take her eyes off Fermin. She had forgotten about me completely.

'What can you tell us about Penelope and Julian?'

'Between them all, they took her from me,' she said. 'My girl'

I took a step forward and was about to say something, but Fermin threw me a look that told me to remain silent.

'Who took Penelope from you, Jacinta? Do you remember?'

'The master,' she said, raising her eyes fearfully, as if she thought someone might hear us.

Fermin seemed to be gauging the emphasis of the old woman's gesture and followed her eyes to the ceiling, weighing up the possibilities.

'Are you referring to God Almighty, emperor of the heavens, or did you mean the master, Miss Penelope's father, Don Ricardo?'

'How's Fernando?' asked the old woman.

'The priest? Splendid. One day, he'll be made pope and will set you up in the Sistine Chapel. He sends you all the best.'

'He's the only one who comes to see me, you know. He comes because he knows I don't have anyone else.'

Fermin gave me a sideways look, as if he were thinking what I was thinking. Jacinta Coronado was much saner than her appearance suggested. Her body was fading away, but her mind and her soul were still blazing with anguish in that wretched place. I wondered how many more people like her, or like the lusty little old man who had shown us how to find her, were trapped in there.

'He comes because he's very fond of you, Jacinta. Because he remembers how well you looked after him and how you fed him when he was a child. He's told us all about that. Do you remember, Jacinta? Do you remember those days, when you went to collect Jorge from school, do you remember Fernando and Julian?'

'Julian

She whispered the name slowly, but her smile betrayed her.

'Do you remember Julian Carax, Jacinta?'

'I remember the day Penelope told me she was going to marry him. ..'

Fermin and I looked at one another in astonishment.

'Marry? When was that, Jacinta?'

'The first day she saw him. She was thirteen and didn't know who he was or what he was called.'

'Then how did she know she was going to marry him?' 'Because she'd seen him. In her dreams.'

As a child, Maria Jacinta Coronado was convinced that the world ended on the outskirts of Toledo and that beyond the town limits there was nothing but darkness and oceans of fire. Jacinta had got that idea from a dream she had during a fever that had almost killed her when she was four years old. This dream was the first of many and they began with that mysterious fever, which some blamed on the sting of a huge red scorpion that appeared in the house one day and was never seen again, and others on the evil designs of a mad nun who crept into houses at night to poison children and who, years later, was to be garroted reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards with her eyes popping out of their sockets, while a red cloud spread over the town, discharging a storm of dead cockroaches. In her dreams Jacinta perceived the past and the future and, at times, saw revealed to her the secrets and mysteries of the old streets of Toledo. One of the characters she would see repeatedly in her dreams was someone called Zacarias, an angel who was always dressed in black and who was accompanied by a dark cat with yellow eyes whose breath smelled of sulphur. Zacarias knew everything: he had predicted the day and the hour of her uncle Benancio's death - a hawker of ointments and holy water. He had revealed the place where her mother, a sanctimonious churchgoer, hid a bundle of letters from an ardent medical student with few financial resources but a solid knowledge of anatomy, and in whose bedroom in the alleyway of Santa Maria she had discovered the doors of paradise at an early age. Zacarias had announced to Jacinta that there was something evil fixed in her stomach, a dead spirit that wished her ill, and that she would know the love of only one man: an empty, selfish love that would break her soul in two. He had augured that in her lifetime she would behold the death of everything she loved, and that before she reached heaven, she would visit hell. On the day of her first period, Zacarias and his sulphuric cat disappeared from her dreams, but years later Jacinta would remember the visits of the black angel with tears in her eyes, because all his prophecies had come true.

So when the doctors diagnosed that she would never be able to have children, Jacinta wasn't surprised. Nor was she surprised, although she almost died of grief, when her husband of three years announced that he was going to leave her because she was like a wasteland that produced no fruit, because she wasn't a woman. In the absence of Zacarias (whom she took to be an emissary of heaven, for, whether or not he was dressed in black, he was still a radiant angel and the best-looking man she had ever seen), Jacinta spoke to God on her own, hiding in corners, without seeing him or expecting him to bother with a reply, because there was a lot of pain in the world and her troubles were, in the end, only small matters. All her monologues with God dealt with the same theme: she wanted only one thing in life, to be a mother, to be woman.