The Shadow of the Wind (53 page)

'Isaac, I don't think it's a good idea for you to be on your own tonight. Why don't you come home with me? Spend the night with us, and that way you can keep my father company.'

Isaac shook his head again. 'I have things to do, Daniel. You go home and read those pages. They belong to you.'

The old man looked away, and I took a few steps towards the door. I was in the doorway when Isaac's voice called to me, barely a whisper.

'Daniel?'

'Yes?'

'Take great care.'

When I went out into the street, it seemed as if darkness were creeping along the pavement, pursuing me. I quickened my pace and didn't slow down until I reached the apartment in Calle Santa Ana. When I got home, I found my father in his armchair with an open book on his lap. It was a photograph album. On seeing me, he sat up with an expression of great relief.

'I was beginning to get worried,' he said, 'How was the funeral?'

I shrugged, and my father nodded gravely.

'I've some dinner ready for you. If you like, I could warm it up and—'

'Thanks, but I'm not hungry. I had a bite to eat earlier.'

He fixed his gaze on me and nodded again. He turned to remove the plates he'd placed on the table. It was then, without quite knowing why, that I went up to him and hugged him. And my father, surprised, hugged me back.

'Daniel, are you all right?'

I held my father tightly in my arms.

'I love you,' I murmured.

The cathedral bells were ringing when I began to read Nuria Monfort's manuscript. Her small, neat writing reminded me of her impeccable desk. Perhaps she had been trying to find in these words the peace and safety that life had not granted her.

NURIA MONFORT: REMEMBRANCE OF THE LOST

1933-1955

1

There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse. Julian Carax and I met in the autumn of 1933. At that time I was working for the publisher Josep Cabestany, who had discovered him in 1927 in the course of one of his 'book-scouting' trips to Paris. Julian earned his living playing piano at a hostess bar in the afternoons, and at night he wrote. The owner of the establishment, one Irene Marceau, knew most of the Paris publishers, and, thanks to her entreaties, favours, or threats of disclosure, Julian Carax had managed to get a number of novels published, though with disastrous commercial results. Cabestany acquired the exclusive rights to publish Carax's works in Spain and Latin America for a song, which price included the translation of the French originals into Spanish by the author himself. Cabestany hoped to sell around three thousand copies per novel, but the first two titles he brought out in Spain turned out to be a total flop, with barely a hundred copies of each sold. Despite these dismal results, every two years we received a new manuscript from Julian, which Cabestany accepted without any objections, saying that he'd signed an agreement with the author, that profit wasn't everything, and that good literature had to be supported no matter what.

One day I was intrigued enough to ask him why he continued to publish Julian Carax's novels when they were making such a loss. In answer to my question, Cabestany ceremoniously walked over to his bookshelf, took down one of Julian's books, and invited me to read it. I did. Two weeks later I'd read them all. This time my question was, how could we possibly sell so few copies of those novels?

'I don't know, dear,' replied Cabestany. 'But we'll keep on trying.' Such a noble and admirable gesture didn't quite fit the picture I had formed of Senor Cabestany. Perhaps I had underestimated him. I found the figure of Julian Carax increasingly intriguing, as everything related to him seemed to be shrouded in mystery. At least twice a month, someone would call asking for his address. I soon realized that it was always the same person, using a different name each time. But I would tell him simply what could be read on the back cover of Julian's novels: that he lived in Paris. After a time, the man stopped calling. Just in case, I deleted Carax's address from the company files. I was the only one who wrote to him, and I knew the address by heart.

Months later I chanced upon some bills sent by the printers to Senor Cabestany. Glancing through them, I noticed that the expense of our editions of Julian Carax's books was defrayed, in its entirety, by someone outside our firm whose name I had never heard before: Miquel Moliner. Moreover, the cost of printing and distributing these books was substantially lower than the sum of money invoiced to Senor Moliner. The numbers didn't lie: the publishing firm was making money by printing books that went straight to a warehouse. I didn't have the courage to question Cabestany's financial irregularities. I was afraid of losing my job. What I did do was take down the address to which we sent Miquel Moliner's invoices — a mansion on Calle Puertaferrissa. I kept that address for months before I plucked up the courage to visit him. Finally my conscience got the better of me, and I turned up at his house to tell him that Senor Cabestany was swindling him. He smiled and told me he already knew.

'We all do what we're best at.'

I asked him whether he was the person who had phoned so often asking for Carax's address. He said he wasn't, and told me with a worried look that I should never give that address to anyone. Ever.

Miquel Moliner was a bit of a mystery. He lived on his own in a cavernous crumbling mansion that was part of his inheritance from his father, an industrialist who had grown rich through arms manufacture and, it was said, warmongering. Far from living a life of luxury, Miquel led an almost monastic existence, dedicated to squandering his father's money, which he considered to be stained with blood, on the restoration of museums, cathedrals, schools, libraries, and hospitals, and on ensuring that the works of his childhood friend, Julian Carax, were published in his native city.

'I have more money than I need, but not enough friends like Julian,' was his only explanation.

He hardly kept in touch with his siblings or the rest of the family, whom he referred to as strangers. He hadn't married and seldom left the grounds of his mansion, of which he occupied only the top floor. There he had set up his office, where he worked feverishly writing articles and columns for various newspapers and magazines in Madrid and Barcelona, translating technical texts from German and French, copy-editing encyclopaedias and school textbooks. Miquel Moliner suffered from that affliction of people who feel guilty when they're not working; although he respected and even envied the leisure others enjoyed, he fled from it. Far from gloating about his manic work ethic, he would joke about his obsessive activity and dismiss it as a minor form of cowardice.

"While you're working, you don't have to look life in the eye.' Almost without realizing it, we became good friends. We both had a lot in common, probably too much. Miquel liked to talk to me about books, about his beloved Dr Freud, about music, but above all about his old friend Julian. We saw each other almost every week. Miquel would tell me stories about the days when Julian was at San Gabriel's. He kept a collection of old photographs and stories written by a teenage Julian. Miquel adored Julian, and, through his words and his memories, I came to know him, or at least to create an image of him in his absence. A year after we had met, Miquel confessed that he'd fallen in love with me. I did not wish to hurt him, but neither did I want to deceive him. It was impossible to deceive Miquel. I told him I was extremely fond of him, that he'd become my best friend, but I wasn't in love with him. Miquel told me he already knew.

'You're in love with Julian, but you don't yet know it.' In August 1933, Julian wrote to inform me that he'd almost finished the manuscript of another novel, called The Cathedral Thief. Cabestany had some contracts with Gallimard that were due for renewal in September. He'd been paralysed for several weeks with a vicious attack of gout and, as a reward for my dedication, he decided that I should travel to France in his place to negotiate the new contracts. At the same time, I could visit Julian Carax and collect his new opus. I wrote to Julian telling him of my visit, which was planned for mid-September, and asking him whether he could recommend a reliable, inexpensive hotel. Julian replied saying that I could stay at his place, a modest apartment in the Saint-Germain quarter, and keep the hotel money for other expenses. The day before I left, I went to see Miquel to ask him whether he had any message for Julian. For a long while he seemed to hesitate, and then he said he didn't.

The first time I saw Julian in person was at the Gare d'Austerlitz. Autumn had sneaked up early in Paris, and the station vault was thick with fog. I waited on the platform while the other passengers made their way towards the exit. Soon I was left alone. Then I saw a man wearing a black coat, standing at the entrance to the platform, watching me through the smoke from his cigarette. During the journey I had often wondered how I would recognize Julian. The photographs I'd seen of him in Miquel Moliner's collection were at least thirteen or fourteen years old. I looked up and down the platform. There was nobody there except that figure and me. I noticed that the man was looking at me with some curiosity: perhaps he, too, was waiting for someone. It couldn't be him. According to my calculations, Julian would be thirty-three, and that man seemed older. His hair was grey, and he looked sad or tired. Too pale and too thin, or maybe it was just the fog and the wearying journey, or that the only pictures in my mind were of an adolescent Julian. Tentatively, I went up to the stranger and looked him straight in the eye.

'Julian?'

The stranger smiled and nodded. Julian Carax possessed the most charming smile in the world. It was all that was left of him.

Julian lived in an attic in Saint-Germain. The apartment only had two rooms: a living room with a minute kitchen and a tiny balcony from which you could see the towers of Notre Dame looming out of a jungle of rooftops and mist, and a bedroom with no windows and a single bed. The bathroom was at the end of a corridor on the floor below, and he shared it with the rest of his neighbours. The whole of the apartment was smaller than Cabestany's office. Julian had cleaned it up and got everything ready to welcome me with simple modesty. I pretended to be delighted with the apartment, which still smelled of disinfectant and furniture wax, applied by Julian with more determination than skill. The sheets on the bed looked brand new and appeared to have a pattern of dragons and castles. Children's sheets. Julian excused himself: he'd bought them at a very reduced price, but they were top quality. The ones with no pattern were twice the price, he explained, and they were boring.

In the sitting room, an old wooden desk faced the view of the cathedral towers. On it stood the Underwood typewriter that Julian had bought with Cabestany's advance and two piles of writing paper, one blank and the other written on both sides. Julian shared the attic apartment with a huge white cat he called Kurtz. The animal watched me suspiciously as he lay at his master's feet, licking his paws. I counted two chairs, a coat rack, and little else. The rest were all books. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, in double rows. Seeing me inspect the place, Julian sighed.

'There's a hotel two blocks away. Clean, affordable, and respectable. I took the liberty of making a reservation.'

I thought about it but was afraid of offending him.

'I'll be fine here, so long as it's not a bother for you, or for Kurtz.'

Kurtz and Julian exchanged glances. Julian shook his head, and the cat imitated him. I hadn't noticed how alike they looked. Julian insisted on letting me have his bedroom. He hardly slept, he explained, and would set himself up in the sitting room on a folding bed, lent to him by his neighbour, Monsieur Darcieu - an old conjuror who read young ladies' palms in exchange for a kiss. That first night I slept right through, exhausted after the journey. I woke up at dawn and discovered that Julian had gone out. Kurtz was asleep on top of his master's typewriter. He snored like a mastiff. I went over to the desk and saw the manuscript of the new novel that I had come to collect.

The Cathedral Thief

On the first page, as in all Julian's other novels, was the handwritten dedication:

For P

I was tempted to start reading. I was about to pick up the second page when I noticed that Kurtz was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I shook my head the way I'd seen Julian do. The cat, in turn, shook his head, and I put the pages back in their place. After a while Julian appeared, bringing with him freshly baked bread, a Thermos of coffee and some cheese. We had breakfast by the balcony. Julian spoke incessantly but avoided my eyes. In the light of dawn, he seemed like an aged child. He had shaved and put on what I imagined must be his only decent outfit, a cream-coloured cotton suit that looked worn but elegant. I listened to him as he talked about the mysteries of Notre Dame; about a ghostly barge that was said to cleave the waters of the Seine at night, gathering up the souls of desperate lovers who had ended their lives by jumping into the frozen waters. I listened to a thousand and one magical tales he invented as he went along just to keep me from asking him any questions. I watched him silently, nodding, searching in him for the man who had written the books I knew almost by heart, the boy whom Miquel Moliner had described to me so often.