The Shadow of the Wind (60 page)

'Let's leave this place, Julian.

'There's nowhere to go,' said Carax, with an oddly calm tone of voice that made his friend eye him carefully.

It was only then that Miquel noticed the revolver in Julian's hand. The doorbell sounded above the murmur of the radio. Miquel snatched the gun from Carax's hands and fixed his eyes on him.

'Give me your papers, Julian.'

The three policemen pretended to sit at the bar. One of them gave Miquel and Julian a sidelong glance. The other two felt inside their raincoats.

'Your papers, Julian. Now.'

Carax silently shook his head.

'I have only a month left, perhaps two, with luck. One of us has to get out of here, Julian. You have more going for you than I do. I don't know whether you'll find Penelope. But Nuria is waiting for you.'

'Nuria is your wife.'

'Remember the deal we made. The day I die, all that was once mine will be yours. . . .'

'. . . Except your dreams.'

They smiled at one another for the last time. Julian handed him his passport. Miquel put it next to the copy of The Shadow of the Wind that he had been carrying in his coat pocket since the day he'd received it.

'See you soon,' Julian whispered.

'There's no hurry. I'll be waiting.'

Just as the three policemen turned towards them, Miquel rose from the table and went up to them. At first all they saw was a pale, tremulous man who seemed to be at death's door as he smiled at them, blood showing on the corners of his thin, lifeless lips. By the time they noticed the gun in his right hand, Miquel was barely three yards away from them. One of them was about to scream, but the first shot blew off his lower jaw. The body fell on its knees at Miquel's feet, lifeless. The other two police officers had already drawn their weapons. The second shot went through the stomach of the one who looked older, the bullet snapping his backbone in two and splattering a handful of guts against the bar. Miquel never had time to fire a third shot. The remaining policeman was already pointing his gun at him. He felt it in his ribs, on his heart, and saw the man's steely eyes, lit up with panic. 'Stand still, you son of a bitch, or I swear I'll tear you apart.' Miquel smiled and slowly raised his gun towards the policeman's face. The man couldn't have been more than twenty-five, and his lips trembled.

'You tell Fumero, from Carax, that I remember his little sailor suit.' He felt no pain, no fire. The impact, like a muffled blow, threw him into the window, extinguishing the sound and colour of things. As he crashed through the pane, he noticed an intense cold creeping down his throat and the light receding like dust in the wind. Miquel Moliner turned his head for the last time and saw his friend Julian running down the street. Miquel was thirty-six years old, which was longer than he'd hoped to live. Before he collapsed onto a pavement strewn with bloodstained glass, he was already dead.

9

That night an unidentified van arrived in response to the call from the policeman who had killed Miquel. I never knew his name, nor do I think he realized whom he had murdered. Like all wars, private or public, that one was like a stage show. Two men carried off the bodies of the dead policemen and made sure the manager of the bar understood that he must forget what had happened or there would be trouble. Never underestimate the talent for forgetting that wars awaken, Daniel. Miquel Moliner's corpse was abandoned in an alleyway of the Raval quarter twelve hours later, so that his death could not be connected to that of the two police officers. When the body finally arrived at the morgue, it had been dead for two days. Miquel had left his own papers at home before going out. All the employees at the morgue could find was a disfigured passport in the name of Julian Carax, and a copy of The Shadow of the Wind. The police concluded that the deceased man was Julian Carax. The passport still gave his address as Fortuny's apartment in Ronda de San Antonio.

By then the news had reached Fumero, who went along to the morgue to bid farewell to Julian. There he met the hatter, whom the police had fetched to identify the body. Senor Fortuny, who hadn't seen Julian for two days, feared the worst. When he recognized the body as that of the man who had knocked on his door only a week earlier, asking after Julian (and whom he'd taken to be one of Fumero's henchmen), he began to scream and left. The police took this response to mean he recognized the corpse. Fumero, who had witnessed the scene, went up to the body and inspected it silently. He hadn't seen Julian for seventeen years. When he recognized Miquel Moliner, all he did was smile and sign the forensic report confirming that the body in question was Julian Carax. He then ordered its immediate removal to a common grave in Montjuic.

For a long time, I wondered why Fumero would do something like that. But that was simply Fumero's logic. By dying with Julian's identity, Miquel had involuntarily provided Fumero with the perfect alibi. From that moment on, Julian Carax didn't exist. There would be no official link between Fumero and the man who, sooner or later, he hoped to find and murder. It was wartime, and few would ask for explanations concerning the death of someone who didn't even have a name. Julian had lost his identity. He was a shadow. I spent two days in the apartment waiting for Miquel or Julian, thinking I was going mad. On the third day, Monday, I went back to work at the publishing firm. Senor Cabestany had been taken into hospital a few weeks previously, and would not be returning to the office. His eldest son, Alvaro, had taken over the business. I didn't say anything to anyone. There was nobody I could turn to.

That same afternoon I received a call from an employee at the morgue, Manuel Gutierrez Fonseca. Senor Gutierrez Fonseca explained that the body of someone called Julian Carax had been brought into the morgue. Having compared the deceased man's passport with the name of the author of the book that was on the body when it arrived, and suspecting, moreover, if not a breach in the rules, a certain laxity on the part of the police, he had felt it his moral duty to call the publishers and inform them of what had happened. As I listened to him, I almost died. The first thing I thought was that it was a trap set up by Fumero. Senor Gutierrez Fonseca expressed himself with the correct tones of a conscientious public official, although there was something else in his voice, something that even he would not have been able to explain. I had taken the call in Cabestany's office. Thank God, Alvaro had gone out for lunch and I was alone, otherwise it would have been difficult for me to explain away my tears and the shaking of my hands as I held the telephone. Senor Gutierrez Fonseca told me he had thought it appropriate to let me know what had happened.

I thanked him for his call with the false formality of all such conversations. As soon as I put down the receiver, I closed the office door and bit my fists so as not to scream. I washed my face and left for home immediately, leaving a message for Alvaro to say I was unwell and would return the following day earlier than usual, to catch up with correspondence. In the street, I had to make an effort not to run, to walk with the anonymous grey calm of people who have nothing to hide. When I inserted the key in the apartment door, I realized that the lock had been forced. I froze. The doorknob began to turn from within. I wondered whether I was going to die like this, in a dark staircase, and without knowing what had become of Miquel. The door opened, and I encountered the dark eyes of Julian Carax. May God forgive me, but at that moment I felt that life was returning to me, and I thanked the heavens for giving me back Julian instead of Miquel.

We melted in a long embrace, but when I searched for his lips, Julian moved away and lowered his eyes. I closed the door and, taking Julian's hand, led him to the bedroom. We lay together on the bed in silence. Evening was closing in, and the shadows of the apartment were fringed with purple. As on every night since the start of the war, shots could be heard in the distance. Julian was crying as he lay on my chest, and I felt a tiredness beyond words. Later, once night had fallen, our lips met, and in the shelter of that pressing darkness, we removed our clothes, which smelled of fear and of death. I wanted to remember Miquel, but the fire of those hands on my stomach stole all my shame and grief. I wanted to lose myself in them, even though I knew that at dawn, exhausted and perhaps overcome by contempt for ourselves, we would be unable to look each other in the eye without wondering what sort of people we had become.

10

I was woken by the pitter-patter of the rain at daybreak. The bed empty, the room bathed in grey light.

I found Julian sitting in front of what had been Miquel's desk, stroking the keys of his typewriter. He looked up and gave me that lukewarm, distant smile that said he would never be mine. I felt like spitting out the truth to him, like hurting him. It would have been so simple. Reveal to him that Penelope was dead. That he was living a lie. That I was now all he had in the world.

'I should never have returned to Barcelona,' he murmured, shaking his head.

I knelt beside him. 'What you are searching for is not here, Julian. Let's go away. The two of us. Far from here. While there is still time.'

Julian looked at me for a long moment, without blinking. 'You know something you haven't told me, don't you?' he asked.

I shook my head and swallowed. Julian just nodded.

'Tonight I'm going back there.'

'Julian, please

'I must make sure.'

'Then I'll go with you.'

'No.'

'The last time I stayed here and waited, I lost Miquel. If you go, I go, too.'

'This has nothing to do with you, Nuria. It's something that concerns only me.'

I wondered whether he didn't realize how much his words hurt me, or whether he just didn't care.

'That's what you think,' I said.

He tried to stroke my cheek, but I drew his hand away.

'You should despise me, Nuria. It would bring you better luck.'

'Yes, I know.'

We spent the day outside, far from the oppressive darkness of the apartment that still smelled of warm sheets and skin. Julian wanted to see the sea. I went with him to La Barceloneta, and we walked along the almost deserted beach, the shimmering sand seeming to trail off into the summer haze. We sat on the sand, near the shore, the way children or old people do. Julian smiled, saying nothing.

As evening fell, we took a tram near the aquarium and went up Via Layetana to Paseo de Gracia, then onto Plaza de Lesseps and Avenida de la Republica Argentina, until we came to the end of the route. Julian gazed silently at the streets, as if he were afraid of losing the city as we travelled through it. Halfway through our journey, he took my hand and kissed it without saying a word. He held it until we got off. An elderly man who was accompanied by a little girl dressed in white looked at us, smiling, and asked us whether we were engaged. It was dark by the time we walked up Calle Roman Macaya towards the Aldayas' old mansion on Avenida del Tibidabo. A fine rain was falling, coating the thick stone walls with silver. We climbed the external wall at the back, near the tennis courts. The large, rambling house rose into view through the rain. I recognized it immediately. I had come across that house in a thousand different guises in Julian's books. In The Red House, it was a sinister mansion that was larger inside than out. It slowly changed shape, grew new corridors, galleries, and improbable attics, endless stairs that led nowhere; it illuminated dark rooms that came and went from one day to the next, taking with it any unsuspecting individual who entered them, never to be seen again. We stopped outside the main door, locked with chains and a padlock the size of a fist. The large windows on the first floor were boarded up with wooden planks that were covered in ivy. The air smelled of weeds and wet earth. The stone, dark and slimy with rain, shone like the scales of a huge reptile.

I wanted to ask Julian how he intended to get past that large oak door, which looked like the door of a basilica or a prison. Julian pulled a jar out from his coat and unscrewed the top. A fetid vapour issued from it, forming a slow, bluish spiral. He held one end of the padlock and poured the acid into the lock. The metal hissed like red-hot iron, enveloped in a cloud of yellow smoke. We waited a few minutes, and then he picked up a cobblestone that lay among the weeds and split the padlock by banging it half a dozen times. Julian then gave the door a kick. It opened slowly, like a tomb, exhaling a thick, damp breath. Beyond the doorway I could sense a velvety darkness. Julian had brought a benzine lighter, which he lit after taking a few steps into the entrance hall. I followed him, leaving the door behind us ajar. Julian walked on a few yards, holding the flame above his head. A carpet of dust lay at our feet, with no footprints but ours. The naked walls took on an amber hue from the flame. There was no furniture, no mirrors, or lamps. The doors were still on their hinges, but the bronze doorknobs had been pulled out. The mansion was just a skeleton. We stopped at the bottom of the staircase. Julian looked up, his eyes scanning the heights. He turned around for a moment to look at me, and I wanted to smile, but in the half-light we could barely see each other's eyes. I followed him up the stairs, treading the steps on which Julian had first seen Penelope. I knew where we were heading, and I felt a coldness inside me that had nothing to do with the biting, damp air of that place.