The Shadow of the Wind (25 page)

'Stupid of me. I don't know why I ask,' he said. 'Who else could it be at this time of night?'

Isaac was clothed in what seemed like a strange crossbreed of dressing gown, bathrobe, and Russian army coat. The padded slippers perfectly matched a checked wool cap, rather like a professor's cap, complete with tassel.

'I hope I didn't get you out of bed,' I said.

'Not at all. I'd only just started saying my prayers. . . .'

He looked at Bea as if he'd just seen a pack of dynamite sticks alight at his feet. 'For your own good, I hope this isn't what it looks like,' he threatened.

'Isaac, this is my friend Beatriz, and with your permission I'd like to show her this place. Don't worry, she's completely trustworthy.'

'Sempere, I've known toddlers with more common sense than you.'

'It would only be for a moment.'

Isaac let out a snort of defeat and examined Bea carefully, like a suspicious policeman.

'Do you realize you're in the company of an idiot?' he asked.

Bea smiled politely. 'I'm beginning to come to terms with it.'

'Sublime innocence! Do you know the rules?'

Bea nodded. Isaac mumbled under his breath and let us in, scanning the shadows of the street, as usual.

‘I visited your daughter, Nuria,' I mentioned casually. 'She's well. Working hard, but well. She sends you her love.'

'Yes, and poisoned darts. You're not much good at making things up, Sempere. But I appreciate the effort. Come on in.'

Once inside, Isaac handed me the candle and proceeded to lock the door.

'When you've finished, you know where to find me.'

Under the mantle of darkness, we could only just make out the spectral forms of the book maze. The candle projected its bubble of light at our feet.  Bea paused, astonished, at the entrance to the labyrinth. I smiled, recognizing in her face the same expression my father must have seen in mine years before. We entered the tunnels and galleries of the maze; they creaked under our footsteps. The marks I had made during my last incursion were still there.

'Come on, I want to show you something,' I said.

More than once I lost my own trail and we had to go backwards in search of the last sign. Bea watched me with a mixture of alarm and fascination. My inner compass told me we were caught in a knot of spirals that rose slowly towards the very heart of the labyrinth. At last I managed to retrace my steps through the tangle of corridors and tunnels until I entered a narrow passage that felt like a gangway stretching out into the gloom, I knelt down by the last shelf and looked for my old friend hidden behind the row of dust-covered volumes - the layer of dust shining like frost in the candlelight. I took the book and handed it to Bea.

'Let me introduce you to Julian Carax.'

'The Shadow of the Wind,' Bea read, stroking the faded letters on the cover.

'Can I take it with me?' she asked.

'You can take any book but this one.'

'But that's not fair. After all the things you've told me, this is precisely the one I want.'

'One day, perhaps. But not today.'

I took it from her and put it back in its hiding place.

'I'll come back without you and I'll take it away without you knowing,' she said mockingly.

'You wouldn't find it in a thousand years.'

'That's what you think. I've seen your notches, and I, too, know the story of the Minotaur.'

'Isaac wouldn't let you in.'

'You're wrong. He prefers me to you.'

'And how do you know?'

'I can read people's eyes.'

Despite myself, I believed her and turned mine away.

'Choose any other one. Here, this one looks promising. The Castilian Hog, That Unknown Beast: In Search of the Roots of Iberian Pork, by Anselmo Torquemada. I'm sure it sold more copies than any book by Julian Carax. Every part of the pig can be put to good use.'

'I'm more attracted to this other one.'

'Tess of the d'Urbervilles. It's the original. You're bold enough to read Hardy in English?'

She gave me a sidelong glance.

'All yours, then!'

'Don't you see? It feels as if it's been waiting for me. As if it has been hiding here for me from before I was born.'

I looked at her in astonishment. Bea's lips crinkled into a smile. 'What have I said?'

Then, without thinking, barely brushing her lips, I kissed her.

It was almost midnight when we reached the front door of Bea's house. We had walked most of the way without speaking, not daring to turn our thoughts into words. We walked apart, hiding from one another. Bea walked upright with her Tess under her arm, and I followed a step behind, still tasting her lips. The way Isaac had glanced at me when we left the Cemetery of Forgotten Books was still on my mind. It was a look I knew well and had seen a thousand times from my father, a look that asked me whether I had the slightest idea what I was doing. The last hours I'd been lost in another world, a universe of touches and looks I did not understand and that blotted out both reason and shame. Now, back in the reality that always lies in wait among the shadows of the Ensanche quarter, the enchantment was lifting, and all I had left was painful desire and an indescribable restlessness. And yet just looking at Bea was enough for me to realize that my doubts were a breeze compared to the storm that was raging inside her. We stopped by her door and looked at one another without attempting to pretend. A mellifluous night watchman was walking up to us unhurriedly, humming boleros to the rhythmic jingle of his bunches of keys.

'Perhaps you'd rather we didn't see each other again,' I suggested without much conviction.

'I don't know, Daniel. I don't know anything. Is that what you want?'

'No. Of course not. And you?'

She shrugged her shoulders, and smiled faintly. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'I lied to you earlier, you know. In the cloister.'

'What about?'

'About not wanting to see you today.'

The night porter hung about, smirking at us, obviously indifferent to my first whispered exchange at a front door. To him, experienced in such matters, it must have seemed a string of cliches and banalities.

'Don't worry about me, there's no hurry,' he said. 'I'll have a smoke on the corner, and you just let me know.'

I waited for the watchman to walk away.

'When will I see you again?'

'I don't know, Daniel'

'Tomorrow?'

'Please, Daniel. I don't know.'

I nodded. She stroked my face. 'You'd better leave now.'

'You know where to find me, at least?'

She nodded.

'I'll be waiting.'

'Me, too.'

As I moved away, I couldn't take my eyes off her. The night watchman, an expert in these situations, was already walking up to open the door for her.

'You rascal,' he whispered as he went by, not without admiration. 'What a looker.'

I waited until Bea had gone into the building and then set off briskly, turning to glance back at every step. Slowly I became possessed by the absurd conviction that anything was possible, and it seemed to me that even those deserted streets and that hostile wind smelled of hope. When I reached Plaza de Cataluna, I noticed that a flock of pigeons had congregated in the centre of the square, covering it with a blanket of white feathers that swayed silently. I thought of going round them, but at that moment I noticed that the pigeons were parting to let me pass, instead of flying off. I felt my way forward, as the pigeons broke ranks in front of me and re-formed behind me. When I got to the middle of the square, I heard the peal of the cathedral bells ringing out midnight. I paused for a moment, stranded in an ocean of silvery birds, and thought how this had been the strangest and most marvellous day of my life.

22

The light was still on in the bookshop when I crossed the street towards the shop window. I thought that perhaps my father had stayed on until late, getting up to date with his correspondence or finding some other excuse to wait up for me and pump me for information about my meeting with Bea. I could see a silhouette making a pile of books and recognized the gaunt, nervous profile of Fermin, lost in concentration. I rapped on the pane with my knuckles. Fermin looked out, pleasantly surprised, and signalled to me to pop in through the backroom door.

'Still working, Fermin? It's terribly late.'

'I'm really just killing time until I go over to poor Don Federico's to watch over him. I'm taking turns with Eloy from the optician's. I don't sleep much anyhow. Two or three hours at the most. Mind you, you can't talk either, Daniel. It's past midnight, from which I infer that your meeting with the young lady was a roaring success.'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'The truth is I don't know,' I admitted.

'Did she let you feel her up?'

'No.'

'A good sign. Never trust girls who let themselves be touched right away. But even less those who need a priest for approval. Good sirloin steak - if you'll excuse the comparison - needs to be cooked until it's medium rare. Of course, if the opportunity arises, don't be prudish, and go for the kill. But if what you're looking for is something serious, like this thing with me and Bernarda, remember the golden rule.'

'Is your thing serious?'

'More than serious. Spiritual. And what about you and this pumpkin, Beatriz? You can see a mile off that she's worth a million, but the crux of the matter is this: is she the sort who makes you fall in love or the sort who merely stirs your nether regions?'

'I haven't the slightest idea,' I pointed out. 'Both things, I'd say.'

'Look, Daniel, this is like indigestion. Do you notice something here, in the mouth of the stomach - as if you'd swallowed a brick? Or do you just feel a general feverishness?'

'The brick things sounds more like it,' I said, although I didn't altogether discard the fever.

'That means it's a serious matter. God help us! Come on, sit down and I'll make you a lime-blossom tea.'

We settled down round the table in the back room, surrounded by books. The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows. Fermin handed me a steaming hot cup and smiled at me a little awkwardly. Something was bothering him.

'May I ask you a personal question, Daniel?'

'Of course.'

'I beg you to answer in all frankness,' he said, and he cleared his throat. 'Do you think I could ever be a father?'

He must have seen my puzzled expression, and he quickly added, 'I don't mean biologically - I may look a bit rickety, but by good luck Providence has endowed me with the potency and the fury of a fighting bull. I'm referring to the other sort of father. A good father, if you see what I mean.'

'A good father?'

'Yes. Like yours. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's his father but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.'