The Shadow of the Wind (30 page)

That fleeting glimpse of Penelope Aldaya at the top of the staircase remained with him during his first weeks at San Gabriel's. His new world was not all to his liking: the pupils at San Gabriel's behaved like haughty, arrogant princes, while their teachers were like docile servants. The first friend Julian made there, apart from Jorge Aldaya, was a boy called Fernando Ramos, the son of one of the cooks at the school, who would never have imagined he would end up wearing a cassock and teaching in the same classrooms in which he himself had grown up. Fernando, whom the rest nicknamed the 'Kitchen Sweep', and whom they treated like a servant, was alert and intelligent but had hardly any friends among the schoolboys. His only companion was an eccentric boy called Miquel Moliner, who in time would become the best friend Julian ever made at the school. Miquel Moliner, who had too much brain and too little patience, enjoyed teasing his teachers by questioning all their statements, using clever arguments in which he displayed both ingenuity and a poisonous sting. The rest feared his sharp tongue and considered him a member of some other species. In a way this was not entirely mistaken, for despite his bohemian traits and the unaristocratic tone he affected, Miquel was the son of a businessman who had become obscenely rich through the manufacture of arms.

'Carax, isn't it? I'm told your father makes hats,' he said when Fernando Ramos introduced them.

'Julian to my friends. I'm told yours makes cannons.'

'He just sells them, actually. The only thing he knows how to make is money. My friends, among whom I only count Nietzsche and Fernando here, call me Miquel.'

Miquel Moliner was a sad boy. He suffered from an unhealthy obsession with death and all matters funereal, a field to the consideration of which he dedicated much of his time and talent. His mother had died three years earlier as a result of a strange domestic accident, which some foolish doctor had dared describe as suicide. It was Miquel who had discovered the body shining under the waters of the well, in the summer mansion the family owned in Argentona. When they pulled her out with ropes, they found that the pockets of the dead woman's coat were filled with stones. There was also a letter written in German, the mother's native tongue, but Senor Moliner, who had never bothered to learn the language, burned it that very afternoon without allowing anyone to read it. Miquel Moliner saw death everywhere - in fallen leaves, in birds that had dropped out of their nests, in old people, and in the rain, which swept everything away. He was exceptionally talented at drawing and would often become distracted for hours, creating charcoal sketches in which a lady, whom Julian took to be his mother, always appeared against a background of mist and deserted beaches.

'What do you want to be when you grow up, Miquel?'

'I'll never grow up,' he would answer enigmatically.

His main interest, apart from sketching and contradicting every living soul, was the work of a mysterious Austrian doctor who, in years to come, would become famous: Sigmund Freud. Thanks to his deceased mother, Miquel Moliner read and wrote perfect German, and he owned a number of books by the Viennese doctor. His favourite field was the interpretation of dreams. He used to ask people what they had dreamed, and would then make a diagnosis. He always said he was going to die young and that he didn't mind. Julian believed that, by thinking so much about death, he had ended up finding more sense in it than in life.

'The day I die, all that was once mine will be yours, Julian,' he would say. 'Except my dreams.'

Besides Fernando Ramos, Moliner, and Jorge Aldaya, Julian also befriended a shy and rather unsociable boy called Javier, the only son of the caretakers of San Gabriel's, who lived in a modest house stationed at the entrance to the school gardens. Javier, who, like Fernando, was considered by the rest of the boys to be no more than an irritating lackey, prowled about alone in the gardens and courtyards of the compound. From so much wandering around the school, he ended up knowing every nook and cranny of the building, from the tunnels in the basements to the passages up to the towers, and all kinds of hiding places that nobody remembered anymore. They were his secret world and his refuge. He always carried with him a penknife he had removed from one of his father's drawers, and he liked to carve wooden figures with it, keeping them in the school dovecote. His father, Ramon, the caretaker, was a veteran of the Cuban War, where he had lost a hand and (it was maliciously rumoured) his right testicle, as a result of a pellet shot from Theodore Roosevelt himself during the raid of the Bay of Cochinos. Convinced that idleness was the mother of all evil, 'Ramon Oneball' (as the schoolboys nicknamed him) set his son the task of gathering up all the fallen leaves from the pine grove and the courtyard around the fountains in a sack. Ramon was a good man, rather coarse and fatally given to choosing bad company, most notably his wife. He had married a strapping, dim-witted woman with delusions of grandeur and the looks of a scullion, who was wont to dress skimpily in front of her son and the other boys, a habit that gave rise to no end of mirth and ridicule. Her Christian name was Maria Craponcia, but she called herself Yvonne, because she thought it more elegant. Yvonne used to question her son about the possibilities for social advancement that his friends presented, for she believed that he was making connections with the elite of Barcelona society. She would ask him about the fortune of this or that one, imagining herself dressed in the best silks and being received for tea in the great salons of good society.

Javier tried to spend as little time as possible in the house and was grateful for the jobs his father gave him, however hard they might be. Any excuse was good in order to be alone, to escape into his secret world and carve his wooden figures. When the schoolboys saw him from afar, some would laugh or throw stones at him. One day Julian felt so sorry for him when he saw how a stone had gashed the boy's forehead and knocked him onto a pile of rubble, that he decided to go to his aid and offer him his friendship. At first Javier thought that Julian was coming to finish him off while the others fell about laughing.

'My name is Julian,' he said, stretching out his hand. 'My friends and I were about to go and play chess in the pine grove, and I wondered whether you'd like to join us.'

'I don't know how to play chess.'

'Nor did I, until two weeks ago. But Miquel is a good teacher.

The boy looked at him suspiciously, expecting the prank, the hidden attack, at any moment.

'I don't know whether your friends will want me there.'

'It was their idea. What do you say?'

From that day on, Javier would sometimes join them after finishing the jobs he had been assigned. He didn't usually say anything but would listen and watch the others. Aldaya was slightly fearful of him. Fernando, who had himself experienced the rejection of others because of his humble origins, would go out of his way to be kind to the strange boy. Miquel Moliner, who taught him the rudiments of chess and watched him with a careful eye, was the most sceptical of all.

'That boy is a nutter. He catches cats and pigeons and tortures them for hours with his knife. Then he buries them in the pine grove. Delightful.'

'Who says so?'

'He told me so himself the other day, while I was explaining the knight's moves to him. He also told me that sometimes his mother gets into his bed at night and fondles him.'

'He must have been pulling your leg.'

'I doubt it. That kid isn't right in the head, Julian, and it's probably not his fault.'

Julian struggled to ignore Miquel's warnings and predictions, but the fact was that he was finding it difficult to establish a friendship with the son of the caretaker. Yvonne in particular did not approve of Julian or of Fernando Ramos. Of all the young men, they were the only ones who didn't have a single peseta. Rumour had it that Julian s father was a simple shopkeeper and that his mother had only got as far as being a music teacher. 'Those people have no money, class, or elegance, my love,' his mother would lecture him. 'The one you should befriend is Aldaya. He comes from a very good family.' 'Yes. Mother,' the boy would answer. 'Whatever you say.'

As time went by, Javier seemed to start trusting his new friends. Occasionally he said a few words, and he was carving a set of chess pieces for Miquel Moliner, in appreciation for his lessons. One day, when nobody expected it or thought it possible, they discovered that Javier knew how to smile and that he had the innocent laugh of a child.

'You see? He's just a normal boy,' Julian argued.

Miquel Moliner remained unconvinced, and he observed the strange lad with a rigorous scrutiny that was almost scientific.

'Javier is obsessed with you, Julian,' he told him one day. 'Everything he does is only to earn your approval.'

'What nonsense! He has a mother and a father for that; I'm only a friend.'

'Irresponsible, that's what you are. His father is a poor wretch who has trouble finding his own bum, and Dona Yvonne is a harpy with the brain of a flea who spends her time pretending to meet people by chance in her underwear, convinced that she is Venus incarnate or something far worse I'd rather not mention. The boy, quite naturally, is looking for a substitute, and you, the saviour, fall from heaven and give him your hand. St Julian of the Fountain, patron saint of the dispossessed.'

'This Dr Freud is rotting your brains, Miquel. We all need friends. Even you.'

'That kid doesn't have friends and never will. He has the heart of a spider. And if you don't believe me, time will tell. I wonder what he dreams about. . . ?'

Miquel Moliner could not know that Francisco Javier's dreams were more like his friend Julian's than he would ever have thought possible. Once, some months before Julian had started at the school, the caretaker's son was gathering dead leaves from the fountain courtyard when Don Ricardo Aldaya's luxurious automobile arrived. That afternoon the tycoon had company. He was escorted by an apparition, an angel of light dressed in silk who seemed to hover above the ground. The angel, who was none other than Aldaya's daughter Penelope, stepped out of the Mercedes and walked over to one of the fountains, waving her parasol and stopping to splash the water of the pond with her hands. As usual, her governess, Jacinta, followed her dutifully, observant of the slightest gesture from the girl. It wouldn't have mattered if an army of servants had guarded her: Javier only had eyes for the girl. He was afraid that if he blinked, the vision would vanish. He remained there, paralysed, breathlessly spying on the mirage. Soon after, as if the girl had sensed his presence and his furtive gaze, Penelope raised her eyes and looked in his direction. The beauty of that face seemed painful, unsustainable. He thought he saw the hint of a smile on her lips. Terrified, Javier ran off to hide at the top of the water tower, next to the dovecote in the attic of the school building, his favourite hiding place. His hands were still shaking when he gathered his carving utensils and began to work on a new piece in the form of the face he had just sighted. When he returned to the caretaker's home that night, hours later than usual, his mother was waiting for him, half naked and furious. The boy looked down, fearing that if his mother read his eyes, she would see in them the girl from the pond and know what he had been thinking about.

'And where've you been, you little shit?'

'I'm sorry, Mother. I got lost.'

'You've been lost since the day you were born.'

Years later, every time he stuck his revolver into the mouth of a prisoner and pulled the trigger, Chief Inspector Francisco Javier Fumero would remember the day he saw his mother's head burst open like a ripe watermelon near an outdoor bar in Las Fionas and didn't feel anything, just the tedium of dead things. The Civil Guard, alerted by the manager of the bar, who had heard the shot, found the boy sitting on a rock holding a smoking shotgun on his lap. He was staring impassively at the decapitated body of Maria Craponcia, alias Yvonne, covered in insects. When he saw the guards coming over to him, he just shrugged his shoulders, his face splattered with blood, as if he were being ravaged by smallpox. Following the sobs, the civil guards found Ramon Oneball squatting by a tree some thirty yards away, in the undergrowth. He was shaking like a child and was unable to make himself understood. The lieutenant of the Civil Guard, after much deliberation, reported that the event had been a tragic accident, and so he recorded it in his statement, though not on his conscience. When they asked the boy if there was anything they could do for him, Francisco Javier asked whether he could keep that old gun, because when he grew up, he wanted to be a soldier. . . .