The Shadow of the Wind (44 page)

'He must be, because I don't think he can have won her over with his looks. Come on, let's go.'

We turned out the light and left the room quietly, closing the door and leaving the two lovers in the hands of sleep. I thought I could see the first glimmer of daybreak through the gallery windows at the end of the corridor.

'Suppose I say no,' I said in a low voice. 'Suppose I tell you to forget this.'

Barcelo smiled. 'Too late, Daniel. You should have sold me that book years ago, when you had the chance.'

Day was dawning when I reached home, dragging myself in that absurd loaned suit through damp streets that shone with a scarlet hue. I found my father asleep in his dining-room armchair, with a blanket over his legs and his favourite book open in his lap - a copy of Voltaire's Candide, which he reread a couple of times a year, the only times I heard him laugh heartily. I observed him: his hair was grey, thinning, and the skin on his face had begun to sag around his cheekbones. I looked at that man whom I had once imagined almost invincible; he now seemed fragile, defeated without knowing it. Perhaps we were both defeated. I leaned over to cover him with the blanket he had been promising to give away to charity for years, and I kissed his forehead, as if by doing so I could protect him from the invisible threads that kept him away from me, from that tiny apartment, and from my memories. As if I believed that with that kiss I could deceive time and convince it to pass us by, to return some other day, some other life.

34

I spent nearly all morning daydreaming in the back room, conjuring up images of Bea. I visualized her naked skin under my hands, and it seemed to me that I could almost taste her sweet breath. I caught myself remembering with maplike precision every contour of her body, the glistening of my saliva on her lips and on that line of fair hair, so fair it was almost transparent, that ran down her belly and that my friend Fermin, in his improvised lectures on carnal logistics, liked to call 'the little road to Jerez'.

I looked at my watch for the umpteenth time and realized to my horror that there were still a few hours to go before I could see, and touch, Bea. I tried to sort out the month's invoices, but the rustle of the sheets of paper reminded me of the sound of underwear slipping down the pale hips and thighs of Dona Beatriz Aguilar, sister of my childhood friend.

'Daniel, you've got your head in the clouds. Is anything worrying you? Is it Fermin?' my father asked.

I nodded, ashamed of myself. My best friend had lost a few ribs to save my skin a few hours earlier, and all I could think of was the fastening of a bra.

'Speak of the devil. . .'

I raised my eyes, and there he was. Fermin Romero de Torres, the one and only, wearing his best suit, and with that ragged posture like a cheap cigar. He came in through the shop door with a victorious smile and a fresh carnation in his lapel.

'But what are you doing here? Weren't you supposed to be resting?'

'Rest takes care of itself. I'm a man of action. And if I'm not here, you two won't even sell a catechism.'

Ignoring the doctor's advice, Fermin had come along, determined to take up his post again. His face was yellow and covered in bruises; he limped badly and moved like a broken puppet.

'You're going straight to bed, Fermin, for God's sake,' said my father, horrified.

'Wouldn't hear of it. Statistics prove that more people die in bed than in the trenches.'

All our protests went unheeded. After a while my father gave in, because something in poor Fermin's eyes suggested that even though his bones hurt him terribly, the prospect of being alone in his pension room was even more painful.

'All right, but if I see you lifting anything besides a pencil, I'll give you an earful.'

'Yes, sir! You have my word of honour that I won't even lift a finger.'

Fermin proceeded to put on his blue overalls and arm himself with a rag and a bottle of alcohol. He set himself up behind the counter, planning to clean the covers and spines of the fifteen secondhand books that had arrived that morning. They were all copies of a much-sought-after title, The Three-Cornered Hat: A History of the Civil Guard in Alexandrine Verse, by the exceedingly young graduate Fulgencio Capon, acclaimed as a prodigy by critics all over the country. While he devoted himself to his task, Fermin kept throwing me surreptitious looks, winking like a scheming devil.

'Your ears are as red as peppers, Daniel.'

'It must be from hearing you talk so much nonsense.'

'Or from the fever that's gripped you. When are you seeing the young maid?'

'None of your business.'

'You look really bad. Are you avoiding spicy food? Hot spices are fatal; they dilate your blood vessels.'

'Piss off.'

It was going to be a long, miserable day.

The afternoon was closing in when the subway train left me at the foot of Avenida del Tibidabo. I could distinguish the shape of the blue tram, moving away through folds of violet mist. I decided not to wait for its return but to make my way on foot. Soon I discerned the outline of The Angel of Mist. I pulled out the key Bea had given me and opened the small door within the gate. I stepped into the properly, leaving the door almost closed, so that it looked shut but could be opened by Bea. I had deliberately arrived early. I knew that Bea would take at least half an hour or forty-five minutes more. I wanted to feel the presence of the house on my own and explore it before Bea arrived and made it hers. I stopped for a moment to look at the fountain and the hand of the angel rising from the waters that were tinted scarlet. The accusing index finger seemed sharp as a dagger. I went up to the edge of the bowl. The sculpted face, with no eyes and no soul, quivered beneath the water.

I walked up the wide staircase that led to the entrance. The main door was slightly ajar. I felt a pang of anxiety, because I thought I'd closed it when I left the place the other night. I examined the lock, which didn't seem to have been tampered with, and came to the conclusion that I must have forgotten to close it. I pushed it gently inwards, and I felt the breath from inside the house brushing my face, a scent of burned wood, damp, and dead flowers. I pulled out a box of matches I'd picked up before leaving the bookshop and knelt down to light the first of the candles Bea had left behind. A copper-coloured bubble lit up in my hands and revealed the dancing shapes of the walls that wept tears of dampness, the fallen ceilings and dilapidated doors.

I proceeded to the second candle and lit it. Slowly, almost ritualistically, I followed the trail of the candles and lit them one by one, conjuring up a halo of amber light that seemed to float in the air like a cobweb trapped in the midst of darkness. My journey ended by the sitting-room fireplace, by the blankets that were still lying on the floor, stained with ash. I sat there, facing the rest of the room. I had expected silence, but the house exhaled a thousand sounds. The creaking of wood, the brush of the wind over the roof tiles, a thousand and one tapping sounds inside the walls, under the floor, moving from place to place.

After about thirty minutes, I noticed that the cold and the dark were beginning to make me feel drowsy. I stood up and began to walk up and down the room to warm up. There was only the charred husk of a log in the hearth. By the time Bea arrived, the temperature inside the old mansion would have vanquished the feverish ideas that had been plaguing me for days and filled me with nothing but pure and chaste thoughts. Having found an aim more practical than the contemplation of the ruins of time, I picked up one of the candles and set off to explore the house in search of something to burn.

My notions of Victorian literature suggested that the most logical place to begin searching was the cellar, which must have once housed the ovens and a great coal bunker. With this idea in mind, I spent almost five minutes trying to find a door or staircase leading to the lower floor. I chose a large door made of carved wood at the end of a passage. It looked like a piece of exquisite cabinet making, with reliefs in the shape of angels and a large cross in the centre. The handle was in the middle of the door, under the cross. I tried unsuccessfully to turn it. The mechanism was probably jammed or simply ruined by rust. The only way that door would yield would be by forcing it open with a crowbar or knocking it down with an axe, alternatives I quickly ruled out. I studied the large piece of wood by candlelight and thought that somehow it looked more like a sarcophagus than a door. I wondered what was hidden behind it. .

A closer examination of the carved angels discouraged me from looking any further, and I left the place. I was about to give up my search for a way down to the cellar when, by chance, I came across a tiny door at the other end of the passage, which at first I took to be the door of a broom cupboard. I tested the doorknob, and it gave way instantly. On the other side, a steep staircase plunged into a pool of blackness. A powerful smell of damp earth hit me. It seemed a strangely familiar smell, and as I stood there with my eyes on the black well in front of me, I was seized by a memory from my childhood, buried beneath years of fear.

A rainy afternoon on the eastern slope of Montjuic, looking at the sea through a forest of incomprehensible mausoleums, a forest of crosses and gravestones carved with skulls and faces of children with no lips or eyes, a place that stank of death; and the silhouettes of about twenty adults that I could only remember as black suits dripping with rain, and my father's hand holding mine too tightly, as if by doing so he could stop his weeping, while a priest's empty words fell into that marble tomb into which three faceless gravediggers pushed a grey coffin. The downpour slithered like melted wax over the coffin, and I thought I heard my mother's voice calling me from within, begging me to free her from that prison of stone and darkness, but all I could do was tremble and ask my father in a voiceless whisper not to hold my hand so tight, tell him he was hurting me, and that smell of fresh earth, earth and ash and rain, was devouring everything, a smell of emptiness and death.

I opened my eyes and went down the steps almost blindly, because the light from the candle dispelled only an inch or two of darkness. When I reached the bottom, I held the candle up high and looked about me. I found no kitchen, no cupboard full of dry wood. A narrow passage extended before me, ending in a semicircular chamber. In the chamber stood a figure, its face lined with tears of blood from two hollow eyes, its arms unfolded like wings and a serpent of thorns sprouting from its temples. I felt an icy cold stabbing me in the nape of the neck. At some point I regained my composure and realized I was staring at an effigy of Christ carved in wood on the wall of a chapel. I stepped forward a few yards and beheld a ghostly sight. A dozen naked female torsos were piled up in one corner of the old chapel. Their heads and arms were missing, and they were supported by a tripod. Each one was shaped differently, replicating the figures of women of varying ages and constitutions. On their bellies were words written in charcoal: 'Isabel, Eugenia, Penelope.' For once, my Victorian reading came to the rescue, and I realized that what I was beholding was none other than the remains of an old custom no longer in use, the echo of an era when the homes of the wealthy had mannequins made to measure for different members of the family, used for tailoring their dresses and trousseaux. Despite Christ's threatening, grim look, I could not resist the temptation of stretching out my hand and touching the torso with Penelope Aldaya's name written on it.

At that moment I thought I heard footsteps on the floor above. I imagined that Bea had arrived and was wandering through the old mansion, looking for me. Relieved, I left the chapel and made my way back to the staircase. I was about to go up when I noticed that at the other end of the corridor there was a boiler and a central heating system that seemed to be in good order. It seemed incongruent with the rest of the cellar. I remembered Bea mentioning that the estate agency, which for years had tried to sell the Aldaya mansion, had carried out some renovation work, hoping to attract potential buyers. I went up to examine the contraption more closely and saw that it consisted of a radiator system fed by a small boiler. At my feet I found a few pails full of charcoal, bits of plywood, and a few tins that I presumed must contain kerosene. I opened the boiler latch and had a look inside. Everything seemed to be in order. The idea of being able to get that old machine to work after so many years struck me as a bit far-fetched, but that didn't stop me filling the boiler with bits of charcoal and wood and spraying them with a good shower of kerosene. While I was doing this, I thought I heard the creaking of old wood, and for a moment I turned my head to look behind me. Suddenly I had a vision of bloodstained thorns being pulled out of the wood, and as I faced the darkness, I was afraid of seeing the figure of Christ emerge only a few steps away, coming towards me with a wolfish smile.