The Shadow of the Wind (57 page)

The promise he had made to his father was still branded on his mind. As soon as he arrived, he tried to pick up Julian's trail, only to discover that, like him, Carax also appeared to have vanished from Barcelona. It was then, through chance or fate, that he encountered a familiar character from his youth. After a prominent career in reformatories and state prisons, Francisco Javier Fumero had joined the army, attaining the rank of lieutenant. There were many who envisaged him as a future general, but a murky scandal caused his expulsion from the army. Even then his reputation outlasted his rank. He was talked about a great deal, but above all he was feared. Francisco Javier Fumero, that shy, disturbed boy who once gathered dead leaves from the courtyard of San Gabriel's, was now a murderer. It was rumoured that he killed notorious characters for money, and that he dispatched political figures on request. Fumero was said to be death incarnate.

Aldaya and he recognized one another instantly through the haze of the Novedades cafe. Aldaya was ill, stricken by a strange fever that he blamed on the insects of the South American jungles. 'There, even the mosquitoes are sons of bitches,' he complained. Fumero listened to him with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. He revered mosquitoes and all insects in general. He admired their discipline, their fortitude and organization. There was no laziness in them, no irreverence or racial degeneration. His favourite species were spiders, blessed with that rare science for weaving a trap in which they awaited their prey with infinite patience, knowing that sooner or later the prey would succumb, either through stupidity or negligence. In his opinion society had a lot to learn from insects. Aldaya was a clear case of moral and physical ruin. He had aged noticeably and looked shabby, with no muscle tone. Fumero couldn't bear people with no muscle tone. They nauseated him.

'Javier, I feel dreadful,' Aldaya pleaded. 'Could you help me out for a few days?'

Fumero agreed to take Jorge Aldaya to his home. He lived in a gloomy apartment in the Raval quarter, in Calle Cadena, in the company of numerous insects stored in jars, and half a dozen books. Fumero detested books as much as he loved insects, hut these were no ordinary volumes: they were the novels of Julian Carax published by Cabestany. Two prostitutes lived in the apartment opposite - a mother and daughter who allowed themselves to be pinched and burned with cigars when business was slow, especially at the end of the month. Fumero paid them to take care of Aldaya while he was at work. He had no desire to see him die. Not yet.

Francisco Javier Fumero had joined the Crime Squad. There was always work there for the type of person who could confront the most awkward situations, the sort of situations that had to be solved discreetly so that respectable citizens could continue living in blissful ignorance. Words to that effect had been used by Lieutenant Duran, a man given to solemn pronouncements, and under whose command Fumero had joined the police force.

'Being a policeman isn't a job, it's a mission,' Duran would proclaim. 'Spain needs more balls and less chatter.'

Unfortunately, Lieutenant Duran was soon to die in a lamentable accident during a police raid in the district of La Barceloneta: in the confusion of an encounter with a group of anarchists, he fell through a skylight, and plunged five floors to his death. Everyone agreed that Spain had lost a great man, a national hero with vision for the future, a thinker who did not fear action. Fumero took over his post with pride, knowing that he had done the right thing by pushing him, for Duran was getting too old for the job. Fumero found old men revolting - as he did crippled men, Gypsies, and queers - whether or not they had good muscle tone. Sometimes God made mistakes. It was the duty of every upright citizen to correct these small failings and keep the world looking presentable.

In March 1932, a few weeks after their meeting in the Novedades Cafe, Jorge Aldaya began to feel better and opened his heart to Fumero. He begged forgiveness for the way he had treated him during their school days. With tears in his eyes, he told Fumero the whole story, without omitting anything. Fumero listened silently, nodding, taking it in, all the while wondering whether he should kill Aldaya there and then, or wait. He wondered whether Aldaya would be so weak that the blade would meet only tepid resistance from that stinking flesh, softened by so many years of indolence. He decided to postpone the vivisection. He was intrigued by the story, especially insofar as it concerned Julian Carax.

He knew, from the information he obtained at the publishing house, that Carax lived in Paris, but Paris was a very large city, and nobody in Cabestany's company seemed to know the exact address. Nobody except for a woman called Monfort who kept it to herself. Fumero had followed her two or three times on her way out of the office, without her realizing. He had even travelled in a tram at half a yard's distance from her. Women never noticed him, and if they did, they turned their faces the other way, pretending not to have seen him. One night, after following her right up to her front door in Plaza de San Felipe Neri, Fumero went back to his home and masturbated furiously; as he did so, he imagined himself plunging a knife into that woman's body, an inch or so at a time, slowly, methodically, his eyes fixed on hers. Maybe then she would deign to give him Carax's address and treat him with the respect due to a police officer.

Julian Carax was the only person whom Fumero had failed to kill once he'd made up his mind. Perhaps because he had been Fumero's first, and it takes time to master your game. When Fumero heard that name again, he smiled in a way his neighbours, the prostitutes, found so frightening: without blinking, and slowly licking his upper lip. He could still remember Carax kissing Penelope Aldaya in the large mansion on Avenida del Tibidabo. His Penelope. His had been a pure love, a true love, like the ones you saw in movies. Fumero was very keen on movies and went to the cinema at least twice a week. It was in a cinema that he had understood that Penelope had been the love of his life. The rest, especially his mother, had been nothing but tarts. As he listened to the last snippets of Aldaya's story, he decided that he wasn't going to kill him after all. In fact, he was pleased that fate had reunited them. He had a vision, like the ones in the films he so enjoyed: Aldaya was going to hand him the others on a platter. Sooner or later they would all end up ensnared in his web.

6

In the winter of 1934, the Moliner brothers finally managed to evict Miquel from the house on Calle Puertaferrissa, which is still empty and in a derelict state to this day. All they wanted was to see him out on the street, shorn of what little he had left, his books and the freedom and independence that so offended them and filled them with such deep hatred. He didn't tell me anything or come to me for help. I only discovered he'd become a virtual beggar when I went to look for him in what had been his home and found his brothers' hired legal thugs drawing up an inventory of the property and selling off the few objects that had belonged to him. Miquel had already been spending a few nights in a pension on Calle Canuda, a dismal, damp hovel that looked and smelled like a brothel. When I saw the tiny room in which he was confined, like a coffin with no windows and a prisoner's bunk, I grabbed hold of him and took him home. He couldn't stop coughing, and he looked emaciated. He said it was a lingering cold, an old maid's complaint that would go away when it got bored. Two weeks later he was worse.

As he always dressed in black, it took me some time to realize that those stains on his sleeves were bloodstains. I called a doctor, and after he examined Miquel, he asked me why I'd waited so long to call him. Miquel had tuberculosis. Bankrupt and ill, he now lived only on his memories and regrets. He was the kindest and frailest man I had ever known, my only friend. We got married one cold February morning in a county court. Our honeymoon consisted of taking the bus up to Guell Park and gazing down on Barcelona - a little world of fog - from its sinuous terraces. We didn't tell anyone we'd got married, not Cabestany, or my father, or Miquel's family, who believed him to be dead. Eventually I wrote a letter to Julian, telling him about it, but I never mailed it. Ours was a secret marriage. A few months after the wedding, someone knocked on our door saying his name was Jorge Aldaya. He looked like a shattered man, and his face was covered in sweat despite the biting cold. When he saw Miquel again after more than ten years, Aldaya smiled bitterly and said, 'We're all cursed, Miquel. You, Julian, Fumero, and me.' The alleged reason for the visit was an attempt to make up with his old friend Miquel, who he hoped would now let him know how to get in touch with Julian Carax, because he had a very important message for him from his deceased father, Don Ricardo Aldaya. Miquel said he didn't know where Carax was.

'We lost touch years ago,' he lied. 'The last thing I heard, he was living in Italy.'

Aldaya was expecting such an answer. 'You disappoint me, Miquel. I had hoped that time and misfortune would have made you wiser.'

'Some disappointments honour those who inspire them.'

Shrivelled up and on the verge of collapse, Aldaya laughed.

'Fumero sends you his most heartfelt congratulations on your marriage,' he said on his way to the door.

Those words froze my heart. Miquel didn't wish to speak, but that night, while I held him close and we both pretended to fall asleep, I knew that Aldaya had been right. We were cursed.

A few months went by without any news from either Julian or Aldaya. Miquel was still writing regular pieces for the press in Barcelona and Madrid. He worked without pause, sitting at the typewriter pouring out what he considered to be drivel, to feed commuters on the tram. I kept my job at the publishing house, perhaps because that was where I felt closest to Julian. He had sent me a brief note saying he was working on a new novel, called The Shadow of the Wind, which he hoped to finish within a few months. The letter made no mention at all of what had happened in Paris. The tone was colder and more distant than before. But my attempts at hating him were unsuccessful. I began to believe that Julian was not a man, he was an illness.

Miquel had no illusions about my feelings. He offered me his affection and devotion without asking for anything in exchange except my company and perhaps my discretion. No reproach or complaint ever passed his lips. In time I came to feel an immense tenderness for him, beyond the friendship that had brought us together and the compassion that had later doomed us. Miquel opened a savings account in my name, into which he deposited almost all the income he earned from his journalism. He never said no to an article, a review, or a gossip column. He wrote under three different pseudonyms, fourteen or sixteen hours a day. When I asked him why he worked so hard, he just smiled or else he said that if he didn't do anything, he'd be bored. There was never any deceit between us, not even the wordless kind. Miquel knew he would soon die.

'You must promise that if anything happens to me, you'll take that money and get married again, that you'll have children, and that you'll forget about us all, starting with me.'

'And who would I marry, Miquel? Don't talk nonsense.'

Sometimes I'd catch him looking at me with a gentle smile, as if the

very sight of my presence were his greatest treasure. Every afternoon he

would come to meet me on my way out of the office, his only moment of leisure in the whole day. He feigned strength, but I saw how he stooped when he walked, and how he coughed. He would take me for a snack or to window-shop in Calle Fernando, and then we'd go back home, where he would continue working until well after midnight. I silently blessed every minute we spent together, and every night he would fall asleep embracing me, while I hid the tears caused by the anger I felt at having been incapable of loving that man the way he loved me, incapable of giving him what I had so pointlessly abandoned at Julian's feet. Many a night I swore to myself that I would forget Julian, that I would devote the rest of my life to making that poor man happy and returning to him some small part of what he had given me. I was Julian's lover for two weeks, but I would be Miquel's wife the rest of my life. If some day these pages should reach your hands and you should judge me, as I have judged myself when writing them, looking at my reflection in this mirror of remorse, remember me like this, Daniel. The manuscript of Julian's last novel arrived towards the end of 1935. I don't know whether it was out of spite or out of fear, but I handed it to the printer without even reading it. Miquel's last savings had financed the edition in advance, months earlier, so Cabestany, who at the time was having health problems, paid little attention. That week the doctor who was attending Miquel came to see me at the office, looking very concerned. He told me that if Miquel didn't slow down and give himself some rest, there was little he could do to help him fight the tuberculosis.

'He should be in the mountains, not in Barcelona breathing in clouds of bleach and charcoal. He's not a cat with nine lives, and I'm not a nanny. Make him listen to reason. He won't pay any attention to me.'