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My only response was the slam of the front door as I left the apartment. I rushed furiously down the stairs, my eyes brimming with tears of rage as I stepped outside. The street was freezing, desolate, suffused in an eerie blue radiance. I felt as if my heart had been flayed open. Everything around me trembled. I walked off aimlessly, paying scant attention to a stranger who was observing me from Puerta del Ángel. He wore a dark suit, right hand buried in the pocket of his jacket, eyes like wisps of light in the glow of his cigarette. Limping slightly, he began to follow me.
I wandered through the streets for an hour or more, until I found myself at the base of the Columbus monument. Crossing over to the port, I sat on the stony steps that descended into the dark waters, next to the dock that sheltered the pleasure boats. Someone had chartered a night trip, and I could hear laughter and music wafting across from the procession of lights and reflections in the inner harbor. I remembered the days when my father would take me on that very same boat for a trip to the breakwater point. From there you could see the cemetery on the slopes of Montjuïc, the endless city of the dead. Sometimes I waved, thinking that my mother was still there and could see us going by. My father would also wave. It was years since we had boarded a pleasure boat, although I knew that sometimes he did the trip o
n his own.
“A good night for remorse, Daniel,” came a voice from the shadows. “Cigarette?”
I jumped up with a start. A hand was offering me a cigarette out of the dark.
“Who are you?”
The stranger moved forward until he was on the very edge of darkness, his face still concealed. A puff of blue smoke rose from his cigarette. I immediately recognized the black suit and the hand hidden in the jacket pocket. His eyes shone like glass beads.
“A friend,” he said. “Or that’s what I aspire to be. A cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Good for you. Unfortunately, I have nothing else to offer you, Daniel.”
He had a rasping, wounded voice. He dragged his words out so that they sounded muffled and distant like the old 78s Barceló collected.
“How do you know my name?”
“I know a lot about you. Your name is the least of it.”
“What else do you know?”
“I could embarrass you, but I don’t have the time or the inclination. Just say that I know you have something that interests me. And I’m ready to pay you good money for it.”
“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
“No, I hardly think so. I tend to make other mistakes, but never when it comes to people. How much do you want for it?”
“For what?”
“ForThe Shadow of the Wind. ”
“What makes you think I have it?”
“That’s beyond discussion, Daniel. It’s just a question of price. I’ve known you have it for a long time. People talk. I listen.”
“Well, you must have heard wrong. I don’t have that book. And if I did, I wouldn’t sell it.”
“Your integrity is admirable, especially in these days of sycophants and ass lickers, but you don’t have to pretend with me. Say how much. A thousand duros? Money means nothing to me. You set the price.”
“I’ve already told you: it’s not for sale, and I don’t have it,” I replied. “You’ve made a mistake, you see.”
The stranger remained silent and motionless, enveloped in the blue smoke of a cigarette that never seemed to go out. I realized he didn’t smell of tobacco, but of burned paper. Good paper, the sort used for books.
“Perhaps you’re the one who’s making a mistake now,” he suggested.
“Are you threatening me?”
“Probably.”
I gulped. Despite my bravado, the man frightened me out of my skin.
“May I ask why you are so interested?”
