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He fixed his gaze
on me and nodded again. He turned to remove the plates he’d placed on the table. It was then, without quite knowing why, that I went up to him and hugged him. My father, surprised, hugged me back.
“Daniel, are you all right?”
I held my father tightly in my arms.
“I love you,” I murmured.
The cathedral bells were ringing when I began to read Nuria Monfort’s manuscript. Her small, neat writing reminded me of her impeccable desk. Perhaps she had been trying to find in these words the peace and safety that life had not granted her.
Nuria Monfort:
Remembrance of
the Lost
1933–1955
·1·
THERE ARE NO SECOND CHANCES IN LIFE, EXCEPT TO FEEL remorse. Julián Carax and I met in the autumn of 1933. At that time I was working for the publisher Toni Cabestany, who had discovered him in 1927 in the course of one of his “book-scouting” trips to Paris. Julián earned his living playing piano at a hostess bar in the afternoons, and he wrote at night. The owner of the establishment, one Irene Marceau, knew most of the Paris publishers, and, thanks to her entreaties, favors, or threats of disclosure, Julián Carax had managed to get a number of novels published, though with disastrous commercial results. For a giveaway price, Cabestany acquired the exclusive rights to publish Carax’s works in Spain and Latin America, with the translation of the French originals into Spanish by the author himself. Cabestany hoped to sell around three thousand copies per novel, but the first two titles he published in Spain turned out to be a total flop: barely a hundred copies of each sold. Despite these dismal results, every two years we received a new manuscript from Julián, which Cabestany accepted without any objections, saying that he’d signed an agreement with the author, that profit wasn’t everything, and that good literature had to be supported no matter what.
One day I was intrigued enough to ask him why he continued to publish Julián Carax’s novels as a loss-making venture. In answer to my question, Cabestany ceremoniously walked over to his bookshelf, took one of Julián’s books, and invited me to read it. I did. Two weeks later I’d read them all. This time my question was, how we could possibly sell so few copies of those novels.
“I don’t know, dear,” replied Cabestany. “But we’ll keep on trying.”
Such a noble and admirable gesture didn’t quite fit the picture I had formed of Mr. Cabestany. Perhaps I had underestimated him. I found the figure of Julián Carax increasingly intriguing as everything related to him seemed to be shrouded in mystery. At least twice a month, someone would call asking for his address. I soon realized that it was always the same person, using a different name each time. But I would tell him only what could be read on the back cover of his novels, that Julián lived in Paris. After a time he stopped calling. Just in case, I deleted Carax’s address from the company files. I was the only one who wrote to him, and I knew the address by heart.
Months later I chanced upon the bills sent by the printers to Mr. Cabestany. Glancing through them, I noticed that the expense of the editions of Julián Carax’s books was defrayed, in its entirety, by someone outside our firm whose name I had never heard before: Miquel Moliner. Moreover, the costs of printing and shipping these books were substantially lower than the sum of money invoiced to Mr. Moliner. The numbers didn’t lie: the publishing firm was making money by printing books that went straight to a warehouse. I didn’t have the courage to question Cabestany’s financial irregularities. I was afraid of losing my job. What I did do was take down the address to which we sent Miquel Moliner’s invoices, a mansion on Calle Puertaferrissa. I kept that address for months before I plucked up the courage to visit him. Finally my conscience got the better of me, and I turned up at his house to tell him that Mr. Cabestany was swindling him. He smiled and told me he already knew.
“We all do what we’re best at.”
I asked him whether he was the person who had phoned so often asking for Carax’s address. He said he wasn’t, and told me with a worried look that I should never give that address to anyone. Ever.
Miquel Moliner was a bit of a mystery. He lived on his own in a cavernous, crumbling mansion that was part of the inheritance from his father, an industrialist who had grown rich through arms manufacture and, it was said, war mongering. Far from living among luxuries, Miquel led an almost monastic existence, dedicated to squandering his father’s money, which he considered bloodstained, on the restoration of museums, cathedrals, schools, libraries, and hospitals, and on ensuring that the works of his childhood friend, Julián Carax, were published in his native city.
“I have more money than I need, but not enough friends like Julián” was his only explanation.
He hardly kept in touch with his siblings or the rest of the family, whom he referred to as strangers. He hadn’t married and he seldom left the grounds of his mansion, of which he occupied only the top floor. There he had set up his office, where he worked feverishly, writing articles and columns for various newspapers and magazines in Madrid and Barcelona, translating technical texts from German and French, copyediting encyclopedias and school textbooks. Miquel Moliner suffered from that affliction of those who feel guilty when not working; although he respected and even envied the leisure others enjoyed, he fled from it. Far from gloating about his manic work ethic, he would joke about his obsessive activity and dismiss it as a minor form of cowardice.
“While you’re working, you don’t have to look life in the eye.”
Almost without realizing it, we became good friends. We had a lot in common, probably too much. Miquel liked to talk to me about books, about his beloved Dr. Freud, about music, but above all about his old friend Julián. We saw each other almost every week. Miquel would tell me stories about the days when Julián was at San Gabriel’s School. He kept a collection of old photographs of, and stories written by, a teenage Julián. Miquel adored Julián, and, through his words and his memories, I came to know him, or at least to create an image in his absence. A year after we had met, Miquel confessed that he’d fallen in love with me. I did not wish to hurt him, but neither did I want to deceive him. It was impossible to deceive Miquel. I told him I was extremely fond of him, that he’d become my best friend, but I wasn’t in love with him. Miquel told me he already knew.
“You’re in love with Julián, but you don’t yet know.”
In August 1933, Julián wrote to inform me that he’d almost finished the manuscript of another novel, called The Cathedral Thief. Cabestany had some contracts with Gallimard that were due for renewal in September. He’d been paralyzed for several weeks with a vicious attack of gout and, as a reward for my dedication, decided that I should travel to France in his place to negotiate the new contracts. At the same time, I could visit Julián Carax and collect his new opus. I wrote to Julián telling him of my visit, which was planned for mid-September, and asking him whether he could recommend a reliable, inexpensive hotel. Julián replied saying that I could stay at his place, a modest apartment in the Saint-Germain quarter, and keep the hotel money for other expenses. The day before I left, I went to see Miquel to ask him whether he had any message for Julián. For a long while he seemed to hesitate, and then he said he didn’t.
The first time I saw Julián in person was at the Gare d’Austerlitz. Autumn had sneaked up early in Paris, and the station vault was thick with fog. I waited on the platform while the other passengers made their way toward the exit. Soon I was left alone and then saw a man wearing a black coat, standing at the entrance to the platform and watching me through the smoke of his cigarette. During the journey I had often wondered how I would recognize Julián. The photographs I’d seen of him in Miquel Moliner’s collection were at least thirteen or fourteen years old. I looked up and down the platform. There was nobody there except that figure and me. I noticed that the man was looking at me with some curiosity: perhaps he, too, was waiting for someone. It couldn’t be him. According to my calculations, Julián would be thirty-three, and that man seemed older. His hair was gray, and he looked sad or tired. Too pale and too thin, or maybe it was just the fog and the wearying journey or that the only pictures in my mind were of an adolescent Julián. Tentatively, I went up to the stranger and looked straight into his eyes.
“Julián?”
The stranger smiled and nodded. Julián Carax possessed the most charming smile in the world. It was all that was left of him.
Julián lived in an attic in Saint-Germain. The apartment had only two rooms: a living room with a minute kitchen and a tiny balcony from which you could see the towers of Notre-Dame looming out of a jungle of rooftops and mist, and a bedroom with no windows and a single bed. The bathroom was at the end of a corridor on the floor below, and he shared it with the neighbors. The whole of the apartment was smaller than Mr. Cabestany’s office. Julián had cleaned it up and got everything ready to welcome me with simple modesty. I pretended to be delighted with the apartment, which still smelled of disinfectant and furniture wax, applied by Julián with more determination than skill. The sheets on the bed looked brand new. They appeared to have a pattern of dragons and castles. Children’s sheets. Julián excused himself: he’d bought them at a very reduced price, but they were top quality. The ones with no pattern were twice the price, he explained, and they were boring.
In the sitting room, an old wooden desk faced the view of the cathedral towers. On it stood the Underwood typewriter that Julián had bought with Cabestany’s advance and two piles of writing paper, one blank and the other written on both sides. Julián shared the attic apartment with a huge white cat he called Kurtz. The animal watched me suspiciously as he lay at his master’s feet, licking his paws. I counted two chairs, a coatrack, and little else. The rest was all books. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, in double rows. Seeing me inspect the place, Julián sighed.
