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“I can’t find her, Julián…. I swear that—”
“Don’t worry, Father. This is something I must do. You’ve already helped me as much as you could.”
That night Julián at last went out into the streets of Barcelona, determined to find Penélope.
AS MIQUEL LISTENED TO HIS FRIEND’S TALE, IT DID NOT OCCUR TO HIM to be suspicious of the waiter when he went over to the telephone and mumbled something with his back to them or, later, when he surreptitiously kept an eye on the door, wiping glasses too thoroughly for an establishment where dirt was otherwise so at home. It didn’t occur to him that Fumero would already have been in that café, and in dozens of cafés like it, a stone’s throw away from the Aldaya mansion; that as soon as Carax set foot in any one of them, the call would be placed in a matter of seconds. When the police car stopped in front of the café and the waiter disappeared into the kitchen, Miquel felt the cold and serene stillness of fate. Carax read his eyes, and they both turned at the same time and saw the apparition: three gray raincoats flapping behind the windows, three faces blowing steam onto the windowpane. None of them was Fumero. The vultures preceded him.
“Let’s leave this place, Julián….”
“There’s nowhere to go,” said Carax, with an oddly calm tone of voice that made his friend eye him carefully.
It was only then that Miquel noticed the revolver in Julián’s hand. The doorbell sounded above the murmur of the radio. Miquel snatched the gun from Carax’s hands and fixed his eyes on him.
“Give me your papers, Julián.”
The three policemen pretended to sit at the bar. One of them gave Miguel and Julián a sidelong glance. The other two felt inside their raincoats.
“Your papers, Julián. Now.”
Carax silently shook his head.
“I only have a month left, perhaps two, with luck. One of us has to get out of here, Julián. You have more going for you than I do. I don’t know whether you’ll find Penélope. But Nuria is waiting for you.”
“Nuria is your wife.”
“Remember the deal we made. The day I die, all that was once mine will be yours…”
“…except your dreams.”
They smiled at each other for the last time. Julián handed him his passport. Miquel put it next to the copy of The Shadow of the Wind that he had been carrying in his coat pocket since the day he’d received it.
“See you soon,” Julián whispered.
“There’s no hurry. I’ll be waiting.”
Just when the three policemen were turning toward them, Miquel rose from the table and went up to them. At first all they saw was a pale, tremulous man who seemed at death’s door as he smiled at them with blood showing on the corners of his thin, lifeless lips. By the time they noticed the gun in his right hand, Miquel was barely three yards away from them. One of them was about to scream, but the first shot blew off his lower jaw. The body fell on its knees, lifeless, at Miquel’s feet. The other two police officers had already drawn their weapons. The second shot went through the stomach of the one who looked older. The bullet snapped his backbone in two and splattered a handful of guts against the bar. Miquel never had time to fire a third shot. The remaining policeman was already pointing his gun at him. He felt it in his ribs, on his heart, and saw the man’s steely eyes, lit up with panic.
“Stand still, you son of a bitch, or I swear I’ll tear you apart.”
Miquel smiled and slowly raised his gun toward the policeman’s face. The man couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and his lips trembled.
“You tell Fumero, from Carax, that I remember his little sailor suit.”
He felt no pain, no fire. The impact, like a muffled blow from a hammer, threw him into the window, extinguishing the sound and color of things. As he crashed through the pane, he noticed an intense cold creeping down his throat and the light receding like dust in the wind. Miquel Moliner turned his head for the last time and saw his friend Julián running down the street. Miquel was thirty-six years old, which was longer than he’d hoped to live. Before he collapsed onto a pavement strewn with bloodstained glass, he was already dead.
·9·
THAT NIGHT AN UNIDENTIFIED VAN ARRIVED IN RESPONSE TO THE call from the policeman who had killed Miquel. I never knew his name, nor do I think he realized whom he had murdered. Like all wars, whether private or public, that one was like a stage show. Two men carried off the bodies of the dead policemen and made sure the manager of the bar understood that he must forget what had happened or there would be trouble. Never underestimate the talent for forgetting that wars awaken, Daniel. Miquel Moliner’s corpse was abandoned in an alleyway of the Raval quarter twelve hours later, so that his death could not be connected to that of the two police officers. When the body finally arrived at the morgue, Miquel had been dead for two days. He had left his own papers at home before going out. All that the employees at the mortuary could find was a disfigured passport in the name of Julián Carax, and a copy of The Shadow of the Wind. The police concluded that the deceased man was Julián Carax. The passport still gave his address as that of the Fortunys’ apartment on Ronda de San Antonio.
By then the news had reached Fumero, who went along to the morgue to bid farewell to Julián. There he met the hatter, whom the police had fetched to identify the body. Mr. Fortuny, who hadn’t seen Julián for two days, feared the worst. When he recognized the corpse as that of the man who only a week earlier had knocked on his door asking after Julián (and whom he’d taken to be one of Fumero’s henchmen), he began to scream and left. The police took this response as an admission of recognition. Fumero, who had witnessed the scene, went up to the body and inspected it silently. He hadn’t seen Julián for seventeen years. When he recognized Miquel Moliner, all he did was smile and sign the forensic report confirming that the body in question was Julián Carax. He then ordered its immediate removal to a common grave in Montjuïc.
For a long time, I wondered why Fumero would do something like that. But that was simply Fumero’s logic. By dying with Julián’s identity Miquel had involuntarily provided him with the perfect alibi. From that moment on, Julián Carax didn’t exist. There would be no official link between Fumero and the man who, sooner or later, he hoped to find and murder. It was wartime, and few would ask for explanations concerning the death of someone who didn’t even have a name. Julián had lost his identity. He was a shadow. I spent two days in the apartment waiting for Miquel or Julián, thinking I was going mad. On the third day, Monday, I went back to work at the publishing firm. Mr. Cabestany had been hospitalized a few weeks before and would not return to his office. His eldest son, Álvaro, had taken over the business. I didn’t say anything to anyone. There was nobody I could turn to.
That same afternoon I received a call from an employee at the morgue, Manuel Gutiérrez Fonseca. He explained that the body of someone called Julián Carax had been brought to the mortuary. Having compared the deceased man’s passport with the name of the author of the book that was on the body when it arrived, and suspecting, moreover, if not a breach in the rules, a certain laxity on the part of the police, he had felt it his moral duty to call the publishers and inform them of what had happened. As I listened to him, I almost died. The first thing I thought was that it was a trap set up by Fumero. Mr. Gutiérrez Fonseca expressed himself with the correctness of a conscientious public official, although something else tinged his voice, something that even he would have been unable to explain. I had taken the call in Mr. Cabestany’s office. Thank God, Álvaro had gone out for lunch and I was alone; otherwise it would have been difficult for me to explain away the tears and the shaking hands with which I held the telephone. Mr. Gutiérrez Fonseca told me he had thought it appropriate to let me know what had happened.
I thanked him for his call with that artificiality of coded conversations. As soon as I put down the receiver, I closed the office door and bit my fists so as not to scream. I washed my face and left for home immediately, leaving a message for Álvaro to say I was unwell and would return the following day earlier than usual, to catch up with the correspondence. I had to make an effort not to run in the street, to walk with the anonymous gray calm of people who have no secrets to hide. When I inserted the key in the apartment door, I realized that the lock had been forced. I froze. The doorknob began to turn from within. I wondered whether I was going to die like this, in a dark staircase, and without knowing what had become of Miquel. The door opened, and I encountered the dark eyes of Julián Carax. May God forgive me, but at that moment I felt that life was returning to me, and I thanked the heavens for giving me back Julián instead of Miquel.
We melted in a long embrace, but when I searched for his lips, Julián moved away and lowered his eyes. I closed the door and, taking Julián’s hand, led him to the bedroom. We lay together on the bed in silence. Evening was closing in, and the shadows of the apartment were ablaze with purple. As on every night since the start of the war, shots could be heard in the distance. Julián was crying as he lay on my chest, and I felt a tiredness beyond words. Later, once night had fallen, our lips met, and in the shelter of that pressing dar
