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“Do you know whether Carax’s father is still alive?”
“I hope so. He was younger than me, but I go out very little these days and I haven’t read the obituary pages for years—acquaintances drop dead like flies, and, quite frankly, it puts the wind up you. By the way, Carax was his mother’s surname. The father was called Fortuny. He had a hat shop on Ronda de San Antonio.”
“Is it possible, then, do you think, that when he returned to Barcelona, Carax may have felt tempted to visit your daughter, Nuria, if they were friends, since he wasn’t on good terms with his father?”
Isaac laughed bitterly. “I’m probably the last person who would know. After all, I’m her father. I know that once, in 1932 or 1933, Nuria went to Paris on business for Cabestany, and she stayed in Julián Carax’s apartment for a couple of weeks. It was Cabestany who told me. According to my daughter, she stayed in a hotel. She was unmarried at the time, and I had an inkling that Carax was a bit smitten with her. My Nuria is the sort who breaks a man’s heart by just walking into a shop.”
“Do you mean they were lovers?”
“You like melodrama, eh? Look, I’ve never interfered in Nuria’s private life, because mine isn’t picture perfect either. If you ever have a daughter—a blessing I wouldn’t wish on anyone, because it’s Murphy’s Law that sooner or later she will break your heart—anyhow, as I was saying, if you ever have a daughter, you’ll begin, without realizing it, to divide men into two camps: those you suspect are sleeping with her and those you don’t. Whoever says that’s not true is lying through his teeth. I suspected that Carax was one of the first, so I didn’t care whether he was a genius or a poor wretch. To me he was always a scoundrel.”
“Perhaps you were mistaken.”
“Don’t be offended, but you’re still very young and know as much about women as I do about baking marzipan pastries.”
“No contest there,” I agreed. “What happened to the books your daughter took from the warehouse?”
“They’re here.”
“Here?”
“Where do you think your book came from—the one you found on the day your father brought you to this place?”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s very simple. One night, some days after the fire in Cabestany’s warehouse, my daughter, Nuria, turned up here. She looked nervous. She said that someone had been following her and she was afraid it was the man called Coubert, who was trying to get hold of the books to destroy them. Nuria said she had come to hide Carax’s books. She went into the large hall and hid them in the maze of bookshelves, like buried treasure. I didn’t ask her where she’d put them, nor did she tell me. Before she left, she said that as soon as she managed to find Carax, she’d come back for them. It seemed to me that she was still in love with him, but I didn’t say anything. I asked her whether she’d seen him recently, whether she’d had any news. She said she hadn’t heard from him for months, practically since he’d sent the final corrections for the manuscript of his last book. I can’t say whether she was lying. What I do know is that after that day Nuria d
idn’t hear from Carax again, and those books were left here, gathering dust.”
“Do you think your daughter would be willing to talk to me about all this?”
“Could be, but I don’t know whether she’d be able to tell you anything that yours truly hasn’t told you already. Remember, all this happened a long time ago. The truth is that we don’t get on as well as I’d like. We see each other once a month. We go out to lunch somewhere close by, and then she’s off as quick as she came. I know that a few years ago she married a nice man, a journalist, a bit harebrained, I’d say, one of those people who are always getting into trouble over politics, but with a good heart. They had a civil wedding, with no guests. I found out a month later. She has never introduced me to her husband. Miquel, his name is. Or something like that. I don’t suppose she’s very proud of her father, and I don’t blame her. Now she’s a changed woman. Imagine, she even learned to knit, and I’m told she no longer dresses like Simone de Beauvoir. One of these days, I’ll find out I’m a grandfather. For years she’s been working at home as an Italian and French translator. I don’t know where she got the talent from, quite frankly. Not from her father, that’s for sure. Let me write down her address, though I’m not sure it’s a very good idea to say I sent you.”
Isaac scribbled something on the corner of an old newspaper and handed me the scrap of paper.
“I’m very grateful. You never know, maybe she’ll remember something….”
Isaac smiled with some sadness. “As a child she’d remember everything. Everything. Then children grow up, and you no longer know what they think or what they feel. And that’s how it should be, I suppose. Don’t tell Nuria what I’ve told you, will you? What’s been said here tonight should go no further.”
“Don’t worry. Do you think she still thinks about Carax?”
Isaac gave a long sigh and lowered his eyes. “Heaven knows. I don’t know whether she really loved him. These things remain locked inside, and now she’s a married woman. When I was your age, I had a girlfriend, Teresita Boadas, her name was—she sewed aprons in the Santamaría textile factory, on Calle Comercio. She was sixteen, two years younger than me, and she was the first woman I ever fell for. Don’t look at me like that. I know you youngsters think we old people have never fallen in love. Teresita’s father had an ice cart in the Borne Market and had been born dumb. You can’t imagine how scared I was the day I asked him for his daughter’s hand and he spent five long minutes staring at me, without any apparent reaction, holding the ice pick in his hand. I’d been saving up for two years to buy Teresita a wedding ring when she fell ill. Something she’d caught in the workshop, she told me. Six months later she was dead of tuberculosis. I can still remember how the dumb man moaned the day we buried her in the Pueblo Nuevo cemetery.”
Isaac fell into a deep silence. I didn’t dare breathe. After a while he looked up and smiled.
“I’m speaking of fifty-five years ago, imagine! But if I must be frank, a day doesn’t go by without me thinking of her, of the walks we used to take as far as the ruins of the 1888 Universal Exhibition, or of how she would laugh at me when I read her the poems I wrote in the back room of my uncle Leopoldo’s grocery store. I even remember the face of a Gypsy woman who read our fortune on El Bogatell beach and told us we’d always be together. In her own way, she was right. What can I say? Well, yes, I think Nuria still remembers that man, even if she doesn’t say so. And the truth is, I’ll never forgive Carax for that. You’re still very young, but I know how much these things hurt. If you want my opinion, Carax was a robber of hearts, and he took my daughter’s to the grave or to hell. I’ll only ask you one thing: if you see her and talk to her, let me know how she is. Find out whether she’s happy. And whether she’s forgiven her father.”
SHORTLY BEFORE DAWN, WITH ONLY AN OIL LAMP TO LIGHT MY WAY, I went back into the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. As I did so, I imagined Isaac’s daughter wandering through the same dark and endless corridors with exactly the same determination as guided me that day: to save the book. I thought I remembered the route I’d followed the first time I visited that place with my father, but soon I realized that the folds of the labyrinth bent the passages into spirals that were impossible to recall. Three times I tried to follow a path I thought I had memorized, and three times the maze returned me to the same point. Isaac waited for me there, a wry smile on his face.
“Do you intend to come back for it one day?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“In that case you might like to cheat a little.”
“Cheat?”
“Young man, you’re a bit slow on the uptake, aren’t you? Remember the Minotaur.”
