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“That explains it. Ask him to let me know what to do about it. I can get a Radiant for him at a very good price. Look, take this one with you if you like, and let him try it out. If he likes it, he can pay for it later. If not, just bring it back.”
“Thank you very much, Don Federico.”
The watchmaker began to wrap up the monstrosity in question.
“The latest technology,” he said with pleasure. “By the way, I loved the book Fermín sold me the other day. It was by this fellow Graham Greene. That Fermín was a tremendous hire.”
I nodded. “Yes, he’s worth twice his weight in gold.”
“I’ve noticed he never wears a watch. Tell him to come by the shop and we’ll sort something out.”
“I will. Thank you, Don Federico.”
When he handed me the alarm clock, the watchmaker observed me closely and arched his eyebrows. “Are you sure there’s nothing the matter, Daniel? Just a bad day?”
I nodded again and smiled. “There’s nothing the matter, Don Federico. Take care.”
“You too, Daniel.”
When I got home, I found my father asleep on the sofa, the newspaper on his chest. I left the alarm clock on the table with a note saying “Don Federico says dump the old one” and slipped quietly into my room. I lay down on my bed in the dark and fell asleep thinking about the inspector, Fermín, and the watchmaker. When I woke up again, it was already two o’clock in the morning. I peered into the corridor and saw that my father had retired to his bedroom with the new alarm clock. The apartment was full of shadows, and the world seemed a gloomier and more sinister place than it had been only the night before. I realized that, in fact, I had never quite believed that Inspector Fumero existed. I went into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of cold milk, and wondered whether Fermín would be all right in hispensión.
On my way back to my room, I tried to banish the image of the policeman from my mind. I tried to get back to sleep but realized that it was impossible. I turned on the light and decided to examine the envelope addressed to Julián Carax that I had stolen from Doña Aurora that morning and which was still in the pocket of my jacket. I placed it on my desk, under the beam of the reading lamp. It was a parchmentlike envelope, with yellowing serrated borders and clayish to the touch. The postmark, just a shadow, said “18 October 1919.” The wax seal had come unstuck, probably thanks to Doña Aurora’s good offices. In its place was a reddish stain, like a trace of lipstick that had kissed the fold of the envelope on which the return address was written.
Penélope Aldaya
Avenida del Tibidabo, 32, Barcelona
I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter, an ocher-colored sheet neatly folded in two. The handwriting, in blue ink, glided nervously across the page, paling slowly until it regained intensity every few words. Everything on that page spoke of another time: the strokes that depended on the ink pot, the words scratched on the thick paper by the tip of the nib, the rugged feel of the paper. I spread the letter out on the desk and read it, breathless.
Dear Julián:
This morning I found out through Jorge that you did in fact leave Barcelona to go in pursuit of your dreams. I always feared that those dreams would never allow you to be mine, or anyone else’s. I would have liked to see you one last time, to be able to look into your eyes and tell you things that I don’t know how to say in a letter. Nothing came out the way we had planned. I know you too well, and I know you won’t write to me, that you won’t even send me your address, that you will want to be another person. I know you will hate me for not having been there as I had promised. That you will think I failed you. That I didn’t have the courage.
I have imagined you so many times, alone on that train, convinced that I had betrayed you. Many times I tried to find you through Miquel, but he told me that you didn’t want to have anything more to do with me. What lies did they tell you, Julián? What did they say about me? Why did you believe them?
Now I know I have already lost you. I have lost everything. Even so, I can’t let you go forever and allow you to forget me without letting you know that I don’t bear you any grudge, that I knew it from the start, I knew that I was going to lose you and that you would never see in me what I see in you. I want you to know that I loved you from the very first day and that I still love you, now more than ever, even if you don’t want me to.
I am writing to you in secret, without anyone knowing. Jorge has sworn that if he sees you again, he’ll kill you. I’m not allowed to go out of the house anymore, I can’t even look out of the window. I don’t think they’ll ever forgive me. Someone I trust has promised to mail this letter to you. I won’t mention the name so as not to compromise the person in question. I don’t know whether my words will reach you. But if they do, and sho
uld you decide to return to fetch me here, I know you will find the way to do it. As I write, I imagine you in that train, full of dreams and with your soul broken by betrayal, fleeing from us all and from yourself. There are so many things I cannot tell you, Julián. Things we never knew and it’s better you should never know.
All I wish is for you to be happy, Julián, that everything you aspire to achieve may come true and that, although you may forget me in the course of time, one day you may finally understand how much I loved you.
Always,
Penélope
·17·
THE WORDS OF PENÉLOPE ALDAYA, WHICH I READ AND REREAD that night until I knew them by heart, brushed aside all the bitterness Inspector Fumero’s visit had left in me. At dawn, after spending the night wide awake, engrossed in that letter and the voice I sensed behind the words, I left the house. I dressed quietly and left a note for my father on the hall cabinet saying I had a few errands to run and would be in the bookshop by nine-thirty. When I stepped out of the main door, the bluish shadows of early morning still darkened the puddles left in the street by the night’s drizzle. I buttoned up my jacket and set off briskly toward Plaza de Cataluña. The stairs up from the subway station gave off a swirl of warm air. At the ticket office of the Ferrocarriles Catalanes, I bought a third-class fare to Tibidabo station. I made the journey in a carriage full of office workers, maids, and day laborers carrying sandwiches the size of bricks wrapped in newspaper. Taking refuge in the darkness of the tunnels, I rested my head against the window, while the train journeyed through the bowels of the city to the foot of Mount Tibidabo, which presides over Barcelona. When I reemerged into the streets, it seemed as if I were discovering another place. Dawn was breaking, and a purple blade of light cut through the clouds, spraying its hue over the fronts of mansions and stately homes that bordered Avenida del Tibidabo. A blue tram was crawling lazily uphill in the mist. I ran after it and managed to clamber onto the back platform as the conductor looked on disapprovingly. The wooden carriage was almost empty. Two friars and a lady in mourning with ashen skin swayed, half asleep, to the rocking of the carriage.
“I’m going only as far as number thirty-two,” I told the conductor, offering him my best smile.
“I don’t care if you’re going to Cape Horn,” he replied with indifference. “Even Christ’s soldiers here have paid for their tickets. Either you fork out or you walk out. And I’m not charging you for the rhyme.”
Clad in sandals and the austere brown sackcloth cloaks of the Franciscan order, the friars nodded, showing their two pink tickets to prove the conductor’s point.
“I’ll get off, then,” I said. “Because I haven’t any small change.”
