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“There are worse prisons than words, Daniel.”
I nodded, not quite sure what she meant.
“Did Julián ever talk about those memories, about his years in Barcelona?”
“Very little. During the week I was staying with him in Paris, he told me a bit about his family. His mother was French, a music teacher. His father had a hat shop or something like that. I know he was a very religious man, and very strict.”
“Did Julián explain to you what sort of a relationship he had with him?”
“I know they didn’t get on at all. It was something that went back a long time. In fact, the reason Julián went to Paris was to avoid being put into the army by his father. His mother had promised him she would take him as far away as possible from that man, rather tha
n let that happen.”
“That man was his father, after all.”
Nuria Monfort smiled. It was just a hint of a smile and her eyes shone weary and sad.
“Even if he was, he never behaved like one, and Julián never considered him as such. Once he confessed to me that before getting married, his mother had had an affair with a stranger whose name she never revealed to him. That man was Julián’s real father.”
“It sounds like the beginning ofThe Shadow of the Wind. Do you think he told you the truth?”
Nuria Monfort nodded. “Julián told me he had grown up watching how the hatter—that’s what he called him—insulted and beat his mother. Then he would go into Julián’s room and tell him he was the son of sin, that he had inherited his mother’s weak and despicable personality and would be miserable all his life, a failure at whatever he tried to do….”
“Did Julián feel resentful toward his father?”
“Time is a great healer. I never felt that Julián hated him. Perhaps that would have been better. I got the impression that he lost all respect for the hatter as a result of all those scenes. Julián spoke about all that as if it didn’t matter to him, as if it were part of a past he had left behind, but these things are never forgotten. The words with which a child’s heart is poisoned, through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.”
I wondered whether she was talking from experience, and the image of my friend Tomás Aguilar came to my mind, listening stoically to the diatribes of his haughty father.
“How old was Julián when his father started speaking to him like that?”
“About eight or ten, I imagine.”
I sighed.
“As soon as he was old enough to join the army, his mother took him to Paris. I don’t think they even said good-bye. The hatter could never accept that his family had abandoned him.”
“Did you ever hear Julián mention a girl called Penélope?”
“Penélope? I don’t think so. I’d remember.”
“She was a girlfriend of his, from the time when he still lived in Barcelona.”
I pulled out the photograph of Carax and Penélope Aldaya and handed it to her. I noticed how a smile lit up her face when she saw an adolescent Julián Carax. Nostalgia and loss were consuming her.
“He looks so young here…. Is this the Penélope you mentioned?”
I nodded.
“Very good-looking. Julián always managed to be surrounded by pretty women.”
Like you, I thought. “Do you know whether he had lots…?”
That smile again, at my expense. “Girlfriends? Lovers? I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I never heard him speak about any woman in his life. Once, just to needle him, I asked him. You must know that he earned his living playing the piano in a hostess bar. I asked him whether he wasn’t tempted, surrounded all day by beauties of easy virtue. He didn’t find the joke funny. He replied that he had no right to love anyone, that he deserved to be alone.”
“Did he say why?”
“Julián never said why.”
