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“Even so, in the end, shortly before returning to Barcelona in 1936, Julián Carax was going to get married.”
“So they said.”
“Do you doubt it?”
She looked skeptical as she shrugged her shoulders. “As I said, in all the years we knew each other, Julián never mentioned any woman in particular, and even less one he was going to marry. The story about his supposed marriage reached me later. Neuval, Carax’s last publisher, told Cabestany that the fiancée was a woman twenty years older than Julián, a rich widow in poor health. According to Neuval, she had been more or less supporting him for years. The doctors gave her six months to live, a year at the most. Neuval said she wanted to marry Julián so that he could inherit from her.”
“But the marriage ceremony never took place.”
“If there ever was such a plan, or such a widow.”
“From what I know, Carax was involved in a duel, on the dawn of the very day he was due to be married. Do you know who with, or why?”
“Neuval supposed it was someone connected to the widow. A grasping distant relative who didn’t want to see the inheritance fall into the hands of some upstart. Neuval published mostly penny dreadfuls, and I think the genre had gone to his head.”
“I see you don’t really believe the story of the wedding and the duel.”
“No. I never believed it.”
“What do you think happened, then? Why did Carax return to Barcelona?”
She smiled sadly. “I’ve been asking myself this question for seventeen years.”
Nuria Monfort lit another cigarette. She offered me one. I was tempted to accept but refused.
“But you must have some theory?” I suggested.
“All I know is that in the summer of 1936, shortly after the outbreak of the war, an employee at the municipal morgue phoned our firm to say they had received the body of Julián Carax three days earlier. They’d found him dead in an alleyway of the Raval quarter, dressed in rags and with a bullet through his heart. He had a book on him, a copy ofThe Shadow of the Wind, and his passport. The stamp showed he’d crossed the French border a month before. Where he had been during that time, nobody knew. The police contacted his father, but he refused to take responsibility for the body, alleging that he didn’t have a son. After two days without anyone’s claiming the corpse, he was buried in a common grave in Montjuïc Cemetery. I couldn’t even take him flowers, because nobody could tell me where he’d been buried. It was the employee of the morgue—who had kept the book found in Julián’s jacket—who had the idea of phoning Cabestany’s publishing house a couple of days later. That is how I found out what had happened. I couldn’t understand it. If Julián had anyone left in Barcelona to whom he could turn, it was me or, at a pinch, Mr. Cabestany. We were his only friends, but he never told us he’d returned. We only knew he’d come back to Barcelona after he died….”
“Were you able to find out anything else after getting the news?”
“No. Those were the first months of the war, and Julián was not the only one to disappear without a trace. Nobody talks about it anymore, but there are lots of nameless graves, like Julián’s. Asking was like banging your head against a brick wall. With the help of Mr. Cabestany, who by then was very ill, I made a complaint to the police and pulled all the strings I could. All I got out of it was a visit from a young inspector, an arrogant, sinister sort, who told me it would be a good idea not to ask any more questions and to concentrate my efforts on having a more positive attitude, because the country was in full cry, on a crusade. Those were his words. His name was Fumero, that’s all I remember. It seems that now he’s quite an important man. He’s often mentioned in the papers. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”
I swallowed. “Vaguely.”
“I heard nothing more about Julián until someone got in touch with the publishers and said he was interested in acquiring all the copies of Carax’s novels that were left in the warehouse.”
“Laín Coubert.”
Nuria Monfort nodded.
“Have you any idea who that man was?”
“I have an inkling, but I’m not sure. In March 1936—I remember the date because at the time we were preparingThe Shadow of the Wind for press—someone called the publishers to ask for his address. He said he was an old friend and he wanted to visit Julián in Paris. Give him a surprise. They put him onto me, and I said I wasn’t authorized to give out that information.”
“Did he say who he was?”
“Someone called Jorge.”
“Jorge Aldaya?”
“It might have been. Julián had mentioned him on more than one occasion. I think they had been together at San Gabriel’s School, and sometimes Julián referred to him as if he’d been his best friend.”
“Did you know that Jorge Aldaya was Penélope’s brother?”
Nuria Monfort frowned. She
looked disconcerted.
