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“Not at all. I’d only just started saying my prayers….”
He looked at Bea as if he’d just seen a pack of dynamite sticks alight at his feet. “For your own good, I hope this isn’t what it looks like,” he threatened.
“Isaac, this is my friend Beatriz, and with your permission I’d like to show her this place. Don’t worry, she’s completely trustworthy.”
“Sempere, I’ve known toddlers with more common sense than you.”
“It will only be a moment.”
Isaac let out a snort of defeat and examined Bea carefully, like a suspicious policeman.
“Do you realize you’re in the company of an idiot?” he asked.
Bea smiled politely. “I’m beginning to come to terms with it.”
“Sublime innocence! Do you know the rules?”
Bea nodded. Isaac mumbled under his breath and let us in, scanning the shadows of the street, as usual.
“I visited your daughter, Nuria,” I mentioned casually. “She’s well. Working hard, but well. She sends you her love.”
“Yes, and poisoned darts. You’re not much good at making things up, Sempere. But I appreciate the effort. Come on in.”
Once inside, Isaac handed me the candle and proceeded to lock the door.
“When you’ve finished, you know where to find me.”
Under the mantle of darkness, we could only just make out the spectral forms of the book maze. The candle projected its bubble of steamy light at our feet. Bea paused, astonished, at the entrance to the labyrinth. I smiled, recognizing in her face the same expression my father must have seen in mine years before. We entered the tunnels and galleries of the maze; they creaked under our footsteps. The marks I had made during my last incursion were still there.
“Come, I want to show you something,” I said.
More than once I lost my own trail and we had to go back a stretch in search of the last sign. Bea watched me with a mixture of alarm and fascination. My mental compass told me we were caught in a knot of spirals that rose slowly toward the very heart of the labyrinth. At last I managed to retrace my steps within the tangle of corridors and tunnels until I entered a narrow passage that felt like a gangway stretching out into the gloom. I knelt down by the last shelf and looked for my old friend hidden behind the row of dust-covered volumes—the layer of dust shining like frost in the candlelight. I took the book and handed it to Bea.
“Let me introduce you to Julián Carax.”
“The Shadow of the Wind,”Bea read, stroking the faded letters on the cover.
“Can I take it with me?” she asked.
“You can take any book but this one.”
“But that’s not fair. After all the things you’ve told me, this is precisely the one I want.”
“One day, perhaps. But not today.”
I took it from her hands and put it back in its hiding place.
“I’ll come back without you and I’ll take it away without you knowing,” she said mockingly.
“You wouldn’t find it in a thousand years.”
“That’s what you think. I’ve seen your notches, and I, too, know the story of the Minotaur.”
“Isaac wouldn’t let you in.”
“You’re wrong. He prefers me to you.”
“And how do you know?”
