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One day, almost three years to the day since Don Ricardo Aldaya’s first visit to the Fortuny and Sons hat shop, the hatter left Quimet in charge of the shop and told him he’d be back at noon. He boldly presented himself at the offices of Aldaya’s consortium on Paseo de Gracia and asked to see Don Ricardo.
“And whom have I the honor to announce?” asked a clerk in a haughty manner.
“His personal hatter.”
Don Ricardo received him, somewhat surprised but well disposed, imagining that perhaps Fortuny was bringing him a bill—small shopkeepers never quite understood the protocol when it comes to money.
“So tell me, what can I do for you, Fortunato, old fellow?”
Without further delay, Antoni Fortuny proceeded to explain to Don Ricardo that he was very much mistaken concerning his son, Julián.
“My son, Don Ricardo, is not the person you think he is. Quite the contrary, he is an ignorant, lazy boy, with no more talent than the pretentiousness his mother has put into his head. He’ll never get anywhere, believe me. He lacks ambition and character. You don’t know him. He can be very clever at sweet-talking strangers, making them believe he knows a lot about everything, when in fact he knows nothing about anything. He’s a mediocre person. But I know him better than anyone, and I thought I should warn you.”
Don Ricardo Aldaya listened to the speech in silence, without blinking.
“Is that all, Fortunato?”
Seeing that it was, the industrialist pressed a button on his desk. A few moments later, the secretary who had received Fortuny on arrival appeared at the office door.
“Our friend Fortunato is leaving, Balcells,” Don Ricardo announced. “Please accompany him to the door.”
The icy tone of the industrialist did not please the hatter.
“If you don’t mind, Don Ricardo: it’s Fortuny, not Fortunato.”
“Whatever. You’re a very sad man, Fortuny. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come by here again.”
When Fortuny found himself back on the street, he felt more alone than ever, more convinced that everyone was against him. Only a few days later, the smart clients brought in by his relationship with Aldaya began to send messages canceling their orders and settling their bills. In just a few weeks, he had to dismiss Quimet, because there wasn’t enough work for both in the shop. The boy wasn’t much use anyhow, he told himself. He was mediocre and lazy, like all of them.
It was around this time that people in the neighborhood began to mention that Mr. Fortuny was looking much older, lonelier, more bitter. He barely spoke to anyone anymore and spent hours on end shut up in the shop, with nothing to do, watching people go by on the other side of the counter, feelings of disdain mingling with hope. Later people said that fashions changed, that young people no longer wore hats, and that those who did would rather go to other shops, where they sold hats ready made in different sizes, with more modern designs, and at a cheaper price. The Fortuny and Sons hat shop slowly sank into a sad, silent slumber.
You’re all waiting for me to die, Fortuny said to himself. Well, I might just give you that pleasure. In fact, he had started to die long before.
Julián threw himself even more into the world of the Aldayas, into the only future he could conceive of, one with Penélope in it. Almost two years went by, in which the two of them walked on a tightrope of secrecy together. In his own way, Zacarías had warned him long ago. Shadows spread around Julián, and soon they would close in on him.
The first sign came one day in April 1918. Jorge Aldaya was going to be eighteen, and Don Ricardo, playing the role of great patriarch, had decided to organize (or, rather, to give orders for someone to organize) a monumental birthday party that his son did not want and from which he, Don Ricardo, would be absent: with the excuse of important business commitments, he would be meeting with a delicious lady, newly arrived from St. Petersburg, in the blue suite of the Hotel Colón. The house on Avenida del Tibidabo was turned into a circus pavilion for the occasion: hundreds of lanterns, pennants, and stalls were set up in the gardens to delight the guests.
Almost all Jorge Aldaya’s school companions from San Gabriel’s had been invited. At Julián’s suggestion, Jorge had included Francisco Javier Fumero. Miquel Moliner warned them that the son of the school caretaker would feel out of place in such pompous, pretentious surroundings. Francisco Javier received his invitation but, anticipating exactly the same thing, decided to turn it down. When Doña Yvonne, his mother, learned that her son was going to decline an invitation to the Aldayas’ luxurious mansion, she was on the point of skinning him alive. What could that invitation be but a sign that she herself would soon enter high society? The next step could only be an invitation to afternoon tea with Mrs. Aldaya and other ladies of unquestionable distinction. Doña Yvonne took the savings she had been scraping together out of her husband’s pay and went to buy a pretty sailor suit for her son.
Francisco Javier was already seventeen at the time, and that blue suit with short trousers, tailored to appeal to the none-too-refined sensibility of Doña Yvonne, looked grotesque and humiliating on the boy. Pressed by his mother, Francisco Javier accepted the invitation and spent a week carving a letter opener, which he intended to give Jorge as a present. On the day of the party, Doña Yvonne insisted on accompanying her son to the door of the Aldayas’ house. She wanted to scent royalty and bask in the glory of seeing her son cross the doors that would soon open for her. When the moment came to put on his awful sailor suit, Francisco Javier discovered it was too small for him. Yvonne decided to adjust it somehow. They arrived late. In the meantime, taking advantage of the hubbub and of Don Ricardo’s absence—who no doubt was at that very moment celebrating in his own way—Julián had slipped away from the party. He and Penélope had arranged to meet in the library, where they didn’t risk running into any partygoers. They were too busy devouring each other’s lips to notice the couple approaching the front door of the house. Francisco Javier, dressed in a first-communion sailor suit and purple with shame, was almost being dragged by Doña Yvonne, who for the occasion had decided to resurrect a broad-brimmed hat and a matching dress adorned with pleats and garlands; they made her look like a candy stand or, in the words of Miquel Moliner, who sighted her from afar, a bison dressed up as Madame Récamier. The two servants guarding the door didn’t seem very impressed by the visitors. Doña Yvonne announced that her son, Don Francisco Javier Fumero de Sotoceballos, was making his entrance. The two servants answered, in a sarcastic tone, that the name did not ring a bell. Irritated, but keeping the composure of a woman of importance, Yvonne told her son to show them the invitation. Unfortunately, when the suit was being fixed, the card had been left on Doña Yvonne’s sewing table.
Francisco Javier tried to explain the circumstances, but he stammered, and the laughter of the two servants did not help clear up the misunderstanding. Mother and son were invited to get the hell out of there. Doña Yvonne was inflamed with anger and announced that the servants didn’t know who they were dealing with. The servants replied that the floor cleaner’s position was already taken.
From her bedroom window, Jacinta watched Francisco Javier turn to leave, then suddenly stop. Beyond the scene his mother was creating, shouting herself hoarse at the arrogant servants, the boy saw them: Julián kissing Penélope by the large window of the library. They were kissing with the intensity of those who belong to each other, unaware of the world around them.
The following day, during the midday break, Francisco Javier appeared unexpectedly. News of the previous day’s scene had already spread among the pupils: he was met with laughter and questioned about what he’d done with his little sailor suit. The laughter ended abruptly when the boys noticed he was carrying his father’s gun in his hand. Silence reigned, and many of them moved away. Only the circle formed by Aldaya, Moliner, Fernando, and Julián turned around and stared at the boy, without understanding. Francisco Javier gave no warning: he raised his rifle and aimed.
Later, witnesses said there was no irritation or anger in his expression. Francisco Javier displayed the same automatic coolness with which he performed his cleaning jobs in the garden. The first bullet scraped past Julián’s head. The second would have gone through his throat had Miquel Moliner not thrown himself on the caretaker’s son, punched him, and wrenched the gun from him. Julián Carax watched the scene in astonishment, paralyzed. Everyone thought the shots were aimed at Jorge Aldaya in revenge for the humiliation Javier had suffered the day before. Only later, when the Civil Guards were taking the boy away and the caretakers were being almost literally kicked out of their home, did Miquel Moliner go up to Julián and tell him, without any pride, that he had saved his life.
It was the last year for Julián and his companions at San Gabriel’s School. Most of them were already talking about their plans, or about the plans their respective families had set up for them for the following year. Jorge Aldaya already knew that his father was sending him to study in England, and Miquel Moliner took it for granted that he would go to Barcelona University. Fernando Ramos had mentioned more than once that perhaps he would enter the seminary of the Society of Jesus, a prospect his teachers considered the wisest in his particular situation. As for Francisco Javier Fumero, all one knew about the boy was that, thanks to Don Ricardo Aldaya, who interceded on his behalf, he had been taken to a reformatory school high in a remote valley of the Pyrenees, where a long winter awaited him. Seeing that all his friends had found some direction in life, Julián wondered what would become of himself. His literary dreams and ambitions seemed further away and more unfeasible than ever. All he longed for was to be near Penélope.
While he asked himself about his future, others were planning it for him. Don Ricardo Aldaya was already preparing a post for him in his firm to initiate him into the business. The hatter, for his part, had decided that if his son did not want to continue in the family business, he could forget about sponging off him. He had secretly started procedures to send Julián to the army, where a few years of military life would cure him of his delusions of grandeur. Julián was unaware of such plans, and by the time he found out what others had arranged for him, it would be too late. Only Penélope occupied his thoughts, and now the feigned distance and the clandestine meetings no longer satisfied him. He insisted on seeing her more often, increasingly risking discovery. Jacinta did what she could to cover them: she lied repeatedly and concocted a thousand and one ruses to give them a few moments on their own. She understood that this was not enough for Penélope and Julián. The governess had for some time now recognized in their looks the defiance and arrogance of desire: a blind desire to be discovered, a hope that their secret would become an open scandal so that they would no longer have to hide in corners and attics, to love each other in the dark. Sometimes, when Jacinta tucked Penélope up at night, the girl would burst into floods of tears and confess how she longed to flee with Julián, to catch the first train and escape to a place where nobody would know them. Jacinta, who remembered the sort of world that existed beyond the iron gates of the Aldaya mansion, shuddered and tried to dissuade her. Penélope was docile by nature, and the fear she saw in Jacinta’s face was enough to soothe her. Julián was another matter.
During that last spring at San Gabriel’s, Julián was unnerved to discover that Don Ricardo Aldaya and his mother sometimes met secretly. At first he feared that the industrialist might have decided to add the conquest of Sophie to his collection, but soon he realized that the meetings, which always took place in cafés in the center of town and were carried out with the utmost propriety, were limited to conversation. Sophie kept silent about these meetings. When at last Julián decided to go up to Don Ricardo and ask him what was going on between him and his mother, the magnate laughed.
“Nothing gets by you, does it, Julián? The fact is, I was going to talk to you about this matter. Your mother and I are discussing your future. She came to see me a few weeks ago. She was worried because your father wants to send you to the army next year. Your mother, quite naturally, wants the best for you, and she came to me to see whether, between the two of us, we could do anything. Don’t worry; you have Don Ricardo Aldaya’s word that you won’t become cannon fodder. Your mother and I have great plans for you. Trust us.”
Julián wanted to trust him, yet Don Ricardo inspired anything but trust. When he consulted with Miquel Moliner, the boy agreed with Julián.
