The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten 1)

“Come off it. I’m not what I used to be. I lost my Herculean muscles in prison, and since then…”

“Well, I think you look like Charles Boyer, at least in build,” objected my father. “Which reminds me: I wanted to propose something to you.”

“For you, Mr. Sempere, I would kill, if I had to. Just say the name, and I’ll get rid of the guy before he knows what’s hit him.”

“It won’t come to that. What I wanted to offer you was a job in the bookshop. It consists of looking for rare books for our clients. It’s almost like literary archaeology, and it would be just as important for you to know the classics as the basic black-market techniques. I can’t pay you much at present, but you can eat at our table and, until we find you a goodpensión, you can stay here with us, in the apartment, if that’s all right with you.”

The beggar looked at both of us, dumbfounded.

“What do you say?” asked my father. “Will you join the team?”

I thought he was going to say something, but at that moment Fermín Romero de Torres burst into tears.

WITH HIS FIR

ST WAGES, FERMÍN ROMERO DE TORRES BOUGHT HIMSELF A glamorous hat and a pair of galoshes and insisted on treating me and my father to a dish of bull’s tail, which was served on Mondays in a restaurant a couple of blocks away from the Monumental bull ring. My father had found him a room in apensión on Calle Joaquín Costa, where, thanks to the friendship between our neighbor Merceditas and the landlady, we were able to avoid filling in the guest form required by the police, thus removing Fermín Romero de Torres from under the nose of Inspector Fumero and his henchmen. Sometimes I thought about the terrible scars that covered his body and felt tempted to ask him about them, fearing that perhaps Inspector Fumero might have something to do with them. But there was a look in the eyes of that poor man that made me think it was better not to bring up the subject. Perhaps he would tell us one day, when he felt the time was right. Every morning, at seven on the dot, Fermín waited for us by the shop door with a smile on his face, neatly turned out and ready to work an unbroken twelve-hour shift, or even longer. He had discovered a passion for chocolate and Swiss rolls—which did not lessen his enthusiasm for the great names of Greek tragedy—and this meant he had put on a little weight. He shaved like a young swell, combed his hair back with brilliantine, and was growing a pencil mustache to look fashionable. Thirty days after emerging from our bathtub, the ex-beggar was unrecognizable. But despite his spectacular change, where Fermín Romero de Torres had really left us openmouthed was on the battlefield. His sleuthlike instincts, which I had attributed to delirious fantasies, proved surgically precise. He could solve the strangest requests in a matter of days, even hours. Was there no title he didn’t know, and no stratagem for obtaining it at a good price that didn’t occur to him? He could talk his way into the private libraries of duchesses on Avenida Pearson and horse-riding dilettantes, always adopting fictitious identities, and would depart with the said books as gifts or bought for a pittance.

The transformation from beggar into model citizen seemed miraculous, like one of those stories that priests from poor parishes loved to tell to illustrate the Lord’s infinite mercy—stories that invariably sounded too good to be true, like the ads for hair-restorer lotions that were plastered over the trams.

Three and a half months after Fermín started work in the bookshop, the telephone in the apartment on Calle Santa Ana woke us up one Sunday at two o’clock in the morning. It was Fermín’s landlady. In a voice choked with anxiety, she explained that Mr. Romero de Torres had locked himself in his room and was shouting like a madman, banging on the walls and swearing that if anyone dared come in, he would slit his own throat with a broken bottle.

“Don’t call the police, please. We’ll be right there.”

Rushing out, we made our way toward Calle Joaquín Costa. It was a cold night, with icy wind and tar-black skies. We hurried past the two ancient hospices—Casa de la Misericordia and Casa de Piedad—ignoring looks and words from dark doorways smelling of charcoal. Soon we reached the corner of Calle Ferlandina. Joaquín Costa lay there, a gap in the rows of blackened beehives, blending into the darkness of the Raval quarter. The landlady’s eldest son was waiting for us downstairs.

“Have you called the police?” asked my father.

“Not yet,” answered the son.

We ran upstairs. Thepensión was on the second floor, the staircase a spiral of grime scarcely visible in the ocher light shed by naked bulbs that hung limply from a bare wire. Doña Encarna, the landlady, the widow of a Civil Guard corporal, met us at the door wrapped in a light blue dressing gown, crowned with a matching set of curlers.

“Look here, Mr. Sempere, this is a decent house. I have more offers than I can take, and I don’t need to put up with this kind of thing,” she said as she guided us through a dark corridor that reeked of ammonia and damp.

“I understand,” mumbled my father.

Fermín Romero de Torres’s screams could be heard tearing at the walls at the end of the corridor. Several drawn and frightened faces peeped around half-open doors—boardinghouse faces fed on watery soup.

“And the rest of you, off to sleep, for fuck’s sake! This isn’t a variety show at the Molino!” cried Doña Encarna furiously.

We stopped in front of the door to Fermín’s room. My father rapped gently with his knuckles.

“Fermín? Are you there? It’s Sempere.”

The howl that pierced the walls chilled me. Even Doña Encarna lost her matronly composure and put her hands on her heart, hidden under the many folds of her ample chest.

My father called again. “Fermín? Come on, open the door.”

Fermín howled again, throwing himself against the walls, yelling obscenities at the top of his voice. My father sighed.

“Doña Encarna, do you have a key to this room?”

“Well, of course.”

“Give it to me, please.”

Doña Encarna hesitated. The other guests were peering into the corridor again, white with terror. Those shouts must have been heard from the army headquarters.

“And you, Daniel, run and find Dr. Baró. He lives very close, in number twelve, Riera Alta.”