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

“Listen, wouldn’t it be better to call a priest? He sounds to me as if he’s possessed by the devil,” suggested Doña Encarna.

“No. A doctor will do fine. Come on, Daniel. Run. And you, please give me that key.”

Dr. Baró was a sleepless bachelor who spent his nights reading Zola and looking at 3-D pictures of young ladies in racy underwear to relieve his boredom. He was a regular customer at my father’s bookshop, and, though he described himself as a second-rate quack, he had a better eye for reaching the right diagnosis than most of the smart doctors with elegant practices on Calle Muntaner. Many of his patients were old whores from the neighborhood or poor wretches who could barely afford to pay him, but he would see them all the same. I heard him say repeatedly that the world was God’s chamber pot and that his sole remaining wish was for Barcelona’s football team to win the league, once and for all, so that he could die in peace. He opened the door in his dressing gown, smelling of wine and flaunting an unlit cigarette between his lips.

“Daniel?”

“My father sent me. It’s an emergency.”

When we returned to thepensión, we found Doña Encarna sobbing with fear and the other guests turned the color of old candle wax. My father was holding Fermín Romero de Torres in his arms in a corner of the room. Fermín was naked, crying and shaking. The room was a wreck, the walls stained with something that could have been either blood or excrement—I couldn’t tell. Dr. Baró quickly took in the situation and gestured to my father to lay Fermín on the bed. They were helped by Doña Encarna’s son, a would-be boxer. Fermín moaned and thrashed about as if some vermin were devouring his insides.

“But for goodness’ sake, what’s the matter with this poor man? What’s wrong with him?” groaned Doña Encarna from the door, shaking her head.

The doctor took his pulse, examined his pupils with a flashlight, and, without saying a word, proceeded to prepare an injection from a bottle he carried in his bag.

“Hold him down. This will make him sleep. Daniel, help us.”

Between us four we managed to immobilize Fermín, who jerked violently when he felt the stab of the needle in his thigh. His muscles tensed like steel cables, but after a few seconds his eyes clouded over and his body went limp.

“Hey, be careful, that man’s not very strong, and anything could kill him,” said Doña Encarna.

“Don’t worry. He’s only asleep,” said the doctor as he examined the scars that covered Fermín’s starved body.

I saw him shake his head slowly. “Bastards,” he mumbled.

“What are these scars from?” I asked. “Cuts?”

Dr. Baró shook his head again, without looking up. He found a blanket amid the wreckage and covered his patient with it. “Burns. This man has been tortured,” he explained. “These marks are from a soldering iron.”

Fermín slept for two days. When he awoke, he could not remember anything; he just thought he’d woken up in a dark cell, that was all. He felt so ashamed of his behavior that he went down on his knees to beg for Doña Encarna’s forgiveness. He swore he would paint thepensión for her and, knowing she was very devout, promised she would have ten masses said for her in the Church of Belén.

“What you have to do is get better and not frighten me like that again. I’m too old for that sort of thing.”

My father paid for the damages and begged Doña Encarna to give Fermín another chance. She gladly agreed. Most of her guests were dispossessed people who were alone in the world, like her. Once she had got over the fright, she felt an even greater affection for Fermín and made him promise her that he would take the tablets Dr. Baró had prescribed.

“For you, Doña Encarna, I’d swallow a brick if need be.”

In time we all pretended we’d forgotten what had happened, but never again did I take the stories about Inspector Fumero lightly. After that incident we would take Fermín with us almost every Sunday for an afternoon snack at the Novedades Café, so as not to leave him on his own. Then we’d walk up to the Fémina Cinema, on the corner of Calle Diputación and Paseo de Gracia. One of the ushers was a friend of my father’s, and he would let us sneak in through the fire exit on the ground floor during the newsreel, always when the Generalissimo was in the act of cutting the ribbon to inaugurate some new reservoir, which really got on Fermín’s nerves.

“What a disgrace,” he would say indignantly.

“Don’t you like the cinema, Fermín?”

“Between you and me, this business of the seventh art leaves me cold. As far as I can see, it’s only a way of feeding the mindless and making them even more stupid. Worse than football or bullfights. The cinema began as an invention for entertaining the illiterate masses. Fifty years on, it’s much the same.”

Fermín’s

attitude changed radically the day he discovered Carole Lombard.

“What breasts, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what breasts!” he exclaimed in the middle of the film, beside himself. “Those aren’t tits, they’re two schooners!”

“Shut up, you degenerate, or I’ll call the manager,” muttered a voice straight from the confessional, a few rows behind us. “People have no shame. What a country of pigs we live in.”

“You’d better lower your voice, Fermín,” I advised him.

Fermín Romero de Torres wasn’t listening to me. He was lost in the gentle swell of that miraculous bosom, with an enraptured smile and unblinking eyes. Later, walking back along Paseo de Gracia, I noticed that our bibliographic detective was still in a trance.

“I think we’re going to have to find you a woman,” I said. “A woman will brighten up your life, you’ll see.”