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

“Did you give Aldaya Julián’s address in Paris?”

“No. He made me feel uneasy.”

“What did he say?”

“He laughed at me, he said he’d find him some other way, and hung up.”

Something seemed to be gnawing at her. I began to suspect where the conversation was taking us. “But you heard from him again, didn’t you?”

She nodded nervously. “As I was telling you, shortly after Julián’s disappearance that man turned up at Cabestany’s firm. By then Mr. Cabestany could no longer work, and his eldest son had taken charge of the business. The visitor, Laín Coubert, offered to buy all the remaining stock of Julián’s novels. I thought the whole thing was a joke in poor taste. Laín Coubert was a character inThe Shadowof the Wind. ”

“The devil.”

Nuria Monfort nodded again.

“Did you actually see Laín Coubert?”

She shook her head and lit her third cigarette. “No. But I heard part of the conversation with the son in Mr. Cabestany’s office.”

She left the sentence in the air, as if she were afraid of finishing it or wasn’t sure how to. The cigarette trembled in her fingers.

“His voice,” she said. “It was the same voice as the man who phoned saying he was Jorge Aldaya. Cabestany’s son, an arrogant idiot, tried to ask for more money. Coubert—or whoever he was—said he had to think about the offer. That very night Cabestany’s warehouse in Pueblo Nuevo went up in flames, and Julián’s books with it.”

“Except for the ones you rescued and hid in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.”

“That’s right.”

“Have you any idea why anyone would have wanted to burn all of Julián Carax’s books?”

“Why are books burned? Through stupidity, ignorance, hatred…goodness only knows.”

“Why do you think?” I insisted.

“Julián lived in his books. The body that ended up in the morgue was only a part of him. His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself.”

“So if somebody wanted to destroy him, he’d have to destroy those stories and those characters, isn’t that right?”

The dispirited smile returned, a smile of defeat and tiredness. “You remind me of Julián,” she said. “Before he lost his faith.”

“His faith in what?”

“In everything.”

She came up to me in the half-light and took my hand. She stroked my palm in silence, as if she wanted to read the lines on my skin. My hand was shaking under her touch. I caught myself tracing the shape of her body under those old, borrowed clothes. I wanted to touch her and feel her pulse burning under her skin. Our eyes had met, and I felt sure that she knew what I was thinking. I sensed that she was lonelier than ever. I raised my eyes and met her serene, open gaze.

“Julián died alone, convinced that nobody would remember him or his books and that his life had meant nothing,” she said. “He would have liked to know that somebody wanted to keep him alive, that someone remembered him. He used to say that we exist as long as somebody remembers us.”

I was filled by an almost painful desire to kiss that woman, an eagerness such as I had never before experienced, not even when I conjured up the ghost of Clara Barceló. She read my thoughts.

“It’s getting late for you, Daniel,” she murmured.

One part of me wanted to stay, to lose myself in this strange intimacy, to hear her say again how my gestures and my silences reminded her of Julián Carax.

“Yes,” I mumbled.

She nodded but said nothing, and then escorted me to the door. The corridor seemed endless. She opened the door for me, and I went out onto the landing.

“If you see my father, tell him I’m well. Lie to him.”