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

“I can read people’s eyes.”

Despite myself, I believed her and turned mine away.

“Choose any other one. Here, this one looks promising.The Castilian Hog, That Unknown Beast: In Search of the Roots of Iberian Pork, by Anselmo Torquemada. I’m sure it sold more copies than any book by Julián Carax. Every part of the pig can be put to good use.”

“I’m more attracted to this other one.”

“Tess of the d’Urbervilles.It’s the original. You’re bold enough to read Hardy in English?”

She gave me a sidelong glance.

“All yours, then!”

“Don’t you see? It feels as if it’s been waiting for me. As if it has been hiding here for me since before I was born.”

I looked at her in astonishment. Bea’s lips crinkled into a smile. “What have I said?”

Then, without thinking, barely brushing her lips, I kissed her.

IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT WHEN WE REACHED THE FRONT DOOR OF Bea’s house. We had walked most of the way without speaking, not daring to turn our thoughts into words. We walked apart, hiding from each other. Bea walked upright with herTess under her arm, and I followed a step behind, still tasting her lips. The way Isaac had glanced at me when we left the Cemetery of Forgotten Books was still on my mind. It was a look I knew well and had seen a thousand times in my father, a look that asked me whether I had the slightest idea what I was doing. The last hours I’d been lost in another world, a universe of touches and looks I did not understand, that blotted out both reason and shame. Now, back in the reality that always lies in wait among the shadows of the Ensanche quarter, the enchantment was lifting, and all I had left in me was a painful desire and an indescribable restlessness. And yet just looking at Bea was enough for me to realize that my doubts were but a breeze compared to the storm that was raging inside her. We stopped by her door and looked at each other without attempting to pretend. A mellifluous night watchman was walking up to us unhurriedly, humming boleros to the rhythmic jingle of his bunches of keys.

“Perhaps you’d rather we didn’t see each other again,” I suggested without much conviction.

“I don’t know, Daniel. I don’t know anything. Is that what you want?”

“No. Of course not. And you?”

She shrugged her shoulders and smiled faintly. “What do you think?” she asked. “I lied to you earlier, you know. In the cloister.”

“What about?”

“About not wanting to see you today.”

The night porter hung about, smirking at us, obviously indifferent to my first whispered exchange at a front door. To him, experienced in such matters, it must have seemed a string of clichés and banalities.

“Don’t worry about me, there’s no hurry,” he said. “I’ll have a smoke on the corner, and you just let me know.”

I waited for the watchman to walk away.

“When will I see you again?”

“I don’t know, Daniel.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Please, Daniel. I don’t know.”

I nodded. She stroked my face. “You’d better leave now.”

“You know where to find me, at least?”

She nodded.

“I’ll be waiting.”

“Me, too.”

As I moved away, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The night watchman, an expert in these situations, was already walking up to open the door for her.