“Is it true you haven’t read any of these books?”
“Books are boring.”
“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you,” answered Julián.
Don Ricardo Aldaya laughed again. “Well, I’ll leave you two alone so you can get to know each other. Julián, you’ll see that although he seems spoiled and conceited, underneath that mask Jorge isn’t as stupid as he looks. He has something of his father in him.”
Aldaya’s words seemed to fall like knives on the boy, though he didn’t let his smile fade at all. Julián regretted his answer and felt sorry for him.
“You must be the hatter’s son,” said Jorge, without malice. “My father talks about you a lot these days.”
“It’s the novelty. I hope you don’t hold that against me. Under this mask of a know-it-all meddler, I’m not such an idiot as I seem.”
Jorge smiled at him. Julián thought he smiled the way people smile who have no friends, with gratitude.
“Come, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”
They left the library behind them and went off toward the main door and the gardens. When they crossed the hall with the staircase, Julián looked up and glimpsed a figure ascending the stairs with a hand on the banister. He felt as if he were caught up in a vision. The girl must have been about twelve or thirteen and was escorted by a mature woman, small and rosy-cheeked, who had the air of a governess. The girl wore a blue satin dress. Her hair was the color of almonds, and the skin on her shoulders and slim neck seemed translucent. She stopped at the top of the stairs and turned around briefly. For a second their eyes met, and she offered him the ghost of a smile. Then the governess put her arms around the girl’s shoulders and led her to the entrance of a corridor into which they both disappeared. Julián looked down and he fixed his eyes on Jorge’s again.
“That’s Penélope, my sister. You’ll meet her later. She’s a bit nutty. She spends all day reading. Come on, I want to show you the chapel in the basement. The cooks say it’s haunted.”
Julián followed the boy meekly, but he cared little about anything else. Now he understood. He had dreamed about her countless times, on that same staircase, with that same blue dress and that same movement of her ash-gray eyes, without knowing who she was or why she smiled at him. When he went out into the garden, he let himself be led by Jorge as far as the coach houses and the tennis courts that stretched out beyond. Only then did he turn around to look back and saw her in her window on the second floor. He could barely make out her shape, but he knew she was smiling at him and that somehow she, too, had recognized him.
That fleeting glimpse of Penélope Aldaya at the top of the staircase remained with him during his first weeks at San Gabriel’s School. His new world was not all to his liking: the pupils of San Gabriel’s behaved like haughty, arrogant princes, while their teachers were like docile and learned servants. The first friend Julián made there, apart from Jorge Aldaya, was a boy called Fernando Ramos, the son of one of the cooks at the school, who would never have imagined he would end up wearing a cassock and teaching in the same classrooms in which he himself had grown up. Fernando, whom the rest nicknamed “Kitchen Sweep,” and whom they treated like a servant, was alert and intelligent but had hardly any friends among the schoolboys. His only companion was an eccentric boy called Miquel Moliner, who in time would become the best friend Julián ever made at the school. Miquel Moliner, who had too much brain and too little patience, enjoyed teasing his teachers by questioning all their statements, using clever arguments in which he displayed both ingenuity and a poisonous bite. The rest feared his sharp tongue and considered him a member of some other species. In a way this was not entirely mistaken, for despite his bohemian traits and the unaristocratic tone he affected, Miquel was the son of a businessman who had become obscenely rich through the manufacture of arms.
“Carax, isn’t it? I’m told your father makes hats,” he said when Fernando Ramos introduced them.
“Julián for my friends. I’m told yours makes cannons.”
“He just sells them, actually. The only thing he knows how to make is money. My friends, among whom I count only Nietzsche and Fernando here, call me Miquel.”
Miquel Moliner was a sad boy. He suffered from an unhealthy obsession with death and all matters funereal, a field to whose consideration he dedicated much of his time and talent. His mother had died three years earlier as a result of a strange domestic accident, which some foolish doctor had dared describe as suicide. It was Miquel who had discovered the shining body under the water of the well, in the summer mansion the family had in Argentona. When they pulled her out with ropes, they found that the pockets of the dead woman’s coat were filled with stones. There was also a letter written in German, the mother’s native tongue, but Mr. Moliner, who had never bothered to learn the language, burned it that same afternoon without allowing anyone to read it. Miquel Moliner saw death everywhere—in fallen leaves, in birds that had dropped out of their nests, in old people, and in the rain, which swept everything away. He was exceptionally talented at drawing and would often become distracted for hours with charcoal sketches in which a lady, whom Julián took to be his mother, always appeared against a background of mist and deserted beaches.
“What do you want to be when you grow up, Miquel?”
“I’ll never grow up,” he would answer enigmatically.
His main interest, apart from sketching and contradicting every living soul, was the works of a mysterious Austrian doctor who, in years to come, would become famous: Sigmund Freud. Thanks to his deceased mother, Miquel Moliner read and wrote perfect German, and he owned a number of books by the Viennese doctor. His favorite field was the interpretation of dreams. He was in the habit of asking people what they had dreamed, and he would then make a diagnosis. He always said he was going to die young and that he didn’t mind. Julián believed that, by thinking so much about death, he had ended up finding more sense in it than in life.
“The day I die, all that was once mine will be yours, Julián,” he would say. “Except my dreams.”
Besides Fernando Ramos, Moliner, and Jorge Aldaya, Julián also befriended a shy and rather unsociable boy called Javier, the only son of the caretakers of San Gabriel’s, who lived in a modest house stationed at the entrance to the school gardens. Javier, who, like Fernando, was considered by the rest of the boys to be no more than an irritating lackey, prowled about alone in the gardens and courtyards of the compound. From so much wandering around the school, he ended up knowing every nook and cranny of the building, from the tunnels in the basements to the passages up to the towers, and all kinds of hiding places that nobody remembered anymore. They were his secret world and his refuge. He always carried with him a penknife he had removed from one of his father’s drawers, and he liked to carve wooden figures with it, which he kept in the school dovecote. His father, Ramón, the caretaker, was a veteran from the Cuban War, where he had lost a hand and (it was rumored maliciously) his right testicle, as a result of a pellet shot from Theodore Roosevelt himself in the raid of the Bay of Cochinos. Convinced that idleness was the mother of all evils, “Ramón Oneball” (as the schoolboys nicknamed him) set his son the task of gathering up in a sack all fallen leaves from the pine grove and the courtyard around the fountains. Ramón was a good man, rather coarse and fatally given to choosing bad company, most notably his wife. Ramón Oneball had married a strapping, dim-witted woman with delusions of grandeur and the looks of a scullion, who was wont to dress skimpily in front of her son and the other boys, a habit that gave rise to no end of mirth and ridicule. Her Christian name was María Craponcia, but she called herself Yvonne, because she thought it more elegant. Yvonne used to question her son about the possibilities of social advancement that his friends would provide, for she believed that he was making connections with the elite of Barcelona society. She would ask him about the fortune of this or that one, imagining herself dressed in the best silks and bein
g received for tea in the great salons of good society.
Javier tried to spend as little time as possible in the house and was grateful for the jobs his father gave him, however hard they might be. Any excuse was good in order to be alone, to escape into his secret world and carve his wooden figures. When the schoolboys saw him from afar, some would laugh or throw stones at him. One day Julián felt so sorry for him when he saw how a stone had gashed his forehead and knocked him onto a pile of rubble that he decided to go to his aid and offer him his friendship. At first Javier thought that Julián was coming to finish him off while the others fell about laughing.
“My name is Julián,” he said, stretching out his hand. “My friends and I were about to go and play chess in the pine grove, and I wondered whether you’d like to join us.”
“I don’t know how to play chess.”
“Nor did I, until two weeks ago. But Miquel is a good teacher….”
The boy looked at him suspiciously, expecting the prank, the hidden attack, at any moment.
“I don’t know whether your friends will want me to be with you….”
“It was their idea. What do you say?”
From that day on, Javier would sometimes join them after finishing the jobs he had been assigned. He didn’t usually say anything but would listen and watch the others. Aldaya was slightly fearful of him. Fernando, who had himself experienced the rejection of others because of his humble origins, would go out of his way to be kind to the strange boy. Miquel Moliner, who taught him the rudiments of chess and watched him with a careful eye, was the most skeptical of all.
“This guy is a nutter. He catches cats and pigeons and tortures them for hours with his knife. Then he buries them in the pine grove. Delightful.”
“Who says so?”
“He told me himself the other day while I was explaining the knight’s moves to him. He also told me that sometimes his mother gets into his bed at night and fondles him.”
“He must have been pulling your leg.”
“I doubt it. This kid isn’t right in the head, Julián, and it’s probably not his fault.”
Julián struggled to ignore Miquel’s warnings and predictions, but the fact is that he was finding it difficult to establish a friendship with the son of the caretaker. Yvonne in particular did not approve of Julián or of Fernando Ramos. Of all the young men, those were the only ones who didn’t have a single peseta. Rumor had it that Julián’s father was a simple shopkeeper and that his mother had got only as far as being a music teacher. “Those people have no money, class, or elegance, my love,” his mother would lecture him. “The one you should befriend is Aldaya. He comes from a very good family.” “Yes, Mother,” the boy would answer. “Whatever you say.” As time went by, Javier seemed to start trusting his new friends. Occasionally he said a few words, and he was carving a set of chess pieces for Miquel Moliner, in appreciation for his lessons. One day, when nobody expected it or thought it possible, they discovered that Javier knew how to smile and that he had the innocent laugh of a child.
“You see? He’s just a normal boy,” Julián argued.
Miquel Moliner remained unconvinced, and he observed the strange lad with a rigorous scrutiny that was almost scientific.
“Javier is obsessed with you, Julián,” he told him one day. “Everything he does is just to earn your approval.”
“What nonsense! He has a mother and a father for that; I’m only a friend.”
“Irresponsible, that’s what you are. His father is a poor wretch who has trouble enough finding his own bum when he needs to move his bowels, and Doña Yvonne is a harpy with the brain of a flea who spends her time pretending to meet people by chance in her underwear, convinced that she is Venus incarnate or something far worse I’d rather not mention. The kid, quite naturally, looks for a parent substitute, and you, the savior angel, fall from heaven and give him your hand. Saint Julián of the Fountain, patron saint of the dispossessed.”
“This Dr. Freud is rotting your head, Miquel. We all need friends. Even you.”
“This kid doesn’t have friends and never will. He has the heart of a spider. And if you don’t believe me, time will tell. I wonder what he dreams…?”
Miquel Moliner could not know that Francisco Javier’s dreams were more like his friend Julián’s than he would ever have thought possible. Once, some months before Julián had started at the school, the caretaker’s son was gathering dead leaves from the courtyard with the fountains when Don Ricardo Aldaya’s luxurious automobile arrived. That afternoon the tycoon had company. He was escorted by an apparition, an angel of light dressed in silk who seemed to levitate. The angel, who was none other than his daughter, Penélope, stepped out of the Mercedes and walked over to one of the fountains, waving her parasol and stopping to splash the water of the pond with her hands. As usual, her governess, Jacinta, followed her dutifully, observant of the slightest gesture from the girl. It wouldn’t have mattered if an army of servants had guarded her: Javier had eyes only for the girl. He was afraid that if he blinked, the vision would vanish. He remained there, paralyzed, breathlessly spying on the mirage. Soon after, as if the girl had sensed his presence and his furtive gaze, Penélope raised her eyes and looked in his direction. The beauty of that face seemed painful, unsustainable. He thought he saw the hint of a smile on her lips. Terrified, Javier ran off to hide at the top of the water tower, next to the dovecote in the attic of the school building, his favorite hiding place. His hands were still shaking when he gathered his carving utensils and began to work on a new piece in the form of the face he had just sighted. When he returned to the caretaker’s home that night, hours later than usual, his mother was waiting for him, half naked and furious. The boy looked down, fearing that, if his mother read his eyes, she would see in them the girl of the pond and would know what he had been thinking about.
“And where’ve you been, you little shit?”
“I’m sorry, Mother. I got lost.”
“You’ve been lost since the day you were born.”
Years later, every time he stuck his revolver into the mouth of a prisoner and pulled the trigger, Chief Inspector Francisco Javier Fumero would remember the day he saw his mother’s head burst open like a ripe watermelon near an outdoor bar in Las Planas and didn’t feel anything, just the tedium of dead things. The Civil Guard, alerted by the manager of the bar, who had heard the shot, found the boy sitting on a rock holding a smoking shotgun on his lap. He was staring impassively at the decapitated body of María Craponcia, alias Yvonne, covered in insects. When he saw the guards coming up to him, he just shrugged his shoulders, his face splattered with blood, as if he were being ravaged by smallpox. Following the sobs, the Civil Guards found Ramón Oneball squatting by a tree, some thirty yards away, in the undergrowth. He was shaking like a child and was unable to make himself understood. The lieutenant of the Civil Guard, after much deliberation, reported that the event had been a tragic accident, and so he recorded it in the statement, though not on his conscience. When they asked the boy if there was anything they could do for him, Francisco Javier asked whether he could keep that old gun, because when he grew up, he wanted to be a soldier….
“Are you feeling all right, Mr. Romero de Torres?”
The sudden appearance of Fumero in Father Fernando Ramos’s narrative had stunned me, but the effect on Fermín had been devastating. He looked yellow, and his hands shook.
“A sudden drop in my blood pressure,” Fermín improvised in a tiny voice. “This Catalan climate can be hell for us southerners.”
“May I offer you a glass of water?” asked the priest in a worried tone.
“If Your Grace wouldn’t mind. And perhaps a chocolate, for the glucose, you know…”
The priest poured him a glass of water, which Fermín drank greedily.
“All I have are some eucalyptus sweets. Will they be any help?”
“God bless you.”
Fermín swallowed a fistful of sweets and after
a while seemed to recover his natural complexion.
“This boy, the son of the caretaker who heroically lost his scrotum defending the colonies, are you sure his name was Fumero, Francisco Javier Fumero?”
“Yes. Quite sure. Do you know him?”
“No,” we intoned in unison.
Father Fernando frowned. “It wouldn’t have surprised me. Regrettably, Francisco Javier has ended up being a notorious character.”
“We’re not sure we understand you….”
“You understand me perfectly. Francisco Javier Fumero is chief inspector of the Barcelona Crime Squad and is widely known. His reputation has even reached those of us who never leave this establishment, and I’d say that when you heard his name, you shrank a couple of inches.”
“Now that you mention it, Your Excellency, the name does ring a bell….”
Father Fernando looked sidelong at us. “This kid isn’t the son of Julián Carax. Am I right?”
“Spiritual son, Your Eminency. Morally, that has more weight.”
“What kind of mess are you two in? Who sends you?”
At that point I was dead certain we were about to be kicked out of the priest’s office, and I decided to silence Fermín and, for once, play the honesty card.
“You’re right, Father. Julián Carax isn’t my father. But nobody has sent us. Years ago I happened to come across a book by Carax, a book that was thought to have disappeared, and from that time on, I have tried to discover more about him and clarify the circumstances of his death. Mr. Romero de Torres has helped me—”
“What book?”
“The Shadow of the Wind.Have you read it?”