One day I was intrigued enough to ask him why he continued to publish Julián Carax’s novels as a loss-making venture. In answer to my question, Cabestany ceremoniously walked over to his bookshelf, took one of Julián’s books, and invited me to read it. I did. Two weeks later I’d read them all. This time my question was, how we could possibly sell so few copies of those novels.
“I don’t know, dear,” replied Cabestany. “But we’ll keep on trying.”
Such a noble and admirable gesture didn’t quite fit the picture I had formed of Mr. Cabestany. Perhaps I had underestimated him. I found the figure of Julián Carax increasingly intriguing as everything related to him seemed to be shrouded in mystery. At least twice a month, someone would call asking for his address. I soon realized that it was always the same person, using a different name each time. But I would tell him only what could be read on the back cover of his novels, that Julián lived in Paris. After a time he stopped calling. Just in case, I deleted Carax’s address from the company files. I was the only one who wrote to him, and I knew the address by heart.
Months later I chanced upon the bills sent by the printers to Mr. Cabestany. Glancing through them, I noticed that the expense of the editions of Julián Carax’s books was defrayed, in its entirety, by someone outside our firm whose name I had never heard before: Miquel Moliner. Moreover, the costs of printing and shipping these books were substantially lower than the sum of money invoiced to Mr. Moliner. The numbers didn’t lie: the publishing firm was making money by printing books that went straight to a warehouse. I didn’t have the courage to question Cabestany’s financial irregularities. I was afraid of losing my job. What I did do was take down the address to which we sent Miquel Moliner’s invoices, a mansion on Calle Puertaferrissa. I kept that address for months before I plucked up the courage to visit him. Finally my conscience got the better of me, and I turned up at his house to tell him that Mr. Cabestany was swindling him. He smiled and told me he already knew.
“We all do what we’re best at.”
I asked him whether he was the person who had phoned so often asking for Carax’s address. He said he wasn’t, and told me with a worried look that I should never give that address to anyone. Ever.
Miquel Moliner was a bit of a mystery. He lived on his own in a cavernous, crumbling mansion that was part of the inheritance from his father, an industrialist who had grown rich through arms manufacture and, it was said, war mongering. Far from living among luxuries, Miquel led an almost monastic existence, dedicated to squandering his father’s money, which he considered bloodstained, on the restoration of museums, cathedrals, schools, libraries, and hospitals, and on ensuring that the works of his childhood friend, Julián Carax, were published in his native city.
“I have more money than I need, but not enough friends like Julián” was his only explanation.
He hardly kept in touch with his siblings or the rest of the family, whom he referred to as strangers. He hadn’t married and he seldom left the grounds of his mansion, of which he occupied only the top floor. There he had set up his office, where he worked feverishly, writing articles and columns for various newspapers and magazines in Madrid and Barcelona, translating technical texts from German and French, copyediting encyclopedias and school textbooks. Miquel Moliner suffered from that affliction of those who feel guilty when not working; although he respected and even envied the leisure others enjoyed, he fled from it. Far from gloating about his manic work ethic, he would joke about his obsessive activity and dismiss it as a minor form of cowardice.
“While you’re working, you don’t have to look life in the eye.”
Almost without realizing it, we became good friends. We had a lot in common, probably too much. Miquel liked to talk to me about books, about his beloved Dr. Freud, about music, but above all about his old friend Julián. We saw each other almost every week. Miquel would tell me stories about the days when Julián was at San Gabriel’s School. He kept a collection of old photographs of, and stories written by, a teenage Julián. Miquel adored Julián, and, through his words and his memories, I came to know him, or at least to create an image in his absence. A year after we had met, Miquel confessed that he’d fallen in love with me. I did not wish to hurt him, but neither did I want to deceive him. It was impossible to deceive Miquel. I told him I was extremely fond of him, that he’d become my best friend, but I wasn’t in love with him. Miquel told me he already knew.
“You’re in love with Julián, but you don’t yet know.”
In August 1933, Julián wrote to inform me that he’d almost finished the manuscript of another novel, called The Cathedral Thief. Cabestany had some contracts with Gallimard that were due for renewal in September. He’d been paralyzed for several weeks with a vicious attack of gout and, as a reward for my dedication, decided that I should travel to France in his place to negotiate the new contracts. At the same time, I could visit Julián Carax and collect his new opus. I wrote to Julián telling him of my visit, which was planned for mid-September, and asking him whether he could recommend a reliable, inexpensive hotel. Julián replied saying that I could stay at his place, a modest apartment in the Saint-Germain quarter, and keep the hotel money for other expenses. The day before I left, I went to see Miquel to ask him whether he had any message for Julián. For a long while he seemed to hesitate, and then he said he didn’t.
The first time I saw Julián in person was at the Gare d’Austerlitz. Autumn had sneaked up early in Paris, and the station vault was thick with fog. I waited on the platform while the other passengers made their way toward the exit. Soon I was left alone and then saw a man wearing a black coat, standing at the entrance to the platform and watching me through the smoke of his cigarette. During the journey I had often wondered how I would recognize Julián. The photographs I’d seen of him in Miquel Moliner’s collection were at least thirteen or fourteen years old. I looked up and down the platform. There was nobody there except that figure and me. I noticed that the man was looking at me with some curiosity: perhaps he, too, was waiting for someone. It couldn’t be him. According to my calculations, Julián would be thirty-three, and that man seemed older. His hair was gray, and he looked sad or tired. Too pale and too thin, or maybe it was just the fog and the wearying journey or that the only pictures in my mind were of an adolescent Julián. Tentatively, I went up to the stranger and looked straight into his eyes.
“Julián?”
The stranger smiled and nodded. Julián Carax possessed the most charming smile in the world. It was all that was left of him.
Julián lived in an attic in Saint-Germain. The apartment had only two rooms: a living room with a minute kitchen and a tiny balcony from which you could see the towers of Notre-Dame looming out of a jungle of rooftops and mist, and a bedroom with no windows and a single bed. The bathroom was at the end of a corridor on the floor below, and he shared it with the neighbors. The whole of the apartment was smaller than Mr. Cabestany’s office. Julián had cleaned it up and got everything ready to welcome me with simple modesty. I pretended to be delighted with the apartment, which still smelled of disinfectant and furniture wax, applied by Julián with more determination than skill. The sheets on the bed looked brand new. They appeared to have a pattern of dragons and castles. Children’s sheets. Julián excused himself: he’d bought them at a very reduced price, but they were top quality. The ones with no pattern were twice the price, he explained, and they were boring.
In the sitting room, an old wooden desk faced the view of the cathedral towers. On it stood the Underwood typewriter that Julián had bought with Cabestany’s advance and two piles of writing paper, one blank and the other written on both sides. Julián shared the attic apartment with a huge white cat he called Kurtz. The animal watched me suspiciously as he lay at his master’s feet, licking his paws. I counted two chairs, a coatrack, and little else. The rest was all books. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, in double rows. Seeing me inspect the place, Julián sighed.
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“There’s a hotel two blocks away. Clean, affordable, and respectable. I took the liberty of making a reservation.”
I thought about it but was afraid of offending him.
“I’ll be fine here, so long as it’s not a bother for you, or for Kurtz.”
Kurtz and Julián exchanged glances. Julián shook his head, and the cat imitated him. I hadn’t noticed how alike they looked. Julián insisted on letting me have his bedroom. He hardly slept, he explained, and would set himself up in the sitting room on a folding bed, lent to him by his neighbor, Monsieur Darcieu—an old conjuror who read young ladies’ palms in exchange for a kiss. That first night I slept right through, exhausted after the journey. I woke up at dawn and discovered that Julián had gone out. Kurtz was asleep on top of his master’s typewriter. He snored like a mastiff. I went up to the desk and saw the manuscript of the new novel that I had come to collect.
THE CATHEDRAL THIEF
On the first page, as in all Julián’s other novels, was the handwritten dedication:
For P
I was tempted to start reading. I was about to pick up the second page when I noticed that Kurtz was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I shook my head the way I’d seen Julián do. The cat, in turn, shook his head, and I put the pages back in their place. After a while Julián appeared, bringing with him freshly baked bread, a thermos of coffee, and some cheese. We had breakfast by the balcony. Julián spoke incessantly but avoided my eyes. In the light of dawn, he seemed to me like an aged child. He had shaved and put on what I imagined must be his only decent outfit, a cream-colored cotton suit that looked worn but elegant. I listened to him as he talked about the mysteries of Notre-Dame and about a ghostly barge that was said to cleave the waters of the Seine at night, gathering up the souls of desperate lovers who had ended their lives by jumping into the frozen waters. I listened to a thousand and one magic tales he invented as he went along just to keep me from asking him any questions. I watched him silently, nodding, searching in him for the man who had written the books I knew almost by heart from so much rereading, the boy whom Miquel Moliner had described to me so often.
“How many days are you going to be in Paris?” he asked.
My business with Gallimard would take me about two or three days, I said. My first meeting was that afternoon. I told him I’d thought of taking a couple of days off to get to know the city before returning to Barcelona.
“Paris requires more than two days,” said Julián. “It won’t listen to reason.”
“I don’t have any more time, Julián. Mr. Cabestany is a generous employer, but everything has a limit.”
“Cabestany is a pirate, but even he knows that one can’t see Paris in two days, or in two months, or even in two years.”
“I can’t spend two years in Paris, Julián.”
For a long while, he looked at me without speaking, and then he smiled. “Why not? Is someone waiting for you?”
The dealings with Gallimard and my courtesy calls to various other publishers with whom Cabestany had agreements took up three whole days, just as I had foreseen. Julián had assigned me a guide and protector, a young boy called Hervé who was barely thirteen and knew the city intimately. Hervé would accompany me from door to door, making sure I knew which cafés to stop at for a bite, which streets to avoid, which sights to take in. He would wait for me for hours at the door of the publishers’ offices without losing his smile or accepting any tips. Hervé spoke an amusing broken Spanish, which he mixed with overtones of Italian and Portuguese.
“Signore Carax, he already pay, with tuoda generosidade for meus serviçios….”
From what I gathered, Hervé was the orphan of one of the ladies at Irene Marceau’s establishment, in whose attic he lived. Julián had taught him to read, write, and play the piano. On Sundays he would take him to the theater or a concert. Hervé idolized Julián and seemed prepared to do anything for him, even guide me to the end of the world if necessary. On our third day together, he asked me whether I was the girlfriend of Signore Carax. I said I wasn’t, that I was only a friend on a visit. He seemed disappointed.
Julián spent most nights awake, sitting at his desk with Kurtz on his lap, going through pages or simply staring at the cathedral towers silhouetted in the distance. One night, when I couldn’t sleep either because of the noise of the rain pattering on the roof, I went into the sitting room. We looked at each other without saying a word, and Julián offered me a cigarette. For a long time we stared silently at the rain. Later, when the rain stopped, I asked him who P was.
“Penélope,” he answered.
I asked him to talk to me about her, about those fourteen years of exile in Paris. In a whisper, in the half-light, Julián told me Penélope was the only woman he had ever loved.
ONE NIGHT, IN THE WINTER OF 1921, IRENE MARCEAU FOUND JULIÁN wandering in the Paris streets, unable to remember his name and coughing up blood. All he had on him were a few coins and some folded sheets of paper with writing on them. Irene read them and thought she’d come across some famous author who had drunk too much, and that perhaps a generous publisher would reward her when he recovered consciousness. That, at least, was her version, but Julián knew she’d saved him out of compassion. He spent six months recovering in an attic room of Irene’s brothel. The doctors warned Irene that if that man poisoned himself again, they would not be held responsible for him. He had ruined his stomach and his liver and was going to have to spend the rest of his days eating only milk, cottage cheese, and fresh bread. When Julián was able to speak again, Irene asked him who he was.
“Nobody,” answered Julián.
“Well, nobody lives at my expense. What can you do?”
Julián said he could play the piano.
“Prove it.”
Julián sat at the drawing-room piano and, facing a rapt audience of fifteen-year-old prostitutes in underwear, played a Chopin nocturne. They all clapped except for Irene, who told him that what she had just heard was music for the dead and they were in the business of the living. Julián played her a ragtime tune and a couple of pieces by Offenbach.
“That’s better. Let’s keep it upbeat.”
His new job earned him a living, a roof, and two hot meals a day.
He survived in Paris thanks to Irene Marceau’s charity, and she was the only person who encouraged him to keep on writing. Her favorite books were romantic novels and biographies of saints and martyrs, which intrigued her enormously. In her opinion Julián’s problem was that his heart was poisoned; that was why he could only write those stories of horror and darkness. Despite her objections, it was thanks to Irene that Julián had found a publisher for his first novels. She was the one who had provided him with that attic in which he hid from the world, the one who dressed him and took him out to get a bit of sun and fresh air, who bought him books and made him go to mass with her on Sundays, followed by a stroll through the Tuileries. Irene Marceau kept him alive without asking for anything in return except his friendship and the promise that he would continue writing. In time she would allow him, occasionally, to take one of her girls up to the attic, even if they were only going to sleep hugging each other. Irene joked that the girls were almost as lonely as he was, and all they wanted was a bit of affection.
“My neighbor, Monsieur Darcieu, thinks I’m the luckiest man in the universe,” he told me.
I asked him why he had never returned to Barcelona in search of Penélope. He fell into a long, deep silence, and when I looked at his face in the dark, I saw it was lined with tears. Without quite knowing what I was doing, I knelt down next to him and hugged him. We remained like that, embracing, until dawn caught us by surprise. I no longer know who kissed whom first, nor whether it matters. I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn’t know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julián, we made love to each other on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitt
ing in a café or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penélope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penélope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the gray existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether I arrived in Paris with such an empty life that I fell into Julián’s arms like Irene Marceau’s girls, who, despite themselves, craved affection. All I know is that those two weeks I spent with Julián were the only time in my life when I felt, for once, that I was myself, when I understood with the hopeless clarity of what cannot be explained that I would never be able to love another man the way I loved Julián, even if I spent the rest of my days trying.
One day Julián fell asleep in my arms, exhausted. The previous afternoon, as we passed by a pawnshop, he had stopped to show me a fountain pen that had been on display there for years. According to the pawnbroker, it had once belonged to Victor Hugo. Julián had never owned even a fraction of the means to buy that pen, but he would stop and look at it every day. I dressed quietly and went down to the pawnshop. The pen cost a fortune, which I didn’t have, but the pawnbroker said that he’d accept a check in pesetas on any Spanish bank with a branch in Paris. Before she died, my mother had promised me she would save up to buy me a wedding dress. Victor Hugo’s pen took care of that, veil and all, and although I knew it was madness, I have never spent any sum of money with more satisfaction. When I left the shop with the fabulous case, I noticed that a woman was following me. She was a very elegant lady, with silvery hair and the bluest eyes I have ever seen. She came up to me and introduced herself. She was Irene Marceau, Julián’s patron. Hervé, my guide, had spoken to her about me. She only wanted to meet me and ask me whether I was the woman Julián had been waiting for all those years. I didn’t have to reply. Irene nodded in sympathy and kissed my cheek. I watched her walking away down the street, and at that moment I understood that Julián would never be mine. I went back to the attic with the pen case hidden in my bag. Julián was awake and waiting for me. He undressed me without saying anything, and we made love for the last time. When he asked me why I was crying, I told him they were tears of joy. Later, when Julián went down for some food, I packed my bags and placed the case with the pen on his typewriter. I put the manuscript of the novel in my suitcase and left before Julián returned. On the landing I came upon Monsieur Darcieu, the old conjuror who read the palms of young ladies in exchange for a kiss. He took my left hand and gazed at me sadly.