She looked sceptical as she shrugged her shoulders. 'As I said, in all the years we knew one another, Julian never mentioned any woman in particular, and even less one he was going to marry. The story about his supposed marriage reached me later. Neuval, Carax's last publisher, told Cabestany that the fiancee was a woman twenty years older than Julian, a rich widow in poor health. According to Neuval, she had been more or less supporting him for years. The doctors gave her six months to live, a year at the most. Neuval said she wanted to marry Julian so that he could inherit from her.'
'But the marriage ceremony never took place.'
'If there ever was such a plan, or such a widow.'
'From what I know, Carax was involved in a duel, on the dawn of the very day he was due to be married. Do you know who with, or why?'
'Neuval supposed it was someone connected to the widow. A greedy distant relative who didn't want to see the inheritance fall into the hands of some upstart. Neuval mostly published penny dreadfuls, and I think the genre had gone to his head.'
'I can see you don't really believe the story of the wedding and the duel.'
'No. I never believed it.'
'What do you think happened, then? Why did Carax return to Barcelona?'
She smiled sadly. 'I've been asking myself the same question for seventeen years.'
Nuria Monfort lit another cigarette. She offered me one. I was tempted to accept but refused.
'But you must have some theory?' I suggested.
'All I know is that in the summer of 1936, shortly after the outbreak of the war, an employee at the municipal morgue phoned our firm to say they had received the body of Julian Carax three days earlier. They'd found him dead in an alleyway of the Raval quarter, dressed in rags and with a bullet through his heart. He had a book on him, a copy of The Shadow of the Wind, and his passport. The stamp showed he'd crossed the French border a month before. Where he had been during that time, nobody knew. The police contacted his father, but he refused to take responsibility for the body, alleging that he didn't have a son. After two days without anyone claiming the corpse, he was buried in a common grave in Montjuic Cemetery. I couldn't even take him flowers, because nobody could tell me where he'd been buried. It was the employee at the morgue, who had kept the book found in Julian's jacket, who had the idea of phoning Cabestany's publishing house a couple of days later. That is how I found out what had happened. I couldn't understand it. If Julian had anyone left in Barcelona to whom he could turn, it was me or, at a pinch, Cabestany. We were his only friends, but he never told us he'd returned. We only knew he'd come back to Barcelona after he died. . . .'
'Were you able to find out anything else after getting the news?'
'No. Those were the first months of the war, and Julian was not the only one to disappear without a trace. Nobody talks about it anymore, but there are lots of nameless graves, like Julian's. Asking was like banging your head against a brick wall. With the help of Senor Cabestany, who by then was very ill, I made a complaint to the police and pulled all the strings I could. All I got out of it was a visit from a young inspector, an arrogant, sinister sort, who told me it would be a good idea not to ask any more questions and to concentrate my efforts on having a more positive attitude, because the country was in full cry, on a crusade. Those were his words. His name was Fumero, that's all I remember. It seems that now he's quite an important man. He's often mentioned in the papers. Maybe you've heard of him.'
I swallowed. 'Vaguely.'
'I heard nothing more about Julian until someone got in touch with the publishers and said he was interested in acquiring all the copies of Carax's novels that were left in the warehouse.'
'Lain Coubert.'
Nuria Monfort nodded.
'Have you any idea who that man was?'
'I have an inkling, but I'm not sure. In March 1936 - I remember the date because at the time we were preparing The Shadow of the Wind for press - someone called the publishers to ask for his address. He said he was an old friend and he wanted to visit Julian in Paris. Give him a surprise. They put him onto me, and I said I wasn't authorized to give out that information.'
'Did he say who he was?'
'Someone called Jorge.'
'Jorge Aldaya?'
'It might have been. Julian had mentioned him on more than one occasion. I think they had been at San Gabriel's school together, and sometimes Julian referred to him as if he'd been his best friend.'
'Did you know that Jorge Aldaya was Penelope's brother?'
Nuria Monfort frowned. She looked disconcerted.
'Did you give Aldaya Julian'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 Julian's disappearance that man turned up at Cabestany's firm. By then Cabestany could no longer work, and his eldest son had taken charge of the business. The visitor, Lain Coubert, offered to buy all the remaining stock of Julian's novels. I thought the whole thing was a joke in poor taste. Lain Coubert was a character in The Shadow of the Wind.'
'The devil'
Nuria Monfort nodded again.
'Did you actually see Lain Coubert?'
She shook her head and lit her third cigarette. 'No. But I heard part of the conversation with the son in Senor 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, the 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 Julian's books went 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 Julian Carax's books?'
'Why are books burned? Through stupidity, ignorance, hatred . . . goodness only knows.'
'Why do you think?' I insisted.
'Julian 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 of 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 tired gesture of defeat. 'You remind me of Julian,' 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.
'Julian 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 this woman, an eagerness such as I had never experienced before, not even when I conjured up the ghost of Clara Barcelo. 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 Julian 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.'
I said goodbye to her in a low voice, thanking her for her time and holding out my hand politely. Nuria Monfort ignored my formal gesture. She placed her hands on my arms, leaned forward, and kissed me on the cheek. We gazed at one another, and this time I searched her lips, almost trembling. It seemed to me that they parted a little, and that her fingers were reaching for my face. At the last moment, Nuria Monfort moved away and looked down.
'I think it's best if you leave, Daniel,' she whispered.
I thought she was about to cry, but before I could say anything, she closed the door. I was left on the landing, sensing her presence on the other side of the door, motionless, asking myself what had happened in there. At the other end of the landing, the neighbour's spy-hole was blinking. I waved at her and attacked the stairs. When I reached the street, I could still feel Nuria Monfort's face, her voice, and her smell, deep in my soul. I carried the trace of her lips, of her breath on my skin through streets full of faceless people escaping from offices and shops.
When I turned into Calle Canuda, an icy wind hit me, cutting through the bustle. I welcomed the cold air on my face and walked up towards the university. After crossing the Ramblas, I made my way towards Calle Tallers and disappeared into its narrow canyon of shadows, feeling that I was still trapped in that dark, gloomy dining room where I now imagined Nuria Monfort sitting alone, silently tidying up her pencils, her folders, and her memories, her eyes poisoned with tears.
21.
Dusk fell almost surreptitiously, with a cold breeze and a mantle of purple light that slid between the gaps in the streets. I quickened my pace, and twenty minutes later the front of the university emerged like an ochre ship anchored in the night. In his lodge the porter of the Literature department perused the words of the nation's most influential by-lines in the afternoon edition of the sports pages. There seemed to be hardly any students left in the premises. The echo of my footsteps followed me through the corridors and galleries that led to the cloister, where the glow of two yellowish lights barely disturbed the shadows. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Bea had tricked me, that she'd arranged to meet me there at that untimely hour as some sort of revenge. The leaves on the orange trees in the cloister shimmered like silver tears, and the sound of the fountain echoed through the arches. I looked carefully around the courtyard, contemplating disappointment or maybe a certain cowardly sense of relief. There she was, sitting on one of the benches, her silhouette outlined against the fountain, her eyes looking up towards the vaults of the cloister. I stopped at the entrance to gaze at her, and for a moment I was reminded of Nuria Monfort daydreaming on her bench in the square. I noticed she didn't have her folder or her books with her, and I suspected she hadn't had any classes that afternoon. Perhaps she'd come here just to meet me. I swallowed hard and walked into the cloister. The sound of my footsteps gave me away and Bea looked up, with a smile of surprise, as if my presence there were just a coincidence.
'I thought you weren't coming,' said Bea.
'That's just what I thought,' I replied.
She remained seated, upright, her knees tight together and her hands on her lap. I asked myself how I could feel so detached from her and at the same time read every little detail of her lips.
'I've come because I want to prove to you that you were wrong about what you said the other day, Daniel. I'm going to marry Pablo, and I don't care what you show me tonight. I'm going to El Ferrol as soon as he's finished his military service.'
I looked at her as if I'd just had the rug pulled out from under my feet. I realized I'd spent two days walking on air, and now my whole world was collapsing.
'And there I was, thinking you'd come because you felt like seeing me.' I managed a weak smile.
I noticed her blushing self-consciously.
'I was only joking,' I lied. 'What I was serious about was my promise to show you a face of the city that you don't yet know. At least that will give you cause to remember me, or Barcelona, whenever you go.'
There was a touch of sadness in Bea's smile, and she avoided my eyes. 'I nearly went to the cinema, you know. So as not to see you today,' she said.
'Why?'
Bea looked at me but said nothing. She shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyes as if she were trying to catch words that were escaping from her.
'Because I was afraid that perhaps you were right,' she said at last.
I sighed. We were shielded by the evening light and that despondent silence that brings strangers together, and I felt brave enough to say anything that came into my head, even though it might be for the last time.
'Do you love him, or don't you?'
A smile came and went. 'It's none of your business.'
'That's true,' I said. 'It's only your business.'
She gave me a cold look. 'And what does it matter to you?'
'It's none of your business,' I said.
She didn't smile. Her lips trembled. 'People who know me know I'm very fond of Pablo. My family and-'
'But I'm almost a stranger,' I interrupted. 'And I would like to hear it from you.'
'Hear what?'
'That you really love him. That you're not marrying him to get away from home, to put distance between yourself and Barcelona and your family, to go somewhere where they can't hurt you. That you're leaving and not running away.'
Her eyes shone with angry tears. 'You have no right to say that to me, Daniel. You don't know me.'
'Tell me I'm mistaken and I'll leave. Do you love him?'
We looked at one another for a long while, without saying a word.
'I don't know,' she murmured at last. 'I don't know.'
'Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever,' I said.
Bea looked for the irony in my expression. 'Who said that?'
'Someone called Julian Carax.'
'A friend of yours?'
I caught myself nodding. 'Sort of.'
'You're going to have to introduce him to me.'
'Tonight, if you like.'
We left the university under a bruised sky and wandered aimlessly, just getting used to walking side by side. We took shelter in the only subject we had in common, her brother, Tomas. Bea spoke about him as if he were a virtual stranger, someone she loved but barely knew. She avoided my eyes and smiled nervously. I felt that she regretted what she had said to me in the university cloister, that the words still hurt and were still gnawing at her.
'Listen, what I said to you before,' she said suddenly, 'you won't mention a word to Tomas, will you?'