When I went out into the street, it seemed as if darkness were creeping along the pavement, pursuing me. I quickened my pace and didn't slow down until I reached the apartment in Calle Santa Ana. When I got home, I found my father in his armchair with an open book on his lap. It was a photograph album. On seeing me, he sat up with an expression of great relief.
'I was beginning to get worried,' he said, 'How was the funeral?'
I shrugged, and my father nodded gravely.
'I've some dinner ready for you. If you like, I could warm it up and-'
'Thanks, but I'm not hungry. I had a bite to eat earlier.'
He fixed his gaze on me and nodded again. He turned to remove the plates he'd placed on the table. It was then, without quite knowing why, that I went up to him and hugged him. And my father, surprised, hugged me back.
'Daniel, are you all right?'
I held my father tightly in my arms.
'I love you,' I murmured.
The cathedral bells were ringing when I began to read Nuria Monfort's manuscript. Her small, neat writing reminded me of her impeccable desk. Perhaps she had been trying to find in these words the peace and safety that life had not granted her.
NURIA MONFORT: REMEMBRANCE OF THE LOST 1933-1955.
1.
There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse. Julian Carax and I met in the autumn of 1933. At that time I was working for the publisher Josep Cabestany, who had discovered him in 1927 in the course of one of his 'book-scouting' trips to Paris. Julian earned his living playing piano at a hostess bar in the afternoons, and at night he wrote. The owner of the establishment, one Irene Marceau, knew most of the Paris publishers, and, thanks to her entreaties, favours, or threats of disclosure, Julian Carax had managed to get a number of novels published, though with disastrous commercial results. Cabestany acquired the exclusive rights to publish Carax's works in Spain and Latin America for a song, which price included the translation of the French originals into Spanish by the author himself. Cabestany hoped to sell around three thousand copies per novel, but the first two titles he brought out in Spain turned out to be a total flop, with barely a hundred copies of each sold. Despite these dismal results, every two years we received a new manuscript from Julian, which Cabestany accepted without any objections, saying that he'd signed an agreement with the author, that profit wasn't everything, and that good literature had to be supported no matter what.
One day I was intrigued enough to ask him why he continued to publish Julian Carax's novels when they were making such a loss. In answer to my question, Cabestany ceremoniously walked over to his bookshelf, took down one of Julian's books, and invited me to read it. I did. Two weeks later I'd read them all. This time my question was, how could we 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 Senor Cabestany. Perhaps I had underestimated him. I found the figure of Julian 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 simply what could be read on the back cover of Julian's novels: that he lived in Paris. After a time, the man 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 some bills sent by the printers to Senor Cabestany. Glancing through them, I noticed that the expense of our editions of Julian Carax's books was defrayed, in its entirety, by someone outside our firm whose name I had never heard before: Miquel Moliner. Moreover, the cost of printing and distributing these books was substantially lower than the sum of money invoiced to Senor 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 Senor 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 his inheritance from his father, an industrialist who had grown rich through arms manufacture and, it was said, warmongering. Far from living a life of luxury, Miquel led an almost monastic existence, dedicated to squandering his father's money, which he considered to be stained with blood, on the restoration of museums, cathedrals, schools, libraries, and hospitals, and on ensuring that the works of his childhood friend, Julian Carax, were published in his native city.
'I have more money than I need, but not enough friends like Julian,' 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 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, copy-editing encyclopaedias and school textbooks. Miquel Moliner suffered from that affliction of people who feel guilty when they're 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 both 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 Julian. We saw each other almost every week. Miquel would tell me stories about the days when Julian was at San Gabriel's. He kept a collection of old photographs and stories written by a teenage Julian. Miquel adored Julian, and, through his words and his memories, I came to know him, or at least to create an image of him 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 Julian, but you don't yet know it.' In August 1933, Julian 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 paralysed for several weeks with a vicious attack of gout and, as a reward for my dedication, he decided that I should travel to France in his place to negotiate the new contracts. At the same time, I could visit Julian Carax and collect his new opus. I wrote to Julian telling him of my visit, which was planned for mid-September, and asking him whether he could recommend a reliable, inexpensive hotel. Julian 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 Julian. For a long while he seemed to hesitate, and then he said he didn't.
The first time I saw Julian 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 towards the exit. Soon I was left alone. Then I saw a man wearing a black coat, standing at the entrance to the platform, watching me through the smoke from his cigarette. During the journey I had often wondered how I would recognize Julian. 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, Julian would be thirty-three, and that man seemed older. His hair was grey, 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 Julian. Tentatively, I went up to the stranger and looked him straight in the eye.
'Julian?'
The stranger smiled and nodded. Julian Carax possessed the most charming smile in the world. It was all that was left of him.
Julian lived in an attic in Saint-Germain. The apartment only had 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 rest of his neighbours. The whole of the apartment was smaller than Cabestany's office. Julian 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 Julian with more determination than skill. The sheets on the bed looked brand new and appeared to have a pattern of dragons and castles. Children's sheets. Julian 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 Julian had bought with Cabestany's advance and two piles of writing paper, one blank and the other written on both sides. Julian 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 coat rack, and little else. The rest were all books. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, in double rows. Seeing me inspect the place, Julian sighed.
'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 Julian exchanged glances. Julian shook his head, and the cat imitated him. I hadn't noticed how alike they looked. Julian 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 neighbour, 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 Julian had gone out. Kurtz was asleep on top of his master's typewriter. He snored like a mastiff. I went over 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 Julian'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 Julian do. The cat, in turn, shook his head, and I put the pages back in their place. After a while Julian appeared, bringing with him freshly baked bread, a Thermos of coffee and some cheese. We had breakfast by the balcony. Julian spoke incessantly but avoided my eyes. In the light of dawn, he seemed like an aged child. He had shaved and put on what I imagined must be his only decent outfit, a cream-coloured cotton suit that looked worn but elegant. I listened to him as he talked about the mysteries of Notre Dame; 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 magical 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, 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 Julian. 'It won't listen to reason.'
'I don't have any more time, Julian. Senor Cabestany is a generous employer, but everything has a limit.'
'Cabestany is a pirate, but even he knows that you can't see Paris in two days, or in two months, or even in two years.'
'I can't spend two years in Paris, Julian.'
He looked at me for a long while, without speaking, and then he smiled. 'Why not? Is there someone waiting for you?'
The dealings with Gallimard and my courtesy calls to various publishers with whom Cabestany did business took up three whole days, just as I had foreseen. Julian had assigned me a guide and protector, a young boy called Herve who was barely thirteen and knew the city intimately. Herve would accompany me from door to door, making sure I knew which cafes 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. Herve spoke an amusing broken Spanish, which he mixed with overtones of Italian and Portuguese.
'Signore Carax, he already pay, with tuoda generosidade for meus servicios...'
From what I gathered, Herve was the orphan of one of the ladies at Irene Marceau's establishment, in whose attic he lived. Julian had taught him to read, write, and play the piano. On Sundays he would take him to the theatre or a concert. Herve idolized Julian 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 Signore Carax's girlfriend. I said I wasn't, that I was only a friend on a visit. He seemed disappointed.
Julian spent most nights awake, sitting at his desk with Kurtz on his lap, going over pages of his work 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 one another without saying a word, and Julian 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.
'Penelope,' 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, Julian told me Penelope was the only woman he had ever loved.
One night, in the winter of 1921, Irene Marceau had found Julian 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 Julian knew she'd saved him out of compassion. He spent six months recovering in an attic room in Irene's brothel. The doctors warned Irene that if that man poisoned himself again, they would not be held responsible. 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 Julian was able to speak again, Irene asked him who he was.
'Nobody,' answered Julian.
'Well, nobody is living here at my expense. What can you do?'
Julian said he could play the piano.
'Prove it.'
Julian sat at the drawing-room piano and, facing a rapt audience of fifteen-year-old prostitutes in their underwear, he 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. Julian 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 favourite books were romantic novels and biographies of saints and martyrs, which intrigued her enormously. In her opinion Julian's problem was that his heart was poisoned; that was why he could only write those stories full of horror and darkness. But, despite her objections, it was thanks to Irene that Julian found a publisher for his first novels. She was the one who had provided him with the attic in which he hid from the world; the one who dressed him and took him out to get some 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 some affection.
'My neighbour, 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 Penelope. 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, or 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 Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope 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 grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. All I know is that those two weeks I spent with Julian 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 Julian, even if I spent the rest of my days trying.
One day Julian 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. Julian 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 cheque 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 very elegant, with silvery hair and the bluest eyes I have ever seen. She came up to me and introduced herself. She was Irene Marceau, Julian's patron. Herve, my guide, had spoken to her about me. She only wanted to meet me and ask me whether I was the woman Julian 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 Julian would never be mine. I went back to the attic with the pencase hidden in my bag. Julian 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 Julian went down to buy 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 Julian 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.
'Vous avez du poison au coeur, mademoiselle?
When I tried to pay him his fee, he shook his head gently, and instead it was he who kissed my hand.
I got to the Gare d'Austerlitz just in time to catch the twelve o'clock train to Barcelona. The ticket inspector who sold me the ticket asked me whether I was feeling all right. I nodded and shut myself up in the compartment. The train was already leaving when I looked out the window and caught a glimpse of Julian's silhouette on the platform, in the same place I'd seen him for the first time. I closed my eyes and didn't open them again until we had lost sight of the station and that bewitching city to which I could never return. I arrived in Barcelona the following morning, as day was breaking. It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and I knew that the best part of my life was already behind me.
2.
After I returned to Barcelona, I let some time pass before visiting Miquel Moliner again. I needed to get Julian out of my head, and I realized that if Miquel were to ask me about him, I wouldn't know what to say. When we did meet again, I didn't need to tell him anything. Miquel just looked me in the eyes and knew. He seemed to me thinner than before my trip to Paris; his face had an almost unhealthy pallor, which I attributed to the enormous workload with which he punished himself. He admitted that he was going through financial difficulties. He had spent almost all the money from his inheritance on his philanthropic causes, and now his brothers' lawyers were trying to evict him from the home, claiming that a clause in old Moliner's will specified that he could live there only providing he kept it in good condition and could prove he had the financial means for the upkeep of the property. Otherwise the Puertaferrissa mansion would pass into the custody of his other brothers.
'Even before dying, my father sensed that I was going to spend his money on all the things he most detested in life, down to the last centimo.'
Miquel's income as a newspaper columnist and translator was far from enough to maintain that sort of residence.
'Making money isn't hard in itself,' he complained. 'What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting your life to.'
I suspected that he was beginning to drink in secret. Sometimes his hands shook. Every Sunday I went over to see him and made him come out with me and get away from his desk and his encyclopaedias. I knew it hurt him to see me. He acted as if he didn't remember that he'd offered to marry me and I'd refused him, but at times I'd catch him gazing at me with a look of mingled yearning and defeat. My sole excuse for submitting him to such cruelty was purely selfish: only Miquel knew the truth about Julian and Penelope Aldaya.
During those months I spent away from Julian, Penelope Aldaya became a spectre who stole my sleep and invaded my thoughts. I could still remember the expression of disappointment on Irene Marceau's face when she realized I was not the woman Julian had been waiting for. Penelope Aldaya, treacherously absent, was too powerful an enemy for me. She was invisible, so I imagined her as perfect. Next to her I was unworthy, vulgar, all too real. I had never thought it possible to hate someone so much and so despite myself- someone I didn't even know, and had never seen in my life. I suppose I thought that if I met her face to face, if I could prove to myself that she was flesh and blood, her spell would break and Julian would be free again. And I with him. I wanted to believe that it was only a matter of time and patience. Sooner or later Miquel would tell me the truth. And the truth would liberate me.
One day, as we strolled through the cathedral cloister, Miquel once again hinted at his interest in me. I looked at him and saw a lonely man, devoid of hope. I knew what I was doing when I took him home and let myself be seduced by him. I knew I was deceiving him and that he knew, too, but had nothing else in the world. That is how we became lovers, out of desperation. I saw in his eyes what I would have wanted to see in Julian's. I felt that by giving myself to him I was taking revenge on Julian and Penelope and on everything that had been denied to me. Miquel, who was ill with desire and loneliness, knew that our love was a farce, but even so he couldn't let me go. Every day he drank more heavily and often could hardly make love to me. He would then joke bitterly that, after all, we'd turned into the perfect married couple in record time. We were hurting one another through spite and cowardice. One night, almost a year after I had returned from Paris, I asked him to tell me the truth about Penelope. Miquel had been drinking, and he became violent, as I'd never seen him before. In his rage he insulted me and accused me of never having loved him, of being a vulgar whore. He tore my clothes off me, shredding them in the process, and when he tried to force himself on me, I lay down, offering my body without resistance, crying quietly to myself. Miquel broke down and begged me to forgive him. How I wished I were able to love him and not Julian, to be able to choose to remain by his side. But I couldn't. We embraced in the dark, and I asked his forgiveness for all the pain I had caused him. He then told me that if it mattered so much to me, he would tell me the truth about Penelope Aldaya. It was another one of my mistakes.
That Sunday in 1919, when Miquel Moliner went to the station to give his friend Julian his ticket to Paris and see him off, he already knew that Penelope would not be coming to the rendezvous. Two days earlier, when Don Ricardo Aldaya returned from Madrid, his wife had confessed that she'd surprised Julian and their daughter Penelope in the governess's room. Jorge Aldaya had revealed all this to Miquel the day before, making him swear he would never tell anyone. Jorge explained how, when he was given the news, Don Ricardo exploded with anger and rushed up to Penelope's room, shouting like a madman. When she heard her father's cries, Penelope locked her door and wept with terror. Don Ricardo kicked in the door and found his daughter on her knees, trembling and begging for mercy. Don Ricardo then slapped her in the face so hard that she fell down. Not even Jorge was able to repeat the words Don Ricardo hurled at her in his fury. All the members of the family and the servants waited downstairs, terrified, not knowing what to do. Jorge hid in his room, in the dark, but even there he could hear Don Ricardo's shouts. Jacinta was dismissed that same day. Don Ricardo didn't even deign to see her. He ordered the servants to throw her out of the house and threatened them with a similar fate if any of them had any contact with her again.
When Don Ricardo went down to the library, it was already midnight. He'd left Penelope locked up in what had been Jacinta's bedroom and strictly forbade anyone, whether members of his staff or family, to go up to see her. From his room Jorge could hear his parents talking on the ground floor. The doctor arrived in the early hours. Senora Aldaya led him to the room where they kept Penelope under lock and key and waited by the door while the doctor examined her. When he came out, the doctor only nodded and collected his fee. Jorge heard Don Ricardo telling him that if he told anyone about what he'd seen there, he would personally ensure that his reputation was ruined and he would never be able to practise medicine again. Even Jorge knew what that meant.
Jorge admitted that he was very worried about Penelope and Julian. He had never seen his father so beside himself with rage. Even taking into account the offence committed by the lovers, he could not understand the extent of his anger. There must be something else, he said, something else. Don Ricardo had already ordered San Gabriel's school to expel Julian and had got in touch with the boy's father, the hatter, about sending him off to the army immediately. When Miquel heard all this, he decided he couldn't tell Julian the truth. If he disclosed to Julian that Don Ricardo was keeping Penelope locked up, and that she might be carrying his child, Julian would never take that train to Paris. He knew that if his friend remained in Barcelona, that would be the end of him. So he decided to deceive him and let him go to Paris without knowing what had happened; he would let him think that Penelope was going to join him sooner or later. When he said goodbye to Julian that day in the Estacion de Francia, even Miquel wanted to believe that not all was lost.
Some days later, when it was discovered that Julian had disappeared, all hell broke loose. Don Ricardo Aldaya was foaming at the mouth. He set half the police department in pursuit of the fugitive, but without success. He then accused the hatter of having sabotaged the plan they had agreed on and threatened to ruin him completely. The hatter, who couldn't understand what was going on, in turn accused his wife, Sophie, of having plotted the escape of that despicable son and threatened to throw her out of their home. It didn't occur to anyone that it was Miquel Moliner who had planned the whole thing - to anyone, that is, except Jorge Aldaya, who went to see him a fortnight later. He no longer exuded the fear and anxiety that had gripped him earlier. This was a different Jorge Aldaya, an adult robbed of all innocence. Whatever the secret that hid behind Don Ricardo's anger was, Jorge had found out. The reason for his visit was clear: he knew it was Miquel who had helped Julian escape. He told him their friendship was over, that he didn't ever want to see him again, and he threatened to kill him if he told anyone what he had revealed to him two weeks before.
A few weeks later, Miquel received a letter, with a false sender's name, posted by Julian in Paris. In it he gave him his address, told him he was well and missed him, and inquired after his mother and Penelope. He included a letter addressed to Penelope, which Miquel was to post from Barcelona, the first of many that Penelope would never read. Miquel prudently allowed a few months to go by. He wrote to Julian once a week, mentioning only what he felt was suitable, which was almost nothing. Julian, in turn, spoke to him about Paris, about how difficult everything was turning out to be, how lonely and desperate he felt. Miquel sent him money, books, and his friendship. In every letter Julian would include another one for Penelope. Miquel mailed them from different post offices, even though he knew it was useless. In his letters Julian never stopped asking after Penelope but Miquel couldn't tell him anything. He knew from Jacinta that Penelope had not left the house on Avenida del Tibidabo since her father had locked her in the room on the third floor.
One night Jorge Aldaya waylaid Miquel in the dark, two blocks from his home. 'Have you come to kill me then?' asked Miquel. Jorge said that he had come to do him and his friend Julian a favour. He handed him a letter and advised him to make sure it reached Julian, wherever he was hiding. 'For everyone's sake,' he declared portentously. The envelope contained a sheet of paper handwritten by Penelope Aldaya.
Dear Julian; I'm writing to notify you of my forthcoming marriage and to entreat you not to write to me anymore, to forget me and rebuild your life. I don't bear you any grudge, but I wouldn't be honest if I didn't confess to you that I have never loved you and never will be able to love you. I wish you the best, wherever you may be. Penelope Miquel read and reread the letter a thousand times. The handwriting was unmistakable, but he didn't believe for a moment that Penelope had written that letter willingly: '. . . wherever you may be.' Penelope knew perfectly well where Julian was: in Paris, waiting for her. If she was pretending not to know his whereabouts, Miquel reflected, it was to protect him. But for that same reason, Miquel couldn't understand what could have induced her to write those words. What further threats could Don Ricardo Aldaya bring down on her, on top of keeping her locked up for months in that room like a prisoner? More than anyone, Penelope knew that her letter would be like a poisoned dagger to Julian's heart: a young boy of nineteen, lost in a distant and hostile city, abandoned by everyone, surviving only on his false hopes of seeing her again. What did she want to protect him from by pushing him from her in that way? After much consideration, Miquel decided not to send the letter. Not without knowing the reason for it first. Without a good reason, it would not be his hand that plunged that dagger into his friend's soul.
Some days later he found out that Don Ricardo Aldaya, tired of seeing Jacinta waiting like a sentry at the doors of his house, begging for news of Penelope, had used his contacts to get her admitted into the Horta lunatic asylum. When Miquel Moliner tried to see her, he was denied access. Jacinta Coronado was to spend the first three months in solitary confinement. After three months of silence and darkness, he was told by one of the doctors - a cheerful young individual - the patient's submission was guaranteed. Following a hunch, Miquel decided to pay a visit to the pension where Jacinta had been staying after her dismissal. When he identified himself, the landlady remembered that Jacinta had left a note for him and still owed her three weeks' rent. He paid the debt, even though he doubted its existence, and took the note. In it the governess explained how she had been informed that Laura, one of the Aldayas' servants, had been dismissed when it was discovered that she had secretly posted a letter from Penelope to Julian. Miquel deduced that the only address to which Penelope, from her captivity, could have sent the letter was Julian's parents' apartment in Ronda de San Antonio, hoping that they, in turn, would make sure it reached Julian in Paris.
Miquel decided to visit Sophie . Carax to recover the letter and forward it to Julian. When he arrived at the Fortunys' home, Miquel was in for an unpleasant surprise: Sophie Carax no longer lived there. She had abandoned her husband a few days earlier - or that, at least, was the rumour that was doing the rounds of the neighbours. Miquel then tried to speak to the hatter, who spent his days shut away in his shop, consumed by anger and humiliation. Miquel told him that he'd come to collect a letter that must have arrived for his son, Julian, a few days earlier.
'I have no son,' was the only answer he received.
Miquel Moliner went away without knowing that the letter in question had ended up in the hands of the caretaker and that, many years later, you, Daniel, would find it and read the words Penelope had meant for Julian, this time straight from her heart: words that he never received.
As Miquel left the Fortuny hat shop, one of the residents in the block of apartments, who identified herself as Vicenteta, approached him and asked him whether he was looking for Sophie. Miquel said he was and told her he was a friend of Julian's.
Vicenteta informed him that Sophie was staying in a boarding-house hidden in a small street behind the post office building, waiting for the departure of the boat that would take her to America. Miquel went to the address, where he found a narrow, miserable staircase almost devoid of light and air. At the top of the dusty spiral of sloping steps, he found Sophie Carax, in a damp, dark, room on the fourth floor. Julian's mother was facing the window, sitting on the edge of a makeshift bed on which two closed suitcases were lying like coffins, containing her twenty-two years in Barcelona.
When she read the letter signed by Penelope that Jorge Aldaya had given Miquel, Sophie shed tears of anger.
'She knows,' she murmured. 'Poor child, she knows. . . .'
'Knows what?' asked Miquel.
'It's my fault,' said Sophie. 'It's all my fault.'
Miquel held her hands, not understanding. Sophie didn't dare meet his eyes.
'Julian and Penelope are brother and sister,' she whispered.
3.
Years before becoming Antoni Fortuny's slave, Sophie Carax had been a woman who made a living from her talents. She was only nineteen when she arrived in Barcelona in search of a promised job that never materialized. Before dying, her father had obtained the necessary references for her to go into the service of the Benarenses, a prosperous family of merchants from Alsace who had established themselves in Barcelona.