'Open your mouth or I'll open it myself with a bullet.'
I parted my lips. Fumero stuck the revolver in my mouth. I felt nausea rising in my throat. Fumero's thumb tensed on the hammer.
'Now, you bastard, think about whether you have any reason to go on living. What do you say?'
I nodded slowly.
'Then tell me where Carax is.'
I tried to mumble. Fumero slowly pulled out the gun.
'Where is he?'
'Downstairs. In the crypt.'
'You lead the way. I want you to be there when I tell that son of a bitch how Nuria Monfort moaned when I dug the knife into-'
Glancing over Fumero's shoulder, I thought I saw the darkness stirring and a figure without a face, his eyes burning, glided towards us in absolute silence, as if he barely touched the floor. Fumero saw the reflection in my tear-filled eyes, and his face slowly became distorted.
When he turned and shot at the mantle of blackness that surrounded him, two deformed leather claws gripped his throat. They were the hands of Julian Carax, grown out of the flames. Carax pushed me aside and crushed Fumero against the wall. The inspector clutched his revolver and tried to place it under Carax's chin. Before he could pull the trigger, Carax grabbed his wrist and hammered it against the wall, again and again, but Fumero didn't drop the gun. A second shot exploded in the dark and hit the wall, making a hole in the wood panelling. Tears of burning gunpowder and red-hot splinters rained down over the inspector's face. A stench of singed flesh filled the room.
With a violent jerk, Fumero tried to get away from the force that was immobilizing his neck and the hand holding the gun, but Carax wouldn't loosen his grip. Fumero roared with anger and tilted his head until he was able to bite Carax's fist. He was possessed by an animal fury. I heard the snap of his teeth as he tore at the dead skin, and saw Fumero's lips dripping with blood. Ignoring the pain, or perhaps unable to feel it, Carax grabbed hold of the dagger on the wall. He pulled it out and skewered the inspector's right wrist to the wall with a brutal blow that buried the blade into the wooden panel almost to the hilt. Fumero let out a terrible cry of pain as his hand opened in a spasm, and the gun fell to his feet. Carax kicked it into the shadows.
The horror of that scene passed before my eyes in just a few seconds. I felt paralysed, incapable of acting or even thinking. Carax turned to me and fixed his eyes on mine. As I looked at him, I was able to reconstruct his lost features, which I had so often imagined from photographs and old stories.
'Take Beatriz away from here, Daniel. She knows what you must do.
Don't let her out of your sight. Don't let anyone take her from you. Anyone or anything. Look after her. More than your own life.'
I tried to nod, but my eyes turned to Fumero, who was struggling with the knife that pierced his wrist. He yanked it out and collapsed on his knees, holding the wounded arm that was pouring blood.
'Leave,' Carax murmured.
Fumero watched us from the floor, blind with hatred, holding the bloody knife in his left hand. Carax turned to him. I heard hurried footsteps approaching and realized that Palacios was coming to the aid of his boss, alerted by the shots. Before Carax was able to seize the knife from Fumero, Palacios entered the library holding his gun up high.
'Move back,' he warned.
He threw a quick glance at Fumero, who was getting up with some difficulty, and then he looked at us - first at me and then at Carax. I could see horror and doubt etched on his face.
'I said move back.'
Carax paused and withdrew. Palacios observed us coldly, trying to work out what he should do. His eyes rested on me.
'You, get out of here. This doesn't have anything to do with you. Go.'
I hesitated for a moment. Carax nodded.
'No one's leaving this place,' Fumero cut in. 'Palacios, hand me your gun.'
Palacios didn't answer.
'Palacios,' Fumero repeated, stretching out his blood-drenched hand, demanding the weapon.
'No,' mumbled Palacios, gritting his teeth.
Fumero, his maddened eyes filled with disdain and fury, grabbed Palacios's gun and pushed him aside with a swipe of his hand. I glanced at Palacios and knew what was going to happen. Fumero raised the gun slowly. His hand shook, and the revolver shone with blood. Carax drew back a step at a time, in search of the shadows, but there was no escape. The revolver's barrel followed him. I felt all the muscles in my body burn with rage. Fumero's deathly grimace, and the way he kept licking his lips like a madman woke me up like a slap in the face. Palacios was looking at me, silently shaking his head. I ignored him. Carax had given up by now and stood motionless in the middle of the room, waiting for the bullet.
Fumero never saw me. For him only Carax existed and that bloodstained hand holding the revolver. I leaped at him. I felt my feet rise from the ground, but everything seemed to freeze in midair. The blast of the shot reached me from afar, like the echo of a receding storm. There was no pain. The bullet went through my ribs. At first there was a blinding flash, as if I'd been hit by a metal bar and propelled through the air for a couple of yards. I didn't feel the fall, although I thought I saw the walls converging and the ceiling descending at great speed towards me.
A hand held the back of my head, and I saw Julian Carax's face bending over me. In my vision Carax appeared exactly as I'd imagined him, as if the flames had never destroyed his features. I noticed the horror in his eyes and saw how he placed his hand on my chest, and wondered what that smoking liquid was flowing between his fingers. It was then I felt that terrible fire, like the hot breath of embers burning inside me. I tried to scream but nothing surfaced except warm blood. I recognized the face of Palacios next to me, full of remorse, defeated. I raised my eyes, and then I saw her. Bea was advancing slowly from the library door, her face suffused with terror and her hands on her lips. She was trembling and shaking her head without speaking. I tried to warn her, but a biting cold was coursing up my arms, stabbing its way into my body.
Fumero was hiding behind the door. Bea didn't notice his presence. When Carax leaped up and Bea turned, the inspector's gun was already almost touching her forehead. Palacios rushed to stop him. He was too late. Carax was already there. I heard his faraway scream, which bore Bea's name. The room lit up with the flash of the shot. The bullet went through Carax's right hand. A moment later the man without a face was falling upon Fumero. I leaned over to see Bea running to my side, unhurt. I looked for Carax, but I couldn't find him. Another figure had taken his place. It was Lain Coubert, just as I'd learned to fear him reading the pages of a book, so many years ago. This time Coubert's claws sank into Fumero's eyes like hooks and pulled him away. I managed to see the inspector's legs as they were hauled out through the library door. I managed to see how his body shook with spasms as Coubert dragged him without pity towards the main door, saw how his knees hit the marble steps and the snow spat on his face, how the man without a face grabbed him by the neck and, lifting him up like a puppet, threw him into the frozen bowl of the fountain. The hand of the angel pierced his chest, spearing him, the accursed soul driven out like black vapour, falling like frozen tears over the mirror of frozen water.
I collapsed then, unable to keep my eyes focused any longer. A white light flooded my pupils and Bea's face receded from me. I closed my eyes and felt her hands on my cheeks and the breath of her voice begging God not to take me, whispering in my ear that she loved me and wouldn't let me go. All I remember is that at that moment a strange peace enveloped me and took away the pain of the slow fire that burned inside me. I saw myself and Bea - an elderly couple - walking hand in hand through the streets of Barcelona, that bewitched city. I saw my father and Nuria Monfort placing white roses on my grave. I saw Fermin crying in Bernarda's arms, and my old friend Tomas, who had fallen silent forever. I saw them the way you see strangers from a train that is moving away too fast. It was then, almost without realizing it, that I remembered my mother's face, a face I had lost so many years before, as if an old cutting had suddenly fallen out of the pages of a book. Her light was all that came with me as I descended.
POSTMORTEM 27 NOVEMBER 1955.
The room was white, a shimmer of sheets, gauzy curtains and bright sunshine. From my window I could make out a blue sea. One day someone would try to convince me that you cannot see the sea from the Corachan Clinic; that its rooms are not white or ethereal, and that the sea that November was like a leaden pond, cold and hostile; that it went on snowing every day of that week until all of Barcelona was buried in three feet of snow, and that even Fermin, the eternal optimist, thought I was going to die again.
I had already died before, in the ambulance, in the arms of Bea and Lieutenant Palacios, who ruined his uniform with my blood. The bullet, said the doctors, who spoke about me thinking that I couldn't hear them, had destroyed two ribs, had brushed my heart, had severed an artery, and had come out at full speed through my side, dragging with it everything it had encountered on the way. My heart had stopped beating for sixty-four seconds. They told me that when I returned from my excursion to eternity, I opened my eyes and smiled before losing consciousness again.
I didn't come round until eight days later. By then the newspapers had already published the news of Francisco Javier Fumero's death during a struggle with an armed gang of criminals and the authorities were busy trying to find a street or an alleyway they could rename in memory of the distinguished police inspector. His was the only body found in the old Aldaya mansion. The bodies of Penelope and her son were never discovered.
I awoke at dawn. I remember the light, like liquid gold, pouring over the sheets. It had stopped snowing, and somebody had exchanged the sea outside my window for a white square from which a few swings could be seen, and little else. My father, sunk in a chair by my bed, looked up and gazed at me in silence. I smiled at him, and he burst into tears. Fermin, who was sleeping like a baby in the corridor, and Bea, who was holding his head on her lap, heard my father's loud wailing and came into the room. I remember that Fermin looked white and thin, like the backbone of a fish. They told me that the blood running through my veins was his, that I'd lost all mine, and that my friend had been spending days stuffing himself with meat sandwiches in the hospital's canteen to breed more red blood corpuscles, in case I should need them. Perhaps that explains why I felt wiser and less like Daniel. I remember there was a forest of flowers and that in the afternoon - or perhaps two minutes later, I couldn't say - a whole cast of people filed through the room, from Gustavo Barcelo and his niece Clara to Bernarda and my friend Tomas, who didn't dare look me in the eye and who, when I embraced him, ran off to weep in the street. I vaguely remember Don Federico, who came along with Merceditas and Don Anacleto, the schoolteacher. I particularly remember Bea, who looked at me without saying a word while all the others dissolved into cheers and thanks to the heavens, and I remember my father, who had slept on that chair for seven nights, praying to a God in whom he did not believe.
When the doctors ordered the entire committee to vacate the room and leave me to have a rest I did not want, my father came up to me for a moment and told me he'd brought my pen, the Victor Hugo fountain pen, and a notebook, in case I wanted to write. From the doorway Fermin announced that he'd consulted the whole staff of doctors in the hospital and they had assured him I would not have to do my military service. Bea kissed me on the forehead and took my father with her to get some fresh air, because he hadn't been out of that room for over a week. I was left alone, weighed down by exhaustion, and I gave in to sleep, staring at the pen case on my bedside table.
I was woken up by footsteps at the door. I waited to see my father at the end of the bed, or perhaps Dr Mendoza, who had never taken his eyes off me, convinced that my recovery was the result of a miracle. The visitor went round the bed and sat on my father's chair. My mouth felt dry. Julian Carax put a glass of water to my lips, holding my head while I moistened them. His eyes spoke of farewell, and looking into them was enough for me to understand that he had never discovered the true identity of Penelope. I can't remember his exact words, or the sound of his voice. I do know that he held my hand and I felt as if he were asking me to live for him, telling me I would never see him again. What I have not forgotten is what I told him. I told him to take that pen, which had always been his, and to write again.
When I woke again, Bea was cooling my forehead with a cloth dampened with eau de cologne. Startled, I asked her where Carax was. She looked at me in confusion and told me that Carax had disappeared in the storm eight days before, leaving a trail of blood on the snow, and that everyone had given him up for dead. I said that wasn't true, he'd been right there, with me, only a few seconds ago. Bea smiled at me without saying anything. The nurse who was taking my pulse slowly shook her head and explained that I'd been asleep for six hours, that she'd been sitting at her desk by the door all that time, and that certainly nobody had come into my room.
That night, when I was trying to get to sleep, I turned my head on my pillow and noticed that the pen case was open. The pen was gone.
THE WATERS OF MARCH 1956.
Bea and I were married in the church of Santa Ana three months later. Senor Aguilar, who still spoke to me in monosyllables and would go on doing so until the end of time, had given me his daughter's hand in view of the impossibility of obtaining my head on a platter. Bea's disappearance had done away with his anger, and now he seemed to live in a state of perpetual shock, resigned to the fact that his grandson would soon call me Dad and that life, in the shape of a rascal stitched back together after a bullet wound, had robbed him of his girl - a girl who, despite his bifocals, he still saw as the child in her first-communion dress, not a day older.
A week before the ceremony, Bea's father turned up at the bookshop to present me with a gold tiepin that had belonged to his father and to shake hands with me.
'Bea is the only good thing I've ever done in my life,' he said. 'Take care of her for me.'
My father went with him to the door and watched him walk away down Calle Santa Ana, with that sadness that softens men who are aware that they are growing old together.
'He's not a bad person, Daniel,' he said. 'We all love in our own way.'
Dr Mendoza, who doubted my ability to stay on my feet for more than half an hour, had warned me that the bustle of a wedding and all the preparations were not the best medicine for a man who had been on the point of leaving his heart in the operating room.
'Don't worry,' I reassured him. 'They're not letting me do anything.'
I wasn't lying. Fermin Romero de Torres had set himself up as absolute dictator over the ceremony, the banquet, and all related matters. When the parish priest discovered that the bride was arriving pregnant at the altar, he flatly refused to perform the wedding and threatened to summon the spirits of the Holy Inquisition and make them cancel the event. Fermin flew into a rage and dragged him out of the church, shouting to all and sundry that he was unworthy of his habit and of the parish, and swearing that if the priest as much as raised an eyebrow, he was going to stir up such a scandal in the bishopric that at the very least he would be exiled to the Rock of Gibraltar to evangelize the monkeys. A few passers-by clapped, and the flower vendor in the square gave Fermin a white carnation, which he went on to wear in his lapel until the petals turned the same colour as his shirt collar. All ready to go but lacking a priest, Fermin went to San Gabriel's school, where he recruited the services of Father Fernando Ramos, who had not performed a wedding in his life and whose specialty was Latin, trigonometry, and gymnastics, in that order.
'You see, Your Reverence, the bridegroom is very weak, and I can't upset him again. He sees in you a reincarnation of the great glories of the Mother Church, there, up high, with St Thomas, St Augustine, and the Virgin of Fatima. He may not seem so, but the boy is, like me, extremely devout. A mystic. If I have to tell him that you've failed me, we may well have to celebrate a funeral instead of a wedding.'
'If you put it like that.'
From what they told me later - because I don't remember it, and weddings always stay more clearly in the memory of others - before the ceremony Bernarda and Gustavo Bercelo (following Fermin's detailed instructions) softened up the poor priest with muscatel wine to rid him of his stage fright. When the time came for Father Fernando to officiate, wearing a saintly smile and a pleasantly rosy complexion, he chose, in a breach of protocol, to replace the reading of I don't know which Letter to the Corinthians with a love sonnet, the work of a poet called Pablo Neruda. Some of Senor Aguilar's guests identified said poet as a confirmed communist and a Bolshevik, while others looked in the missal for those verses of intense pagan beauty, wondering whether this was one of the first effects of the impending Ecumenical Council.
The night before the wedding, Fermin told me he had organized a bachelor party to which only he and I were invited.
'I don't know Fermin. I don't really like them-'
'Trust me.'
On the night of the crime, I followed Fermin meekly to a foul hovel in Calle Escudillers, where the stench of humanity coexisted with the most potent odour of refried food on the entire Mediterranean coast. A line-up of ladies with their virtue for rent - and a lot of mileage on the clock - greeted us with smiles that would only have excited a student of dentistry.
'We've come for Rociito,' Fermin informed a pimp whose sideburns bore a surprising resemblance to Cape Finisterre.
'Fermin,' I whispered, terrified. 'For heaven's sake . . .'
'Have faith.'
Rociito arrived in all her glory - which I reckoned to amount to around thirteen stone, not counting the feather shawl and a skeleton-tight red viscose dress - and examined me from head to toe.
'Hi, sweetheart. I thought you was older, to tell the God's honest truth.'
'This is not the client,' Fermin clarified.
I then understood the nature of the situation, and my fears subsided. Fermin never forgot a promise, especially if it was I who had made it. The three of us went off in search of a taxi that would take us to the Santa Lucia Hospice. During the journey Fermin, who, in deference to my delicate health and my status as fiance, had offered me the front seat, was sitting in the back with Rociito, taking in her attributes with obvious relish.
'You're a dish fit for a pope, Rociito. That egregious ass of yours is the Revelation According to Botticelli.'
'Oh, Senor Fermin, since you got yourself a girlfriend, you've forgotten me, you rogue.'
'You're too much of a woman for me, Rociito, and now I'm monogamous.'
'Nah! Good ole Rociito will cure that for you with some good rubs of penicillin.'
We reached Calle Moncada after midnight, escorting Rociito's heavenly body, and slipped her into the hospice by the back door - the one used for taking out the deceased through an alleyway that looked and smelled like hell's oesophagus. Once we had entered the shadows of The Tenebrarium, Fermin proceeded to give Rociito his final instructions while I tried to find the old granddad to whom I'd promised a last dance with Eros before Thanatos settled accounts with him.
'Remember, Rociito, the old geezer's probably as deaf as a post, so speak to him in a loud voice, clear and dirty, saucy, the way you know how. But don't get too carried away either. We don't want to give him heart failure and send him off to kingdom come before his time.'
'No worries, pumpkin. I'm a professional.'
I found the lonely recipient of those favours in a corner of the first floor. He raised his eyes and stared at me, confused.
'Am I dead?'
'No. You're very much alive. Don't you remember me?'
'I remember you as well as I remember my first pair of shoes, young man, but seeing you like this, looking so pale, I thought you must be a vision from beyond. Don't hold it against me. Here you lose what you outsiders call discernment. So this isn't a vision?'
'No. The vision is waiting for you downstairs, if you'll do the honours.'
I led the old man to a gloomy room that Fermin and Rociito had decorated festively with some candles and a few puffs of perfume. When his eyes rested on the abundant beauty of our Andalusian Venus, the old man's face lit up.
'May God bless you all.'
'And may you live to see it,' said Fermin, as he signalled to the siren from Calle Escudillers to start displaying her wares.
I saw her caress the old man with infinite delicacy, kissing the tears that fell down his cheeks. Fermin and I left the scene to grant them their deserved privacy. In our winding journey through that gallery of despair, we encountered Sister Emilia, one of the nuns who managed the hospice. She threw us a venomous look.
'Some patients are telling me you've brought in a hooker. Now they all want one.'
'Most Illustrious Sister, what do you take us for? Our presence here is strictly ecumenical. This young lad, who tomorrow will be a man in the eyes of the Holy Mother Church, and I, have come to inquire after the patient Jacinta Coronado.'
Sister Emilia raised an eyebrow. 'Are you related?'
'Spiritually.'
'Jacinta died two weeks ago. A gentleman came to visit her the night before. Is he a relative of yours?'
'Do you mean Father Fernando?'
'He wasn't a priest. He said his name was Julian. I can't remember his last name.'
Fermin looked at me, dumbstruck.
'Julian is a friend of mine,' I said.
Sister Emilia nodded. 'He was with her for a few hours. I hadn't heard her laugh for years. When he left, she told me they'd been talking about the old days, when they were young. She said that man had brought news of her daughter, Penelope. I didn't know Jacinta had a daughter. I remember, because that morning Jacinta smiled at me, and when I asked her why she was so happy, she said she was going home, with Penelope. She died at dawn, in her sleep.'
Rociito concluded her love ritual a short while later, leaving the old man merrily exhausted and in the hands of Morpheus. As we were leaving, Fermin paid her double, but Rociito, who was crying at the sight of those poor, helpless people, forsaken by God and the devil, insisted on handing her fee to Sister Emilia so that they could all be given a meal of hot chocolate and sweet buns, because, she said, that was something that always made her forget the sorrows of life.
'I'm ever so sentimental. Take that poor old soul, Senor Fermin. . .. All he wanted was to be hugged and stroked. Breaks your heart, it does....'
We put Rociito into a taxi with a good tip and walked up Calle Princesa, which was deserted and strewn with mist.
'We ought to get to bed, because of tomorrow,' said Fermin.
'I don't think I'll be able to sleep.'