The Shadow of the Wind (12 page)

T
HE
F
ORTUNY HAT SHOP, OR WHAT WAS LEFT OF IT, LANGUISHED AT
the foot of a narrow, miserable-looking building blackened by soot on Ronda de San Antonio next to Plaza de Goya. One could still read the letters engraved on the filthy window, and a sign in the shape of a bowler hat still hung above the shop front, promising designs made to measure and the latest novelties from Paris. The door was secured with a padlock that had seen at least a decade of undisturbed service. I pressed my forehead against the glass pane, trying to peek into the murky interior.

“If you've come about the rental, you're late,” spit a voice behind my back. “The administrator has already left.”

The woman who was speaking to me must have been about sixty and wore the national costume of all pious widows. A couple of rollers stuck out under the pink scarf that covered her hair, and her padded slippers matched her flesh-colored knee-highs. I assumed she was the caretaker of the building.

“Is the shop for rent?”

“Isn't that why you've come?”

“Not really, but you never know, I might be interested.”

The caretaker frowned, debating whether to grant me the benefit of the doubt. I slipped on my trademark angelic smile.

“How long has the shop been closed?”

“For a good twelve years, since the old man died.”

“Mr. Fortuny? Did you know him?”

“I've been here for forty-eight years, young man.”

“So perhaps you also knew Mr. Fortuny's son.”

“Julián? Well, of course.”

I took the burned photograph out of my pocket and showed it to her. “Do you think you'd be able to tell me whether the young man in the photograph is Julián Carax?”

The caretaker looked at me rather suspiciously. She took the photograph and stared at it.

“Do you recognize him?”

“Carax was his mother's maiden name,” the caretaker explained in a disapproving tone. “This is Julián, yes. I remember him being very fair, but here, in the photograph, his hair looks darker.”

“Could you tell me who the girl is?”

“And who is asking?”

“I'm sorry, my name is Daniel Sempere. I'm trying to find out about Mr. Carax, about Julián.”

“Julián went to Paris, 'round about 1918 or 1919. His father wanted to shove him in the army, you see. I think the mother took him with her so that he could escape from all that, poor kid. Mr. Fortuny was left alone, in the attic apartment.”

“Do you know when Julián returned to Barcelona?”

The caretaker looked at me but didn't speak for a while.

“Don't you know? Julián died that same year in Paris.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said Julián passed away. In Paris. Soon after he got there. He would have done better joining the army.”

“May I ask you how you know that?”

“How do you think? Because his father told me.”

I nodded slowly. “I see. Did he say what he died of?”

“Quite frankly, the old man never gave me any details. Once, not long after Julián left, a letter arrived for him, and when I mentioned it to his father, he told me his son had died and if anything else came for him, I should throw it away. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Mr. Fortuny lied to you. Julián didn't die in 1919.”

“Say that again?”

“Julián lived in Paris until at least 1935, and then he returned to Barcelona.”

The caretaker's face lit up. “So Julián is here, in Barcelona? Where?”

I nodded again, hoping that by doing so she would be encouraged to tell me more.

“Holy Mary…what wonderful news. Well, if he's still alive, that is. He was such a sweet child, a bit strange and given to daydreaming, that's true, but there was something about him that won you over. He wouldn't have been much good as a soldier, you could tell that a mile off. My Isabelita really liked him. Imagine, for a time I even thought they'd end up getting married. Kid stuff…May I see that photograph again?”

I handed the photo back to her. The caretaker gazed at it as if it were a lucky charm, a return ticket to her youth. “It's strange, you know, it's as if he were here right now…and that mean old bastard saying he was dead. I must say, I wonder why God sends some people into this world. And what happened to Julián in Paris? I'm sure he got rich. I always thought Julián would be wealthy one day.”

“Not exactly. He became a writer.”

“He wrote stories?”

“Something like that.”

“For the radio? Oh, how lovely. Well, it doesn't surprise me, you know. As a child he used to tell stories to the kids in the neighborhood. In the summer sometimes my Isabelita and her cousins would go up to the roof terrace at night and listen to him. They said he never told the same story twice. But it's true that they were all about dead people and ghosts. As I say, he was a bit of an odd child. Although, with a father like that, the odd thing was that he wasn't completely nuts. I'm not surprised that his wife left him in the end, because he really was nasty. Listen: I never meddle in people's affairs, everything's fine by me, but that man wasn't a good person. In a block of apartments, nothing's secret in the end. He beat her, you know? You always heard screams coming from their apartment, and more than once the police had to come around. I can understand that sometimes a husband has to beat his wife to get her to respect him, I'm not saying they shouldn't; there's a lot of tarts about, and young girls are not brought up the way they used to be. But this one, well, he liked to beat her for the hell of it, if you see what I mean. The only friend that poor woman had was a young girl, Viçenteta, who lived in four-two. Sometimes the poor woman would take shelter in Viçenteta's apartment, to get away from her husband's beatings. And she told her things….”

“What sort of things?”

The caretaker took on a confidential manner, raising an eyebrow and glancing sideways right and left. “Like the kid wasn't the hatter's.”

“Julián? Do you mean to say Julián wasn't Mr. Fortuny's son?”

“That's what the Frenchwoman told Viçenteta, I don't know whether out of spite or heaven knows why. The girl told me years later, when they didn't live here anymore.”

“So who was Julián's real father?”

“The Frenchwoman never said. Perhaps she didn't even know. You know what foreigners are like.”

“And do you think that's why her husband beat her?”

“Goodness knows. Three times they had to take her to the hospital, do you hear? Three times. And the swine had the nerve to tell everyone that she was the one to blame, that she was a drunk and was always falling about the house from drinking so much. But I don't believe that. He quarreled with all the neighbors. Once he even went to the police to report my late husband, God rest his soul, for stealing from his shop. As far as he was concerned, anyone from the south was a layabout and a thief, the pig.”

“Did you say you recognized the girl who is next to Julián in the photograph?”

The caretaker concentrated on the image once again. “Never seen her before. Very pretty.”

“From the picture it looks like they were a couple,” I suggested, trying to jog her memory.

She handed it back to me, shaking her head. “I don't know anything about photographs. As far as I know, Julián never had a girlfriend, but I imagine that if he did, he wouldn't have told me. It was hard enough to find out that my Isabelita had got involved with that fellow…. You young people never say anything. And us old folks don't know how to stop talking.”

“Do you remember his friends, anyone special who came around here?”

The caretaker shrugged her shoulders. “Well, it was such a long time ago. Besides, in the last years Julián was hardly ever here, you see. He'd made a friend at school, a boy from a very good family, the Aldayas—now, that's saying something. Nobody talks about them now, but in those days it was like mentioning the royal family. Lots of money. I know because sometimes they would send a car to fetch Julián. You should have seen that car. Not even Franco would have one like it. With a chauffeur, and all shiny. My Paco, who knew about cars, told me it was a
rolsroi,
or something like that. Fit for an emperor.”

“Do you remember the name of that friend?”

“Listen: with a surname like Aldaya, there's no need for first names, if you see what I mean. I also remember another boy, a bit of a scatterbrain, called Miquel. I think he was also a classmate. But don't ask me for his surname or what he looked like.”

We seemed to have reached a dead end, and I feared that the caretaker would start losing interest. I decided to follow a hunch. “Is anyone living in the Fortuny apartment now?”

“No. The old man died without leaving a will, and his wife, as far as I know, is still in Buenos Aires and didn't even come back for the funeral. Can't blame her.”

“Why Buenos Aires?”

“Because she couldn't find anywhere farther away, I guess. She left everything in the hands of a lawyer, a very strange man. I've never seen him, but my daughter Isabelita, who lives on the fifth floor, right underneath, says that sometimes, since he has the key, he comes at night and spends hours walking around the apartment and then leaves. Once she said that she could even hear what sounded like women's high heels. What can I say…?”

“Maybe they were stilts,” I suggested.

She looked at me blankly. Obviously this was a serious subject for the caretaker.

“And nobody else has visited the apartment in all these years?”

“Once this very creepy individual came along, one of those people who never stop smiling, a giggler, but you could see him coming a mile off. He said he was in the Crime Squad. He wanted to see the apartment.”

“Did he say why?”

The caretaker shook her head.

“Do you remember his name?”

“Inspector something or other. I didn't even believe he was a policeman. The whole thing stank, do you know what I mean? It smelled of something personal. I sent him packing and told him I didn't have the keys to the apartment and if he wanted anything, he should call the lawyer. He said he'd come back, but I haven't seen him around here anymore. Good riddance.”

“You wouldn't by any chance have the name and address of the lawyer, would you?”

“You ought to ask the administrator of this building, Mr. Molins. His office is quite close, number twenty-eight, Floridablanca, first floor. Tell him I sent you—Señora Aurora, at your service.”

“I'm really grateful. So, tell me, Doña Aurora, is the Fortuny apartment empty, then?”

“No, not empty, because nobody has taken anything from there in all these years since the old man died. Sometimes it even smells. I'd say there are rats in the apartment, mark my words.”

“Do you think it would be possible to have a look? We might find something that tells us what really happened to Julián….”

“Oh no, I can't do that. You must talk to Mr. Molins, he's the one in charge.”

I smiled at her mischievously. “But you must have a master key, I imagine. Even if you told that guy you didn't…Don't tell me you're not dying to see what's in there.”

Doña Aurora looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

“You're a devil.”

 

T
HE DOOR GAVE WAY LIKE A TOMBSTONE, WITH A SUDDEN GROAN,
exhaling dank, foul-smelling air from within. I pushed the front door inward, discovering a corridor that sank into darkness. The place was stuffy and reeked of damp. Spiraling threads of grime and dust hung from the ceiling like white hair. The broken floor tiles were covered by what looked like a layer of ash. I noticed what appeared to be footprints making their way into the apartment.

“Holy Mother of God!” mumbled the caretaker. “There's more shit here than on the floor of a henhouse.”

“If you'd rather, I'll go in on my own,” I said.

“That's exactly what you'd like. Come on, you go ahead, I'll follow.”

We closed the door behind us and waited by the entrance for a moment until our eyes became accustomed to the dark. I could hear the nervous breathing of the caretaker and noticed the sour smell of her sweat. I felt like a tomb robber, whose soul is poisoned by greed and desire.

“Hey, what's that noise?” asked the caretaker in an anxious tone. Something fluttered in the dark, disturbed by our presence. I thought I glimpsed a pale shape flickering about at the end of the corridor.

“Pigeons,” I said. “They must have got in through a broken window and made a nest here.”

“Those ugly birds give me the creeps,” said the caretaker. “And they shit like there's no tomorrow.”

“Relax, Doña Aurora, they only attack when they're hungry.”

We ventured in a few steps till we reached the end of the corridor, where a dining room opened onto the balcony. Just visible was a shabby table covered with a tattered tablecloth that looked more like a shroud. Four chairs held a wake, together with a couple of grimy glass cabinets that guarded the tableware: an assortment of glasses and a tea set. In a corner stood the old upright piano that had belonged to Carax's mother. The keys were dark with dirt, and the joins could hardly be seen under the film of dust. An armchair with a long, threadbare cover was slowly disintegrating next to the balcony. Beside it was a coffee table on which rested a pair of reading glasses and a Bible bound in pale leather and edged with gold, of the sort that used to be given as presents for a child's first communion. It still had its bookmark, a piece of scarlet string.

“Look, that chair is where the old man was found dead. The doctor said he'd been there for two days. How sad to go like that, like a dog, all alone. Not that he didn't have it coming, but even so…”