The Shadow Of The Wind Part 10

'Sure. Help yourself.'

He handed me the index card, and I looked at it. The numbers were perfectly legible. The PO box was 2321. It horrified me to think of the accounting that must have gone on in that office.

'Did you have much contact with Senor Fortuny during his lifetime?' I asked.

'So so. Quite the ascetic type. I remember that when I found out that the Frenchwoman had left him, I invited him to go whoring with a few mates of mine, nearby, in a fabulous establishment I know next to the La Paloma dance hall. Just to cheer him up, eh? That's all. And you know what? He would not talk to me, even greet me in the street anymore, as if I were invisible. What do you make of that?'

'I'm in shock. What else can you tell me about the Fortuny family? Do you remember them well?'

'Those were different times,' he murmured nostalgically. 'The fact is that I already knew Grandfather Fortuny, the one who started the hat shop. About the son, there isn't much to tell. Now, the wife, she was spectacular. What a woman. And decent too. Despite all the rumours and the gossip 'Like the one about Julian's not being Fortuny's legitimate son?'

'And where did you hear that?'

'As I said, I'm part of the family. Everything gets out.'

'None of that was ever proved.'

'But it was talked about,' I said encouragingly.

'People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.'

'And what did people say?'

'Don't you feel like a little gla.s.s of rum? It's Cuban, like all the good stuff that kills you.'

'No thanks, but I'll keep you company. In the meantime, you can tell me .. .'

Antoni Fortuny, whom everyone called the hatter, met Sophie Carax in 1899 by the steps of Barcelona Cathedral. He was returning from making a vow to St Eustace -for of all the saints, St Eustace was considered the most diligent and the least fussy when it came to granting miracles to do with love. Antoni Fortuny, who was already over thirty and a confirmed bachelor, was looking for a wife, and wanted her right away. Sophie was a French girl who lived in a boarding-house for young ladies in Calle Riera Alta and gave private music and piano lessons to the offspring of the most privileged families in Barcelona. She had no family or capital to rely on, only her youth and what musical education she had received from her father - the pianist at a Nimes theatre - before he died of tuberculosis in 1886. Antoni Fortuny, on the contrary, was a man on the road to prosperity. He had recently inherited his father's business, a hat shop of some repute in Ronda de San Antonio, where he had learned the trade that he dreamed one day of teaching his own son. He found Sophie Carax fragile, beautiful, young, docile, and fertile. St Eustace had obliged. After four months of insistent courting, Sophie accepted Antoni s marriage proposal. Senor Molins, who had been a friend of Fortuny the elder, warned Antoni that he was marrying a stranger. He said that Sophie seemed like a nice girl, but perhaps this marriage was a bit too convenient for her, and he should wait a year at least. . . Antoni Fortuny replied that he already knew everything he needed to know about his future wife. The rest did not interest him. They were married at the Basilica del Pino and spent their three-day honeymoon in a spa in the nearby seaside resort of Mongat. The morning before they left, the hatter asked Senor Molins, in confidence, to be initiated into the mysteries of the bedroom. Molins sarcastically told him to ask his wife. The newlyweds returned to Barcelona after only two days. The neighbours said Sophie was crying when she came into the building. Years later Vicenteta swore that Sophie had told her the following: that the hatter had not laid a finger on her and that when she had tried to seduce him, he had called her a wh.o.r.e and told her he was disgusted by the obscenity of what she was proposing. Six months later Sophie announced to her husband that she was with child. By another man.

Antoni Fortuny had seen his own father hit his mother on countless occasions and did what he thought was the right thing to do. He stopped only when he feared that one more blow would kill her. Despite the beating, Sophie refused to reveal the ident.i.ty of the child's father. Applying his own logic to the matter, Antoni Fortuny decided that it must be the devil, for that child was the child of sin, and sin had only one father: the Evil One. Convinced in this manner that sin had sneaked into his home and also between his wife's thighs, the hatter took to hanging crucifixes everywhere: on the walls, on the doors of all the rooms, and on the ceiling. When Sophie discovered him scattering crosses in the bedroom to which she had been confined, she grew afraid and, with tears in her eyes, asked him whether he had gone mad. Blind with rage, he turned around and hit her. A wh.o.r.e like the rest,' he spat as he threw her out onto the landing, after flaying her with blows from his belt. The following day, when Antoni Fortuny opened the door of his apartment to go down to the hat shop, Sophie was still there, covered in dried blood and s.h.i.+vering with cold. The doctors never managed to fix the fractures on her right hand completely. Sophie Carax would never be able to play the piano again, but she would give birth to a boy, whom she would name Julian after the father she had lost when she was still too young - as happens with all good things in life. Fortuny considered throwing her out of his home but thought the scandal would not be good for business. n.o.body would buy hats from a man known to be a cuckold - the two didn't go together. From then on, Sophie was a.s.signed a dark, cold room at the back of the apartment. It was there she gave birth to her son with the help of two neighbours. Antoni did not return home until three days later. 'This is the son G.o.d has given you,' Sophie announced. If you want to punish anyone, punish me, but not an innocent creature. The boy needs a home and a father. My sins are not his. I beg you to take pity on us.'

The first months were difficult for both of them. Antoni Fortuny had downgraded his wife to the rank of servant. They no longer shared a bed or table and rarely exchanged any words except to resolve some domestic matter. Once a month, usually coinciding with the full moon, Antoni Fortuny showed up in Sophie's bedroom at dawn and, without a word, charged at his former wife with vigour but little skill. Making the most of these rare and aggressive moments of intimacy, Sophie tried to win him over by whispering words of love and caressing him. But the hatter was not a man for frivolities, and the eagerness of desire evaporated in a matter of minutes, or even seconds. These a.s.saults brought no children. After a few years, Antoni Fortuny stopped visiting Sophie's chamber for good and took up the habit of reading the Gospels until the small hours, seeking in them a solace for his torment.

With the help of the Gospels, the hatter made an effort to kindle some affection for the child with deep eyes who loved making a joke of everything and inventing shadows where there were none. Despite his efforts, Antoni Fortuny was unable to feel as if little Julian were his flesh and blood, nor did he recognize any aspect of himself in him. The boy, for his part, did not seem very interested either in hats or in the teachings of the catechism. During the Christmas season he would amuse himself by changing the positions of the small figures in the Nativity scene and devising plots in which Baby Jesus had been kidnapped by the three magi from the East who had wicked intentions. He soon became obsessed with drawing angels with wolf's teeth and inventing stories about hooded spirits that came out of walls and ate people's ideas while they slept. In time the hatter lost all hope of being able to set this boy on the right path. The child was not a Fortuny and never would be. Julian maintained that he was bored in school and came home with his notebooks full of drawings of monstrous beings, winged serpents, and buildings that were alive, walked, and devoured the unsuspecting. By then it was quite clear that fantasy and invention interested him far more than the daily reality around him. Of all the disappointments ama.s.sed during his lifetime, none hurt Antoni Fortuny more than that son whom the devil had sent to mock him.

At the age of ten, Julian announced that he wanted to be a painter, like Velazquez. He dreamed of embarking on canvases that the great master had been unable to paint during his life because, Julian argued, he'd been obliged to paint so many time-consuming portraits of mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded royals. To make matters worse, Sophie, perhaps to relieve her loneliness and remember her father, decided to give him piano lessons. Julian, who loved music, art, and all matters that were not considered practical in the world of men, soon learned the rudiments of harmony and concluded that he preferred to invent his own compositions rather than follow the music-book scores. At that time Antoni Fortuny still suspected that part of the boy's mental deficiencies were due to his diet, which was far too influenced by his mother's French cooking. It was a well-known fact that the richness of b.u.t.tery foods led to moral ruin and confusion of the intellect. He forbade Sophie to cook with b.u.t.ter ever again. The results were not entirely as he had antic.i.p.ated.

At twelve Julian began to lose his feverish interest in painting and in Velazquez, but the hatter's initial hopes did not last long. Julian was abandoning his canvas dreams for a far more pernicious vice. He had discovered the library in Calle del Carmen and devoted any time he was allowed off from the hat shop to visiting the sanctuary of books and devouring volumes of fiction, poetry, and history. The day before his thirteenth birthday, he announced that he wanted to be someone called Robert Louis Stevenson, evidently a foreigner. The hatter remarked that with luck he'd become a quarry worker. At that point he became convinced that his son was nothing hut an idiot.

At night Antoni Fortuny often writhed in his bed with anger and frustration, unable to get any sleep. At the bottom of his heart, he loved that child, he told himself. And although she didn't deserve it, he also loved the s.l.u.t who had betrayed him from the very first day. He loved her with all his soul, but in his own way, which was the correct way. All he asked G.o.d was to show him how the three of them could be happy, preferably also in his own way. He begged the Lord to send him a signal, a whisper, a crumb of His presence. G.o.d, in His infinite wisdom, and perhaps overwhelmed by the avalanche of requests from so many tormented souls, did not answer. While Antoni Fortuny was engulfed by remorse and suspicion, on the other side of the wall, Sophie slowly faded away, her life s.h.i.+pwrecked on a sea of disappointment, isolation, and guilt. She did not love the man she served, but she felt she belonged to him, and the possibility of leaving him and taking his son with her to some other place seemed inconceivable. She remembered Julian's real father with bitterness, and eventually grew to hate him and everything he stood for. In her desperation she began to shout back at Antoni Fortuny. Insults and sharp recriminations flew round the apartment like knives, stabbing anyone who dared get in their way, usually Julian. Later the hatter never remembered exactly why he had beaten his wife. He remembered only the anger and the shame. He would then swear to himself that this would never happen again, that, if necessary, he would give himself up to the authorities and get himself locked up in prison.

Antoni Fortuny was sure that, with G.o.d's help, he would end up being a better man than his own father. But sooner or later, his fists would once more meet Sophie's tender flesh, and in time Fortuny felt that if he could not possess her as a husband, he would do so as a tyrant. In this manner, secretly, the Fortuny family let the years go by, silencing their hearts and their souls to the point where, from so much keeping quiet, they forgot the words with which to express their real feelings and the family became strangers living under the same roof like so many other families in the vast city.

It was past two-thirty when I returned to the bookshop. As I walked in, Fermin gave me a sarcastic look from the top of a ladder, where he was polis.h.i.+ng up a collection of the Episodios Nacionales by the famous Don Benito.

'Who is this I see before me? We thought you must have set off to the New World by now, Daniel'

'I got delayed on the way. Where's my father?'

'Since you didn't turn up, he went off to deliver the rest of the orders. He asked me to tell you that this afternoon he is going to Tiana to value a private library belonging to a widow. Your father's a wolf in sheep's clothing. He said not to wait for him to close the shop.'

'Was he annoyed?'

Fermin shook his head, coming down the stepladder with feline nimbleness.

'Not at all. Your father is a saint. Besides, he was very happy to see you're dating a young lady.'

'What?'

Fermin winked at me and smacked his lips.

'Oh, you little devil, you were hiding your light under a bushel! And what a girl, eh? Good enough to stop traffic. And such cla.s.s. You can tell she's been to good schools, although she has fire in her eyes. ... If Bernarda hadn't stolen my heart, and I haven't told you all about our outing yet - there were sparks coming out of those eyes, I tell you, sparks, it was like a bonfire on Midsummer's Night-'

'Fermin,' I interrupted. 'What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?'

'About your fiancee.'

'I don't have a fiancee, Fermin.'

'Well, these days you young people call them anything, sugar pie, or-'

'Fermin, will you please rewind? What are you talking about?'

Fermin Romero de Torres looked at me disconcertedly.

'Let me see. This afternoon, about an hour or an hour and a half ago, a gorgeous young lady came by and asked for you. Your father and yours truly were on the premises, and I can a.s.sure you, without a shadow of doubt, that the girl was no apparition. I could even describe her smell. Lavender, only sweeter. Like a little sugar bun just out of the oven.'

'Did little sugar bun say she was my fiancee, by any chance?'

'Well, not in so many words, but she gave a sort of quick smile, if you see what I mean, and said that she would see you on Friday afternoon. All we did was put two and two together.'

'Bea . . .' I mumbled.

'Ergo, she exists,' said Fermin with relief.

'Yes, but she's not my girlfriend.'

'Well, I don't know what you're waiting for, then.'

'She's Tomas Aguilar's sister.'

'Your friend the inventor?'

I nodded.

'All the more reason. Even if she were the pope's niece, she's a bombsh.e.l.l. If I were you, I'd be on the ready.'

'Bea already has a fiance. A lieutenant doing his military service.'

Fermin sighed with irritation. 'Ah, the army, blight and refuge for the basest simian instincts. All the better, because this way you can cheat on him without feeling guilty.'

'You're delirious, Fermin. Bea's getting married when the lieutenant finishes his service.'

Fermin gave me a sneaky smile. 'Funny you should say that, because I have a feeling she's not. I don't think this pumpkin is going to be tying the knot anytime soon.'

'What do you know?'

'About women and other worldly matters, considerably more than you. As Freud tells us, women want the opposite of what they think or say they want, which, when you consider it, is not so bad, because men, as is more than evident, respond, contrariwise, to the dictates of their genital and digestive organs.'

'Stop lecturing me, Fermin, I can see where this is heading. If you have anything to say, just say it.'

'Right, then, in a nutsh.e.l.l: this one hasn't a single bone of obedient-little-wife material in her heavenly body.'

'Hasn't she? Then what kind of bone does your expertise detect?'

Fermin came closer, adopting a confidential tone. 'The pa.s.sionate kind,' he said, raising his eyebrows with an air of mystery. 'And you can be sure I mean that as a compliment.'

As usual, Fermin was right. Feeling defeated, I decided that attack was the best form of defence. 'Speaking of pa.s.sion, tell me about Bernarda. Was there or was there not a kiss?'

'Don't insult me, Daniel. Let me remind you that you are talking to a professional in the art of seduction, and this business of kissing is for amateurs and little old men in slippers. Real women are won over bit by bit. It's all a question of psychology, like a good faena in the bullring.'

'In other words, she gave you the brush-off.'

'The woman is yet to be born who is capable of giving Fermin Romero de Torres the brush-off. The trouble is that man, going back to Freud - and excuse the metaphor - heats up like a light bulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand - and this is pure science - heats up like an iron, slowly, over a low heat, like a tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her. Like the steel furnaces in Vizcaya.'

I weighed up Fermin's thermodynamic theories. 'Is that what you're doing with Bernarda? Heating up the iron?'

Fermin winked at me. 'That woman is a volcano on the point of eruption, with a libido of igneous magma yet the heart of an angel,' he said, licking his lips. 'If I had to establish a true parallel, she reminds me of my succulent mulatto girl in Havana, who was very devout and always wors.h.i.+pped her saints. But since, deep down, I'm an old-fas.h.i.+oned gent who doesn't like to take advantage of women, I contented myself with a chaste kiss on the cheek. I'm not in a hurry, you see? All good things must wait. There are yokels out there who think that if they touch a woman's behind and she doesn't complain, they've hooked her. Amateurs. The female heart is a labyrinth of subtleties, too challenging for the uncouth mind of the male racketeer. If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is to win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping which steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus.'

I clapped solemnly at this discourse. 'You're a poet, Fermin.'

'No, I'm with Ortega and I'm a pragmatist. Poetry lies, in its adorable wicked way, and what I say is truer than a slice of bread and tomato. That's just what the master said: show me a Don Juan and I'll show you a loser in disguise. What I aim for is permanence, durability. Bear witness that I will make Bernarda, if not an honest woman, because that she already is, at least a happy one.'

I smiled as I nodded. His enthusiasm was contagious, and his diction beyond improvement. 'Take good care of her, Fermin. Do it for me. Bernarda has a heart of gold, and she has already suffered too many disappointments.'

'Do you think I can't see that? It's written all over her, like a stamp from the society of war widows. Trust me: I wrote the book on taking no s.h.i.+t from everybody and his mother. I'm going to make this woman blissfully happy even if it's the last thing I ever do in this world.'

'Do I have your word?'

He stretched out his hand with the composure of a Knight Templar. I shook it.

'Yes, the word of Fermin Romero de Torres.'

Business in the shop was slow that afternoon, with barely a couple of browsers. In view of the situation, I suggested Fermin take the rest of the day off.

'Go on, go and find Bernarda and take her to the cinema or go window shopping with her in Calle Puertaferrissa, walking arm in arm, she loves that.'

Fermin did not hesitate to take me up on my offer and rushed off to smarten himself up in the back room, where he always kept a change of clothes and all kinds of eau de colognes and ointments in a toilet bag that would have been the envy of Veronica Lake. When he emerged, he looked like a film star, only five stone lighter. He wore a suit that had belonged to my father and a felt hat that was a couple of sizes too large, a problem he solved by placing b.a.l.l.s of newspaper under the crown.

'By the way, Fermin. Before you go ... I wanted to ask you a favour.'

'Say no more. You give the order. I'm already on to it.'

'I'm going to ask you to keep this between us, OK? Not a word to my father.'

He beamed. 'Ah, you rascal Something to do with that girl, eh?'

'No. This is a matter of high intrigue. Your department.'

'Well, I also know a lot about girls. I'm telling you this because if you ever have a technical query, you know who to ask. Privacy a.s.sured. I'm like a doctor when it comes to such matters. No need to be prudish.'

'I'll bear that in mind. Right now what I would like to know is who owns a PO box in the main post office on Via Layetana. Number 2321. And, if possible, who collects the mail that goes there. Do you think you'll be able to lend me a hand?'

Fermin wrote down the number with a ballpoint on his instep, under his sock.

'Piece of cake. All official inst.i.tutions find me irresistible. Give me a few days and I'll have a full report ready for you.'

'We agreed not to say a word of this to my father?'

'Don't worry. I'll be as quiet as the Sphinx.'

'I'm very grateful. Now, go on, off with you, and have a good time.'

I said goodbye with a military salute and watched him leave looking as debonair as a c.o.c.k on his way to the henhouse.

He couldn't have been gone for more than five minutes when I heard the tinkle of the doorbell and lifted my head from the columns of numbers and crossings-out. A man had just come in, hidden behind a grey raincoat and a felt hat. He sported a pencil moustache and had gla.s.sy blue eyes. He smiled like a salesman, a forced smile. I was sorry Fermin was not there, because he was an expert at seeing off travellers selling camphor and other such rubbish whenever they slipped into the bookshop. The visitor offered me his greasy grin, casually picking up a book from a pile that stood by the entrance waiting to be sorted and priced. Everything about him communicated disdain for all he saw. You're not even going to sell me a 'good afternoon', I thought.

'A lot of words, eh?' he said.

'It's a book; they usually have quite a few words. Anything I can do for you, sir?'

The man put the book back on the pile, nodding indifferently and ignoring my question. 'I say reading is for people who have a lot of time and nothing to do. Like women. Those of us who have to work don't have time for make-believe. We're too busy earning a living. Don't you agree?'

'It's an opinion. Were you looking for anything in particular?'

'It's not an opinion. It's a fact. That's what's wrong with this country: people don't want to work. There're a lot of layabouts around. Don't you agree?'

'I don't know, sir. Perhaps. Here, as you can see, we only sell books.'

The man came up to the counter, his eyes darting around the shop, settling occasionally on mine. His appearance and manner seemed vaguely familiar, though I couldn't say why. Something about him reminded me of one of those figures from old-fas.h.i.+oned playing cards or the sort used by fortune-tellers, a print straight from the pages of an incunabulum: his presence was both funereal and incandescent, like a curse dressed in its Sunday best.

'If you'll tell me what I can do for you 'It's really me who was coming to do you a service. Are you the owner of this establishment?'

'No. The owner is my father.'

'And the name is?'

'My name or my father's?'