The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

They gazed silently at one another for a long time, each sensing the wounds life had inflicted on the other.

They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they’d been dealt or to the way they had played them. ‘I’ve never thanked you for everything you’ve done for me over the years, Miquel.’ ‘Don’t begin now. I did what I had to do and what I wanted to do. There’s nothing to thank me for.’

‘You only love truly once in a lifetime, Julián, even if you aren’t always aware of it.’

Nobody was going to snatch his son away from him again. This time God Almighty could descend from the heavens, the same God who had spent His whole life ignoring the hatter’s prayers, and Fortuny would gladly have pulled His eyes out if He dared take Julián away again.

What the flower vendor interpreted as ‘pretty nasty’ was only the intensity that comes to those who, better late than never, have found a purpose in life and are pursuing it to make up for lost time.

How many lost souls do You need, Lord, to satisfy Your hunger? the hatter asked. God, in His infinite silence, looked at him without blinking.

As Miquel listened to his friend’s tale, it did not occur to him to be suspicious of the waiter when he went over to the telephone and mumbled something with his back to them or, later, when he surreptitiously kept an eye on the door, wiping glasses too thoroughly for an establishment where dirt was otherwise so at home.

When the police car stopped in front of the café and the waiter disappeared into the kitchen, Miquel felt the cold and serene stillness of fate.

‘Remember the deal we made. The day I die, all that was once mine will be yours. . . .’ ‘. . . Except your dreams.’ They smiled at one another for the last time. Julián handed him his passport. Miquel put it next to the copy of The Shadow of the Wind that he had been carrying in his coat pocket since the day he’d received it. ‘See you soon,’ Julián whispered. ‘There’s no hurry. I’ll be waiting.’

Miquel Moliner turned his head for the last time and saw his friend Julián running down the street. Miquel was thirty-six years old, which was longer than he’d hoped to live. Before he collapsed onto a pavement strewn with bloodstained glass, he was already dead.

Miquel Moliner’s corpse was abandoned in an alleyway of the Raval quarter twelve hours later, so that his death could not be connected to that of the two police officers.

his own papers at home before going out. All the employees at the morgue could find was a disfigured passport in the name of Julián Carax, and a copy of The Shadow of the Wind.

I wondered whether I was going to die like this, in a dark staircase, and without knowing what had become of Miquel. The door opened, and I encountered the dark eyes of Julián Carax.

May God forgive me, but at that moment I felt that life was returning to me, and I thanked the heavens for giving me back Julián instead of Miquel.