That day, when I returned to the bookshop after visiting the old house, I found a parcel bearing a Paris postmark. It contained a book calledThe Angel of Mist, a novel, by a certain Boris Laurent. I leafed through the pages, inhaling the enchanted scent of promise that comes with all new books, and stopped to read the start of a sentence that caught my eye. I knew immediately who had written it, and I wasn’t surprised to return to the first page and find, written in the blue strokes of that pen I had so much adored when I was a child, this dedication:
For my friend Daniel, who gave me back my voice and my pen. And for Beatriz, who gave us both back our lives.
A YOUNG MAN, ALREADY SHOWING A FEW GRAY HAIRS, WALKS through the streets of a Barcelona trapped beneath ashen skies as dawn pours over Rambla de Santa Mónica in a wreath of liquid copper.
He holds the hand of a ten-year-old boy whose eyes are intoxicated with the mystery of the promise his father made him at dawn, the promise of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
“Julián, you mustn’t tell anyone what you’re about to see today. No one.”
“Not even Mommy?” asks the boy in whisper.
His father sighs, taking refuge in the sad smile that has followed him through life.
“Of course you can tell her,” he answers. “We have no secrets from her. You can tell her anything.”
Soon afterward, like figures made of steam, father and son disappear into the crowd of the Ramblas, their steps lost forever in the shadow of the wind.
The Shadow of the Wind Page 50