“In life, nothing worthwhile is easy, Daniel. When I was young I thought that in order to sail through the world you only needed to do three things well. First, tie your shoelaces properly. Second: undress a woman conscientiously. And third: read a few pages for pleasure every day, pages written with inspiration and skill. I thought that a man who has a steady step, knows how to caress, and learns how to listen to the music of words will live longer and, above all, better. But time has shown me that this isn’t enough, and that sometimes life offers us an opportunity to aspire to be more than a hairy bipedal creature that eats, excretes, and occupies a temporary space in the planet. And so it is today that destiny, with its boundless lack of concern, has decided to offer you that opportunity.”
I nodded, unconvinced. “What if I don’t make the grade?”
“If there’s one thing we have in common, Daniel, it’s that we’ve both been blessed with the good fortune of finding women we don’t deserve. It is clear as day that in this journey they are the ones who will decide what baggage we’ll need and what heights we’ll attain, and all we have to do is try not to fail them. What do you say?”
“That I’d love to believe you wholeheartedly, but I find it hard.”
Fermín shook his head, as if to make light of the matter. “Don’t worry. The mixture of spirits I’ve poured down you is clouding what little aptitude you have for my refined rhetoric. But you know that in these matters I have a lot more miles on the clock than you, and I’m normally as right as a truckload of saints.”
“I won’t argue that point.”
“And you’ll do well not to, because you’d be knocked out in the first round. Do you trust me?”
“Of course I do, Fermín. I’d go with you to the end of the world, you know that.”
“Then take my word for it and trust yourself as well. The way I do.”
I looked straight into his eyes and nodded slowly.
“Recovered your common sense?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“In that case wipe away that doleful expression, make sure your testicular mass is safely stored in the proper location, and go back to the room to give Señora Bea and the baby a hug, like the man they’ve just made you. Make no mistake about it: the boy I had the honor of meeting some years ago, one night beneath the arches of Plaza Real, the boy who since then has given me so many frights, must remain in the prelude of this adventure. We still have a lot of history to live through, Daniel, and what awaits us is no longer child’s play. Are you with me? To that end of the world, which, for all we know, might only be around the corner?”
I could think of nothing else to do but embrace him. “What would I do without you, Fermín?”
“You’d make a lot of mistakes, for one thing. And while we’re on the subject of caution, bear in mind that one of the most common side effects derived from the intake of the concoction you have just imbibed is a temporary softening of restraint and a certain overexuberance on the sentimental front. So now, when Señora Bea sees you step into that room again, look straight into her eyes so that she realizes that you really love her.”
“She knows that already.”
Fermín shook his head patiently. “Do as I say,” he insisted. “You don’t have to tell her in so many words, if you feel embarrassed, because that’s what we men are like and testosterone doesn’t encourage eloquence. But make sure she feels it. These things should be proven rather than just said. And not once in a blue moon, but every single day.”
“I’ll try.”
“Do a bit more than try, Daniel.”
And so, stripped, thanks to Fermín’s words and deeds, of the eternal and fragile shelter of my adolescence, I made my way back to the room where destiny awaited.
* * *
Many years later, the memory of that night would return when, seeking a late-night refuge in the back room of the old bookshop on Calle Santa Ana, I tried once more to confront a blank page, without even knowing how to begin to tell myself the real story of my family. It was a task to which I had devoted months or even years, and to which I had been incapable of contributing a single line worth saving.
Making the most of a bout of insomnia, which he attributed to having eaten half a kilo of deep-fried pork rinds, Fermín had decided to pay me a visit in the wee hours. When he caught me agonizing in front of a blank page, armed with a fountain pen that leaked like an old car, he sat down beside me and checked the tide of crumpled folios spread at my feet. “Don’t be offended, Daniel, but have you the slightest idea of what you’re doing?”
“No,” I admitted. “Perhaps if I tried using a typewriter, everything would change. The advertisements say that Underwood is the professional’s choice.”
Fermín considered the publicity promise, but shook his head vigorously. “Typing and writing are different things, light-years apart.”
“Thanks for the encouragement. What about you? What are you doing here at this time of night?”
Fermín tapped his belly. “The consumption of an entire fried-up pig has left my stomach in turmoil.”
“Would you like some bicarbonate of soda?”
“No, I’d better not. It always gives me a monumental hard-on, if you’ll forgive me, and then I really can’t sleep a wink.”
I abandoned my pen and my umpteenth attempt at producing a single usable sentence, and searched my friend’s eyes.
“Everything all right here, Daniel? Apart from your unsuccessful storming of the literary castle, I mean . . .”
I shrugged hesitantly. As usual, Fermín had arrived at the providential moment, living up to his natural role of a roguish deus ex machina.
“I’m not sure how to ask you something I’ve been turning over in my mind for quite a while,” I ventured.
He covered his mouth with his hand and let go a short but effective burp. “If it’s related to some bedroom technicality, don’t be shy, just fire away. May I remind you that on such issues I’m as good as a qualified doctor.”
“No, it’s not a bedroom matter.”
“Pity, because I have fresh information on a couple of new tricks that—”
“Fermín,” I interrupted. “Do you think I’ve lived the life I was supposed to live, that I’ve not fallen short of expectations?”
My friend seemed lost for words. He looked down, sighing.
“Don’t tell me that’s what’s behind this bogged-down-Balzac phase of yours. Spiritual quest and all that . . .”
“Isn’t that why people write—to gain a better understanding of themselves and of the world?”
“No, not if they know what they’re doing, and you—”
“You’re a lousy confessor, Fermín. Give me a little help.”
“I thought you were trying to become a novelist, not a holy man.”
“Tell me the truth, Fermín. You’ve known me since I was a child. Have I disappointed you? Have I been the Daniel you hoped for? The one my mother would have wished me to be? Tell me the truth.”
Fermín rolled his eyes. “Truth is the rubbish people come up with when they think they know something, Daniel. I know as much about truth as I know about the bra size of that fantastic female with the pointy name and pointier bosom we saw in the Capitol Cinema the other day.”
“Kim Novak,” I specified.
“Whom may God and the laws of gravity hold forever in their glory. And no, you have not disappointed me, Daniel. Ever. You’re a good man and a good friend. And if you want my opinion, yes, your late mother, Isabella, would have been proud of you and would have thought you were a good son.”
“But not a good novelist.” I smiled.
“Look, Daniel, you’re as much a novelist as I’m a Dominican monk. And you know that. No pen or Underwood under the sun can change that.”
I sighed and fell into a deep silence. Fermín observed me thoughtfully.
“You know something, Daniel? What I really think is that after everything you and I have been through, I’m s
till that same poor devil you found lying in the street, the one you took home out of kindness, and you’re still that helpless, lost kid who wandered about stumbling on endless mysteries, believing that if you solved them, perhaps, by some miracle, you would recover your mother’s face and the memory of the truth that the world had stolen from you.”
I mulled over his words; they’d touched a nerve. “And if that were true, would it be so terrible?”
“It could be worse. You could be a novelist, like your friend Carax.”
“Perhaps what I should do is find him and persuade him to write the story,” I said. “Our story.”
“That’s what your son Julián says, sometimes.”
I looked at Fermín askance. “Julián says what? What does Julián know about Carax? Have you talked to my son about Carax?”
Fermín adopted his official sacrificial lamb expression. “Me?”
“What have you told him?”
Fermín puffed, as if making light of the matter. “Just bits and pieces. At the very most a few, utterly harmless footnotes. The trouble is that the child is inquisitive by nature, and he’s always got his headlights on, so of course he catches everything and ties up loose ends. It’s not my fault if the boy is smart. He obviously doesn’t take after you.”
“Dear God . . . and does Bea know you’ve been talking to the boy about Carax?”
“I don’t interfere in your marital life. But I doubt there’s much Señora Bea doesn’t know or guess.”
“I strictly forbid you to talk to my son about Carax, Fermín.”
He put his hand on his chest and nodded solemnly. “My lips are sealed. May the foulest ignominy fall upon me if in a moment of tribulation I should ever break this vow of silence.”
“And while we’re at it, don’t mention Kim Novak, either. I know you only too well.”
“On that matter I’m as innocent as the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world: it’s the boy who brings up that subject, he’s not stupid by half.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I humbly accept your unfair remarks, because I know they’re provoked by the frustration of your own emaciated ingenuity. Does Your Excellency have any other names to add to the blacklist of unmentionables, apart from Carax? Bakunin? Mae West?”
“Why don’t you go off to bed and leave me in peace, Fermín?”
“And leave you on your own to face the danger? No way. There must at least be one sane and responsible adult among the audience.”
Fermín examined the fountain pen and the pile of blank pages waiting on the table, assessing them with fascination, as if he were looking at a set of surgical instruments. “Have you figured out how to get this enterprise up and running?”
“No. I was doing just that when you came in and started making obtuse remarks.”
“Nonsense. Without me you can’t even write a shopping list.”
Convinced at last, and rolling up his sleeves to face the titanic task before us, he sat himself down on a chair beside me, looking at me with the fixed intensity of someone who scarcely needs words to communicate.
“Speaking of lists: look, I know as much about this novel-writing business as I do about the manufacture and use of a hair shirt, but it occurs to me that before beginning to narrate anything, we should make a list of what we want to tell. An inventory, let’s say.”
“A road map?” I suggested.
“A road map is what people rough out when they’re not sure where they’re going, to convince themselves and some other simpleton that they’re going somewhere.”
“It’s not such a bad idea. Self-deceit is the key to all impossible ventures.”
“You see? Together we make an invincible duo. You take notes, and I think.”
“Then start thinking aloud.”
“Is there enough ink in that piece of junk for a round trip to hell and back?”
“Enough to start walking.”
“Now all we need to decide is where we begin the list.”
“What if we begin with the story of how you met her?” I asked.
“Met who?”
“Who do you think? Our Alice in the Wonderland of Barcelona.”
A shadow crossed his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that story, Daniel. Not even you.”
“In that case, what better entrance could there be to the labyrinth?”
“A man should be allowed to take some secrets to his grave,” Fermín objected.
“Too many secrets may take that man to his grave before his time.”
Fermín raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Who said that? Socrates? Myself?”
“No. For once it was Daniel Sempere Gispert, the simpleton, only a few seconds ago.”
Fermín smiled with satisfaction, peeled a lemon Sugus, and put it in his mouth. “It’s taken you years, but you’re starting to learn from the master, you rascal. Would you like a Sugus?”
I accepted the piece of candy because I knew it was the most treasured possession in my friend Fermín’s estate, and he was honoring me by sharing it.
“Have you ever heard that much-abused saying that all’s fair in love and war, Daniel?”
“Sometimes. Usually by those who favor war rather than love.”
“That’s right, because when all’s said and done, it’s a rotten lie.”
“So, is this a story of love or war?”
Fermín shrugged. “What’s the difference?”
And so, under cover of midnight, a couple of Sugus, and the spell of memories that were threatening to disappear in the mist of time, Fermín began to connect the threads that would weave the end and the beginning of our story . . .
Excerpt from The Labyrinth of the Spirits (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, volume IV), by Julián Carax. Edited by Émile de Rosiers Castellaine. Paris: Éditions de la Lumière, 1992.
Dies Irae
Barcelona
March 1938
1
He was woken by the roll of the sea. When he opened his eyes, the stowaway perceived a darkness that seemed to stretch into infinity. The swaying of the ship, the stench of salt residue, and the sound of water scratching at the hull reminded him that he was not on dry land. He set aside the sacks that had served him as a bed and stood up slowly, scanning the long line of columns and arches that made up the ship’s hold.
The sight was dreamlike, he thought, a submerged cathedral peopled by what looked like booty taken from a hundred museums and palaces. He noticed the outline of a fleet of luxury cars, covered with semitransparent cloths, amid a set of sculptures and paintings. Next to a large grandfather clock he spotted a cage containing a splendid parrot. The bird observed him severely, questioning his stowaway status.
A bit farther on he caught sight of a copy of Michelangelo’s David, which some individual on an impulse had crowned with the three-cornered hat of the Civil Guard. Behind it, an army of ghostly dummies, all wearing period dresses, seemed caught in a never-ending Viennese waltz. On one side, leaning against the bodywork of a luxurious hearse with glass sides—coffin included—was a pile of old posters in frames. One of them announced a bullfight at the Arenas ring dating from before the war.
The name of a certain Fermín Romero de Torres appeared among the list of horseback bullfighters. As his eyes stroked the letters, the secret passenger, at the time still known by a name he would soon have to leave behind in the ashes of that war, silently mouthed those words.
Fermín
Romero de Torres
A good name, he told himself. Musical. Operatic. On a par with the epic and harrowing existence of a lifelong stowaway. Fermín Romero de Torres, or the thin little man stuck to a very large nose who was soon to adopt that name, had remained hidden in the bowels of a merchant ship that had left Valencia two nights earlier. Miraculously, he’d managed to slip aboard, hiding in a large trunk full of old rifles that was camouflaged among all kinds of merchandise. Some of the guns were wrapped up in sealed b
ags with a knot that protected them from the damp, but the rest were uncovered, piled up one on top of the other, and looked more likely to explode in the face of some unfortunate militiaman—or in his own face, if he leaned where he shouldn’t—than to bring down the enemy.
Every half hour, to stretch his legs and alleviate the numbness caused by the cold and the damp oozing from the walls of the hull, Fermín would venture through the web of containers and supplies in search of something edible, or, failing that, something that would help him kill time. In one of his expeditions he’d befriended a small mouse with long experience of these circumstances. After an initial period of distrust, the mouse began to approach him timidly and, nestling snugly in the warmth of his lap, shared the bits of hard cheese that Fermín had found in one of the food crates. The cheese, or whatever that greasy, leathery substance was, tasted like soap, and as far as Fermín’s gastronomic knowledge went, there was no indication that any cow or other ruminant had had a hand or a hoof in the matter of its production. But a wise man admits there is no accounting for taste, and if there was, the abject poverty of those days clearly altered the saying, so that they both enjoyed the feast with the enthusiasm that comes only from months of accumulated hunger.
“Dear rodent friend, one of the advantages of this war business is that from one day to the next, pigswill can be considered a dish fit for the gods, and even a cleverly skewered piece of shit on a stick begins to give off an exquisite bouquet of Parisian boulangerie. This semimilitary diet of soups made with dirty water and bread crumbs mixed with sawdust hardens the spirit and heightens the sensibility of the palate to such a degree that eventually even a piece of cork can taste of serrano ham if there’s nothing better to eat.”
The mouse listened patiently to Fermín while they devoured the food stolen by the stowaway. Sometimes, feeling satisfied, the rodent would fall asleep at his feet. Fermín gazed at the little creature, guessing that they had made good friends because deep down they resembled one another.
“You and I are two of a kind, mate, enduring the scourge of the erect ape with philosophy, and finding what we can find to survive it. Let’s hope to God that in the not too distant future all primates will be extinguished in one fell swoop and sent to push up daisies with the diplodocus, the mammoth, and the dodo, so that you, hardworking, peaceful creatures who are content to eat, fornicate, and sleep, can inherit the earth, or at least share it with the cockroach and some other coleopteran.”
The Labyrinth of the Spirits Page 2