The Labyrinth of the Spirits

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

  Nobody had ever called Braulio Señor or Don in his entire life, and he discovered that he didn’t like the sound of that address coming from the stranger’s lips. “And who are you? Has Hendaya sent you?”

  The visitor simply smiled and raised the packet of cigarettes up to Braulio, who accepted one. He then pulled out a gas lighter and held out the flame.

  “Thanks,” Braulio murmured.

  “You’re welcome. Tell me, Don Braulio, who’s in there?”

  “A pile of stiffs—what do you expect?”

  “I’m referring to the living.”

  Braulio hesitated. “So Hendaya sent you, right?”

  The stranger just fixed his eyes on him without losing his smile.

  Braulio gulped. “The pathologist, and a policeman from Madrid.”

  “Vargas?”

  Braulio nodded.

  “How is it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The cigarette. How is it?”

  “Very good. Imported?”

  “Like all good things. You have keys, don’t you, Don Braulio?”

  “Keys?”

  “To the morgue. I’m afraid I might need them.”

  “Hendaya didn’t say anything about giving any keys to anyone.”

  The stranger shrugged. “Change of plans,” he said, as he calmly slipped on a pair of gloves.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  The flash of the steel only lasted a second. Braulio noticed the blade of the knife, the sharpest cold he’d ever known in his miserable existence, sinking into his guts. At first he felt no pain, only that awareness of extreme clarity and weakness as the blade sliced his guts. Then, when the stranger sank the knife again into the lower abdomen, this time right up to the handle, and pulled it strongly upward, Braulio felt that cold turning to fire. A claw of red hot iron made its way toward his heart. His throat flooded with blood and drowned his screams, as the stranger dragged him into the alley and pulled out the bunch of keys fastened to his belt.

  20

  He walked through the corridors in the half-light until he reached the passage leading to the autopsy room. A greenish halo filtered through the cracks in the door. He could hear the voices of the two men. They spoke like old friends, leaving silences that didn’t require explaining and making jokes to ease the job at hand. Standing on his toes to look through the tinted glass circle crowning the door, he studied Vargas’s profile as he sat on one of the marble slabs, and that of the pathologist, leaning over the corpse. He heard the doctor describe in all detail the fruit of his labors. He couldn’t help smiling at the skill with which the pathologist unraveled the details of Lomana’s last moments, without being disgusted by the smoothness of the cut or the precision with which he’d sliced the arteries and the windpipe of that lout, just to see him die on his knees and enjoy the panic in his eyes as the blood gushed through his hands. Among experts, it was only gentlemanly to recognize a job well done.

  * * *

  The pathologist also described the knife wounds that had been dealt Lomana on the torso when he grabbed the killer’s legs, trying in vain to avoid being pushed to the edge of the swimming pool. There was no water in his lungs, he explained, only blood. Lomana had drowned in his own blood before sinking into the putrid water. The pathologist was an experienced man, a professional who knew his job and whose teachings inspired respect and admiration. There were not many like him. For that reason alone, the man decided to spare his life.

  Vargas, the old fox, dropped questions here and there with remarkable insight—the watcher had to give him that. But it was obvious that he was groping around in the dark and that, apart from the particulars of Lomana’s final agony, he would learn little from his visit to the morgue. While the man outside the door listened to the two inside, he debated whether he should withdraw for a few hours to take a rest or go in search of a prostitute to warm his feet until dawn. It seemed clear that Vargas’s inquiries had reached a standstill, and there would be no need to take further steps in the matter. Those were his orders, after all. Not to make a move unless there was no other choice. Deep down, he was sorry. It would have been interesting to confront the old policeman and see whether he still had the guts to cling on to life. Those who resisted the inevitable were his favorites. And as for the luscious Alicia, he was reserving the final honor for her. With her he would certainly take his time and savor the reward for all his efforts. Alicia was not going to disappoint him.

  It was another half hour before the pathologist concluded his examination and offered Vargas a glass of the liqueur he kept in the instrument cupboard. The conversation diverted toward topics that are de rigueur between old friends whose paths have parted—platitudes on the passing of time, on those fallen along the wayside, and other banalities on the tired subject of aging. Bored, the listener was about to leave and let Vargas and the pathologist drift away to the back of beyond when he noticed that the policeman was pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket, examining it under the lights hanging from the ceiling. The voices dropped to a murmur, and the man had to press his ear against the door to make out the words.

  Dr. Manero noticed that the door to the room was moving slightly. “Braulio, is that you?”

  When he didn’t get a reply, the pathologist sighed and shook his head disapprovingly. “When I don’t let him stay, he sometimes hides behind doors to eavesdrop.”

  “I don’t know how you put up with him,” said Vargas.

  “I tell myself that it’s almost better if he’s here, pissing out, rather than wandering about in the big wide world, pissing in. At least this way we can keep an eye on him. Nice drink, eh?”

  “What is it? Embalming liquid?”

  “I keep it for when I have to take something along to weddings and first communions in my wife’s family. Aren’t you going to tell me about the case? What was this wretch Lomana doing in the swimming pool of an abandoned house in Vallvidrera?”

  Vargas shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Then I’ll try with the living. What are you doing in Barcelona? If I’m not mistaken, you’d promised never to return.”

  “An unbroken promise doesn’t deserve to be called a promise.”

  “And what’s this you’ve got here?” asked Manero, pointing to the list of numbers Vargas was holding. “I always thought of you as a man of letters.”

  “Who knows? I’ve been carrying it around with me for days, and I don’t know what it means.”

  “Can I have a look?”

  Vargas handed it to the pathologist, who glanced at it while he sipped his liqueur.

  “I was thinking that perhaps they were bank account numbers,” said the policeman.

  The pathologist shook his head. “I wouldn’t be able to say what the ones in the right-hand column are, but the ones on the left are almost certainly certificates.”

  “Certificates?”

  “Death certificates.”

  Vargas gave him a puzzled look.

  Manero pointed to the column on the left. “Do you see the numbering? These numbers follow the old system. The numbering changed years ago, but in these you can still see the number of the document, book, and page. These bits are added later, but here we generate these numbers every day. Even your friend Lomana will have one for the rest of eternity.”

  Vargas downed his drink in one gulp and examined the list again as if he were looking at a jigsaw puzzle he’d been battling with for years, and it was suddenly starting to make sense. “What about the numbers in the right-hand column? They look as if they’re correlated, but the sequence of the numbering is different. Could they also be certificates?”

  Manero looked closer and shrugged. “Looks like it, but they’re not from my department.”

  Vargas let out a sigh.

  “Does this help you at all?” asked the pathologist.

  The policeman nodded. “And where could I find the documents that correspond to these certificate numbers?”

 
“Where do you think? Where everything begins and ends in this life: in the Civil Registry.”

  21

  The glimmer of light seeping through the bathroom window told Fernandito that dawn was at hand. He sat on the bed and glanced at Matilde, who had fallen asleep next to him. His gaze ran over her naked body, and he smiled.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him serenely. “How’s things, love? A bit more relaxed?”

  “Do you think they’ll have left by now?”

  Matilde stretched and looked for her clothes, strewn by the foot of the bed. “Just in case, go out through the opening that leads to the alley. It will take you to one of the market entrances.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart. Have you enjoyed it a little?”

  Fernandito blushed, but he nodded as he got dressed in the morning gloom. Matilde stretched out an arm to grab the pack of cigarettes she’d left on the bedside table and lit one. She observed Fernandito as he slipped his clothes on in a hurry, his shyness and timidity almost intact despite the instruction he’d just received. Once he was ready, he looked at her. She pointed to the small window.

  “This way?”

  Matilde nodded. “But keep your eyes peeled, and don’t break your neck. I want you to come back and see me in one piece. You will come back, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” lied Fernandito. “As soon as I get my wages.”

  The boy stuck his head out of the window and studied the inner courtyard leading to the narrow lane Matilde had mentioned.

  “Don’t trust the stairs—they’re a bit loose. You’d better jump, you’re young.”

  “Thanks. And good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, darling. Good luck.”

  “Good luck,” Fernandito replied.

  He was about to slip through the small window when he heard Matilde’s voice behind him. “Fernando?”

  “Yes?”

  “Treat her well. Your girlfriend, whatever her name is. Treat her well.”

  * * *

  As soon as he’d abandoned the morgue, Vargas felt he was coming back to life after a prolonged interlude in purgatory. The liqueur poured out by Dr. Manero and, above all, the revelation about what half the numbers on that list signified had lifted his spirits. He could almost forget he hadn’t slept a wink in far too many hours. His body betrayed his tiredness—if he’d stopped to think about it, he would have realized that his bones, and even his memory, were aching. But the hope that the small bit of information he had just uncovered might lead to something solid kept him resolutely on his feet.

  For a moment he wondered whether he should go over to Alicia’s apartment to share the news, but since he wasn’t sure whether the list of death-certificate numbers Valls had carried with him in his secret journey from Madrid could provide any hard evidence, he decided to make sure first. He set off toward Plaza Medinaceli, an oasis of palm trees and gardens standing out amid the dilapidated palaces and the sea mist blowing in from the port, where soon the offices of the Barcelona Civil Registry would open their doors.

  On his way, Vargas stopped at the Hostal Ambos Mundos in Plaza Real, where they were already serving breakfast and coffee to the children of the night who were dropping by for one last refreshment. He sat at the bar, signaled to a waiter—endowed with a prominent jaw and sideburns—and asked for a serrano ham sandwich, a beer, and a double black coffee with a shot of brandy.

  “I’ve only got the expensive stuff left,” warned the waiter.

  “Then give me two shots,” replied Vargas.

  “If you’re in the mood for celebrations, you might want a Montecristo cigar for dessert. They bring them to me straight from Cuba. Sheer class, the sort the mulatto girls roll between their thighs . . .”

  “I won’t say no.”

  Vargas had always heard it said that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, at least until lunchtime. To finish it off with a good Havana cigar could only bring good luck. Leaving a halo of Caribbean smoke, he set off again, with a full stomach and mounting optimism. The sky was tinged with amber, and the misty light sliding down the facades made him think that this would be one of those rare days when he’d discover the truth, or something that looked sufficiently like it.

  * * *

  About fifty meters behind him, under a patch of shadow cast by the cornices of a decaying building, the eyes of the observer followed him relentlessly. With that cigar between his lips, full belly, and the air of someone steeped in false hopes, Vargas seemed to him closer to the end than ever. What little respect he’d managed to feel for the policeman was evaporating like the film of mist that still crept along the cobbled pavement beneath his feet.

  He would never be like that, he told himself. He would never allow alcohol and complacency to cloud his judgment or let his body become a useless bundle of bones. He’d always found old people disgusting. If people didn’t have the dignity to jump out of a window or under a train once decrepitude set in, somebody should shoot them, deal them a death blow, or remove them from circulation like mangy dogs as a matter of public health.

  The observer smiled, never remiss in celebrating his own witty remarks. He was always going to be young, because he was smarter than the rest. He wasn’t going to make the mistakes that allowed someone with Vargas’s potential to become a sad reflection of his former self. Like that yokel Lomana, who had been kicked in the ass all his life and then died on his knees, holding on to his gullet with both hands while he, the observer, watched his eyes: the capillaries bursting, the pupils dilating into a black mirror. Another piece of shit who hadn’t known how to get out of the way in time.

  He wasn’t afraid of Vargas. He wasn’t afraid of what the cop could, or believed he could, discover. He bit his tongue so as not to laugh. Time was nearly up. And when there was no more need to follow Vargas, and all that business had concluded, he would be able to enjoy his reward: Alicia. The two of them alone, in no hurry. Just as the master had promised him. With enough time and skills to teach that velvet slut that there was nothing left to learn from her, and that, before dispatching her into the oblivion from which she should never have emerged, he was going to work her good and deep and show her what pain really was.

  * * *

  When Alicia opened her eyes, the light of dawn was blazing in the windows. She turned her head to one side and buried her face in the sofa cushion. She was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and the poisonous taste of bitter almonds lingered in her mouth, left by the pills soaked in alcohol. Something hammered in her ears. She half opened her eyes again and saw the bottle of pills on the table next to the remains of a glass of warm white wine, which she swallowed in one gulp. When she tried to fill it again, she discovered that the bottle was empty. Only when she groped her way to the kitchen to look for another one did she realize that the hammering she heard in her temples wasn’t her pulse or the shadow of a migraine brought about by the pills, but the sound of someone knocking on her door. She held on to a chair in the dining room and rubbed her eyes. A voice on the other side of the door kept repeating her name insistently. She dragged herself to the entrance and opened the door. Fernandito, who looked as if he’d been to the end of the world and back, gazed at her more in alarm than relief.

  “What time is it?” asked Alicia.

  “Early. Are you all right?”

  Alicia nodded with half-closed eyes and staggered back to the sofa. Fernandito closed the door and, before she fell on the way, held her upright and helped her land safely on the sofa.

  “What is this stuff you take?” he wanted to know, examining the bottle of pills.

  “Aspirin.”

  “They must be for horses.”

  “What are you doing here so early?”

  “I was in El Pinar last night. I have plenty to tell you.”

  Alicia felt the table in search of cigarettes. Fernandito pushed them aside without her noticing.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “It do
esn’t look like it. Why don’t you take a shower while I make some coffee?”

  “Do I smell bad?”

  “No. But I think it will do you good. Come on, I’ll help you.”

  Before Alicia could protest, Fernandito helped her up from the sofa and led her to the bathroom, where he sat her on the edge of the bath and let the water run, testing the temperature with one hand and making sure she wasn’t going to keel over with the other.

  “I’m not a baby,” Alicia complained.

  “Sometimes you act like one. Come on, into the water. Are you going to undress, or shall I do it?”

  “In your dreams.”

  Alicia pushed him out of the bathroom and closed the door. She dropped her clothes on the floor, a garment at a time, as if she were shedding dead scales, and looked at herself in the mirror.

  “Good God,” she murmured.

  A few seconds later the shock of cold water biting her skin returned her unceremoniously to the world of the living. Fernandito, who was preparing a pot of strong coffee in the kitchen, couldn’t hold back a smile when he heard the shout from the bathroom.

  * * *

  A quarter of an hour later, buried in a bathrobe that was too large for her, her hair wrapped in a towel, Alicia heard the story of the night’s events. While Fernandito talked, she sipped at the coffee in the large cup she held in both hands. When the boy had concluded his report, she downed the remaining coffee and looked him in the eyes.

  “You shouldn’t have put yourself in that dangerous situation, Fernandito.”

  “That’s the least of it. That guy, Hendaya, hasn’t the foggiest who I am. But I’m sure he knows who you are, Alicia. You’re the one in danger.”

  “Where have you been since you managed to shake off the two policemen?”

  “I found a sort of flophouse behind the Boquería market where I was able to wait.”

  “A sort of flophouse?”

  “The lurid details for another day. What are we going to do now?”

  Alicia sat up. “You’re doing nothing. You’ve done enough already.”