The Labyrinth of the Spirits

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

  In an attempt to dodge the traffic that had solidified on the lower stretch of Vía Layetana, the taxi had moved into the oncoming traffic lane. Fermín saw a bus go past within a hairsbreadth of the window.

  “Father, is that you?” called Alicia. “Father, don’t leave me . . .”

  Fernandito looked at Fermín, panic-stricken.

  “Pay no attention, kid. The poor thing is delirious, she’s hallucinating. It’s quite common in the Spanish temperament. Boss, how’s it going out there?”

  “Either we all arrive alive, or we fall by the wayside,” said the taxi driver.

  “That’s the spirit.”

  Fermín saw they were approaching Paseo de Colón at cruising speed. A wall of trams, cars, and humanity rose five seconds ahead. The driver clutched the wheel with all his might, muttering some verbal abuse.

  Commending his soul to the goddess Fortune or whoever happened to be on call, Fermín smiled weakly at Fernandito. “Hold tight, son.”

  Never had a four-wheeled object sliced through the traffic on Paseo de Colón so recklessly, provoking a roar of hoots, insults, and curses. Having crossed the avenue, the taxi plunged into the area leading to La Barceloneta, where it pulled into a street as narrow as a sewage tunnel, taking with it a team of motorbikes parked on the edges.

  “Bravo, maestro!” Fermín chanted.

  At last they sighted the beach and a purple-tinged Mediterranean. The taxi swung into the hospital’s front entrance and stopped opposite two ambulances, letting out a deep mechanical groan of surrender and scrap metal. A veil of steam emerged from the sides of the bonnet.

  “You’re a star,” Fermín declared, patting the driver’s shoulder. “Fernandito, take this champion’s name and his number plate, we’ll send him a Christmas hamper, with ham and turrones included.”

  “I’ll be quite happy as long as you never hail my taxi again.”

  Twenty seconds later a squadron of nurses took Alicia out of the car, placed her on a stretcher, and rushed off with her to the operating room, while Fermín ran alongside her, his hands pressing the wound.

  “You’re going to need a few hectoliters of blood,” he warned. “You can take as much as you like from me. I may have a lean frame, but I have more liquid reserves than the national park of Aigüestortes.”

  “Are you related to the patient?” asked a porter who came up to him at the entrance to the surgery department.

  “I’m the alternate father figure and designated parental backup,” replied Fermín.

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It means get out of my way or I’ll find myself in the painful need to catapult your scrotum up your neck by kneeing you in the balls. Are we clear?”

  The porter stood to one side, and Fermín accompanied Alicia until she was snatched from his hands and he saw her land, pale as a ghost, on an operating table. The nurses were cutting off her clothes with scissors, exposing her battered body, covered in bruises, scratches, and cuts, and revealing the wound from which blood flowed unremittingly. Fermín caught a glimpse of the dark scar clamped onto one of her hips, spreading across her anatomy like a web about to devour her. He clenched his fists to stop his hands from shaking.

  Alicia searched him with eyes that were veiled with tears, a feeble smile on her lips. Fermín prayed to the Limping Devil, the perennial favorite patron of doomed scenarios, not to take her away yet.

  “What’s your blood group?” asked a voice next to him.

  Holding Alicia’s gaze, Fermín stretched out one of his arms.

  “O negative, universal and top quality.”

  32

  In those days, science had yet to unravel the enigma of why time slows to a fraction of its cruising speed inside hospitals. Once Fermín had emptied himself of what he deemed, at a glance, a barrel of blood, he and Fernandito settled down in a waiting room with a view of the beach. From the window they could see the citadel of shacks of the Somorrostro, a vast shantytown beached between a sea and a sky sealed together by leaden clouds. Farther on lay the mosaic of crosses, angels, and pantheons of the Pueblo Nuevo Cemetery. The sight offered an ominous reminder to the poor souls enduring endless hours in the hospital waiting room. Fernandito gazed at the scene like a condemned man, while the more prosaic Fermín devoured a gigantic spicy sausage sandwich he’d managed to secure at the coffee shop, washing it down with a Moritz beer.

  “I don’t know how you can eat now, Fermín.”

  “Having donated eighty percent of my bloodstream and probably the sum total of my liver, I need to restock. Like Prometheus, but without those big ugly birds.”

  “Prometheus?”

  “One must read, Fernandito. Not everything in adolescence is jerking off like a monkey. Besides, being a man of action, I have a very swift metabolism that requires me to consume over three times my body weight in prime steak every week in order to maintain this stupendous physique in combat form.”

  “Señorita Alicia barely eats,” ventured Fernandito. “Drinking, well, that’s another matter . . .”

  “We each have to wrestle with our appetites. In my case, for example, since the war, I’m constantly ravenous. You’re young and can’t understand that.”

  Fernandito watched in resignation as Fermín proceeded to devour his feast. After a while, an individual who looked like a district lawyer poked his head around the waiting-room door, carrying a file, and cleared his throat to announce his presence. “Are you relatives of the patient?”

  Fernandito sought Fermín’s gaze, who put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to imply that from then on he would take care of the talking. “The word ‘relative’ doesn’t quite do justice to the bond that unites us to her,” he said, shaking the crumbs off his jacket.

  “And what word would you use to define such a bond, if it’s not too much to ask?”

  Fernandito had naively assumed that he had begun to master the art of fibbing until he witnessed the performance given by the master at work, Fermín Romero de Torres, while Alicia was plunging into the darkness of surgery. As soon as the individual had introduced himself as assistant to the hospital management and made clear his intention of inquiring what had happened and asking for documentation, Fermín fired off a rhapsody of such fine embroidery that he reduced the bureaucrat to a state of babbling stupefaction.

  The first thing he did was to identify himself as the right-hand man to the civil governor of Barcelona, the regime’s blue-eyed boy in the province. “We cannot be discreet enough concerning what I have to tell Your Excellency,” he pronounced.

  “The wounds suffered by the young lady are extremely serious, and of a clearly violent nature. I’m obliged by law to inform the police . . .”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it unless you want to make your debut by tomorrow noon at the latest as assistant receptionist at the roadside dispensary behind the slaughterhouse of Castellfollit.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “That much is obvious. Kindly sit down and take note.”

  Fermín then began to unfold the epic account of how Alicia, now fictionally rechristened Violeta LeBlanc, a fashionable courtesan, had been procured by the governor and a few friends of his from the Department of Labor to provide them with a fine sample of her famed services out on the town, all expenses paid by contributions from the Trade Union Organization. “You know how these things are. A few glasses of brandy here, a lace petticoat there, and they all turn into boisterous children. The Spanish male is very macho, and here, by the Mediterranean coast, the salty vapors of the sea wantonly embolden the spirit . . .”

  Fermín elaborated on the story, explaining that given the governor’s penchant for exotic role-play and other tussles of a notoriously risqué nature, the sweet Violeta had ended up seriously wounded in the line of duty. “Alas, the heyday of the sturdy tart is well behind us,” he concluded.

  “But—”

  “Between you and me, it goes without saying what a scandal would result were such
an incident to become known. Remember that the governor has a saintly wife and eight children, enjoys five vice presidencies in savings banks, and is the main shareholder in three construction companies where equity interests are held by sons-in-law, cousins, and other relatives of men in top positions of our esteemed government, as is traditional in our beloved motherland.”

  “I understand, but the law is the law, and I have an obligation—”

  “You have an obligation to Spain and to the good name of its best, just like me and like my squire here, Miguelito, this fine young man sitting over yonder, looking as if he’s just crapped himself in his pants, and who is, believe it or not, the second godson of none other than the marquis of Villaverde. Miguelito, tell him.”

  Fernandito nodded repeatedly.

  “And what do you want me to do?” protested the manager.

  “Look, in cases of such a delicate nature—and believe me, I have a lot of experience in the field—what behooves a man of vision and patriotic flair is to fill in the forms with names borrowed from any of the great Spanish classics, for it has been proven that the finest pens in the business have little weight on the reading list recommended by police headquarters, and that way nobody notices the substitutions.”

  “But how I am to do anything so ridiculous?”

  “Leave the paperwork to me. You just concentrate on the generous emoluments you will receive for having performed your civic duty courageously. This is the way to save Spain, a little bit every day. This isn’t like Rome. Here traitors do get paid.”

  The management assistant, who had acquired a purplish shade and seemed to be defying salubrious blood-pressure levels, shook his head and adopted a royal expression of indignation. “And you? Aren’t you going to tell me your name at least?”

  “Last name LaMancha, first name Quixote, at your service and the service of the Generalissimo.”

  “This is disgraceful.”

  Fermín looked him firmly in the eye and nodded. “Precisely. And what do we do in this country with such disgraces but sweep them under the carpet and cash in on them?”

  * * *

  An hour later, Fermín and Fernandito were still waiting for news from the operating room. At Fermín’s request, the boy had drunk a hot cup of cocoa and was beginning to revive and regain some calm.

  “Fermín, do you think they’ve swallowed all that stuff you told them? Haven’t you gone a bit too far with those lurid details?”

  “Fernandito, we’ve planted the seed of doubt, and that’s what matters. When it comes to lying, what one must consider is not the plausibility of the fib but the greed, fear, and stupidity of the receiver. One never lies to people; they lie to themselves. A good liar gives fools what they want to hear and allows them to free themselves from the facts at hand and choose the level of self-delusion that fits their foolishness and moral turpitude. That’s the secret. Oldest trick in the world.”

  “What you’ve suggested is terrible,” Fernandito objected.

  Fermín shrugged. “Depends how you look at it. In this farcical world of ours, where leopards try to hide their spots and lambs think themselves lions, falsehood is the glue that keeps all the bits together. People get so used to lying and repeating other people’s lies, either because they’re afraid or out of self-interest, resentment, or sheer stupidity, that they end up lying even when they think they’re telling the truth. It’s the failing of our times. The honest, decent person is a species in danger of extinction, much like the plesiosaur or the well-read burlesque dancer.”

  “I can’t accept what you’re saying. Most people are decent and good-hearted. The trouble is that a few bad apples give a bad name to the rest. I have no doubt about that.”

  Fermín patted the boy’s knee affectionately. “That’s because you’re still very green and a bit of a simpleton. When you’re young, you see the world as it should be, and when you’re old you start to see it as it really is. You’ll be cured of it eventually.”

  Fernandito hung his head. While the boy battled with the blows of misfortune, Fermín scanned the horizon and noticed a couple of nurses in tight uniforms advancing up the corridor. Their pleasing architecture and the way they wiggled as they walked produced a tickling sensation in the nether regions of his soul. For want of anything better to occupy his mind while waiting, his eyes bored into them expertly. One of the nurses, who looked like a junior and couldn’t have clocked more than nineteen years on her meter, threw him a look as she went by to indicate that the likes of him were never, ever going to taste such delicious fruit, and then laughed. The other one, who seemed more feisty when it came to dealing with idle visitors hanging around the corridors, looked at him severely.

  “You pig,” murmured the young woman.

  “The worms are going to have a feast one day . . . ,” said Fermín.

  “I don’t know how you can think about such things when Señorita Alicia is hovering between life and death,” said Fernandito.

  “Do you always speak in clichés or did you learn to express yourself by watching the newsreels?” replied the bibliographic adviser to the Sempere & Sons bookshop.

  A long silence followed. Finally Fermín, who was starting to peer beneath the piece of cotton wool that had been taped to his arm after he gave blood, noticed that Fernandito was looking at him out of the corner of his eye, fearful of opening his mouth again.

  “What’s the matter now?” Fermín asked. “Do you need to pee?”

  “I was wondering how long you’ve known Señorita Alicia.”

  “You could say we’re old friends.”

  “But she’d never mentioned you before.”

  “That’s because we haven’t seen each other for over twenty years, and we each thought the other was dead.”

  The boy stared at him in bewilderment.

  “What about you? Are you a naive, aspiring lover boy caught in the spiderweb of the queen of the night, or an eager goody-goody?”

  Fernandito thought it over. “More like the first, I suppose.”

  “Don’t be embarrassed, life’s like that. Learning how to differentiate between why one does things and why one says one does them is the first step toward getting to know oneself. And from there to no longer being a cretin, there’s still quite a way to go.”

  “You speak like a book, Fermín.”

  “If books spoke, there wouldn’t be so many deaf people around the place. What you need to do, Fernandito, is start preventing others from writing your dialogue. Use the head God planted on your neck and write your own script. Life is full of black marketeers eager to stuff their audience’s brains with nonsense because that allows them to stay on their high horses and keep the carrot dangling. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That explains a lot. But still, making the most of the fact that you’re a bit calmer now, I’m going to ask you to tell me, once again, everything that happened. This time, from the beginning, in proper order and with no stylistic flourishes. Do you think it feasible?”

  “I can try.”

  “Go on, then.”

  This time Fernandito didn’t leave a drop in the inkwell. Fermín listened intently, assembling the pieces from the puzzle that was beginning to form in his mind with hypotheses and speculations.

  “Those documents and the diary of Isabella you mentioned,” he said, “where are they now?”

  “I left them with my aunt Jesusa. She’s the caretaker in the building where Señorita Alicia lives. She can be trusted.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but we’re going to have to find a safer location. In the world of criminal investigation, it is well known that caretaker’s lodgings provide many good uses, but confidentiality isn’t one of them.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And I’m going to ask you to keep all the things you’ve told me between us two. Not a word to Daniel Sempere.”

  “Understood.”

  “That’s good. Listen, have you any money on
you?”

  “A few coins, I think . . .”

  Fermín put out an open palm. “I have to make a call.”

  * * *

  Daniel answered at the first ring.

  “For God’s sake, Fermín, where the hell are you?”

  “Hospital del Mar.”

  “Hospital? What happened?”

  “Someone tried to murder Alicia.”

  “What? Who? Why?”

  “Please calm down, Daniel.”

  “How am I going to calm down?”

  “Is Bea around?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “Put her on the phone.”

  A pause, voices arguing, and finally the calm tones of Bea on the phone. “Tell me, Fermín.”

  “I don’t have time to go into detail, but Alicia very nearly died. Right now she’s in the operating room, and we’re waiting for news.”

  “We?”

  “Me and a kid called Fernandito who seems to have worked as an assistant and lackey for Alicia. I know how this is sounding, but try to be patient.”

  “What do you need, Fermín?”

  “I’ve tried to contain the matter with a bit of fine wording, but I have a feeling we won’t be able to stay here much longer. If Alicia survives this, I don’t think the hospital will be a very safe place. Someone might try to finish the job.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “I suggest we take her somewhere where nobody can find her, as soon as possible.”

  Bea let a long silence go by. “Are we thinking the same thing?”

  “Great minds think alike.”

  “And how do you plan to get her out of the hospital and take her there?”

  “I’m formulating a strategy as we speak.”

  “Heaven help us.”

  “O ye of little faith . . .”

  “What must I do?”

  “Get hold of Dr. Soldevila,” said Fermín.

  “Dr. Soldevila retired and hasn’t worked for at least two years. Wouldn’t it be better . . . ?”

  “We need someone we can trust,” replied Fermín. “Besides, Soldevila is an eminent doctor and knows all the tricks. I’m sure he’ll be delighted if you tell him I’ve asked you.”