The Labyrinth of the Spirits

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

  She washed herself on her own, with no help from the nurses. Then she slowly put on the garments Leandro had chosen for the last day of her life and looked at herself in the mirror. All she needed was the white coffin and the crucifix in her hands. She sat down to wait, wondering how many white virgins had been purified in that luxurious cell before her, how many luxury Pertegaz boxes Leandro had ordered to say good-bye to his damsels with a kiss on their forehead.

  She didn’t have to wait long. Barely half an hour later she heard the sound of the key slipping into the lock. The mechanism gave way softly, and the kind doctor, with his friendly face of the trusted family surgeon, poked his head around the door with that docile, compassionate smile that always accompanied him, like his bagful of wonders.

  “Good morning, Ariadna. How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Very well. Thank you, Doctor.”

  He slowly drew closer, leaving the bag on the table. “You’re looking very pretty and elegant. I hear this is a big day for you.”

  “Yes. Today I’m going to be reunited with my family.”

  “That’s wonderful. Family is what really matters in life. Señor Leandro has asked me to offer you his deepest apologies for not being able to greet you personally. An urgent matter has cropped up, and he’ll be away temporarily. I’ll let him know you looked splendid.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Shall we administer a tonic to give you a bit more strength?”

  Ariadna stretched out her naked arm submissively. The doctor smiled, opened his bag, and pulled out a leather pouch that he unrolled over the table. Ariadna recognized the twelve numbered bottles attached with elastic bands, and the metallic box for the hypodermic syringe.

  The doctor leaned over her and took her arm delicately. “If I may.”

  He began to feel her skin, which was covered in the marks and bruises of countless injections. While he explored the front of her forearm, her wrist, the space between her knuckles, and tapped the skin gently, he smiled at her. Ariadna looked into his eyes and lifted the skirt of her dress to reveal her thighs. There were also needle marks there, but farther apart.

  “If you like you can prick me here.”

  The doctor affected a show of utmost modesty and nodded discreetly. “Thank you. I think it will be better.”

  She observed him as he prepared the injection. He’d chosen the bottle marked number nine. She’d never seen him choose that bottle before. Once the syringe was ready, the doctor searched for a spot on the inside of her left thigh, right above the top of the new silk stocking she’d just pulled on.

  “It might hurt a bit at first, and you might feel the cold. It will only be for a few seconds.”

  Ariadna watched the doctor as with concentration he drew the needle to her skin. When the point was one centimeter from her thigh, she spoke.

  “You didn’t use the cotton wool with alcohol today, Doctor.”

  The man looked up briefly in surprise, and smiled hesitantly.

  “Do you have daughters, Doctor?”

  “Two, God bless them. Señor Leandro is their godfather.”

  It happened in barely a second. Before the doctor had finished uttering those words and could return to his task, Ariadna grabbed his hand powerfully and thrust the needle into his throat. A bewildered look flooded the eyes of the good doctor. His arms fell to his sides, and he began to shake, the syringe stuck in his neck. The solution became tinted with blood. Ariadna held his gaze, gripped the syringe, and emptied its contents into his jugular vein. The doctor opened his mouth without uttering a sound and fell on his knees. She sat down again on the chair and watched him die. He took two to three minutes.

  Then she leaned over him, pulled out the syringe, and wiped the blood off on his jacket lapel. She put the syringe back in its metal box, returned the bottle marked with a 9 to its place, and folded the leather pouch. Kneeling beside the body, she found a wallet from which she took a dozen or so hundred-peseta notes. She donned the beautiful jacket that came with the dress and the matching hat. Finally, she picked up the keys the doctor had left on the table, the pouch with the bottles, and the syringe, and put them inside the white handbag. She tied the scarf around her neck and, carrying the bag under her arm, opened the bedroom door.

  The suite’s sitting room was empty. A vase full of white roses rested on the table where she had shared so many breakfasts with Leandro. She walked over to the door. It was locked. One by one she tried the doctor’s keys until she found the one that opened it. The corridor, a wide carpeted gallery flanked by paintings and statues, reminded her of a large luxury cruiser. It was deserted. The echo of background music and the hum of a vacuum cleaner in a nearby suite floated in the air. Ariadna walked slowly. She passed an open door with a cleaning cart and saw a maid picking up towels inside. When she reached the hallway with the elevators, she met a smartly dressed middle-aged couple, who stopped speaking the moment they noticed her.

  “Good morning,” said Ariadna.

  The couple replied with a small nod, keeping their eyes glued to the floor. They waited in silence. When the doors of the elevator opened at last, the gentleman allowed Ariadna in and received a steely look from his companion. They began the descent. The lady examined her out of the corner of her eye, sizing her up and circling around her clothes like a bird of prey. Ariadna smiled at her politely, and the lady replied with a cold, cutting smile. “You look like Evita,” she said.

  The caustic tone made it clear that the appreciation had not been a compliment. Ariadna simply looked down modestly. When the doors opened onto the ground floor, the couple didn’t move until she’d walked out.

  “Probably an expensive tart,” she heard the gentleman behind her murmur.

  The hotel foyer was packed. Ariadna noticed a boutique with luxury items a few yards away and took refuge there. Seeing her come in, an obliging sales assistant looked her up and down, and once she’d estimated the cost of what she was wearing, smiled at her as if she were an old friend. Five minutes later Ariadna left the shop sporting a pair of Dior sunglasses that covered half her face, her lips lit up with the most garish pink lipstick she had been able to find. Only a few accessories separate the virgin from the luxury courtesan.

  This is how she walked down the wide stairs leading to the exit, pulling on her gloves as she felt the eyes of guests, concierges, and other hotel staff taking an X-ray of every detail of her body. Slowly, she told herself. When she reached the main door, she stopped, and the doorman who held it open for her looked at her with a mixture of greed and complicity.

  “A taxi, gorgeous?”

  18

  An entire life devoted to medicine had taught Dr. Soldevila that the hardest illness to cure is habit. That afternoon, just like every afternoon since he’d taken that damned decision to close his office and succumb to the second deadliest plague known to man—retirement—the good doctor opened the balcony of his flat on Calle Puertaferrisa and stuck his nose out. The day, he thought, like almost everything in the world, was already going downhill.

  Lamps adorned the streets, and the sky had acquired the pink hue of those wonderful cocktails served at the Boadas Bar with which the doctor rewarded his liver from time to time for a life of practicing what he preached. That was the signal. Armed with coat, scarf, and his doctor’s bag, and under cover of his Barcelona-gentleman’s hat, Soldevila stepped out into the street to his daily meeting with that strange spirit called Alicia Gris, placed in his path thanks to the intrigues of Fermín and the Semperes. A spirit for whom he felt infinite curiosity and a weakness that made him forget, in his long, sleepless nights, that he’d spent thirty years without touching a woman in good health.

  Sauntering down the Ramblas, ignoring the city’s bustle, he was mulling over the certainty that, luckily for her and unluckily for him, Señorita Gris had recovered from her wounds with a speed he attributed not to his medical abilities but to the concentrated malice running through the veins of that shadowy cr
eature. Soon, he lamented, he would have to discharge her.

  He could always try to convince her that she should come by his office every now and then for what professionals call a follow-up, but he knew that such an attempt would be as futile as asking a Bengal tiger that had just been let out of its cage to return every Sunday morning before church to drink its little saucer of milk. Probably the best thing for everyone, except for Alicia herself, was that she should disappear from their lives, the sooner the better. All he had to do was look into her eyes to make that diagnosis and know that it was the most accurate one he’d made in his long career.

  Such was the melancholy that overcame the old doctor at the thought of having to say good-bye to someone who would surely be his last patient that he was unaware, as he walked into the dark tunnel of Calle Arco del Teatro, that among the shadows hovering around him there was one that let off a peculiar perfume of strong eau de cologne and imported Virginia tobacco.

  During the past week he’d learned to locate the large door of that place whose existence he’d had to swear he would not reveal even to the Holy Ghost, unless he wanted Fermín to come around to his house for an afternoon snack every day and tell him dirty jokes. “It’s best if you come alone,” they’d told him. Security reasons, alleged the Semperes, whom he would never have suspected capable of getting mixed up in such complex machinations. One spent one’s life rummaging around people’s internal organs only to discover that one hardly knew them. Life, like appendicitis, was a mystery.

  And so, lost in his thoughts and his determination to submerge himself once again in that enigmatic house they all called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, Dr. Soldevila put his foot on the doorstep of the old palace and grabbed the demon-shaped knocker, ready to rap on the door. He was about to give the first knock when the shadow that had been following him since he’d left his front door materialized next to him and placed the barrel of a revolver on his temple.

  “Good evening, Doctor,” said Hendaya.

  * * *

  Isaac watched Alicia with a touch of suspicion. Not given to trivialities, he’d noticed with some alarm that in the past few weeks he’d allowed something very close to affection for the young woman to grow inside him. He blamed the passing years: they softened everything. Alicia’s presence during those weeks had forced him to reconsider the chosen solitude of his retirement among books. As he watched her recover and return to life, Isaac had felt the memory of his daughter Nuria rekindle. Far from fading, it had sharpened over time until Alicia’s arrival had once again opened the wounds he didn’t even know he carried inside him.

  “Why are you looking at me like that, Isaac?”

  “Because I’m a silly old man.”

  Alicia smiled. Isaac had noticed that when she did that, she bared her teeth, exuding a malicious air. “A silly man who becomes old or an old man who becomes silly?”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Alicia, even if I deserve it.”

  She gazed at him tenderly, and the old keeper had to look away. When Alicia removed that dark veil, even if it was just for a few moments, she reminded him so much of Nuria that he felt a lump in his throat and could barely breathe.

  “What’s that you’ve got there?”

  Isaac showed her a wooden case.

  “Is it for me?”

  “My farewell gift.”

  “Do you want to get rid of me already?”

  “Not me.”

  “So what makes you think I’m leaving?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  Alicia didn’t reply, but accepted the case.

  “Open it.”

  Inside she discovered a golden nib attached to a mahogany pen holder, and a bottle of blue ink that glowed in the candlelight. “Was it Nuria’s?”

  Isaac nodded.

  “It’s the present I gave her on her eighteenth birthday.”

  Alicia examined the nib, a piece of true craftsmanship.

  “Nobody has written anything with it for years,” said the keeper.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I have nothing to write.”

  Alicia was about to dispute his statement when two dry knocks spread their echo through the palace. After a pause of five seconds, there were two more knocks.

  “The doctor,” said Alicia. “He’s finally learned the code.”

  Isaac nodded and stood up. “Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?”

  The keeper picked up one of the oil lamps and set off toward the corridor that led to the entrance.

  “Start trying it out,” he said. “There’s some blank paper there.”

  Isaac walked down the long, curved passage, carrying the lamp in his hand. He only used it when he was going to receive someone. When he was alone, he didn’t need it. He knew that place like the back of his hand and preferred to walk through its heights and depths in the pallid half-light that always floated inside the building. When he reached the big front door, he stopped and set the lamp down on the floor. Using both hands, he clasped the crank that activated the bolt’s mechanism. He’d noticed that he was beginning to find it more of an effort than usual, and every time he pushed, he felt a pressure on his chest that he hadn’t felt before. Perhaps his days as the keeper of the place were numbered.

  The bolt’s machinery, which was as ancient as that place, was made up of an elaborate system of springs, levers, and cogs, and it took between ten and fifteen seconds to unlock all its points of attachment. Once the door was released, Isaac pulled the bar that activated the counterweight system and allowed him to move the heavy oak structure while barely touching it. Dr. Soldevila stood there, silhouetted against the doorframe.

  “As punctual as ever, Doctor,” Isaac began.

  A second later, the doctor’s body fell inside, flat on its face, and a tall angular figure blocked the access.

  “Who . . . ?”

  Hendaya pointed his revolver between Isaac’s eyes and kicked the doctor’s body out of the way. “Shut the door.”

  * * *

  Alicia dipped the nib in the inkwell and slid it across the paper, drawing a brilliant blue line. She wrote her name and watched the ink slowly dry. The pleasure of the blank page, which at first always smells of mystery and promise, vanished as if by magic. As soon as one begins to place the first words on it, it becomes clear how in writing, as in life, the distance between intentions and results is much the same as that between the innocence with which one undertook the first and accepted the second. She was about to write a sentence she remembered from one of her favorite books when she paused and looked toward the door. Leaving the pen on the paper, she scanned the silence.

  She knew immediately that something was wrong. The absence of the murmurings that usually could be heard between the two old veterans, the uncertain echo of irregular footsteps, and a poisoned silence she could feel in the air made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She looked around and cursed her luck. She’d always thought she would die some other way.

  19

  In any other circumstance Hendaya would have shot dead the two old men as soon as he’d gained access to the building, but he didn’t want to alert Alicia. Dr. Soldevila lay practically unconscious after the blow on the back of his head that had knocked him over. Experience told Hendaya that he needn’t worry about him for at least half an hour.

  “Where is she?” he asked the keeper in a whisper.

  “Where’s who?”

  Hendaya hit Isaac’s face with the revolver and heard the crunch of a bone. The keeper fell on his knees and then collapsed on one side, groaning. Hendaya crouched down, grabbed him by his neck, and yanked at him. “Where is she?” he repeated.

  The old man’s nose was bleeding profusely. Hendaya placed the barrel of his weapon under his chin and looked him in the eye. Isaac spat in his face.

  A brave one, thought Hendaya. “Come on, Granddad, let’s not make a scene now, you’re a bit over the hill to act the hero. Where’s Alicia Gris?”
>
  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Hendaya smiled. “Do you want me to break your legs, Grandpa? At your age a broken thigh bone doesn’t mend . . .”

  Isaac kept his lips sealed. Hendaya held him by the nape and dragged him inside. They walked through a wide, curved gallery behind which he sensed a fleeting brightness. The walls were covered with frescoes depicting fantastic scenes. Hendaya wondered what sort of a place this was. When they reached the end of the corridor, he found himself facing a gigantic vaulted hall that seemed to rise to the heavens. The sight made him lower his revolver and let Isaac fall like a dead weight.

  It looked like an apparition, a dreamlike vision floating on a cloud of spectral light. A vast labyrinth swirling around itself grew into an uprising of tunnels, walkways, arches, and bridges. The structure seemed to sprout from the very ground, scaling an inconceivable geometry, until it scratched the large opaque-glass dome crowning the vault.

  Hendaya smiled to himself. Hidden in the shadows of an old Barcelona palace was a forbidden city of books and words that he would set fire to after chopping beautiful Alicia Gris up into little bits. This was his lucky day.

  * * *

  Isaac was dragging himself along the floor, leaving a trail of blood. He wanted to call out, but all he could produce was a moan, and he could barely keep himself conscious. He heard the man’s footsteps approaching again and felt his foot between his shoulders, pressing him down on the floor.

  “Steady there, Grandpa.”

  Hendaya grabbed Isaac’s wrist and lugged him to one of the columns supporting the vaulted ceiling. A trio of narrow pipes ran down the column, fastened to the stone with metal hooks. Hendaya pulled out a pair of handcuffs, attached one handcuff to one of the pipes, and closed the other around Isaac’s wrist until he felt it biting into the skin.