The Labyrinth of the Spirits

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

  The parish priest, who was aware of Juan’s convictions, or his lack of them, always welcomed him, reminding him that this was his home, whatever he believed. “We each live our faith in our own way,” he would say. “But don’t quote me, or they’ll send me off to the missions, hoping I get eaten by an anaconda.” The bookseller always replied that he wasn’t a man of faith, but that in that chapel he felt closer to Isabella, if only because it had been the scene of their marriage and her funeral, separated by just five years, the only happy years he remembered having lived.

  That Sunday morning, as usual, Juan Sempere sat in the last pew to hear mass and watch how the early birds of the neighborhood—a mishmash of devout women and sinners, lonely people, insomniacs, optimists, and those retired from the business of hope—came together to beseech the Lord, in his infinite silence, to remember them and their fleeting existences. He could see the priest’s breath sketching prayers of vapor as he spoke. The congregation listed toward the only gas heater the parish church’s budget allowed, but even that appliance, despite the assistance of Madonnas and saints who interceded from their niches, could not work miracles.

  The priest was about to consecrate the Holy Host and drink the wine that, in that bitter cold, the bookseller wouldn’t have said no to, when he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye a figure sliding down the pew and sitting down next to him. Sempere turned to find his son Daniel, whom he hadn’t seen in church since his wedding day. All he needed now was to see Fermín come in holding a missal to decide that in fact his alarm clock had gone on strike, and what he was seeing was just part of a pleasant winter Sunday’s dream.

  “Everything all right?” asked Juan.

  Daniel nodded with a meek smile and turned to look at the priest, who was starting to distribute communion among the parishioners while the organist, a music teacher who made Sunday appearances at various churches in the area and was a customer at the bookshop, played as best he could.

  “Judging by the crimes committed against Johann Sebastian Bach, Maestro Clemente’s fingers must be frozen stiff this morning,” he added.

  Daniel nodded again. Sempere gazed at his son, who for some days now had seemed lost in thought. Daniel carried inside him a world of absences and silence that Sempere had never been able to enter. He often recalled that dawn, fifteen years ago, when his son had woken up screaming because he could no longer remember his mother’s face. That morning the bookseller had taken him for the first time to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, perhaps hoping that the place and what it signified might fill the emptiness that losing Isabella had left in their lives. He had watched him grow and become a man, get married, and bring a child into the world, and yet he still woke up every morning fearing for him and wishing Isabella were by his side, to tell him the things he would never be able to say. A parent never sees his children grow old. To a father’s eyes, they always seem like those kids who once looked up at him with veneration, convinced that he had the answers to all the mysteries of the universe.

  That morning, however, in the half-light of a chapel far from God and from the world, the bookseller looked at his son and for the first time thought that time had begun to pass for him too, that he would never again see the boy who lived only to remember the face of a mother who would never return. Sempere tried to find words with which to tell Daniel that he understood, that he was not alone, but the darkness hanging over his son like a poisoned shadow scared him. Daniel turned toward his father, and Sempere read anger and hatred in his eyes such as he’d never seen, not even in the eyes of old men whose lives had already been condemned to misery.

  “Daniel . . . ,” he whispered.

  His son put his arms around him, hushing him and holding him tight, as if he feared something might snatch him away. The bookseller couldn’t see his face, but he knew his son was weeping silently. And for the first time since Isabella had left them, he prayed for him.

  2

  The bus left them at the gates of Montjuïc Cemetery shortly before noon. Daniel took Julián in his arms and waited for Bea to get down first. Never before had they taken the boy there. A cold sun had burned away the clouds, and the sky projected an expanse of metallic blue that seemed out of place with the scenery. They walked through the portal of the city of the dead and began their ascent. The path running along the hillside bordered the old part of the graveyard built at the end of the nineteenth century and was flanked by mausoleums and tombs of theatrical architecture that invoked angels and phantoms wrought in intricate chaos to the greater glory of the vast fortunes and families of Barcelona.

  Bea had always detested visiting the city of the dead, where all she saw was a morbid staging of death and a poor attempt at convincing terrified visitors that ancestry and good names persevere even in the hereafter. She deplored the idea that an army of architects, sculptors, and artisans had sold their talents to construct such a sumptuous necropolis and populate it with statues in which the spirits of death leaned over to kiss the foreheads of children born before the days of penicillin, where ghostly damsels were trapped in spells of eternal melancholy, and where inconsolable angels, stretching out over marble tombstones, wept the loss of some rich colonial butcher who had earned both fortune and glory through the slave trade and the bloodstained sugar of the Caribbean islands. In Barcelona, even death dressed up on Sundays. Bea detested that place, but she could never say that to Daniel.

  * * *

  Little Julián gazed at all that grotesque carnival of earthly vanities with haunted eyes. He pointed at the figures and labyrinthine structures of the mausoleums with a mixture of fear and amazement.

  “They’re just statues, Julián,” his mother told him. “They can’t do anything to you, because there isn’t anything here.”

  As soon as she’d uttered those words, she was sorry. Daniel didn’t look as if he’d heard them. He’d barely parted his lips since he’d returned home in the early hours without explaining where he’d been. He’d lain down next to her in the bed, without speaking, but hadn’t slept at all.

  At daybreak, when Bea asked him what was wrong, Daniel stared at her but said nothing. Then he undressed her angrily. He took her forcibly without looking her in the face, holding down her arms over her head with one hand and brusquely opening her legs with the other.

  “Daniel, you’re hurting me. Stop, please. Stop.”

  He ignored her protests and charged at her with a fury Bea couldn’t remember, until she freed her hands and stuck her nails into his back. Daniel cried out in pain, and she pushed him to one side with all her strength. As soon as she’d gotten rid of him, Bea jumped out of the bed and covered herself with a dressing gown. She wanted to shout at him, but she withheld her tears. Daniel had curled up into a ball on the bed and was avoiding her eyes.

  Bea took a deep breath. “Don’t ever do that again, Daniel. Ever. Have you understood? Look at me and answer.”

  He looked up and nodded. Bea locked herself in the bathroom until she heard the door of the apartment close behind Daniel. An hour later, he came back. He’d bought some flowers.

  “I don’t want flowers.”

  “I thought I’d go and visit my mother,” said Daniel.

  Sitting at the table and holding a cup of milk, little Julián observed his parents and noticed that something wasn’t right. You could fool the whole world most of the time, but never Julián, not for a minute, thought Bea.

  “Then we’ll come with you,” she replied.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I said we’ll come with you.”

  * * *

  When they reached the foot of the small hill crowned by a terrace overlooking the sea, Bea stopped. She knew Daniel wanted to visit his mother alone. He tried to hand the child to her, but Julián refused to leave his father’s arms.

  “Take him with you. I’ll wait for you down here.”

  3

  Daniel knelt down in front of the headstone and left the flowers next to it. He strok
ed the letters engraved on the stone:

  ISABELLA SEMPERE

  1917–1939

  He remained there with his eyes closed until Julián started to babble in that incomprehensible tone he adopted when he had something on his mind.

  “What’s the matter, Julián?”

  His son was pointing at something at the foot of the headstone. A small figure peeped through the petals of some dried flowers in the shadow of a glass vase. It looked like a plaster statuette. Daniel was quite sure it hadn’t been there the last time he’d visited his mother’s grave. He picked it up and examined it. An angel.

  Julián, who was staring at the figurine with fascination, leaned over and tried to snatch it. When he did so, the angel slipped, fell on the marble, and broke. It was then that Daniel noticed something sticking out from one of the two halves: a piece of rolled-up paper. He set Julián down and picked up the angel figure. When he unrolled the paper, he recognized Alicia Gris’s handwriting:

  Mauricio Valls

  El Pinar

  Calle Manuel Arnús

  Barcelona

  Julián was looking at Daniel attentively. Daniel kept the piece of paper in his pocket and gave the boy a smile that didn’t seem to convince him. He was observing his father the way he did when he had a fever and lay on the sofa. Daniel left a white rose on the gravestone and picked his son up again.

  Bea was waiting for them at the foot of the little hill. When he was by her side, Daniel hugged her without saying a word. He wanted to beg her forgiveness for what had happened that morning and for everything else, but couldn’t find the words.

  Bea’s eyes found his. “Are you all right, Daniel?”

  He hid behind that smile that hadn’t convinced Julián, and convinced Bea even less. “I love you,” he said.

  That night, after putting Julián to bed, they made love slowly in the half-light. Daniel passed his lips over her body as if he feared it was the last time he’d be able to do so. Then, as they lay in each other’s arms, under the blankets, Bea whispered in his ear: “I’d like to have another child. A girl. Would you like that?”

  Daniel nodded and kissed her forehead. He went on caressing her until Bea fell asleep. Then he waited for her breathing to turn slow and heavy. He got up quietly, gathered his clothes, and put them on in the dining room. Before leaving, he stopped in front of Julián’s bedroom and opened the door a fraction. His son was sleeping peacefully, hugging a cuddly crocodile Fermín had given him, which was twice his size. Julián had christened it “Carlitos,” and there was no way he would go to sleep without it, despite all Bea’s attempts to substitute for it something more manageable.

  Daniel resisted the temptation to go into the bedroom and kiss his son. Julián was a light sleeper and had a particularly sensitive radar for his parents’ movements around the house. When he closed the door of the apartment, he wondered whether he would ever see him again.

  4

  Daniel jumped onto the night tram from Plaza de Cataluña just as it was starting the slide along the rails. There were only about half a dozen passengers inside, all hunched up with cold, swaying to the rattling of the tram with their eyes half closed, oblivious to the world. Nobody would remember having seen him there.

  For about half an hour the tram climbed up the city streets, meeting hardly any traffic. They went past deserted stops, leaving a trail of blue sparks on the cables and a smell of electricity and burned wood. Every now and then one of the passengers came back to life, staggered to the back exit, and got off without waiting for the tram to stop. During the last stretch of the ascent, from the corner of Vía Augusta and Calle Balmes to Avenida del Tibidabo, Daniel traveled alone with only a lethargic conductor who snoozed on his stool at the back and the driver, a little man joined to the world by a cigar that shed plumes of yellowish smoke smelling of gasoline.

  When he reached the final stop, the driver let out a celebratory puff and rang the bell. Daniel stepped out, leaving behind him the amber bubble of light surrounding the tram. In front of him, unfolding toward a vanishing point, was Avenida del Tibidabo, with its parade of mansions and palaces scaling the mountainside. High above, a silent sentinel keeping watch over the city, stood the silhouette of El Pinar. Daniel felt his heart racing. He pulled his coat tight and started walking.

  As he went past number 32 in the avenue he looked up to gaze at the old house of the Aldayas from the gate, and was overcome by memories. In that large old house he’d found and almost lost his life an eternity ago—that is to say, a few years back. Had Fermín been with him, he would surely have found a way of improvising some irony about how that avenue seemed to describe his destiny and how only a fool would think of carrying out what he had in mind while his wife and child slept their last night of peace on earth. Perhaps he should have brought Fermín along with him. He would have done everything in his power to stop him, and not allowed him to do anything crazy. Fermín would have come between him and his duty, or simply his dark desire for vengeance. That is why he knew that, that night, he had to face his destiny alone.

  When he reached the small square that crowned the avenue, Daniel kept in the shadows. He walked toward the road surrounding the hill above which loomed the dark, angular silhouette of El Pinar. From a distance the house looked as if it was perched in the night sky. Only when one drew closer did one become aware of the size of the estate surrounding it and the huge scale of the building. The grounds—a landscaped mountain—were surrounded by a stone wall that bordered the road. An adjoining villa crowned with a tower guarded the main entrance, whose ornate wrought-iron gate dated from the days when metal work was still an art form. Farther down was another entrance, a stone porch built into the wall with a lintel announcing the name of the mansion. Behind that second entrance, a long maze of steps wound its way up through the gardens. It looked like a long climb. The gate seemed as solid as the one at the main entrance, and Daniel concluded that he’d have to climb the wall, vault over, and reach the house by walking through the trees, hoping he wouldn’t be seen. He wondered whether there were any dogs, or hidden guards. From the outside he couldn’t see any lights. El Pinar emitted a funereal air of loneliness and neglect.

  After a couple of minutes’ observation, he chose a point in the wall that seemed more sheltered by the trees. The stone there was damp and slippery, and it took him a few tries before he could reach the top and jump over to the other side. As soon as he’d landed on the blanket of pine needles and fallen branches, he felt the temperature drop around him, as if he’d entered an underground tunnel.

  Daniel began to climb stealthily up the hill, stopping every few meters to listen to the murmur of the breeze through the leaves. After a while he reached a stone path that led from the main entrance to the esplanade surrounding the house. He followed it until the facade rose before him. He scanned the area around him, which was enveloped in silence and a dense gloom. If there was anyone else in that place, they had no intention of making their presence known.

  The building rested in shadow, the windows dark. The only sounds were those of his own footsteps and the wind whistling through the trees. Even by the faint light of the moon, Daniel could tell that El Pinar had been virtually abandoned for years. He gazed around, puzzled. He’d expected guards, dogs, or some sort of armed surveillance. Perhaps he had secretly been hoping for it—for someone who might try to stop him. There was nobody.

  He walked over to one of the large windows and pushed his face against the cracked pane, seeing only darkness inside. He walked around the structure and came to a small patio adjoining a glazed gallery. He peered inside but didn’t see any light or movement. Grabbing a stone, he broke a glass pane in the door, then put his hand through the gap and opened it from the inside. The smell of the house embraced him like an old, wicked spirit that had been waiting anxiously for him. He took a few steps forward, and noticed that he was shaking, and still holding the stone in his hand. He didn’t let go of it.

  The ga
llery led to a rectangular space that must once have been a formal dining room. Daniel walked through it and into a sitting room with large, intricately shaped windows, from which one could gaze down on the whole of Barcelona, more distant than ever. He went on exploring the house, feeling as if he was walking through the hull of a sunken ship. The furniture was shrouded by a pale murkiness, the walls darkened, the curtains frayed or fallen. At the heart of the house was an inner courtyard, its walls rising to a cracked roof through which beams of moonlight fell like swords of steam. He heard a low sound and a flapping of wings up high. On one side stood a sumptuous marble staircase, more suited to an opera house than a private home. Next to the stairs was an old chapel. The face of a Christ nailed to the cross could be made out in the half-light, tears of blood rolling down his cheeks and an accusatory look in his eyes. Farther on, beyond the doors to various closed rooms, a larger open door seemed to sink into the very bowels of the mansion. Daniel walked over to it and stopped. A light draft brushed his face, and with it came a smell. Wax.

  He took a few more steps forward through a corridor and saw a more ordinary-looking staircase, once used, he assumed, by the staff. A few meters farther on, the corridor opened up into an ample room with a table in the middle, and near it, some fallen chairs. It was the old kitchen area, Daniel realized. The smell of wax came from there. A soft flickering light illuminated the surrounding walls and a large dark stain on the table, left by something that had spilled over the edge and splashed on the floor like a liquid shadow. Blood.

  “Who goes there?”

  The voice sounded almost more scared than Daniel himself. He stopped and searched for cover among the shadows as footsteps slowly approached.