The Shadow of the Wind Read Online Free PDF Page B

it. I could try to tell you the story, but it would be like describing a cathedral by saying it's a pile of stones ending in a spire.'
     
    'I'm sure you'd tell it much better than that,' I spluttered.
     
    Women have an infallible instinct for knowing when a man has fallen madly in love with them, especially when the male in question is both young and a complete dunce. I fulfilled all the requirements for Clara Barcelo to send me packing, but I preferred to think that her blindness afforded me a margin for error and that my crime - my complete and pathetic devotion to a woman twice my age, my intelligence, and my height - would remain in the dark. I wondered what on earth she saw in me that could make her want to befriend me, other than a pale reflection of herself, an echo of solitude and loss. In my schoolboy reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams.
     
    When Barcelo returned wearing a feline smile, two hours had passed. To me they had seemed like two minutes. The bookseller handed me the book and winked.
     
    'Have a good look at it, little dumpling. I don't want you coming back to me saying I've switched it, eh?'
     
    'I trust you,' I said.
     
    'Stuff and nonsense. The last man who said that to me (a tourist who was convinced that Hemingway had invented the fabada stew during the San Fermin bull run) bought a copy of Hamlet signed by Shakespeare in ballpoint, imagine that. So keep your eyes peeled. In the book business you can't even trust the index.'
     
    It was getting dark when we stepped out into Calle Canuda. A fresh breeze combed the city, and Barcelo removed his coat and put it over Clara's shoulders. Seeing no better opportunity, I tentatively let slip that if they thought it was all right, I could drop by their home the following day to read a few chapters of The Shadow of the Wind to Clara. Barcelo looked at me out of the corner of his eye and gave a hollow laugh.
     
    'Boy, you're getting ahead of yourself!' he muttered, although his tone implied consent.
     
    'Well, if that's not convenient, perhaps another day or . . .'
     
    'It's up to Clara,' said the bookseller. 'We've already got seven cats and two cockatoos. One more creature won't make much difference.'
     
    'I'll see you tomorrow, then, around seven,' concluded Clara. 'Do you know the address?'

 
    5
     
    There was a time, in my childhood, when, perhaps because I had been raised among books and booksellers, I dreamed of becoming a novelist. The root of my literary ambitions, apart from the marvellous simplicity with which one sees things at the age of five, lay in a prodigious piece of craftsmanship and precision that was exhibited in a fountain pen shop on Calle Anselmo Clave, just behind the Military Government building. The object of my devotion, a plush black pen, adorned with heaven knows how many refinements and flourishes, presided over the shop window as if it were the crown jewels. A baroque fantasy magnificently wrought in silver and gold that shone like the lighthouse at Alexandria, the nib was a wonder in its own right. When my father and I went out for a walk, I wouldn't stop pestering him until he took me to see the pen. My father declared that it must be, at the very least, the pen of an emperor. I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopaedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations. Written with that pen, they would surely reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.
     
    One day we decided to go into the shop and inquire about the blessed artefact. It turned out to be the queen of all fountain pens, a Montblanc Meisterstuck in a numbered series, that had once belonged, or so the shop attendant assured us, to Victor Hugo himself. From