The Labyrinth of the Spirits Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Information about the Series

  Daniel’s Book

  Dies Irae

  Masked Ball

  Kyrie

  City of Mirrors

  The Forgotten

  Agnus Dei

  Isabella’s Notebook

  Libera Me

  In Paradisum

  Barcelona

  1964

  Julián’s Book

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Information about the Series

  The Cemetery of Forgotten Books

  This book is part of a cycle of novels set in the literary universe of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Although each work within the cycle presents an independent, self-contained tale, they are all connected through characters and storylines, creating thematic and narrative links.

  Each individual installment in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series can be read in any order, or separately, enabling the reader to explore the labyrinth of stories along different paths that, when woven together, lead into the heart of the narrative.

  Daniel’s Book

  1

  That night I dreamed that I was going back to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. I was ten years old again, and again I woke up in my old bedroom feeling that the memory of my mother’s face had deserted me. And the way one knows things in a dream, I knew it was my fault and my fault only, for I didn’t deserve to remember her face because I hadn’t been capable of doing her justice.

  Before long my father came in, alerted by my anguished cries. My father, who in my dream was still a young man and held all the answers in the world, wrapped me in his arms to comfort me. Later, when the first glimmer of dawn sketched a hazy Barcelona, we went down to the street. For some arcane reason he would only come with me as far as the front door. Once there, he let go of my hand, and I understood then that this was a journey I had to undertake on my own.

  I set off, but as I walked I remember that my clothes, my shoes, and even my skin felt heavy. Every step I took required more effort than the previous one. When I reached the Ramblas, I noticed that the city had become frozen in a never-ending instant. Passersby had stopped in their tracks and appeared motionless, like figures in an old photograph. A pigeon taking flight left only the hint of a blurred outline as it flapped its wings. Motes of sparkling dust floated in the air like powdered light. The water of the Canaletas fountain glistened in the void, suspended like a necklace of glass tears.

  Slowly, as if I were trying to advance underwater, I managed to press on across the spell of a Barcelona trapped in time, until I came to the threshold of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. There I paused, exhausted. I couldn’t understand what invisible weight I was pulling behind me that barely allowed me to move. I grabbed the knocker and beat the door with it, but nobody came. I banged the large wooden door with my fists, again and again, but the keeper ignored my pleas. At last I fell on my knees, utterly spent. Then, as I gazed at the curse I had dragged behind me, it suddenly became clear to me that the city and my destiny would be forever caught in that haunting, and that I would never be able to remember my mother’s face.

  * * *

  It was only when I’d abandoned all hope that I discovered it. The piece of metal was hidden in the inside pocket of that school jacket with my initials embroidered in blue. A key. I wondered how long it had been there, unbeknown to me. It was rusty and felt as heavy as my conscience. Even with both hands, I could hardly lift it up into the keyhole. I struggled to turn it with my last bit of breath. But just as I thought I would never manage it, the lock yielded and slowly the large door slid open inward.

  A curved gallery led into the old palace, studded with a trail of flickering candles that lit the way. I plunged into the dark and heard the door closing behind me. Then I recognized the corridor flanked by frescoes of angels and fabulous creatures: they peered at me from the shadows and seemed to move as I went past. I proceeded down the corridor until I reached an archway that opened out into a large hall with a vaulted ceiling. I stopped at the entrance. The labyrinth fanned out before me in an endless mirage. A spiral of staircases, tunnels, bridges, and arches woven together formed an eternal city made up of all the books in the world, swirling toward a grand glass dome high above.

  My mother waited for me at the foot of the structure. She was lying in an open coffin, her hands crossed over her chest, her skin as pale as the white dress that covered her. Her lips were sealed, her eyes closed. She lay inert in the absent rest of lost souls. I moved my hand toward her to stroke her face. Her skin was as cold as marble. Then she opened her eyes and fixed them on me. When her darkened lips parted and she spoke, the sound of her voice was so thunderous it hit me like a cargo train, lifting me off the floor, throwing me into the air, and leaving me suspended in an endless fall while the echo of her words melted the world.

  You must tell the truth, Daniel.

  * * *

  I woke up suddenly in the darkness of the bedroom, drenched in cold sweat, to find Bea’s body lying next to me. She hugged me and stroked my face.

  “Again?” she murmured.

  I nodded and took a deep breath.

  “You were talking. In your dream.”

  “What did I say?”

  “I couldn’t make it out,” Bea lied.

  I looked at her and she smiled at me with pity, I thought, or maybe it was just patience.

  “Sleep a little longer. The alarm clock won’t go off for another hour and a half, and today is Tuesday.”

  Tuesday meant that it was my turn to take Julián to school. I closed my eyes, pretending to fall asleep. When I opened them again a couple of minutes later, I found my wife’s face observing me.

  “What?” I asked.

  Bea leaned over and kissed me gently on my lips. She tasted of cinnamon. “I’m not sleepy either,” she hinted.

  I started to undress her unhurriedly. I was about to pull off the sheets and throw them on the floor when I heard the patter of footsteps behind the bedroom door.

  Bea held back the advance of my left hand between her thighs and propped herself up on her elbows.

  “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

  Standing in the doorway, little Julián looked at us with a touch of shyness and unease. “There’s someone in my room,” he whispered.

  Bea let out a sigh and reached out toward Julián. He ran over to take shelter in his mother’s embrace, and I abandoned all sinful expectations.

  “The Scarlet Prince?” asked Bea.

  Julián nodded shyly.

  “Daddy will go to your room right now and give him such a kicking he’ll never come back again.”

  Our son threw me a desperate look. What use is a father if not for heroic missions of this caliber?

  I smiled at him and winked. “A major kicking,” I repeated, looking as furious as I could.

  Julián allowed himself just a flicker of a smile. I jumped out of bed and walked along the corridor to his bedroom. The room reminded me so much of the one I had at his age, a few floors farther down, that for a moment I wondered if I wasn’t still trapped in my dream. I sat on one side of his bed and switched on the bedside table lamp. Julián lived surrounded by toys, some of which he’d inherited from me, but especially by books. It didn’t take me long to find the culprit, hidden under the mattress. I took that little book with black covers and opened to its first page.

  The Labyrinth of the Spirits VII

  Ariadna and the Scarlet Prince

  Text and illustrations by Víctor Ma
taix

  I no longer knew where to hide those books. However much I sharpened my wits to find new hiding places, my son managed to sniff them out. Leafing quickly through the pages, I was assailed by memories.

  When I returned to our bedroom, having banished the book once more to the top of the kitchen cupboard—where I knew my son would discover it sooner rather than later—I found Julián in his mother’s arms. They had both fallen asleep. I paused in the half-light to watch them from the open door. As I listened to their deep breathing, I asked myself what the most fortunate man in the world had done to deserve his luck. I gazed at them as they slept in each other’s arms, oblivious to the world, and couldn’t help remembering the fear I’d felt the first time I saw them clasped in an embrace.

  2

  I’ve never told anyone, but the night my son Julián was born and I saw him in his mother’s arms for the first time, enjoying the blessed calm of those who are not yet aware what kind of place they’ve arrived at, I felt like running away and not stopping until there was no more world left to run from. At the time I was just a kid and life was still a few sizes too big for me, but however many flimsy excuses I try to conjure up, I still carry the bitter taste of shame at the cowardice that possessed me then—a cowardice that, even after all those years, I have not found the courage to admit to the person who most deserved to know.

  * * *

  The memories we bury under mountains of silence are the ones that never stop haunting us. Mine take me back to a room with an infinitely high ceiling from which a lamp spread its faint ocher-colored light over a bed. There lay a girl, still in her teens, holding a baby in her arms. When Bea, vaguely conscious, looked up and smiled at me, my eyes filled with tears. I knelt by the bed and buried my head in her lap. I felt her holding my hand and pressing it with what little strength she had left.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered.

  But I was. And for a moment whose shame has pursued me ever since, I wanted to be anywhere except in that room and in my own skin. Fermín had witnessed the scene from the door and, as usual, had read my thoughts even before I was able to articulate them. Without granting me a second to open my big mouth, he pulled my arm and, leaving Bea and the baby in the safe company of his fiancée, Bernarda, led me out to the hallway, a long angular corridor that melted into the shadows.

  “Still alive in there, Daniel?” he asked.

  I nodded vaguely as I tried to catch the breath I seemed to have dropped along the way. When I turned to go back into the room, Fermín restrained me.

  “Listen, next time you show your face in there, you could use a bit more composure. Luckily Señora Bea is still half knocked out and almost certainly missed much of the dress rehearsal. If I may make a constructive suggestion, I think a blast of fresh air would do wonders. It would help us get over the shock and allow us to attempt a second landing with a bit more flair.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Fermín grabbed my arm and escorted me down the long passageway. We soon reached a staircase that led to a balustrade suspended somewhere between Barcelona and the heavens. A cold, biting breeze caressed my face.

  “Close your eyes and take three deep breaths,” Fermín advised. “Slowly, as if your lungs reached down to your shoes. It’s a trick I learned from a Tibetan monk I met during a brief but educational stint as receptionist-slash-accountant in a little port-side brothel. The rascal knew his business . . .”

  As instructed, I inhaled three times as deeply as I could, and another three for good measure, taking in the benefits of the pure air promised by Fermín and his Tibetan guru. My head felt a bit giddy, but Fermín steadied me.

  “Mind you don’t go catatonic on me, now,” he said. “Just smarten up a bit. The situation calls for temperance, not petrifaction.”

  I opened my eyes to the sight of deserted streets and the city asleep at my feet. It was around three in the morning, and the Hospital de San Pablo was sunk in a shadowy slumber, its citadel of domes, towers, and arches weaving arabesques through the mist that glided down from the top of Mount Carmelo. I gazed silently at that indifferent Barcelona that can only be seen from hospitals, a city oblivious to the fears and hopes of the beholder, and I let the cold seep in until it cleared my mind.

  “You must think me a coward,” I said.

  Fermín held my gaze and shrugged.“Don’t overplay it. What I think is that you’re a bit low on blood pressure and a bit high on stage panic—which excuses you from responsibility and mockery. Luckily, a solution is at hand.”

  He unbuttoned his raincoat, a vast emporium of wonders that doubled as a mobile herbalist’s shop, museum of odds and ends, and carrier bag of curiosities and relics picked up from a thousand flea markets and third-rate auctions.

  “I don’t know how you can carry all those trinkets around with you, Fermín.”

  “Advanced physics. Since my slender yet toned physique consists mostly of muscular fibers and lean cartilage, this cargo reinforces my gravitational field and provides firm anchoring against forces of nature. And don’t imagine you’re going to distract me that easily with comments that piddle outside the bucket. We haven’t come up here to swap stickers or to whisper sweet nothings.”

  After that bit of advice, Fermín pulled out a tin flask from one of his countless pockets and began unscrewing the top. He sniffed the contents as if he were taking in the perfumes of paradise and smiled approvingly. Then he handed me the bottle and, looking solemnly into my eyes, gave me a nod. “Drink now or repent in the afterlife.”

  I accepted the flask reluctantly. “What’s this? It smells like dynamite.”

  “Nonsense. It’s just a cocktail designed to bring the dead back to life—as well as young boys who feel intimidated by life’s responsibilities. A secret master formula of my own invention, made with firewater and aniseed shaken together with a feisty brandy I buy from the one-eyed gypsy who peddles vaguely legal spirits. The mixture is rounded off with a few drops of Ratafia and Aromas de Montserrat liqueurs for that unmistakable Catalan bouquet.”

  “God almighty.”

  “Come on, this is where you tell the men from the boys. Down the hatch in one gulp, like a legionnaire who crashes a wedding banquet.”

  I obeyed and swallowed the concoction. It tasted like gasoline spiked with sugar. The liquor set my insides on fire, and before I could recover Fermín indicated that I should repeat the operation. Objections and intestinal earthquake aside, I downed the second dose, grateful for the drowsy calm the foul drink had conferred on me.

  “How’s that?” Fermín asked. “Better now? Truly the elixir of champions, eh?”

  I nodded with conviction, gasping and loosening my neck buttons.

  Fermín took the opportunity to take a gulp of his gunge, then put the flask back into his raincoat pocket. “Nothing like recreational chemistry to master the emotions. But don’t get too fond of the trick. Liquor is like rat poison or generosity—the more you make use of it, the less effective it becomes.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Fermín pointed to a pair of Cuban cigars that peeped out of another of his raincoat pockets, but he shook his head and winked at me. “I had kept aside these two Cohibas, stolen on impulse from the humidifier of my future honorary father-in-law, Don Gustavo Barceló, but we’d better keep them for another day. You’re not in the best of shape, and it would be most unwise to leave the little babe fatherless on his opening day.”

  Fermín gave me a friendly slap on the back and let a few seconds go by, allowing time for the fumes of his cocktail to spread through my veins and a mist of drunken sobriety mask the silent panic that had seized me. As soon as he noticed the glazed look in my eyes and the dilated pupils that announced the general stupefaction of my senses, he threw himself into the speech he’d probably been dreaming up all night long.

  “Daniel, my friend. God, or whoever fills in during his absence, has seen fit to make it easier to become a father than to pass one’s driving test. Such
an unhappy circumstance means that a disproportionate legion of cretins, dimwits, and bona fide imbeciles flaunt paternity medals and consider themselves fully qualified to keep procreating and ruining forever the lives of the unfortunate children they spawn like mice. That is why, speaking with the authority bestowed on me by the fact that I too find myself ready to embark on the enterprise of getting my beloved Bernarda knocked up as soon as possible, once my gonads and the holy matrimony certification she is demanding sine qua non allow me—so that I may follow you in this journey of great responsibility that is fatherhood—I must declare, and I do declare that you, Daniel Sempere Gispert, tender youngster on the verge of maturity, despite the thin faith you feel at this moment in yourself and in your feasibility as a paterfamilias, are and will be an exemplary father, even if, generally speaking, sometimes you seem born the day before yesterday and wetter behind the ears than a babe in the woods.”

  By the middle of his oration my mind had already drawn a blank, either as a result of the explosive concoction or thanks to the verbal fireworks set off by my good friend. “Fermín,” I said, “I’m not sure I grasp your meaning.”

  Fermín sighed. “What I meant, Daniel, was that I’m aware that right now you feel you’re about to soil your undies and that all this is overwhelming, but as your saintly wife has informed you, you must not be afraid. Children, at least yours, Daniel, bring joy and a plan with them when they’re born, and so long as one has a drop of decency in one’s soul, and some brains in one’s head, one can find a way to avoid ruining their lives and be a parent they will never have to be ashamed of.”

  I looked out of the corner of my eye at that little man who would have given his life for me and who always had a word, or ten thousand, with which to solve my every problem and my occasional lapses into a state of spiritual indecision. “Let’s hope it’s as easy as you describe it, Fermín.”