The Shadow of the Wind Read Online Free Page B

novel’s publishing house as a second-rate firm, known, if anything, for its books on cookery, sewing, and other lesser handicrafts. The owner of the bookstall told him that when the novel had appeared, it had merited but two scant reviews from provincial dailies, strategically placed next to the obituary notices. The critics had a field day writing Carax off in a few lines, advising him not to leave his employment as a pianist, as it was obvious that he was not going to hit the right note in literature. Monsieur Roquefort, whose heart and pocket softened when faced with lost causes, decided to invest half a franc on the book by the unknown Carax and at the same time took away an exquisite edition of the great master Gustave Flaubert, whose unrecognized successor he considered himself to be.
    The train to Lyons was packed, and Monsieur Roquefort was obliged to share his second-class compartment with a couple of nuns who had given him disapproving looks from the moment they left the Gare d’Austerlitz, mumbling under their breath. Faced with such scrutiny, the teacher decided to extract the novel from his briefcase and barricade himself behind its pages. Much to his surprise, hundreds of kilometers later, he discovered he had quite forgotten about the sisters, the rocking of the train, and the dark landscape sliding past the windows like a nightmare scene from the Lumière brothers. He read all night, unaware of the nuns’ snoring or of the stations that flashed by in the fog. At daybreak, as he turned the last page, Monsieur Roquefort realized that his eyes were tearing up and his heart was poisoned with envy and amazement.
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    T HAT M ONDAY , M ONSIEUR R OQUEFORT CALLED THE PUBLISHER IN Paris to request information on Julián Carax. After much insistence a telephonist with an asthmatic voice and a virulent disposition replied that Carax had no known address and that, anyhow, he no longer had dealings with the firm. She added that, since its publication, The Red House had sold exactly seventy-seven copies, most of which had presumably been acquired by young ladies of easy virtue and other regulars of the club where the author churned out nocturnes and polonaises for a few coins. The remaining copies had been returned and pulped for printing missals, fines, and lottery tickets.
    The mysterious author’s wretched luck won Monsieur Roquefort’s sympathy, and during the following ten years, on each of his visits to Paris, he would scour the secondhand bookshops in search of other works by Julián Carax. He never found a single one. Almost nobody had heard of Carax, and those for whom the name rang a bell knew very little. Some swore he had brought out other books, always with small publishers, and with ridiculous print runs. Those books, if they really existed, were impossible to find. One bookseller claimed he had once had a book by Julián Carax in his hands. It was called The Cathedral Thief, but this was a long time ago, and besides, he wasn’t quite sure. At the end of 1935, news reached Monsieur Roquefort that a new novel by Julián Carax, The Shadow of the Wind, had been published by a small firm in Paris. He wrote to the publisher asking whether he could buy a few copies but never got an answer. The following year, in the spring of 1936, his old friend at the bookstall by the Seine asked him whether he was still interested in Carax. Monsieur Roquefort assured him that he never gave up. It was now a question of stubbornness: if the world was determined to bury Carax, he wasn’t going to go along. His friend then explained that some weeks earlier a rumor about Carax had been doing the rounds. It seemed that at last his fortunes had improved. He was going to marry a lady of good social standing and, after a few years’ silence, had published a novel that, for the first time, had earned him a good review in none less than Le Monde. But just when it seemed that his luck was about to