Read The Shadow of the Wind for Free Online

day,” mumbled my father.
    Once we were out in the street again, he told me in a subdued voice that we couldn’t afford the asking price. The bookshop provided just enough to keep us afloat and send me to a decent school. The great Victor Hugo’s Montblanc pen would have to wait. I didn’t say anything, but my father must have noticed my disappointment.
    â€œI tell you what we’ll do,” he proposed. “When you’re old enough to start writing, we’ll come back and buy it.”
    â€œWhat if someone buys it first?”
    â€œNo one is going to take this one, you can be quite sure. And if not, we can ask Don Federico to make us one. That man has the hands of a master.”
    Don Federico was the neighborhood watchmaker, an occasional customer at the bookshop, and probably the most polite and courteous man in the whole of the Northern Hemisphere. His reputation as a craftsman preceded him from the Ribera quarter to the Ninot Market. Another reputation haunted him as well, this one of a less salubrious nature, related to his erotic leanings toward muscular young men from the more virile ranks of the proletariat, and to a certain penchant for dressing up like the music-hall star Estrellita Castro.
    â€œWhat if Don Federico is no good at fancy-pen stuff?” I asked, unaware that to less innocent ears, the phrase might have had a salacious echo.
    My father arched an eyebrow, fearing perhaps that some foul rumors might have sullied my innocence.
    â€œDon Federico is very knowledgeable about all things German and could make a Volkswagen if he put his mind to it. Besides, I’d like to find out whether fountain pens existed in Victor Hugo’s day. There are a lot of con artists about.”
    My father’s zeal for historical fact checking left me cold. I believed obstinately in the pen’s illustrious past, even though I didn’t think it was such a bad idea for Don Federico to make me a substitute. There would be time enough to reach the heights of Victor Hugo. To my consolation, and true to my father’s predictions, the Montblanc pen remained for years in that shop window, which we visited religiously every Saturday morning.
    â€œIt’s still there,” I would say, astounded.
    â€œIt’s waiting for you,” my father would say. “It knows that one day it will be yours and that you’ll write a masterpiece with it.”
    â€œI want to write a letter. To Mommy. So that she doesn’t feel lonely.”
    My father regarded me. “Your mother isn’t lonely, Daniel. She’s with God. And with us, even if we can’t see her.”
    This very same theory had been formulated for me in school by Father Vicente, a veteran Jesuit, expert at expounding on all the mysteries of the universe—from the gramophone to a toothache—quoting the Gospel According to Matthew. Yet on my father’s lips, the words sounded hollow.
    â€œAnd what does God want her for?”
    â€œI don’t know. If one day we see Him, we’ll ask Him.”
    Eventually I discarded the idea of the celestial letter and concluded that, while I was at it, I might as well begin with the masterpiece—that would be more practical. In the absence of the pen, my father lent me a Staedler pencil, a number two, with which I scribbled in a notebook. Unsurprisingly, my story told of an extraordinary fountain pen, remarkably similar to the one in the shop, though enchanted. To be more precise, the pen was possessed by the tortured soul of its previous owner, a novelist who had died of hunger and cold. When the pen fell into the hands of an apprentice, it insisted on reproducing on paper the author’s last work, which he had not been able to finish in his lifetime. I don’t remember where I got that idea from, but I never again had another one like it. My attempts to re-create the novel on the pages of my notebook turned out to be disastrous. My syntax