The Shadow of the Wind

October in Barcelona, Daniel remarks, is his favorite time of year. He delivers an order to Professor Velazquez and discovers that the student with whom the Professor is speaking is Beatriz Aguilar, his arch nemesis and Tomás’ sister. They talk, and Bea attempts to create a truce, but out of jealousy and pride, Daniel insults her fiancé, creating friction between them again. To apologize once more, Daniel promises to show her a side to Barcelona that she has never seen. Daniel is keen to keep her from marrying her doltish fiancé and wants to spend time with Bea. 

He continues his quest to track down information about Julián Carax, arriving at the building where Julián’s father, Antoni Fortuny, ran a hat shop below their apartment. Showing the caretaker the picture left behind in the bookshop, she confirms that Julián went to Paris in 1918 or 1919 to escape the draft and died there soon after his arrival, according to Mr. Fortuny. The shop has been closed for the last twelve years.

Daniel tells the caretaker, Doña Aurora, that Julián is not dead: he lived in Paris until at least 1935 before returning to Barcelona. The caretaker is overjoyed, and she opens up to Daniel, revealing that Mr. Fortuny used to beat his wife, Julián’s mother, unmercifully and that Julián is not Mr. Fortuny’s son. Julián’s best friend was a boy from the wealthy Aldaya family, and Julián spent a lot of time with his friend’s family.

Daniel talks the caretaker into letting him into the Fortuny’s old apartment. Daniel sees footprints in the dust and realizes that someone has been inside recently. He also finds old photographs. While the caretaker repeatedly calls Daniel a “devil,” her curiosity compels her to go along with Daniel’s search in the apartment (117, 120). They find a locked bedroom and a golden key inside a music box in a different bedroom.

Daniel unlocks Julián’s bedroom. Crucifixes cover the room’s walls, ceiling, floors, and furniture. Daniel and the caretaker are astounded; both of them see the recent footprints all around the room. Daniel finds a picture of the girl in his photo: the back says “Penélope, who loves you” (122). Daniel asks the caretaker for the letter that came for Julián after his “death,” and the caretaker gives it to him, telling him that it is a love letter that made her cry.

Following up on Doña Aurora’s suggestion, Daniel heads to the administrator’s office. Mr. Molins tells Daniel all he knows about the Fortuny/Carax family. Sophie Carax, Julián’s mother, met Antoni Fortuny in 1899. He pursued her, but she did not return his feelings. However, he persisted, and after four months, Sophie, who had no family to turn to for support or guidance, agreed to marry him.

Not knowing anything about about sex, Mr. Fortuny beat his wife when she tried to initiate intercourse with him, calling her a whore. Six months later, Sophie confessed that she was pregnant by another man. Fortuny knew that his father had beaten his mother, so he beat Sophie. He treated her like a servant, relegating her to a dark, cold room at the back of the apartment. They never lived as husband and wife again; Fortuny beat Sophie frequently and brutally enough for her to be sent to the hospital three times.

Though he tried to have affection for Julián, the hat maker never understood Julián and believed that the devil sent Julián to mock him. Julián told fantastic and imaginative stories featuring surreal visions such as buildings walking and swallowing each other. Julián preferred fantasy to reality because he grew up in a warped family full of guilt, remorse, anger, and disappointment. Fantasy was Julián’s escape.

When he returns to the bookshop, Daniel finds that Bea has been there to say that she will see Daniel on Friday for their date. Fermín encourages Daniel to pursue Bea, despite her military fiancé. Fermín also declares his love for Bernarda, whom he insists he will endeavor to make happy for the rest of her life.

Inspector Javier Fumero enters the bookshop, “like a curse dressed in Sunday best” (135) threatening Daniel and accusing him of hanging out with criminals, specifically the cross-dressing watchmaker, Don Frederico, and the alleged con-man, Fermín. Daniel asks Fumero to leave, gaining him as an enemy.

Daniel reads Penélope Aldaya’s letter to Julián. In the letter, she declares that she understands his feeling of betrayal over their missed meeting him at the train station. Someday, she hopes that he will know that she always loved him and always will.

The next day, Daniel visits Penélope’s old home, a famous mansion in Barcelona. The caretaker of a neighboring estate tells Daniel that Jorge Aldaya left Barcelona and moved to Argentina. The rest of the family he did not know about. Having arrived in the neighborhood in 1920, he knew nothing about a Penélope Aldaya. However, the neighborhood largely believes the abandoned house is haunted, emitting sounds of sobbing at night. Daniel imagines himself as Julián, holding that picture of Penélope with a hopeful future ahead of him.

Daniel puts Nuria’s address, given to him by Isaac Monfort, in his wallet on Friday morning. A neighbor, Merceditas, brings a present of apples into the bookshop. Merceditas likes Daniel’s father, but Daniel’s father is not interested in any other women, despite the death of his wife so many years before. Daniel wishes that his father would accept Merceditas’ friendship and move on in his life.

A high school teacher, Don Anacleto, rushes into the shop with bad news. Don Frederico has been arrested by the State Police while he was in the act of singing and dancing dressed up as a woman in a seedy nightclub. Unfortunately, Inspector Fumero was on duty at police headquarters, and he ordered Don Frederico to be placed in a cell with a group of known thugs. The thugs proceeded to beat, rape, and urinate on Don Frederico.

Daniel tells his father about Inspector Fumero’s visit and his threats against Fermín. They resolve to do what they can to protect him from Fumero.

The neighborhood rallies around Don Frederico, whose kindness and thoughtful, neighborly gestures over the years had won everyone over. Both the men and women of the neighborhood take turns caring for the humiliated and traumatized man, who was dumped, nearly naked, bloody, broken, and sobbing, on his own doorstep.

Daniel visits Nuria Monfort, in his continued search for information about Julián Carax. She reluctantly agrees to talk with Daniel. She is a beautiful woman with fine porcelain skin and graying hair; Daniel uses angelic language in describing her.

Upstairs in her apartment, Nuria tells Daniel that her husband, Miquel Moliner, has been in prison for the last two years, after being arrested for printing political leaflets. When questioned about Julián, she explains that she was the secretary to the publisher of Julián’s novels, Mr. Cabestany. Since she speaks French, Italian, and a little German, he put her in charge of communicating with foreign authors and publishers. She met Julián in the course of her duties, once spending a week staying in Julián’s Paris apartment to save the expense of a hotel. Though she believes that her father thinks that she had an affair with Julián, she denies it. To her, Julián lived in a world of his own, living “‘within himself, for his books and inside them—a comfortable prison of his own design’”(166).

She goes on to describe Julián’s terrible childhood in which the hatter beat and abused his mother and then would come into Julián’s room and call him a “‘son of sin,’” with a “ weak and despicable personality,’” who would fail at all he attempted to do in life (167). Julián’s mother, Sophie, took him to Paris as soon as he was old enough for the army, leaving the abusive and ignorant hatter alone.

Nuria doubts the rumors of Julián’s engagement to a rich widow and the duel. She stated that she received a phone call from the morgue shortly before the start of the Civil War. The morgue attendant claimed to have received the body of Julián Carax three days before; he was found in an alleyway, dressed in rags with a bullet in his heart. His only possessions were a copy of The Shadow of the Wind and his passport. Before Nuria could intervene, Julián’s father—the hatter—had denied that the dead man was his son, and Julián was buried in a mass grave. Her complaints to the government to investigate Julián’s death only resulted in a visit from the sinister Inspector Fumero, who threatened Nuria into silence.

Nuria stated that she heard nothing more about Julián until a man called Laín Coubert visited the publishers office, making an offer for all of Julián’s remaining books. When Cabestany’s son got greedy and made a counteroffer, Coubert withdrew his offer, and the warehouse went up in flames later that night. Nuria had an intuition about Coubert, so she removed a single copy of each of Julián’s books from the publisher’s office and hid them in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

Nuria compares Daniel to Julián, stating that they have similar mannerisms and ways of speaking. As he is preparing to leave, Daniel feels deeply attracted to Nuria’s beauty and sadness. He attempts to kiss her, but she stops him.

Daniel meets Bea for their date. Both confess that they nearly did not come, and Bea stresses that she is determined to marry her fiancé, Pablo, no matter what Daniel says. As they talk, it becomes clear that Bea is not as certain as she says she is, and she admits that she does not know whether she loves Pablo or not. Daniel sticks to his promise. He tells her the entire story from the beginning, his admiration for The Shadow of the Wind and his obsession with Julián Carax’s life, which he sees as mirroring his own. He does show her a side of Barcelona that she has never seen before and would never forget: the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Fascinated, Bea chooses a book of her own: Tess of the D’Ubervilles. She says that she feels like that book had been waiting for her “‘since before I was born’” (182). Daniel kisses Bea and then walks her home.

Fermín is still working in the bookshop when Daniel arrives home that night after midnight. Fermín is taking a shift caring for Don Frederico, the watchmaker. Fermín asks Daniel for his opinion on whether Fermín will make a good father: he is deeply in love with Bernarda, and he wants to get married and have a family with her. Daniel reassures him. Fermín discovered that Nuria Monfort signs for the mail directed to the Fortuny/Carax apartment rental firm. She lied to Daniel.

Fermín and Daniel work in the bookstore the next day, Saturday, and Tomás Aguilar arrives. He tells Daniel that their tyrannical father screamed at Bea until 4 AM, insisting that she reveal whom she was with, staying out so late. Daniel is distressed and admits that he was with Bea. Tomás is not happy about his friend dating his engaged sister. 

Over Sunday breakfast, Fermín and Daniel review what they know so far in the mystery of Julián Carax’s life and apparent death. The story begins with the friendship between Jorge Aldaya and Julián Carax, inseparable best friends until Julián’s romance with Penélope came between them. Daniel sees the parallels to his own situation immediately.

Julián then runs off to Paris in 1919, leaving Penélope locked up by her family and his friendship with Jorge ruined. Penélope’s letter, given to Daniel by the caretaker at the Fortuny/Carax apartment, never reaches Julián. Julián remains in Paris, making his living by playing piano in a bordello and writing novels by day, which he publishes through Mr. Cabestany. At some point, Julián agrees to marry a wealthy woman who appears to be his benefactor so that he can inherit her wealth. However, Jorge Aldaya arrives in Paris, and Julián fights a duel on his wedding day, never making it to the altar.

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, Julián returns to Barcelona. His body is found some weeks later in an alley; he has been shot to death. Soon thereafter, a man calling himself Laín Coubert, the name of a devil from one of Julián’s novels, begins buying up Carax’s novels and burning them.

The two friends proceed to visit Julián’s old school, San Gabriel’s School. Father Fernando, one of the priests, admits that he was at school with Julián and Jorge Aldaya. Fermín and Daniel lie to the priest to get him to talk to them, asserting that Daniel might be Julián’s son.

Father Fernando Ramos tells them that he and Julián became friends because they were both scholarship kids, unlike the rest of the boys who came from wealthy families. Julián came to the school in 1914. Mr. Aldaya got Julián into the school. Julián’s best friend, however, was a boy named Miquel Moliner, who was from an extremely wealthy family.

The priest tells the story of how Don Aldaya frequented the Fortuny hat shop and met Julián there. Impressed with Julián’s intelligence and straightforward manner, he decides to pay for Julián’s education at San Gabriel’s School. He also introduces Julián to his son, Jorge, and they become good friends. Julián spends a lot of time with the Aldaya family, and he meets Penélope Aldaya, Jorge’s sister, too. Don Aldaya constantly belittles his son. For example, he berates Jorge and calls him stupid in front of Julián.

The priest continues by describing a third member of the school friendship circle, Miquel Moliner, who, like Julián, lost his mother at a young age. The son of an arms tycoon, Miquel is brilliant and eccentric, speaking to the staff in German and making friends among the boys who would not inherit fortunes.

Julián also befriends one other boy, the son of the caretaker at the school, Francisco Javier Fumero. A strange and awkward boy, Javier behaves in an odd way, confessing to torturing and killing cats and pigeons and to his mother climbing into his bed at night and fondling him. Julián struggles to create a friendship with Javier, whose father is a good, but unintelligent, man and whose mother believes herself to be a femme fatal, but becomes the school joke when she parades around within sight of the schoolboys in her underwear. Humiliated by his parents, Javier grows stranger and stranger. Miquel Moliner warns Julián that Javier is obsessed with Julián, and that the boy has the “‘heart of a spider’” (214).

Javier is also obsessed with Penélope Aldaya. When he is still a boy, Fumero shoots his mother’s head off with a shotgun in front of his father. The police, unable to conceive that Javier killed her on purpose, record her death as a tragic accident. The priest also confesses that Javier tried to kill Julián with his father’s shotgun while they were all still at school together. Only a quick maneuver by Miquel, who jumped on Javier, saved Julián. In the end, Father Fernando realizes that Daniel is not Julián’s son, and Daniel and Fermín admit to their true interest: learning about Julián’s life and tracking down his killer and his books. Father Fernando once had a copy of each of Julián’s books, but he found them burned in his room one day.

Fermín and Daniel discuss the priest’s information; both are shaken by Fumero’s entry into the story. They decide that they are unable to put all the pieces of Julián’s story together because of people’s either deliberate or protective lies. Fermín also gives Julián advice: to go after Bea without wasting any more time because life is precious and fleeting. Fermín tells Daniel that he must go after his destiny: in this case, a relationship with Bea.

As he walks toward the shop, Daniel sees Bea looking in a shop window. She asks him to meet her at 4 PM in the Aldayas’ deserted house.

Julián meets Bea inside the Aldayas’ mansion. Bea begins to tell Julián a part of the story that she knows because her father’s realty business has been trying to sell the mansion for 20 years. No one will buy it because it is thought to be haunted.

The Aldayas’ mansion, known by the name of “The Angel of the Mist,” has a grim and bloody past, according to Bea’s information. A wealthy businessman, Salvador Jausà, commissioned the building of the house, bringing his American wife to town along with a mulatto maid named Marisela, who was assumed to be Jausà’s lover, a witch, and a sorceress (233).

Within a year, a horrifying tragedy occurs. Jausà is found handcuffed to a chair in his study, naked and incoherent. His wife lies dead upstairs, wearing only her jewels. She was pregnant when she died. Blood spatter covers the walls all over the house, and the maid, Marisela, is found dead, having slit her own wrists. The angel statues in the garden were also defaced and one was thrown into the fountain at the front of the house. The investigators decide that Marisela poisoned the Jausàs, then committed suicide. Several deadly poisons are found in her room. Somehow, Jausà escaped death, but at a tremendous cost: he gradually lost his hearing and ability to speak, half of his body was paralyzed, and he suffered great pain.

Jausà chose to continue the investigation, bringing in cinematographers who purported to film spirits in the house. Jausà, of course, has lost his mind. Don Aldaya wants to buy the house, and Jausà invites him over to see it. Where Jausà sees spirits in these films, Don Aldaya sees only blots and stains. By the end of the night, Jausà has transferred most of his wealth to Don Aldaya, including the house. Don Jausà disappears shortly thereafter.

A few months later, Don Aldaya moves his family into the home. There are many disturbing occurrences, including cold drafts, loud banging noises, and nauseating smells. Penélope Aldaya is born two weeks after the family moves into the house. Objects, including Mrs. Aldaya’s jewelry and the children’s toys, disappear and reappear in different locations. A womanizer and libertine, Don Aldaya takes advantage of these disappearances, using his wife’s “missing” jewelry to pay off the housemaids he sleeps with.

The family is never happy in the house. No matter how much his wife pleads with him to move them out of the house, he will not listen. One day, Jorge disappears within the house for eight hours. He is eventually found, dazed. He reports that he had been in the library the whole time with a black woman, who told him that all of the women in the family would die because of the sins of the family’s men. She also gave the death date for Mrs. Aldaya as April 12, 1921. This prophecy comes true.

Don Aldaya puts the house up for sale in 1922 and announces that he is moving his family to Argentina. With all of his business ventures failing, the people of the town believe that he was simply leaving behind his shame. Eventually, Mr. Aguilar’s real estate company inherits the deed to the house. However, none of the salesmen have been able to sell the house since.

When Bea finishes the story, she asks Daniel to tell her whether she should run away immediately and marry her soldier boyfriend, leaving Barcelona forever. She is carrying a letter with that news in it. Daniel grabs the letter from her and puts it on the fire; Daniel and Bea become lovers.

Bea and Daniel leave the house, agreeing to meet there again two days later. When Daniel gets back to the bookstore, Fermín is waiting to take him to someone who can help in the search for Julián’s story—Penélope’s nurse, Jacinta. Fermín also tells Daniel that Miquel Moliner is not in prison nor has he ever been in prison. They have proof of another of Nuria Monfort’s lies. They arrive at the Santa Lucía hospice.

Posing as undertakers, Fermín and Daniel search the asylum, a grim, filthy place full of desperate, dying people. They are searching for Penélope Aldaya’s nurse, Jacinta Coranado. They find a man who will tell them how to find Jacinta, if they will bring him a prostitute. Daniel agrees.

Jacinta Coronado, pathetic and alone, is happy to talk about better times and her love and care of Penélope Aldaya. Jacinta admits that she helped the two young lovers exchange messages and helped them meet while they conducted their secret affair. Penélope saw Julián for the first time when she was thirteen years old, and she told Jacinta that she would marry Julián because she had seen him in dreams.

Jacinta begins with her own story, and her relationship with a dark angel named Zacarías. This beautiful but deadly angel accurately predicts many events in her life, including the fact that she would never be able to have a child. In fact, she was abandoned by her husband because she could not bear a child. Zacarías returns to her to tell her that she would have a daughter in another city. After consulting the parish deacon concerning the meaning of her vision, she immediately sets off for Barcelona.

Mr. Aldaya hires Jacinta when he sees her caring for the child of a foreman in one of his stores. She cares for Mrs. Aldaya, then Jorge when he is born, followed by Penélope, who is born in the spring of 1902. Penélope is the child the dark angel promised her. She devotes all of her love and care to Penélope, and as Penélope grows older, they become each other’s best friend. Jacinta recounts the development of the genuine love between Penélope and Julián, and her own love for Julián, too.

As one of her duties is picking up Jorge, and often Julián too, from school Thus, she meets all of Julián’s friends. Fernando Javier also becomes obsessed with Penélope, but Jacinta throws his gifts away, knowing that this strange boy is somehow evil.

At Jorge Aldaya’s eighteenth birthday party, Fumero, humiliated by the outfit his mother insists that he wear as well as her own costume and behavior, sees Julián and Penélope kissing in the library.

The next day at school, Fumero brings his father’s shotgun and attempts to kill Julián. Miquel Moliner throws himself on Fumero, punching him and wresting the gun from his grasp.

As the end of school approaches, all of the boys are working on their plans for the future. While the hat maker prepares a place for Julián in the army, Don Ricardo and Sophie plan for him to take a place in Don Ricardo’s business. However, Julián and Penélope, with Miquel Moliner’s advice and money, plan to run away to Paris. However, Penélope’s mother catches Julián and Penélope together, and their plans are ruined. Julián goes to Paris alone, not knowing what has happened to Penélope.

Jacinta tells Daniel and Fermín that Mrs. Aldaya insisted that Jacinta lock Penélope in her room until Don Ricardo returned home. When he returns, Mrs. Aldaya tells him what has happened. He flies into a rage, dragging Penélope by her hair to Jacinta’s bedroom and locking her in. A doctor examines Penélope. Jacinta is thrown out of the house with nowhere to go. Though she returns to the house repeatedly, she never sees Penélope again. Don Ricardo has her committed to an insane asylum in a far away town, and by the time she is able to return to Barcelona, the Aldaya mansion is deserted.

As they are leaving the hospice, Chief Inspector Fumero and two of his underlings stop Fermín and Daniel, demanding to know why they were visiting the hospice. While Fumero beats, kicks, and urinates on Fermín, Daniel stands by, terrified to intervene. He is ashamed that he does not help Fermín, though one of the policemen promised that he would break Daniel’s arm if he did.

Fermín survives the beating, and Daniel takes Fermín to Don Barceló’s, where Bernarda is the maid and a doctor waits for them. Daniel bathes in Don Barceló’s bathroom, and as he is finishing, Clara barges in with a towel and clean clothes. They ask each other’s forgiveness. Don Barceló asks Daniel to tell him what has happened to them.

Daniel and Fermín tell Don Barceló the entire story of what they have discovered so far. Don Barceló recommends the next step in their Julián Carax detection: Daniel should visit Nuria Monfort and confront her about her lies, while Fermín waits outside to follow her after Daniel leaves.

Daniel arrives early to meet Bea in the deserted Aldaya mansion. While waiting for her to arrive, he explores the cold house, looking for something to burn in the fireplace. He manages to light a boiler that creates some heat in an upstairs bathroom. When Bea arrives, they make love. Afterward, they hear someone outside the door, as a freezing wind blows into the room something bangs on the door.

Frightened, they quickly dress and head for the front door. However, Daniel notices a door ajar that was locked when he tried it earlier. Leaving a frightened Bea upstairs, Daniel follows the steps down into a crypt, where Penélope Aldaya’s body lies: she died in 1919. The voice of Laín Coubert speaks from the shadows, telling Daniel to get out of the house. Bea and Daniel run out of the house; they agree that she will call him the next day.

Daniel arrives home to find Fermín sleeping in his bed after having dinner with his father. Daniel goes to sleep in the dining room, leaving the still-recovering Fermín in his bed. Bea does not call him during the rest of the week; the last week of Daniel’s life, because he announces that he would be dead at the end of the current week.

Daniel eventually goes to the university to try to find Bea, but she has not been to class that week. When he talks things over with Fermín, Fermín insists that he go and call Bea’s house. Mr. Aguilar answers the phone and threatens Daniel, but since Bea has not named him, he is protected. He realizes that he should go and confront Bea’s father and tell him how he feels about Bea, but he is distracted when he recognizes a policeman watching his house.

He tells Fermín what he saw, and they discuss their plan to confront Nuria Monfort the next morning. Daniel asks Fermín to tell him about how he met Fumero and why Fumero has it out for him.

Fermín was a loyalist working for President Companys’ government before the Civil War began. His job was to keep an eye on fellows like Fumero: potential criminals, assassins, and troublemakers. Fumero worked as an assassin for the anarchists, the communists, and then the fascists; in the end, he chose the winning side in the war. Fermín was arrested trying to gain safe passage out of Spain for his superiors. Fumero, in charge of the purge that followed the fall of the government, tortured Fermín using a welding torch for the names of his superiors. Fermín gave in under torture, and all of his superiors were arrested and killed.

When he returned home, he found that his home had been taken by the new government, along with all of his possessions. With no home and no job, he lived on the street, among the dispossessed. Fermín blames himself for being an informer, but Daniel refutes his logic, saying that anyone would have done the same thing under torture. Fermín tells Daniel that his life belongs to Daniel and his father: they saved him. Daniel promises to never tell Bernarda, or anyone else, anything that Fermín just told him.

Daniel and Fermín enact their plan to confront and follow Nuria Monfort. Daniel knocks on her door.

Nuria answers the door. Daniel immediately tells her that he believes that Jorge Aldaya killed Julián Carax and is currently hiding in the old Aldaya mansion. He tells Nuria that the police are following him. Nuria asks if Fumero followed Daniel to the Aldaya mansion. Nuria, very shaken, tells Daniel that he does not know what damage his snooping has caused. Daniel accuses her of lying about her husband being in prison and protecting the man who killed Julián and burned his books. Nuria slides to the floor, crumbling, and she demands that Daniel leave.

Daniel is late getting back to the shop, where his father is impatiently waiting for him. Mr. Sempere leaves for a client appointment. Daniel finds that his draft notice has arrived. Thoroughly miserable, Daniel watches as Don Barceló enters the shop.

Don Barceló has news from the morgue attendant who oversaw the identification of Julián Carax. Apparently, his father was overcome when he saw the body, immediately turning around and leaving without identifying the body. Next, a policeman looks at the body, spits in the corpse’s face, and demands that the body be taken to be buried in a common grave at dawn. The policemen is Fumero. When the morgue attendant objects to burying an unidentified man, Fumero threatens him into silence.

Daniel is minding the bookshop that same afternoon when he decides to call the Barceló’s because Fermín has not yet returned from his spy mission. He hopes that Fermín was simply there with Bernarda. Clara answers the phone and tells Daniel that she’s getting married and that she hopes they can be friends again. Daniel tells her that they have always been friends.

Later that night, after his father has returned and they have eaten dinner, Fumero and his two thugs burst into the apartment looking for Fermín. Fumero holds his revolver to Daniel’s cheek, promising to break his father’s legs if Daniel does not reveal where Fermín is. Daniel tells Fumero that he does not know where Fermín is. Fumero leaves after telling Daniel that he is going to kill Fermín and that Daniel is next.

Don Anecleto, the teacher, brings them the news that Fermín is accused of murdering Nuria Monfort, who was stabbed to death that day.

Though they are being watched by the police, Daniel and his father open the shop the next morning as usual. Soon, however, they get into an argument. Daniel’s father questions him about whether he knew Nuria Monfort and the relationship between Nuria, Daniel, and Fermín. Daniel, sickened by the lies he has told his father, continues to withhold information about Fermín’s and his own involvement in the detective work concerning Julián Carax. Daniel leaves the shop, and a policeman named Palacios follows him.

Daniel decides to go to the Aguilar’s apartment and admit that he is Bea’s boyfriend to Mr. Aldaya. When he arrives, no one but Tomás is home, and Tomás refuses to see him.

On his way home, Don Frederico stops Daniel, telling him that his repair is ready. Don Frederico hands Daniel a bag containing a message from Fermín. Fermín tells Daniel that he is safe, and that he did not kill Nuria Monfort. Furthermore, he demands that Daniel do nothing to try to help him.

Daniel, wet to the bone from the rain he’s been walking in, goes upstairs to change and rest. When he wakes, he is still haunted by Nuria’s death and his own possible role in her death by leading Fumero to her.

Daniel attends Nuria’s funeral, but her father, Isaac from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, is not there. As he walks home, Policeman Palacios offers him a ride. Daniel unwillingly gets into the car. Palacios has a message from Nuria, who died in his arms. She said that there are worse prisons than words and to “‘let her go’ (353), referring to Penélope. Daniel realizes as he ponders Nuria’s last words that she was not talking to him, but instead to Julián, whom she has loved, secretly, for the last 20 years.

Daniel goes to Nuria’s apartment, where he finds Isaac Monfort. Isaac gives Daniel a handwritten manuscript that Nuria asked him to give Daniel. Isaac tells Daniel that the pages contain the answers for which Daniel has been looking.