Like many men, by then my father was beginning to suspect that he’d stopped being a young man, and he often revisited the scenes of his early youth, looking for answers to questions he still didn’t fully understand.

“What’s the matter with Dad?” I asked my mother.

“Nothing. He’s just growing.”

“Isn’t he past the growing age?”

My mother gave a patient sigh. “You men are like that.”

“I’ll grow fast, and you won’t have to worry.”

My mother smiled. “We’re in no hurry, Julián. Let life take care of that.”

In one of his mysterious journeys to the center of his navel, my father came back from the post office carrying a parcel that came from Paris. Inside it was a book called The Angel of Mist. Anything with angels and mist in it sounded totally up my alley, so I decided to investigate, even if only because of the expression on my father’s face when he’d opened the parcel and seen the cover of the book. After some research I concluded that it was a novel written by a certain Boris Laurent, a pen name, I later discovered, for none other than Julián Carax. The book came with a dedication that made my mother cry—and she never was one to run for the handkerchief at the first chance—and finally convinced my father that destiny had us all caught by a place he wouldn’t be explicit about, but that, I surmised, required delicate handling.

To be honest, I was the one who was most surprised. For some reason, I had always supposed that Carax had been dead since time immemorial (a historical period comprising everything that had taken place before my birth). I always thought that Carax was another of the many phantoms from the past lurking in the haunted palace of the official family memory. When I realized that I had been mistaken and that Carax was alive, kicking, and writing in Paris, I had an epiphany.

As I caressed the pages of The Angel of Mist, I suddenly understood what I had to do. That is how the plan was hatched that would allow me to fulfill that destiny, a destiny that for once had decided to pay a house call, and many years later would give birth to this book.

3

Life went on at a steady pace, between revelations and fantasies, as it usually does, without paying too much attention to all of us who travel hanging on it by our fingertips. I enjoyed two childhoods: the first was quite conventional, if such a thing can ever be, and was the one others saw; the second was an imaginary childhood, and the one I truly lived. I made some good friends, most of them books. In school I was bored stiff and acquired the habit of spending my time in the classroom with my head in the clouds, a habit I still retain. I was lucky enough to come across a few good teachers, who treated me with patience and agreed that the fact that I was always different wasn’t necessarily something bad. It takes all sorts to make a world, including a few Julián Semperes. Still, I probably learned more about the world reading between the four walls of the bookshop, visiting libraries on my own, or listening to Fermín, who always had some theory, advice, or practical warning to offer, than in all my years of schooling.