“Do you know where I could find him?”

Planaux shrugged. “Julián left Paris long ago.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“He didn’t say.”

“But you can guess.”

“You’re sharp.”

“Where?” I insisted.

“Where do people hide when they’re old?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you’ll never find Julián.”

“In memories?” I ventured.

Planaux gave me a smile wounded with sadness.

“Do you mean he went back to Barcelona?” I asked.

“Not to Barcelona—to what he loved.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor did he. At least not for many years. It took him his whole life to realize what it was he had loved most.”

All those years listening to stories about Carax, and I felt as lost as the day I arrived in Paris.

“If you are who you say you are, you should know,” Planaux stated. “And if your answer is ‘literature,’ I’ll give you a beating you’ll never forget. But I don’t think you’re that stupid.”

I swallowed hard. “I think I know what you’re referring to. Or who.”

“Then you know what you must do.”

* * *

That evening I bade farewell to Paris, to Pascale, to my dazzling career in the catering industry, and to my nest in the clouds, and headed for the Gare d’Austerlitz. I spent all the cash I had left on a third-class ticket and took the night train back to Barcelona. I arrived at dawn, having survived the journey thanks to a couple of charitable pensioners from Lyon who were returning from visiting their daughter and shared the delicious food they’d bought that afternoon in the market on Rue Mouffetard, while I told them my story in the small hours of the night.

“Bonne chance,” they said when they got off the train. “Cherchez la femme . . .”

When I got back, and for the first few days, everything looked small to me, and closed and gray. The light of Paris had stayed trapped in my memory, and the world had suddenly become large and distant.

“So, did you see Emmanuelle?” asked Fermín.

“An impeccable screenplay,” I said.

“Just as I imagined. The envy of Billy Wilder and company. And tell me, did you find the Phantom of the Opera?” Fermín gave the smile of a devil. I should have imagined he knew perfectly well why I’d traveled to Paris.

“Not exactly,” I admitted.

“So you’re not going to tell me anything juicy.”

“I thought you were the one who was going to tell me something juicy. Remember?”

“First solve your mystery, and then we’ll see.”

“That seems unfair to me.”

“Welcome to Planet Earth,” said Fermín. “Go on, impress me. Say something in French. ‘Bonjour’ and ‘Oh là là’ don’t count.”

“Cherchez la femme,” I said.

Fermín frowned. “The classic maxim of any self-respecting thriller . . .”

“Voilà.”

* * *

Nuria Montfort’s grave lies on a promontory among trees, in the old part of Montjuïc Cemetery. It has a view of the sea and is not far from Isabella’s tomb. It was there, one summer’s evening in 1977, after unsuccessfully searching every corner of a Barcelona already receding into the past, that I found Julián Carax. He’d left fresh flowers on the headstone and was sitting on a stone bench facing the grave. He remained there for almost an hour, talking to himself. I didn’t dare interrupt him.