The Shadow of the Wind [antikvár]

The Cemetery of Forgottén Books I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgottén Books for the first time. It was the early summer of 1945, and we walked through the streets of a Barcelona trapped beneath ashen skies as dawn poured over Rambla de Santa Mónica in a wreath of liquid copper. 'Dániel, you mustn't teli anyone what you're about to see today,' my father warned. 'Not even your friend Tomás. No one.' 'Not even Mummy?' My father sighed, hiding behind the sad smile that followed him like a shadow all through his life. 'Of course you can teli her,' he answered, heavy-hearted. 'We keep no secrets from her. You can teli her everything.' Shortly after the Civil War, an outbreak of cholera had taken my mother away. We buried her in Montjuic on my fourth birthday. The only thing I can recall is that it rained all day and all night, and that when I asked my father whether heaven was crying, he couldn't bring himself to reply. Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not yet learned to stifle with words. My father and I lived in a modest apartment on Calle Santa Ana, a stone's throw from the church square. The apartment was directly above the bookshop, a legacy from my grandfather, that specialized in rare collectors' editions and secondhand books - an enchanted bazaar, which my father hoped would one day be mine. I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day. As a child I learned to fali asleep talking to my mother in the darkness of my bedroom, teliing her about the day's events, my adventures