Explore "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ten years after disembarking in Buenos Aires, Jorge Aldaya, or the spent force he had become, returned to Barcelona. The misfortunes that had started to eat away at the Aldaya family in the Old World had only grown in Argentina. Jorge was left on his own to face the world, a fight for which he had neither his father's strength nor his composure. Jorge had reached Buenos Aires with a numb heart, shot through with remorse. America, he would later say, by way of apology or epitaph, is a mirage, a land of savage predators, and he'd been educated into the privileges and frivolous refinements of Old Europe-a dead continent held together by inertia. In only a few years, he lost everything, starting with his reputation and ending with the gold watch his father had given him for his first communion. Thanks to the watch, he was able to buy himself a return ticket. The man who came back to Spain was almost a beggar, a bundle of bitterness and failure,poisoned by the memory of what he felt had been snatched from him and the hatred for the person on whom he blamed his ruin: Julián Carax.
The promise he had made to his father was still branded on his mind. As soon as he arrived, he tried to pick up Julián's trail, only to discover that, like him, Carax also seemed to have vanished from Barcelona. It was then, through chance or fate, that he encountered a familiar character from his youth. After a prominent career in reformatories and state prisons, Francisco Javier Fumero had joined the army, attaining the rank of lieutenant. There were many who envisaged him as a future general, but a murky scandal caused his expulsion from the army. Even then his reputation outlasted his rank. He was talked about a great deal, but above all he was feared. Francisco Javier Fumero, that shy, disturbed boy who once gathered dead leaves from the courtyard at San Gabriel's, was now a murderer. It was rumored that he killed off notorious characters for money, that he dispatched political figures on request. Fumero was said to be death itself.