Explore "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
JULIÁN CARAX CROSSED THE FRENCH BORDER A FEW DAYS BEFORE the start of the Civil War. The first and only edition of The Shadow of the Wind had left the press two weeks earlier, bound for the anonymity of its predecessors. By then Miquel could barely work: although he sat in front of the typewriter for two or three hours a day, weakness and fever prevented him from coaxing more than a feeble trickle of words out onto the paper. He had lost several of his regular columns due to missed deadlines. Other papers were fearful of publishing his articles after receiving anonymous threats. He had only one daily column left in the Diario de Barcelona, which he signed under the name of Adrián Maltés. The specter of the war could already be felt in the air. The country stank of fear. With nothing to occupy him, and too weak to complain, Miquel would go down into the square or walk up to Avenida de la Catedral, always carrying with him one of Julián's books as if it were an amulet. The last time the doctor had weighed him, he was only 125 pounds. We listened to the news of the Morocco uprising on the radio, and a few hours later a colleague from Miquel's newspaper came around to tell us that Cansinos, the editor in chief, had been murdered with a bullet in the neck, opposite the Canaletas Café, two hours earlier. Nobody dared remove the body, which was still lying there, staining the pavement with a web of blood.
The brief but intense days of initial terror were not long in coming. General Goded's troops set off along the Diagonal and Paseo de Gracia toward the center, where the shooting began. It was Sunday, and a lot of people had still come out into the streets thinking they were going to spend the day picnicking along the road to Las Planas. The blackest days of the war in Barcelona, however, were still two years away. Shortly after the start of the skirmish, General Goded's troops surrendered, due to a miracle or to poor communication between the commanders. Lluís Companys's government seemed to have regained control, but what really happened would become obvious in the next few weeks.