The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

THE FIRST EFFECT OF FERMÍN'S ARRIVAL SOON BECAME APPARENT: I discovered I had much more free time. When Fermín was not out hunting some exotic volume to satisfy a customer's request, he spent his time organizing stocks in the bookshop, dreaming up marketing strategies, polishing the shop sign and windows till they sparkled, or buffing up the spines of the books with a rag and a bit of alcohol. Given this windfall, I decided to devote my leisure time to a couple of pursuits I had lately put aside: attempting to unravel the Carax mystery and, above all, spending more time with my friend Tomás Aguilar, whom I greatly missed.

Tomás was a thoughtful, reserved boy whom other children feared because his vaguely thuggish features gave him a grave and threatening look. He had a wrestler's build, gladiator's shoulders, and a steely, penetrating gaze. We had met many years before in the course of a fistfight, during my first week at the Jesuit school on Calle Caspe. His father had come to pick him up after classes, accompanied by a conceited girl who turned out to be Tomás's sister. I had the brilliant idea of making some tasteless remark about her and before I could blink, Tomás had thrown himself on me and was showering me with a deluge of blows that left me smarting for a few weeks. Tomás was twice my size, strength, and ferocity. During our school-yard duel, surrounded by boys who were thirsty for a bloody fight, I lost a tooth but gained an improved sense of proportion. I refused to tell my father or the priests who had inflicted such a thundering beating on me. Neither did I volunteer the fact that the father of my adversary had watched the thumping with an expression of sheer pleasure, joining in the chorus with the other schoolchildren.