Explore "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
GUSTAVO BARCELÓ HAD A WAY OF LISTENING THAT SEEMED BOTH contemplative and Solomonic, like a doctor or a pope. He observed me with his hands joined under his chin and his elbows on his desk, as if in prayer. His eyes were wide open, and he nodded here and there, as if he could detect symptoms in the flow of my narrative and was composing his own diagnosis. Every time I paused, the bookseller raised his eyebrows inquisitively and beckoned with his right hand for me to continue unraveling my jumbled story, which seemed to amuse him enormously. Every now and then, he would raise a hand and take notes, or he would stare into space as if he wanted to consider the implications of what I was telling him. More often than not, he would lick his lips and smile ironically, a gesture I attributed either to my ingenuousness or to the foolishness of my conjectures.
"Listen, if you think this is nonsense, I'll shut up."