Carlos Zafon - The Midnight Palace

Aryami Bose’s home had been closed up for years, inhabited only by books and paintings, but the spectre of thousands of memories imprisoned between its walls still permeated the house.

On the way there they had agreed that the best plan would be for Sheere to go into the house first, so that she could tell Aryami what had happened and explain that the friends wanted to speak to her. Once this first phase had been completed, the members of the Chowbar Society thought it would also be better to limit the number of representatives at the meeting. The sight of seven strange youths was bound to slow her tongue. It was therefore decided that only Ian, Sheere and Ben would be present at the conversation. Once again Ian agreed to act as ambassador for the society, although he was beginning to suspect that the frequency with which he was chosen for the job had less to do with his friends’ trust in his intelligence and moderation than with his harmless appearance, which was perfect for winning over adults and authority figures. After walking through the streets of the Black Town and waiting a few minutes in the jungle-like courtyard surrounding Aryami Bose’s home, Ian and Ben entered the house at a signal from Sheere, while the others waited for their return.

Sheere led them to a room that was poorly lit by about a dozen candles floating on water inside glass containers. Drops of melted wax formed petals around the candles, dulling the reflection of the flames. The three friends sat down in front of the old lady, who gazed at them in silence from her armchair. In the darkness around them they glimpsed hangings covering the walls and shelves buried under years of dust.

Aryami waited for their eyes to meet hers and then she leaned in towards them.

‘My granddaughter told me what happened,’ said Aryami. ‘But I can’t say I’m surprised. For years I’ve lived with the fear that something like this might occur, although I never imagined it would happen in this way. First of all, you must realise that what you’ve witnessed today is only the beginning and that, after hearing me out, it will be up to you either to let these events continue or to put a stop to them. I’m old and I don’t have the courage or the strength to fight against forces that are far stronger than me and that with each passing day I find harder to understand.’

Sheere took her grandmother’s wrinkled hand and stroked it gently. Ian noticed Ben biting his nails and gave him a discreet nudge.

‘There was a time when I thought that nothing could be more powerful than love. And it’s true, love is powerful, but that power pales into insignificance next to the fire of hatred. I know these revelations aren’t exactly the best present for your sixteenth birthday – normally young people are allowed to live in blissful ignorance of the real nature of the world until they are much older – but I’m afraid you’re not going to have that privilege. I also know that you’ll doubt my words and my judgement, simply because they are those of an old woman. In recent years I’ve come to recognise that look in the eyes of my own granddaughter. The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It’s only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn’t been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she’s about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it, until today …’

‘There was a time when I too was young and did all the things young people are expected to do: marry, have children, get into debt, become disappointed and give up the dreams and principles you have always sworn to uphold. In a word, I became old. Even so, fate was generous to me, or at least that’s what I thought at the beginning: it joined my life to that of a man about whom the best and worst you could say was that he was a good person. I can’t deny it, he wasn’t exactly suave. I remember my sisters sniggering at him when he came to the house. He was rather clumsy and shy and looked as if he’d spent the last ten years of his life locked up in a library – hardly the kind of man any girl your age dreams of, Sheere.

‘My suitor was a teacher at a state school in South Calcutta. His pay was miserable and his clothes were in line with his pay. Every Saturday he would come and pick me up wearing the same suit, the only one he had, which he reserved for school meetings and for going out with me. It took six years before he could afford another one, although he never looked good in suits: he didn’t have the right frame.

‘My two sisters married smart good-looking young men who treated your grandfather with disdain and, behind his back, would throw me suggestive looks which I was supposed to interpret as invitations to enjoy the pleasures of a real man.

‘Years later, those lazy good-for-nothings ended up living off the charity of my husband, but that’s another story. Although he could see right through them – he was always able to look into the soul of anyone he dealt with – he didn’t refuse to support the bloodsuckers and pretended to have forgotten how they had mocked and scorned him when he was young. I wouldn’t have helped them but, as I said, my husband was a good person. Perhaps too good.

‘Unfortunately his health was fragile, and he left me early on, one year after the birth of our only daughter, Kylian. I had to bring her up on my own and try to teach her everything her father would have wanted her to learn. Kylian was the light that illuminated my life after the death of your grandfather. She inherited her kind nature from him, and her instinct for seeing into the hearts of others. But where your grandfather was forever clumsy and shy, Kylian radiated brightness and elegance. Her beauty began in her gestures, in her voice, in the way she moved. As a child, her words enchanted visitors and passers-by as if they were a magic spell. I remember watching her charm the merchants in the bazaar when she was only ten. It seemed to me that my girl was like a swan that had somehow emerged from the ugly duckling that was my husband. His spirit lived within her, in the most insignificant of her gestures and in the way she would sometimes stand in the porch of this house and stare quietly at the people going by, then look at me, her face deadly serious, and ask me why there were so many unfortunates in the world.

‘Soon everyone in the Black Town began to refer to her by the nickname she’d been given by a Bombay photographer: the Princess of Light. And it wasn’t long before would-be princes began to crawl out of the woodwork. Those were wonderful days, when she shared with me the absurd secrets her elegantly attired suitors confided in her, the dreadful poems they wrote to her and a whole collection of anecdotes which, had the situation gone on much longer, might have led us to believe that this city was full of nothing but halfwits. But soon a man appeared on the scene who was destined to change everything: your father, Sheere, the most intelligent, and also the strangest, man I have ever known.

‘In those days, as today, the vast majority of marriages were arranged between families, like a contract in which the wishes of the future spouses carry no weight at all. Most traditions reflect the ills of a society. All my life I had sworn that the day Kylian got married she would do so to someone she had chosen freely.

‘The first time your father came through this door, he seemed the complete opposite of the dozens of swaggering peacocks that were forever hanging around your mother. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, his words were razor-sharp and did not invite a reply. He was kind and, when he wanted, he could display a strange charm that seduced slowly but surely. Even so, your father was always distant and cold with everyone. Everyone, that is, except your mother. In her company he became a different person, vulnerable and almost childlike. I never discovered which of the two he really was, and I suppose your mother took the secret to her grave.