The Midnight Palace - Carlos Ruiz Zafon [35]
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