The Midnight Palace - Carlos Ruiz Zafon [85]
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ asked Ben. The sweat was pouring down his body then instantly drying due to the suffocating heat spat out by the boilers.
‘That city was home to a divinity called Dido, a princess who had sacrificed her body to the fire in order to appease the gods and cleanse herself of her sins. But she returned and was transformed into a goddess. That is the power of fire. Just like the story of the phoenix, the powerful bird whose flight fanned the flames.’
Jawahal stroked the machinery of his lethal creation and smiled.
‘I’ve also been reborn from the ashes and, like Cato, I intend to destroy every last shred of my destiny, this time with fire.’
‘You’re a lunatic,’ Ben said, interrupting him. ‘Especially if you think you’re going to be able to get inside me to stay alive.’
‘Who are the lunatics?’ asked Jawahal. ‘The ones who see horror in the heart of their fellow humans and search for peace at any price? Or the ones who pretend they don’t see what’s going on around them? The world, Ben, belongs either to lunatics or hypocrites. There are no other races on this earth. You must choose which one to belong to.’
Ben stared at Jawahal for a long while, and for the first time the boy thought he could see the shadow of the man who had once been his father.
‘Which did you choose, Father? Which did you choose when you returned to sow death among the few people who loved you? Have you forgotten your own words? Have you forgotten the story you wrote about the man whose tears turned to ice when he returned home and saw that everyone had sold themself to the travelling sorcerer? Perhaps you can take my life too, just as you’ve taken the lives of all those who crossed your path. I don’t suppose it would make much difference any more. But, before you do, tell me face to face that you didn’t sell your soul to the sorcerer too. Tell me, with your hand on that heart of fire you hide yourself in, and I’ll follow you to hell itself.’
Jawahal’s eyelids drooped as he slowly nodded his head. A gradual transformation seemed to creep over his face, and his eyes paled in the burning steam. Defeated and dejected. It was the look of a great wounded predator withdrawing to die in the shadows. And that sudden image of vulnerability, which Ben glimpsed for only a few seconds, seemed more horrifying than any of the previous incarnations of the tormented spectre, because in that image, in that face consumed by pain and fire, Ben could no longer see the spirit of a murderer, only the sad reflection of the man who had been his father.
For a moment they stared at one another like old acquaintances lost in the mists of time.
‘I no longer know whether I wrote that story or some other man did, Ben,’ Jawahal said at last. ‘I no longer know whether those memories are mine or I dreamed them. I don’t know whether I committed those crimes, or whether they were the work of other hands. Whatever the answer to these questions may be, I know I’ll never be able to write another story like the one you remember, or understand its meaning. I have no future, Ben. I have no life either. What you see is only the shadow of a dead soul. I am nothing. The man I was, your father, died a long time ago, taking with him everything I might have dreamed of. And if you’re not going to give me your soul, then at least give me peace. Because only you can give me back my freedom. You came to kill someone who is already dead, Ben. Keep your word, or else join me in the shadows …’
At that moment the train emerged from the tunnel and passed through the central track of Jheeter’s Gate, casting forth its blanket of flames. The locomotive went under the tall arches that formed the entrance to