Jeferson Mateus

Professor Delis

ENC 1101-33572

06 July 2020

Zafón and the Shadow of a Frienship

At five o’clock in the morning, when my eyes devoured the final pages of the book
in my hands while attempting to hold back a river of tears, I looked around me and realized
I was back in my living room after experiencing an astonishing eternity in the Barcelona of
the 1950s. The spell Carlos Ruiz Zafón cast on me with his novel The Shadow of the Wind
was over, but the magic of my journey seeking for every single one of his books had just
begun. That universe of paper I was still holding with shaky hands inspired me to conclude
that, like Zafón, I wanted to build mysteries and emotions and enchanted cities with just a
pen and a blank sheet. Yes, I wanted to become a writer. Thanks to his storytelling I fell in
love with the idea of writing fiction and pursuing the dream of publishing a novel.

In the summer of 2011, ravenous as I was for words and literary worlds, I
desperately searched for books to satisfy my craving until I discovered The Shadow of the
Wind, the first book of a series of four volumes called The Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
The labyrinthine dance of its characters, the exquisite flow of its prose, the unveiling of a
story within a story within a story… Every detail in its more than five hundred pages
captivated me in a way that petrified me. At the time I was debating whether to study
journalism or literature, but when I finished Zafón’s novel a decision was made deep in my
soul.

“A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in
exchange for a story.” That is how The Angel’s Game begins, the second book in the series.
I read it in 2012 feeling like Zafón had just written it for myself as a challenge, daring me
to fall into that convoluted world of aspiring authors. The book followed a cursed writer in
the Barcelona of the 1920s whose passion for words and a woman led him to an underworld
of madness and despair. His misfortunes and sorrow were so poignant that once again I felt
mesmerized by a story that still is, to this day, my favorite book of all time. Ruiz Zafón was
no longer a mere acquaintance but a friend capable of disrupting my existence with his tales
of a Barcelona long forgotten. And because of that I began to write my own stories hoping
that, just like my friend, I too could conjure up dramatis personae in the rainy Bogotá of
my adolescence.

I spent the next several months fabricating texts here and there until I published
online in 2013 a compilation of twenty short stories, all of them influenced by the genius of
Zafón. Later that year I read The Prisoner of Heaven, the third volume of The Cemetery of
Forgotten Books, but I mostly remember my second reading of it in 2014. The book still
smells of hospital and the fear I distilled while consuming its pages. I took it with me so I
wouldn’t be alone when keeping company to my grandfather in the final days of his
struggle with cancer. The imminent arrival of death made me tremble, and my grandpa’s
moans of excruciating pain night after night hit me like daggers. But Zafón, like the
greatest of buddies, appeared by my side to take me far away to a Barcelona where
mysteries and laughter in libraries from heaven became a refuge from the room where my
grandpa was agonizing. He died fifteen days later, and I always regret not reading that book
to him. When I was a kid he taught me not just to read but to love reading.

In 2016 I took a novel-writing course in which I produced a novella inspired by

Ruiz Zafón’s Trilogy of Mist and Marina, books he wrote before The Shadow of the Wind,
when he was still human and not the literary god I made of him in my mind. By the end of
that year he released The Labyrinth of Spirits, the last volume of his magisterial series, a
book that wrecked my heart and became a farewell letter in more than one way.

I met Zafón on top of the Montjuïc castle when I visited Barcelona in 2018. He was
in his residence in Los Angeles, I know, but I felt him right next to me. Shortly after
landing in the city, I visited that fortress mentioned multiple times in his books. Shivers
went down my spine thanks to the view of the Mediterranean Sea before my eyes, the
Barcelona of shadows behind me, and the Music Zafón composed for his books in my ears.
It was a sensation as overwhelming as when I read him for the first time. His characters and
his universe never felt more real.

Yes, a writer never forgets the first time he accepts some coins for a story. That’s
why I will never forget the early months of this year when I started getting paid for writing.
I’m still far from fulfilling my dream of publishing a novel, but I hope I am getting closer
to achieving it. To celebrate my accomplishments, I reread The Labyrinth of Spirits because
having it enjoyed only once felt like heresy, and a month ago I gave The Shadow of the
Wind as a present. Two weeks later I woke up to the news that Carlos Ruiz Zafón had
passed away. He was fifty-five years old.

I honestly believe there is something beyond. I need to believe it so that when I

leave Earth I can visit him in the literary Olympus I created for my favorite writers where
he plays the role of Zeus. I will arrive and he will welcome me with an amused look behind
his round glasses. And then the light, the lux aeterna always present on his novels will
extinguish the shadows of our friendship, revealing the true shape of this camaraderie
between fellow writers.

Nine years after I read him for the first time, I am still in love with the idea of
writing fiction, and that is because of his novels beautifully built as temples of Literature.
He guided me, he inspired me, and just like his characters, the writer I am today exists
because of him. Gracias, Carlos.