The Shadow of the Wind: City of Shadows: Chapter 28 Summary & Analysis

While they sit by the fire, Bea tells Daniel the history she has learned about The Angel of Mist. The house was built at the turn of the century for an eccentric and tyrannical tycoon named Salvador Jausà, who amassed a fortune in Cuba and returned to Spain with an American wife and a beautiful Cuban maid named Marisela, whom everyone believed to be his lover.

Jausà decided he wanted a neo-Gothic mansion just like those he had seen in New York. He designed an extravagant garden with statues full of angels. He hired a team of architects, sent them to New York to study the designs he wanted, and ordered the house built in six months. One month after the family moved in, the police arrived at the house to find both women dead and Jausà naked and handcuffed to his armchair.

The police believed that Jausà and his wife were poisoned by Marisela. Jausà survived, although he lost his powers of speech. After Marisela attempted to murder her employers, they believed, she cut her wrists and splashed her blood on all the house’s walls. The wife had been pregnant and was discovered with a skeleton drawn on her stomach in red wax, so the police concluded that Marisela’s motive was jealousy.

At this point, Jausà met Mr. Aldaya, whom he invited to his house to observe “a scientific and spiritual experiment.” He had hired a cinematographer named Fructuós Gelabert to capture on film Marisela’s spirit, which he was convinced still inhabited the house and was trying to speak to him. Gelabert claimed that his special process of developing the film revealed images of Marisela.

Mr. Aldaya assumed this was a ruse on Gelabert’s part, but Jausà believed completely in the results. Mr. Aldaya knew that such a gullible and desperate man could be manipulated easily, so he encouraged him to continue experimenting while also convincing him to surrender control of his huge financial reserves. After this was accomplished, Jausà vanished mysteriously and Mr. Aldaya paid Gelabert to forget all about the episode.

Mr. Aldaya soon moved his family into the mansion, where Penélope was born. Although Mr. Aldaya denied there was anything supernatural about the house, the family heard noises at night and felt drafts when there was no wind. The servants swore that small things like food and buttons always went missing and turned up in other parts of the house. When jewelry disappeared, Mr. Aldaya fired the maids, although many people thought he really did this because he had a habit of sleeping with them.

The house also altered the family’s character; they were never happy there. Mrs. Aldaya felt isolated and frightened, while the children sometimes disappeared for hours in the house. Once Jorge turned up after eight hours and said he’d been with a black woman who said that “all the females of the family would die […] to atone for the sins of the males,” and told him the exact date of his mother’s death, which occurred exactly when predicted in 1921. All her jewelry was missing and was later found in the courtyard pond next to one of Penélope’s dolls.

In 1922, Mr. Aldaya decided to sell The Angel of Mist, but was unable because of its bad reputation. After bankruptcy, the mansion passed through the hands of several real estate firms and now belongs to a financial group directed by Mr. Aguilar.

Bea says that nothing happens by chance, and Daniel’s discovery of The Shadow of the Wind led directly to this moment in the Aldaya mansion.

Bea produces a letter she’s written to Pablo, telling him she wants to get married as soon as possible, and asks Daniel whether she should send it. Daniel throws the envelope into the fire. Bea tells him to “do whatever you want to me.” Then he and Bea lay down on the carpet and have sex.