The prisoner of heaven
The Prisoner of Heaven is a novel by the Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón . It was published in 2011 by Planeta SA in Barcelona under the title El prisionero del cielo . The German translation is by Peter Schwaar and was published in 2012 by S. Fischer Verlag Frankfurt / Main.
The novel is the third part of the romantic tetralogy Cemetery of Forgotten Books , which also includes the volumes The Shadow of the Wind , The Game of the Angel and The Labyrinth of Lights . The most important people are already familiar from the two previous volumes. The third novel describes her life in the years 1957–60 and in flashbacks from 1939–41.
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A mysterious customer
Daniel, the son of Isabella and Sempere jun., Is twenty-two years old in 1957 and helps his father (Sempere jun. From Das Spiel des Engel ) together with Fermín Romero de Torres in the bookstore, which is currently only making little sales. A limping old man appears in the shop who buys a valuable first edition from the Count of Monte Christo for a large sum . He wants to give the book as a gift and writes a dedication in it that amazes Daniel: “For Fermín Romero de Torres, who has risen from the dead and has the key to the future. 13 ". Daniel secretly follows the strange customer and learns in his accommodation (where he has rented under Fermín's name) that he has only recently been in town. When Fermín receives the book from Daniel and reads the dedication, a violent, disturbing shock strikes him and he asks Daniel to keep quiet about all this. A few days later, at the urging of Daniel, Fermín tells about his life story, which has surprising connections to Daniel's mother Isabella, who died early, and thus to himself.
In prison: Fermín Romero de Torres and David Martín
Fermín introduces himself as “by profession a secret service agent in the Caribbean sector of the Generalitat de Catalunya, now no longer active, but by vocation as a bibliographer and lover of aesthetic literature”. That was before the civil war from 1936 to 1939, after which he had adopted the name Fermín Romero de Torres, which he had read on a bullfight poster, to protect his identity and to prevent further persecution. In 1939 he was arrested on charges made by Inspector Fumero and imprisoned in the notorious prison in the fort on Montjuic in Barcelona. There the prisoners are listed as cell numbers under inhumane conditions and are at the mercy of the director Maurizio Valls and the guards. Valls is a conceited and career-hungry writer who feels completely wrong and underchallenged in this position and is therefore always in a bad mood. In the later years of the Franco dictatorship he succeeded in climbing into the highest circles of the literary scene up to the position of minister of education in the years 1952–55.
Fermín is in cell 13, in the next cell 12 Dr. Sanahuja, former chief physician of an internal clinic, and in the cell opposite is David Martín, the main character in the book The Angel's Game , who, because of his confused nocturnal self-talk, was given the name “the prisoner of heaven” by his fellow prisoners. From Sanahuja, Fermín learns details from Martín's prehistory, which are told in detail in the second volume of the cycle. After a few years in exile, Martín returned to Spain from France in 1939 and was arrested soon afterwards. The influential industrialist Vidal (father of Pedro Vidal in Volume 2) ensured Martín was sentenced to life imprisonment by influencing the court and an army of bribed witnesses. Director Valls then personally campaigned for Martín to be transferred to the prison he directed. Fermín knows and values Martín as a writer and has read all of his books in The City of the Damned series published in the 1920s under the pseudonym Ignatius B. Samson . He hears Martín's nocturnal conversations, including discussions with an imaginary ghost called Señor Corelli, he hears the name Isabella and he sees that Martín often looks for a long time at a photo that he always carries with him, in which a man in white with a little girl is at can be seen in the hand - details that also refer to volume 2. Fermín feels drawn to Martín, talks to him often, but cannot properly assess his mental state. In addition, Dr. Sanahuja more capable. His refusal to denounce colleagues has put him in jail. He believes Martín is schizophrenic and has previously suffered from states of confusion. Dr. Sanahuja is entrusted with the observation and treatment of Martín by Director Valls. Valls is interested in Martín's survival with clear mental faculties because he lets him revise his own writing; Martín had agreed to do this after Valls threatened sanctions against Martín's good friend Isabella and her family. Gradually, Martín and Fermín grow closer, and Martín makes plans how Fermín could escape from prison so that he can protect Isabella and Daniel in his place.
Rescues and Murder
David Martín plans to use the “Monte Christo method” - namely that Fermín could leave the fort instead of the corpse of a prisoner. The opportunity arises when Sebastián Salgado, who is in very poor health, is transferred to Fermín's cell. Salgado poses as a union official, Valls accuses him of murder and robbery, the booty of which has not yet been found, and he has not revealed the hiding place even under torture. Valls instructs Fermín to interrogate his fellow prisoners: he is supposed to find out from Salgado where the booty of his robbery is. Valls also has orders with regard to Martín: Fermín should watch out whether he mentions anything about a cemetery of forgotten or dead books and he should even pay attention to whether he is doing the writing for Valls, since that is both for him and for a certain lady (Isabella) would be for the best.
One night Fermín sees Salgado hiding a small key in a crack in the wall of her cell. He also gives Fermín an address through which Valls should be able to find out the whereabouts of the prey - a trap that ultimately becomes Valls chauffeur, but not himself. First of all, the Monte Christo plan is carried out with great sophistication, in that Salgado, who is terminally ill after being tortured again, is anesthetized with a narcotic obtained from Sanahuja and then reburied on Fermín's bunk. After removing the key from the crack in the wall, Fermín packs himself in the body bag brought for Salgado and is picked up by the funeral service, unloaded in a mass grave and sprinkled with chlorinated lime. Valls is also active that evening. He lets himself be driven to the address given by Salgado, but sends his driver in front, who - as Valls suspected - is shot by Salgado's accomplices there. During the night Fumero will carry out a cruel punitive action there. Later that evening, in a restaurant, Valls meets Isabella, who has repeatedly asked him for a pardon for Martín. Valls appears to be signing a discharge certificate for Martín in front of her, but he has put poison in the drink he ordered for her beforehand. She died of it a few days later (in 1939).
For Daniel, this revelation through Fermín that his mother had been killed is terrible news that fills him with anger and hatred. Fermín, like his father later, only succeeds with difficulty in appeasing him.
Fermín succeeded in rescuing the castle. A group of outcasts and stranded in the slum on the edge of the Somorrostro district looked after him for weeks. The gypsy Armando, who apparently also escaped from the fort, is his patron saint for a while. When he said goodbye, he advised Fermín to leave Barcelona for a while and to go into hiding, and he gave him the address of Fernando Brians, a lawyer Isabella had hired as Martín's legal advisor. When Fermín returned to Barcelona in 1941 after a year, he lived for a few weeks with Brians, from whom he learned of Isabella's death. Brians had found out that Isabella had met with Valls the night before she became ill, and he suspected that he had poisoned her; since he has no clear evidence to support his suspicions, there is nothing he can do about Valls. The prison guard, Bebo, whose brother had helped Brians to shorten his sentence and who now feels obliged to him, provides information on what is going on in the fort. Valls found the masterpiece Martín demanded, with which Valls hoped to achieve fame as a writer, as completely unsuitable and felt betrayed and deceived. As a punishment, he informs Martín of Isabella's death. As a result, Martín raged for days in his cell and probably completely lost his mind. When his condition did not improve at all, Valls ordered two of his vassals to take him away. Its liquidation was probably intended, namely in an abandoned old house next to Park Güell, where such arbitrary judgments had been carried out before. It is rumored, however, that there was someone else in the house who probably disturbed the two henchmen, so that the murder may not have been carried out at all. Years later, Fermín and Daniel will learn the truth from Isaac, the overseer in the secret library. Salgado's story ends sadly: He receives the key from Fermín, who had kept it faithfully over the years, and takes it to a locker at the train station. He takes out a suitcase, but leaves it after opening it and looking inside. Fermín and Daniel, who followed to the train station, see that it is empty. Salgado collapses dead in front of the train station.
The hero's name
Daniel and friends successfully renew the official identity of Fermín, without whom he could not marry his fiancée Bernarda. It is now officially given the name Fermín Romero de Torres, which was adopted years ago. When the church ceremony took place in 1958, Daniel recognized a man for a moment in the background of the church, perhaps David Martín, perhaps Julian Carax. As a wedding present, Daniel Fermín leads into the secret library and receives from the supervisor Isaac Montfort the package that Martín left in the library on New Year's Eve 1941; this confirms that Martín was not killed at the time. The package contains the manuscript of The Angel's Game and a letter for Daniel. In it, Martín implores him not to let himself be poisoned by hatred and thoughts of revenge against the former prison director Valls because of the death of his mother, because that is his, Martíns, story and fate.
Daniel's jealousy and projections into the future
Yet it seems that fate is already on the way. Daniel's wife Beatriz receives a letter from her former fiancé Pablo inviting her to a meeting in a hotel; he had work to do for his publishing house in Barcelona, he still loved her and wanted to try to win her back. Daniel found and read the letter by chance, but Fermín had persuaded him not to doubt her love and loyalty to him. Even so, he had gone to the hotel at the agreed time because he had heard over the phone at reception that Pablo works for Ariadna Verlag, which Valls had founded ten years ago. In full anger, Daniel beats him when Pablo opens the room for him and then hears that Bea hadn't come at all. He forces Pablo to admit that a supervisor made him write the letter with the promise of a reward; He would never have seen Valls himself, no one had ever seen him. (Daniel had noticed during his research on Valls that after years of intense media coverage, he hadn't appeared anywhere for two years.) The embarrassing situation in the hotel is saved when Fermín - pretending to be a police officer - appears there and Daniel can take them with him before Pablo Could call the police. In Fermín there is concern and concern that the disappearance of Valls could also mean that he has started to look for Daniel.
This and two other episodes at the end of the book could mark the beginning of new stories to look forward to in Volume Four. On the one hand, a cousin of Daniels from Naples, Sophia, appears. She is the daughter of a sister of Isabella and wants to study in Barcelona. Everyone who sees her when she arrives on the evening before Fermín's wedding to Bernarda is touched by her resemblance to Isabella, her aunt and Daniel's mother. She is just 17 years old - about the age Isabella was when she married Daniel's father in 1935; s. also Volume 2 of the cycle. On the other hand, Zafón tells in the epilogue of the book how in 1960 Daniel's little son Julián found a small plaster statuette on the grave of his grandmother Isabella among the flowers, from which a tiny piece of paper hidden in the plaster emerged with an address of Mauricio Valls in Barcelona is written in a handwriting known to Daniel (David Martín’s handwriting? Fermín’s handwriting?). So the book ends with the sentences:
“A breeze rises from the sea to the gravestones, and the breath of a curse brushes his face. He pockets the note. Then he lays a white rose on the grave and walks back to the cypress gallery with the child in his arms, where his child's mother is waiting for him. The three merge in an embrace, and when she looks him in the eye, she discovers something in them that was not there a few moments ago. Something murky, dark that scares her. "Are you okay, Daniel?" He looks at her for a long time and smiles. “I love you,” he says and kisses her. He knows that the story, his story, is not over yet. It has only just started. "
The reader notices a time discrepancy when comparing the dating in the epilogue to the game of the angel with the information quoted above in the prisoner of heaven : the date of completion of the "game" is in the "prisoner" as before 1941, but in the epilogue in the year given before 1945.