Isaac Monfort—Nuria Monfort

Isaac Monfort and Nuria Monfort share a relationship shaped by loyalty to lost causes, long silences, and an uneven exchange of knowledge. Isaac knows that his daughter rescued and hid the surviving novels of Julián Carax, and he watches over that secret from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books; yet he sees Nuria only briefly, knows little about her marriage, and can only wonder whether she still remembers Carax. His affection is clearest not in closeness but in the questions he entrusts to Daniel Sempere: whether Nuria is happy, and whether she has forgiven her father.

Family Bond and Shared Instinct

Isaac identifies Nuria as his daughter after explaining that she was the only person at the publishing house—perhaps in all of Barcelona—who had read Carax’s novels. When the secretary heard that an offer had been made for the books, she acted on a premonition and went to the warehouse, taking one copy of each title. Isaac connects her protection of endangered books to a childhood habit: she used to take in small animals she found in the street. In his telling, she later extended that tenderness to failed authors, perhaps because her father had wanted to become one himself and never succeeded.

That comparison gives their bond an inheritance of feeling rather than profession. Nuria’s care for Carax’s neglected work resembles her care for vulnerable creatures, while Isaac’s own unrealized literary ambition forms part of the family history through which he understands her. He recognizes something of himself in her attachment to lost causes, but the account does not establish that they have discussed this resemblance. His comment that he knows her better than she thinks he does sits beside his admission that they no longer get on as well as he would like.

Nuria’s Rescue and Isaac’s Custody of the Secret

Some days after Cabestany’s warehouse burned down, Nuria came to Isaac at the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Nervous, she said that someone had been following her and feared that the man called Laín Coubert was trying to obtain the books in order to destroy them. She carried Carax’s surviving books into the great hall and concealed them among its maze of shelves, like buried treasure. Isaac neither asked where she put them nor received that information from her. The concealment therefore became a secret shared through trust, even though its precise location remained unknown to him.

Nuria said she would return for the books once she had found Carax. Isaac thought she was still in love with him, but kept that judgment to himself. She also said that she had not heard from Carax for months, practically since he had sent the final corrections for his last book. Isaac could not tell whether she was being truthful. What he could say was that Nuria never heard from Carax again, and that the books remained in the cemetery, gathering dust. Her act preserved the novels from destruction, but left Isaac as their custodian and made the hidden collection a material reminder of the daughter he could not fully reach.

Distance in Nuria’s Adult Life

Isaac describes a relationship maintained by brief, regular meetings rather than domestic closeness. He and Nuria see one another once a month, have lunch somewhere nearby, and then she leaves as quickly as she came. He knows that she married a journalist named Miquel, whom he describes as somewhat harebrained, politically troublesome, but good-hearted. Their wedding was a civil ceremony with no guests; Isaac learned of it a month later, and Nuria has never introduced her husband to him. The delay and the absence of an introduction mark the limits of what she chooses to share.

His knowledge of her later life comes partly through reports rather than direct confidence. He understands that she has changed, has learned to knit, no longer dresses as she once did, and works from home as a translator of Italian and French. He is surprised by her talent and jokes that it did not come from him. He also imagines that he may one day discover he is a grandfather, a possibility he mentions without claiming to know whether Nuria has a child. His account thus combines affection with uncertainty: he can list details of her adult life, but cannot say what she thinks or feels.

Memory, Regret, and the Request to Daniel

When Daniel asks whether Nuria might speak to him, Isaac is unsure she could add anything to what he has already said. He nevertheless writes down her address on the corner of an old newspaper and gives it to Daniel, while warning that it might not be a good idea to say he had sent him. He asks Daniel not to repeat what has been said, insisting that the conversation should go no further. The exchange shows Isaac trying to help while respecting, or at least fearing, the privacy and distance that separate him from his daughter.

Isaac remembers Nuria as a child who remembered everything. His sadness lies in the change he sees in parenthood: children grow up, and parents no longer know what they think or feel. He turns from that uncertainty to his own first love, Teresita Boadas. He had saved for two years to buy her a wedding ring, but she died of tuberculosis six months after falling ill. Fifty-five years later, he still thinks of her daily: their walks to the ruins of the 1888 Universal Exhibition, the poems he read to her in the back room of his uncle Leopoldo’s grocery shop, and the fortune-teller on Bogatell beach who said they would always be together. In Isaac’s understanding, the prediction came true through memory rather than a shared life: he has never stopped carrying Teresita with him.

That history informs his judgment of Nuria’s attachment to Carax. Isaac thinks she still remembers him, though she does not say so, and he blames Carax for taking his daughter’s heart. His account is not proof of what Nuria feels; it is a father’s inference, colored by his own enduring bereavement and by anger at the man he believes hurt her. The comparison makes his sympathy and resentment inseparable: he understands that love can survive in memory, but fears that Carax’s place in Nuria’s memory has cost her happiness.

An Unanswered Hope for Reconciliation

Isaac’s final request to Daniel is personal rather than investigative: if Daniel meets Nuria, he wants to know how she is, whether she is happy, and whether she has forgiven her father. The question about forgiveness exposes the fault line in their relationship without explaining its cause. Isaac acknowledges estrangement and regrets their limited contact, but the available account does not specify what Nuria might hold against him or whether she has refused forgiveness. His uncertainty must remain uncertainty.

The books hidden in the cemetery and the daughter who hid them give the relationship its central image of preservation at a distance. Isaac keeps watch over what Nuria left behind, while wondering whether she will return and whether their connection can be recovered. His memories of Teresita show why he understands remembrance as a form of continued attachment; his concern for Nuria reveals the painful difference between remembering someone and knowing the life she leads. By giving Daniel Nuria’s address, he opens a possible path toward contact, but leaves the decisive answers—her happiness, her feelings about Carax, and her forgiveness—outside his reach.