Nuria Monfort—Fortuny

Nuria Monfort and Fortuny form a friendship around their separate attachments to Julián Carax: Fortuny is the estranged father who longs to know the man his son has become, while Nuria is the old friend who can offer him news, company, and a guarded hope of reunion. Her visits make her the closest thing Fortuny has to family, but the friendship also asks her to keep faith with two incompatible wishes: the father’s desire to recover his son and Julián’s decision to remain apart.

The Meeting and a Promise

Nuria encounters Fortuny, the hatter, in a cathedral cloister while Julián is away. Fortuny remembers that she had accompanied Miquel to ask after Julián two years earlier. He confides that he believes his son is alive but cannot understand why Julián has not been in touch; he suspects that Fumero has something to do with the silence. Nuria shares his suspicion, but cannot resolve the uncertainty for him.

Fortuny asks whether Nuria was an old friend of his son and asks her to describe the man Julián has become. He admits that he does not really know him: life, as he puts it, separated them. He has searched Barcelona bookshops for Julián’s novels without finding them and has heard that someone is looking for the books in order to burn them. Fortuny believes Fumero is responsible. Nuria does not contradict him. Instead, out of pity, spite, or both, she tells him that Julián has returned to Paris, is well, and is fond of his father; she assures Fortuny that Julián will visit when circumstances permit. Her account is a lie, but it offers the old man the comfort he is seeking.

Before they part, Fortuny gives Nuria his address and that of his former wife, Sophie, with whom he has resumed contact after years of misunderstandings. Sophie now lives in Bogota, runs a music school, and writes to ask after Julián. Fortuny tells Nuria that memories are what still connect him and Sophie, and speaks of the mistakes people recognize only when they grow old. Nuria promises to keep both parents informed if she learns anything about Julián. That promise gives their association a continuing purpose: she becomes the link through which the separated family might still receive news.

A Friendship Made of Visits

Nuria’s initial pity becomes growing affection. She had heard appalling stories about Fortuny and once imagined him as an ogre, resentful and despicable. In person, she sees a kind man, confused and blind to the reality she herself cannot bring herself to disclose. His waiting for Julián, and his hope of recovering lost time, move her. He reminds her of her own father, who withdrew into books and shadows, and she feels that she and Fortuny are joined by the same hope for Julián. She becomes the old man’s only friend and visits him at his apartment in Ronda de San Antonio without Julián’s knowledge.

Fortuny no longer works in the shop downstairs. He says he lacks the hands, sight, and customers for it. His days have narrowed, but the visits give them a routine: he waits for Nuria almost every Thursday and offers coffee, biscuits, and pastries, though he scarcely touches the food. Their companionship takes shape less through new discoveries than through repeated acts of welcome and recollection. Nuria returns; Fortuny prepares for her; together they revisit the life he fears he has lost.

The Past Preserved in a Room

Fortuny spends hours recalling Julián’s childhood and the time father and son worked together in the hat shop. He shows Nuria photographs and takes her into Julián’s room, which he keeps as immaculate as a museum. There he brings out old notebooks and everyday objects, often unaware that he has shown her the same things and told her the same stories before. The room and its contents preserve a version of Julián that Fortuny can still approach, even while his real son remains absent. The repetition is not simply a matter of passing on information: each Thursday, Fortuny reconstructs the past for a listener who understands both its fragility and its limits.

The friendship is therefore intimate but unequal in what each person knows. Fortuny shares memories in the hope that they may make his son present; Nuria listens while withholding the full truth. Her discretion protects him from a painful reality, but also leaves him living in an imagined prospect of return. The objects in Julián’s room and the repeated stories sustain that prospect, while Nuria’s visits keep Fortuny from facing his solitude entirely alone.

Illness, Solitude, and the Unseen Son

One Thursday, Nuria encounters a doctor leaving Fortuny’s apartment and identifies herself as the closest thing the old man has to a relative. The doctor tells her that Fortuny is very ill and may have only months to live. Asked what is wrong with him, the doctor distinguishes the stated condition from what he considers the deeper cause of his decline: loneliness and memories. Nuria’s role as visitor and confidante thus becomes more urgent. Her friendship cannot restore the lost years, but it gives Fortuny a companion at a time when his isolation has become life-threatening.

Nuria eventually tells Julián that if he wants to see his father again before Fortuny dies, he should hurry. The disclosure reveals that Julián, too, has been visiting: he watches Fortuny from a distance at dusk, sitting at the other end of a square as his father grows old. He does not approach. Julián would rather Fortuny keep the image of the son he had created in his mind than see the person Julián has become. Nuria’s loyalty to Fortuny has brought his failing health to Julián’s attention, but it cannot make Julián accept the reunion she hopes might still happen. She stands between the father who waits and the son who watches unseen, carrying the knowledge that each is near the other yet separated by the past and by Julián’s choice.