Daniel recalls a childhood obsession with an extravagant fountain pen displayed in a shop window, believing it could make him a writer and even carry a letter to his dead mother. When Daniel and Daniel’s father finally inquire about it, the clerk claims it is a numbered Montblanc that once belonged to Victor Hugo and names a price Daniel’s father cannot afford. Daniel’s father promises they will buy it when Daniel is old enough to write, or have the watchmaker Don Federico craft a substitute.

Daniel tries to write anyway with a pencil, producing a clumsy story about an enchanted pen inhabited by a starving novelist’s soul, but quickly abandons his literary ambitions for cheaper childhood distractions. The memory lingers, however, as an emblem of Daniel’s father’s quiet sacrifices and the poverty that shaped their lives.

Returning late from Barceló’s and the Ateneo, Daniel finds Daniel’s father waiting anxiously because Tomás Aguilar had called about a missed meeting. Over soup brought by Merceditas, Daniel explains he got stuck listening to Barceló and mentions meeting Clara, adding that Clara asked Daniel to come the next day after school to read to her. Daniel’s father reacts cautiously, sensing Daniel is growing up, but does not forbid it.

Daniel then presses Daniel’s father about the war and whether people were taken to Montjuïc Castle and never seen again. Daniel’s father admits it is true and reveals that Daniel’s mother made him promise never to talk to Daniel about the war, yet he now wonders if that silence was a mistake. The conversation leaves both of them subdued, and Daniel feels the city’s postwar sadness more sharply after hearing Clara’s story and imagining death as something with a human face.

Later, unable to sleep, Daniel looks from the balcony and sees a motionless stranger below: a man in dark clothes smoking, watching Daniel, then nodding as the cathedral bells strike midnight and walking away with a limp. Daniel is terrified because the scene exactly matches a passage from The Shadow of the Wind, where the watcher is explicitly identified as the devil.