I leafed through the pages of that relic until a folded piece of paper was caught by the wind and blown toward the sea. I chased it, hurting the soles of my feet, and finally trapped it on the ground, flattening it with my hand and leaving it all wrinkled. I turned it over and was able to make out:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi Marcos,
I’ve finally sunk my teeth into your Tropic of Cancer; I owe you one. It was really worth the effort. I’m sending you one of the weird ramblings that occurred to me as I was reading it.
Lots of love,
Dana
And there comes a night when everything is over, when so many jaws have bitten down on us and our flesh is hanging from our bodies, as if all the mouths had chewed it.
As if all the bodies had used it, as if all the consciences had judged us and we were left in darkness, deprived even of our shadows. And we painfully strangle our memories in the dark, one by one, but they never manage to die; they are supported by the memory of our worst moments, and they depart by taking advantage of our decadence. Cursed graze that burns; cursed mind that never stops thinking. Mirrors that don’t lie; doubts that torment; dictators who torture every hope on the rack. The crossroads approach, and it makes my head spin; we choose the path that allows us to sleep; we reject the tempting loophole. Lose yourself within the eyes of the one who deceives, or find yourself within those of the one who still loves you. The uncertainty of what hasn’t been experienced versus the certainty of the already expired. Merge the experiences; the game is as controlled as a fire. Feel the heat; feel the cold. Wager, then, on your own defeat.
Dana. So she signed herself Dana. That ancient Irish goddess my family had once venerated. We used to make offerings to her in the month of Aliso. Adriana had chosen her True Name, and I had discovered it. That was an excellent gift for any male of my clan. I stuffed the piece of paper in the inside pocket of my jacket. It was crinkled, and she would notice that if I put it back inside the book, and that was the equivalent of acknowledging that I had read what she had written, and that would undoubtedly make her feel too exposed. It was better this way—her not knowing that I knew. Hopefully the tender moment of questions and confessions would arrive someday.
Who was Marcos, and what had he done to deserve her kisses and her intimate messages? Her boyfriend, her friend, the guy with whom she’d gone into her apartment building? Clearly a confidant. I wasn’t jealous, because I didn’t own any part of her, but I was attracted by the idea of choosing to keep her secrets, too.
Was it perhaps vanity on my part to think she was talking about me? Was it my eyes she was talking about when she said they were deceptive? Was that what kept her distant from me—the lies, the deceptions? How could she have found out?
I had noticed her distance last night when she finally looked into my eyes in the Prehistory Hall. And I was on the verge of saying no. “No, Adriana, not like this. Not with that look in your eyes. Not without any explanations.” But what if there wasn’t another opportunity? What if she didn’t reconsider her choice? I’ve always favored making mistakes and then regretting them. Better that than spending the rest of my life wondering how her kisses might taste, or how her hair might smell at the break of day, or how strong the pressure of her embraces might be.
And so I left it at that. I left her to do whatever she had decided to do.
Maybe moving on in that way.
Because it had been sad—intense, profound sex, and yet despite that, sad. She had moved a chess piece, and it was easy to anticipate her moves; now she’d let some time pass. She would castle to protect her king. And unfortunately I sensed that there was nothing I could do about it. It was her game. She was making the decisions, moving the pieces. She had won that right.
And despite that, during the weeks that followed the Night of the Museums, there were days when I skipped protocol, and my hand caressed her hair. That was all I needed: to brush my hand over her smooth hair whenever our paths crossed in the deserted corridors of the museum, free of the eyes always watching our every move. Then I’d be left with the feel of that mane of hair, while the touch of my hand seemed to leave her undone.
Silk.
The softest, most exquisite silk.
I had no idea what Dana thought of my audacity; we never spoke about it. At times I imagined she was holding on to my hand with hers and allowing her gaze to linger on mine.
Silk.
There were nights—at that hour when we rid ourselves of our clothes and our obligations—when all I wanted was to get to bed, and I’d close my eyes and see her. Her face between my hands, her body between my legs, her fearless eyes holding my gaze. And I took pleasure in the memory and wanted sleep to bring her to me for a longer period, to bring back the immediate past, those not-so-distant days before she built the invisible wall that she didn’t allow me to breach.
A rock wall.
A wall of intangible but solid rock.
What was it that was keeping her away from me? How was I to clear up that mystery?
32
ADRIANA
May 2012
During those weeks there were days when I crossed paths with Iago in the corridors and, by way of a greeting, he would affectionately stroke my hair. Iago’s hand would run over my hair firmly but gently. I’d wait until he disappeared down the corridor, and then I’d place my hand on the spot where seconds earlier his hand had been. And my hand would smell of lavender again. I’d close my eyes and try to hold on to what I had left of him. That was the most that I allowed myself, that I allowed him.
There were nights when the temptation to remember him battled for space in my head. At those times, when daily distractions were no longer an option and my resolve weakened, I would open the censored drawer of my memory. Details from the night I spent with him would reveal new shades of meaning. Then dawn would arrive, and I would cloak myself in indifference again.
After I got home that dawn of the Night of the Museums, I had spent the whole weekend wrapped up in the memories. I didn’t take a shower so I wouldn’t lose whatever smell of Iago remained.
I replayed every detail of that night in my mind, rewinding again and again, recording the taste of his flesh when I bit his shoulders, the tautness of the skin on his back yielding to my fingers, the rustle of his hair, the glacial-blue steadiness of his tranquil gaze. And best of all, his tense face, his hands imprisoning my face, leaving me at the mercy of his strength. I was fully conscious of what I was doing, because I did it quite deliberately. I wanted to remember all the details of this stage to the point of exhaustion and then end it.
Look forward.
Overcome.
Carry on with the solitary-wolf-of-the-steppes routine that it had cost me so much to put in place.
Monday arrived, and with it a return to life at the museum. I parked my car and headed straight to BACus for breakfast. I knew that Salva, Paz, and various others would be waiting for me. I was sitting down at their table when the intern in the Medieval Section looked up and stared at the entrance. We all turned round and found ourselves looking at Iago, who had just walked into the place wearing a cobalt-blue shirt and a form-fitting vest.
Was Iago aware that color accentuated the blue of his eyes in such an outrageous manner you had to take a mental cold shower to be able to keep looking at him? Yes, he must have been. He would have mirrors in his apartment, wouldn’t he? Iago was a man who was an expert in being a male, one of that breed who is very conscious of the effect he has.
“I’ve just switched twenty-five-percent camps,” said the young woman, known so far for her weakness for Héctor.
To say that Iago was impressive that morning was an understatement, a serious understatement.
“There’s no way of being able to concentrate on work with that,” whispered Paula, Iago’s secre
tary, with an expression oscillating between annoyance and resignation.
For once I was in total agreement with her. Was Iago punishing me? I looked at him, but there was nothing in his behavior to support my theory. While we followed him with our eyes and a poorly disguised curiosity, Iago made his way to the table at the rear of BACus where Héctor was waiting for him. As he went past our table, he restricted himself to a greeting rather than sitting down with us.
“How was your weekend?” he asked us absentmindedly, as if oblivious to our reactions.
I could swear his smile betrayed no concern. As if he’d erased the entire episode. He addressed everyone, including me, without making too much of an effort, but without conveying any sense of indifference.
It was the same during the meeting we had at noon with the stuffy Javier Sanz. Not one look too many. No flirting or untoward contact. As if he really had let it go.
My story was something else altogether. When I woke up that Monday morning, I pretended to get on with my life, but at heart I knew that my façade continued to cover an enormous renunciation. It was a refusal to find out what Iago and his family were hiding; a refusal to feel that lack of control that forces you to classify days according to whether or not he is present; a refusal to pay attention to the color of any iris that wasn’t his.
And yet I didn’t take any further steps.
I placed my trust in time.
It was a mistake.
A big mistake.
Because some weeks later, I was sitting in my office when I received an email from Mercedes Poveda, my former professor. When I opened it, the shock was such that I forgot I was in Santander, that my name was Adriana, and that I had once been an archaeologist. When you’re confronted with something that should be classified as impossible, common sense looks to trickery, deceit, fraud, or a joke as an explanation. Any interpretation that won’t turn your belief system upside down or force you to contemplate the order of the universe from a totally new perspective.
33
IAGO
Venus Day, the twentieth day of the month of Uath
Friday, June 1, 2012
It’s a well-known fact that at times, small unconnected actions in different parts of the planet come together with no apparently common objective, but end up leading to irreversible developments.
That Friday, the first day of June, an elderly woman asked her grandson for his help in surprising one of her former students 250 miles away. So the adolescent sent the former student an email with a scanned version of an old photo attached, and the recipient of that email opened that attachment just as I was opening the door to her office.
I had reached a decision. I was tired of dreadful, sleepless nights, just like the ones Jairo had predicted with the precision of an oracle. I burst into her office like a bull at the gate, firing off my demand point-blank, “Adriana, you’ve got to tell me what your issue is with me. You’re driving me mad.”
But as soon as I saw her, I realized that something really serious had happened. Her face was white, as if the blood in her cheeks had fled to some distant place. She looked at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher—perhaps horror, or maybe terror. Her eyes were wide open, her muscles paralyzed. I even think she tried to speak, but no words came out. Her eyes were fixed on her open laptop. Then she registered my presence and went back to looking at the screen. Instinct made me close the door behind me, and I then walked toward her. Instinct also made me lower my voice.
“What’s the matter, Adriana? You’re looking at me as if I were a ghost.”
But she remained motionless, her state unchanged.
“Are you listening to me?” I insisted as I came closer. “You’ve got me worried.”
Dana raised her hand to prevent me from coming any closer. “It’s just that I’m seeing something that’s impossible, and despite that it’s right in front of my nose,” she replied mechanically, as if she were having trouble stringing the words together.
No, please. I beg you. No, I petitioned the first god I could think of at that moment. He ignored me as usual.
“Adriana, please tell me what’s happening,” I implored, more and more agitated. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Don’t come any closer,” she said, turning the computer screen toward me. “Iago, you have to explain this to me.”
On the screen I could see the scanned copy of a somewhat faded, poor-quality photo of a group of people chatting at what seemed to be some sort of celebration.
“What’s that photo?” I asked, trying to fake a calmness I wasn’t feeling.
“It’s a party at the Complutense to celebrate the feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas. A retired professor sent it to me. My mentor, in fact.”
I knew where this conversation was going to end up, but I asked her to go on.
“Iago, this photo was taken on January 29, 1978. I need you to explain to me what Héctor and Kyra are doing having a conversation in the background of this picture.”
“Please lower your voice. This mustn’t leave this room,” I whispered. “What makes you think it’s Héctor and Kyra?”
“Don’t treat me like an idiot, Iago. The left side of Kyra’s face has several spots—a bit like moles—that look like a constellation.”
The Lyra constellation, I thought, shattered.
“Look at this blowup of the image,” she commanded, almost trembling. “It’s her. It’s not someone like her, Iago. It is her, and Héctor, too. He’s got a beard in the photo, but it’s him.”
“Adriana, you have to erase that photo,” I said, grasping at what little authority I had left right then. “And you also have to tell me the name of the woman who sent it to you.”
“No way,” she refused outright, slamming shut the lid of the laptop. “Either you tell me once and for all what’s going on, or I swear that this doesn’t stop here.”
“You didn’t get that photo by chance. Have you been checking us out?”
“Would you stop asking me questions and start answering mine for once?” she shouted, beside herself, getting up out of her chair.
I took that as a yes.
“Fine, but calm down. Listen, we can’t talk about this here.” And then it occurred to me to suggest, “Come to my place. Let’s go right now, and I promise I’ll tell you everything, but you have to tell me where the photo came from.”
“Okay,” she conceded, “but only if you talk, too.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. Take your laptop. We’re going right now,” I said, locking her office behind us.
During the drive from the MAC to Santander—one of the most difficult of my life, and that’s saying something—I had to decide how much to tell her and how much to keep back. I was aware that Adriana was in a state of shock, but despite that I needed to know what had pushed her to investigate us.
When we finally got to my place, we took off our shoes, and in silence I served her some snacks I threw together—salmon, pâté, dried fruit. Then she sat down on her preferred side of the sofa while I remained standing, striding up and down the carpet, trying to think clearly. Finally, I reached a decision.
“Adriana, I’ve never in my life done what I’m about to do, so I have no idea how it will sound. But first I have to ask you something: whatever happens, and whether or not you believe me, you must never talk about this with anyone—not now, not in fifty years’ time, not even on your deathbed. You have to give me your word.”
Dana recognized that I was absolutely serious. She agreed without saying a word while she kept pulling her hair up into a ponytail and then letting it drop again in a mechanical action that she herself wasn’t even aware of.
“My family mustn’t find out, either, especially Jairo. I’m not even sure how I’m going to handle this,” I said, thinking out loud as I paced back and forth in front of her like a caged lion.
“The effort I’m going to demand of you is huge, and I’m aware of that,” I continued. “But I’m scared that you’ll run out of here as soon as I start talking, so I first have to ask you to tell me what it was that made you start investigating us. What did you see? What did you discover?”
“Actually, it was something I overheard,” she admitted, not very sure of her words.
Something she’d overheard? We were always careful to be on our own when we talked business. Our lives had depended on it so many times that discretion was second nature to us.
“Please tell me,” I begged her.
“I overheard you talking in the laboratory, from a sort of room that’s behind Kyra’s office, though you can’t access it from the basement stairs.”
“So how did you access it?”
“From the bookcase in my office.”
“What are you saying?”
“The bookcase in my office has a false back that leads to a vertical tunnel with rungs. I think it dates from the era when the original indiano house was built. The back of the bookcase gave way from the weight of my books, and my Cunliffe’s The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe fell through.”
“I would have chased after it, too,” I had to admit.
I had no idea the building had any tunnel or secret gallery. Nagorno had never said anything about it, but I left that matter for later, because I had to concentrate on what was unfolding in front of me right now.
“Please go on,” I urged her, with a wave of my hand.
“The thing is that I climbed several yards down the tunnel and heard voices. That was when I realized that it was the three of you.”
The Immortal Collection (A Saga of the Ancient Family Book 1) Page 25
