THE SONS OF ADAM
A Saga of The Ancient Family
II
Eva García Sáenz
Translated by Tina Hart
Text copyright © 2014 by Eva García Sáenz de Urturi
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
Published by Eva García Sáenz de Urturi
ISBN-13:9781500543556
ISBN-10: 1500543551
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[email protected] Table of Contents
Prologue
1 Black snow
2 The last man on Earth
3 Hello, father
4 Four horsemen
5 You don't want to know
6 Bear skin
7 Melted in black
8 I want it to hurt
9 The Sons of Adam
10 The old man
11 The old arguments
12 Wait up for me
13 Berserker
14 Monte Castillo
15 Coffee in Paris
16 The Mayflower list
17 District 7
18 Solstice
19 Charles de Gaulle
20 The knife from Toledo
21 Beware of the fury
22 Mother
23 The wheel of life
24 Akhal Teke
25 The patriarchs
26 True means
27 The first winter
28 Scars
29 First Massacre
30 Deadline
31 High hopes
32 Second massacre
33 Brother's word
34 Cold
35 We're on our own
36 Hundred and fifth massacre
37 If I'm going to die tomorrow
38 Ilur
39 Only the truth
40 Pompeii
41 Daughter of a lesser God
42 A red sunrise
43 Crossroads
Epilogue
Prologue
Dead
IAGO
Dead. Dana was dead. I left the mangled corpse of my wife on the floor of the mansion and threw myself at him, blind with rage.
Life had once again put me in the position of having to kill someone who, a long time ago, I considered to be family.
1
Black snow
IAGO
Two miles left, I urged myself in desperation, me and my horse just have to cross this forest, reach the hill and get to my farm, which I should never have left in the first place, abandoning them like that.
Two miles, I repeated, trying to convince myself, they are not dead. Manon and the boy are strong, they've survived this epidemic as well.
It was old lady Bradford, the wife of the governor of the tiny colony of Plymouth, in New England, who gave me the bad news. Another new outbreak of scurvy had reached the coastal plantations of Duxbury, to the north of Cape Cod.
"Is there any news of my wife and son?" I asked when I heard the first rumors in the market.
She gave me a sad look and crossed herself by way of a response. I dropped the skins of the beavers I had hunted and prepared the week before. A last comfortable profit before leaving the Plymouth plantation and abandoning my identity as Ely.
A decade after arriving on the coast of New England on board the Mayflower, in November of the year of Our Lord 1620, the time had come to abandon a happy home, a beloved son of eight summers and a wife, perhaps the strongest and most determined of all those I had loved.
I was leaving so much behind, we had been through so much together on that farm on the rocky cliff...
The extreme winters on that rugged coast didn't bother us. Manon had shown unusual strength.
She was a tireless chronicler of everything that happened in the Plymouth colony. When I met her she was a young widow who had lost her husband weeks before boarding.
With her journey already paid for, she had no other alternative than to leave on her own without a husband. She roused a certain amount of caution amongst the Puritans and their wives, since a women traveling and living alone was frowned upon, especially if she knew how to read and write, but from the very first day she was an essential part of the colony.
She later told me that it was the first time she had left England, the land of King James I.
"We have had a virgin queen who didn't need a husband to lead the greatest empire on the globe. Can't I travel to the New World without a husband?" she said on the day I boarded with the Puritans in the port of Southampton.
After hearing the dark omens from Mrs. Bradford, I raced off, galloping over the snow-covered pine forest, which whipped my face with its frozen branches. The Wampanoag Indians had opened narrow paths over the centuries but my horse could barely pass between the logs. I didn't care, I spurred him on to the point of exhaustion. The weight of my conscience blinded me and I could only see the moment when I would reach a home that I should never have left.
I jumped down from my horse as I reached the cliff. Neither Manon nor the boy were plowing the land, no one was planting corn that day, the chickens heard me and rushed to the fence. I could tell that they'd been waiting for days for feed that never came.
I shouted out their names, but nobody came to great me. I circled our farm, tripping over some tools that the snow had hidden, and finally came across the thing I had never wanted to find: the grave of my wife, Manon Adams. A mound of earth with two planks of wood crudely tied together in the shape of a cross. My son had dug that pit, but there were no signs of his grave. Was he still alive? I shouted out his name once more, going inside our cabin and there, on the bed, I found his frozen body. He had also died from the epidemic, although he had had the strength to bury his mother.
Maybe if I had have stayed with them...
Maybe I would have taken them far away upon hearing the first rumors.
Maybe I would have been able to save them.
Maybe...
Why fool myself, I had abandoned them just one week before. I had accepted the fact that I would never see them again, that the Grim Reaper would end up taking them. But not that soon. Not that soon and in such a miserable way.
Devastated, I walked out of the cabin and fell to my knees on the black snow. I was aware of my breeches being soaked by the cold ground.
I made a decision. Not even the memory of those lives, that had been cut so short, would remain.
I grabbed a stick and set fire to it, making a torch. I went inside the barn and lit the straw that had been stored for the winter.
And for the first time I thought: If they are going to burn, maybe we should all burn together.
And I let myself get carried away by the sweet idea of ending all the suffering, of sacrificing myself with them, as I had seen done to so many slaves in Scandinavia. I dropped the torch at my feet. It burned around my muddy leather boots, and I closed my eyes, feeling the flames until they were licking at my hands. But then I remembered that my father was waiting for me in London, on the other side of the world. Unaware that his son had given up the gift he had given him, unaware that he would not return to his childhood cave and wait for him at the summer solstice, unaware that he was just a pile of ashes at the foot of a cliff in the New World.
I ran out of the barn just as the flames were beginning to burn my clothes and threw myself on the sno
w, rolling around to put out my own fire. Then I let the entire farm go up in a blaze. There was nothing I could do for the family I had abandoned.
I finally left, without looking back, with a singed shirt and smoky clothes.
I'll remember you for centuries Manon. I'll remember our son and you, for healing my wounds, for this decade of peace that you brought to my worn-out soul. I won't forget, I'll never forget.
And I fled north, where the natives took me in for the first few days, before heading to a place that would later be known as Maine.
Like a coward.
I left like a coward, I left my wife and my son without saying goodbye. I left them in the worst month of the cruel winter, trusting in their strength.
...and then the wound inflicted on me by my daughter Lyra, the scar on my hand, began to burn. The thin line turned red and I felt it burn. It burned so much that I screamed in pain.
"Iago!, wake up! You're shouting Lyra's name again."
Dazed and disoriented, I sat up in bed with a start. I was in Cantabria, in the 21st century. My latest wife, Adriana Alameda, had woken me from my umpteenth nightmare and was giving me a worried look, still half asleep. It was a cold winter morning but my brain was on fire.
I looked at the scar, which beat with its own pulse and was as red as a river of blood. I instinctively closed my fist and hid it from Dana. She wouldn't understand: the feeling of alertness, of a dark omen, sufficient to make my daughter turn in her grave.
Something ominous was about to happen.
"Did you dream about Lyra again?"
"Fortunately, no," I answered, without wanting to discuss it. I could still smell the burnt straw from my farm back in the New World.
"What century were you in then?"
"Neolithic. Sixth millennium BC. Çatal Hüyük," I lied.
She sat up with a start.
"You dreamed about Çatal Hüyük? I turned twenty-six there."
"I know Dana. I know," I sighed. Now the battery of questions would begin, and my head was still stuck in the 17th century.
"So tell me, are us archaeologists right with our conclusions?"
"Pretty much, although there are details right in front of your faces that you aren't seeing."
I couldn't shake my dream from my thoughts, and I had a doubt that stung like acid: what was the name of the son Manon and I had?
"Do you remember that all the bones of the women found there had deformations of the first metatarsal?" I asked, trying to focus on a much more aseptic present.
"Yes, I held many of them in my hands. Was it some kind of deforming custom, like binding the feet of the Chinese girls in the 14th century, or binding heads with boards in the Mayan culture?"
"No, the women of Çatal Hüyük spent their days on their knees grinding corn on stone mills. It was a very awkward position and it deformed their toes."
Dana quickly took in the new piece of information. She sat on the quilt, wearing just my old arctic fox shirt that she had adopted many months before.
"And did you adapt?" she wanted to know.
"I didn't, but I wasn't alone. My father went with me. Lür was more flexible, I guess it was because he had already lived through great change in his world, having seen the Würm glaciation turn into a continent of forests... The women were..." I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, doubtful.
"You can say it, Iago. I don't have any issues with your past."
"They were submissive and complacent. Until then I hadn't had any female companions, not of private property. And the men... many did nothing more than sit about, whilst their women wore themselves out working. But those weren't the only changes. That vast city made of mud was very much like a beehive. We had to eat and sleep in cubicles which we accessed via stairs from the roof. I ended up hating those damn stairs."
I got out of bed. Morning had not yet arrived but for me the night and its liturgies had come to an end.
Naked, I went over to the fireplace that Dana and I had lit the night before. There were still some embers and a log that hadn't fully burned.
What was our son called? I asked myself again, frustrated. But I couldn't find the answer.
I sat on the floor on the soft wool rug, in front of a dying fire, and wrapped myself up in an old Scottish blanket I had brought from one of my trips. Dana also got up, somewhat disheveled and a bit sleepy, and sat between my legs, in the same position as mine, staring at a hypnotic flame.
We had turned an 18th century house overlooking the Costa Quebrada into our home. We had covered the thick masonry stone walls with memories and had decorated all the rooms with our belongings, making it recognizable to both of us. On the mantle was a framed copy of the 'Mea culpa d'un sceptique', which presided over our bedroom. A reminder from the night that Dana finally gave in and decided to believe me.
A year and a half of a precarious balance between someone who wanted to know everything about the past and someone who wanted to forget it all.
I rested my head on her shoulder and changed the course of the conversation.
"I'm meeting with the management of the Altamira Neocave today. I want to see if we can reach a collaboration agreement following all the hype of the carbon dating. What have you got planned for today?" I asked her.
"Another job interview for the Middle Ages Department."
"Ok, when my meeting is over I'll go with you."
I smiled at her. Dana would get there, but late as she always did.
With a bit of luck we would both meet the candidate at the same time.
2
The last man on Earth
LÜR
Sungir, current Russia 23,000 B.C.
Lür meticulously scrutinized the root. He had been digging for hours and his hands were numb and his nails were broken.. The ground was frozen, it was always frozen. For decades now, frozen.
The emaciated plant had a hard skin, but when he opened it he found red sap. Not a good sign, Lür, not a good sign.
As a child in his clan he had been taught to stay away from plants with sap, and even more so if it had a bright color. And he, as a Shaman, had also taught this hundreds of times. Any apprentice knew that nobody would survive unless they respected the rules on how to distinguish an edible plant from a lethal one.
Lür raised his head and looked at the top of the white mountain range. He needed to eat something if he was going to have the strength to climb it.
Another mountain, Lür. Another faded hope, and then what? he repeated to himself.
Then you carry on, you keep going.
Just like you always do. Just like you always do.
His thoughts had become repetitive and he knew that it was due to the lack of food. Since the earth tremors, since that cloud of dust covered up the sunlight many years before, his brain had been working slower. His body, worn out from not eating anything other than roots and bark covered in ash, had lost its previous vigor.
Many trees had disappeared following the disaster and he no longer had any time references on the horizon. Nor were there any seasons. Winter and the thaw were no longer reliable. The Ice Age had covered the Earth, Father Sun barely shone behind the clouds of red dust that had covered everything during the first decades following the Cataclysm. The bodies of the men and animals he had found along the way had all dried up. He found the remains of camps here and there, fur tents that still served as a refuge if he had the strength to drag out the stiff corpses of the owners, who had been taken by surprise during their daily chores, like the rest of Humanity.
One last mountain, Lür. Maybe the Sons of Adam did survive. They say that their matriarch is eternal, like you. She will have resisted, at least.
I am not the last man on Earth. Wandering alone on a deserted planet is not my destiny, he thought, as he had so many times before.
If I can't die, if I'll never grow old, when mankind dies out, when it drops of the face of the earth like the mammoths, like so many other animals that I haven't see
n again, will I be left on my own? For eternity? The whole world to myself?
He picked up the root and performed the first test. He opened his fur coat and rubbed the plant on his forearm. He would soon know if it was poisonous.
But what did it matter, he was going to die either of starvation or of poisoning. What did it matter. He picked up the root again and raised it to his lips, checking that it didn't make them numb, and ate it as if it was the most delicious honey in the world.
He then took a final look at his surroundings, the sky almost red with that eternal haze of dust, the permanently snow-capped mountains, huge and magnificent. In other times, the red and white that surrounded him would have left him ecstatic with their strange beauty. Now he hated what his beloved planet had become. The Land he knew was now barren and silent.
He squeezed his stick, started the climb and began to sing loudly. Old songs, ancient hymns. Happy sounds to celebrate births and brotherhoods between clans, solemn melodies to honor a venerable patriarch, sad whispers to bid farewell to an elderly mother.
Lür sang, he always sang. Every day. He didn't want to forget how to speak, he didn't want to forget the sound of the words and their meanings. And although he didn't want to admit it, he still held onto the hope of finding another human being, another survivor. Which is why he had spent decades covering what was left of the known routes.
I am not the last man. That time has still not arrived.
He started feeling dizzy halfway through the climb. His arm was burning, but he changed the stick to his other hand and carried on climbing.
There were just a few hours left to reach the summit. It would be night by the time he got to the top. But he felt weak. Weak because he hadn't eaten in so many days. Under his fur gloves, bony hands held his stick with less force than they ought.
No... he shouldn't have eaten that root. He would probably die before Mother Moon rose on the horizon.
He took out a piece of coal that he had carefully saved from his last fire. Just for times like these. He began to grind up the small black stone of charred wood, making a paste with his saliva, and swallowing it. Only this could save his life if the plant was actually poisonous.