“I need you to do something for me. Could you bring me that pack over there?”
The man did as I asked and started emptying the contents. When he took out the aloe, I asked him to give it to me, but he ignored my request and started to apply it to my head of his own accord.
“An ugly wound,” he commented, “and your companion hasn’t fared any better.”
“Have you seen my brother?” I asked eagerly.
“They captured another Hellene. I assume he’s your brother because when you were unconscious, he tried to revive you. They brought him back a short while ago, and he was in some considerable pain. He told me they’d applied poultices and torn out all the hair on his body. Not long after that, Olbia demanded his presence. I know nothing further of him or his fate.”
Hektor was nearby. I clung to that hope. “Olbia, the woman who leads this army of old men and cripples?”
“She’s the one in charge now. Her husband, Kelermes, is the leader of the tribe. He set off just a few months ago, heading west with all the healthy men; they’re always having disputes with the Massagetae. This tribe is nomadic, but when the men are on the move, those left behind usually camp along the shore of some river and wait however long it takes for them to return—years sometimes.”
“Are you a prisoner as well?”
He looked at me as you would look at a child and calmly shook his head. “That’s what you think? That we’re prisoners? No, my friend. We’re slaves, and the most likely outcome is that they’ll sell the two of you at the market in Borystene as soon as you recover from your wounds, unless you can provide something of use or interest to Olbia.”
The last thing I needed was to have to rack my brains trying to find some way of not being sold into slavery, but I had no idea what had become of my father, nor did I know if my destiny would be better or worse in Borystene if I were to change owners.
“Tell me about the Scythians. Not what’s in the legends, but what you’ve seen and experienced in your time with them.”
“The Scythians who captured you belong to the nobility, to the warrior elite. They’re the only ones who ride horses, and they do it even before they have learned to walk. But their passion for those animals costs them dearly: they are the most sterile of men, I think because of the constant jolting of their crotch. And most of them bleed like women, though not just once a month, but constantly.”
“How is that possible? I’ve never come across anything like that.”
“They bleed from their private parts; you can see for yourself,” he said, indicating that I should look through one of the cracks in the wall.
I stretched myself as far as I could and peered out at the campsite. I recognized some of the old men who had tied me up. One of them was walking between the tents, and when I spotted the stain on his trousers, I could see that Ponticus was telling the truth.
“What about their reputation for being bloodthirsty? Is everything they say true?”
“Forget what they say; the reality is far worse. They usually use the skulls of their enemies as drinking vessels for their wine. They saw off the top of the skull and send it to be covered in gold leaf. But they combine their love of art with the most primitive savagery. They pull off their enemies’ scalps after making a cut from ear to ear like this,” he said, illustrating his statement by running a finger across the nape of my neck. “They knead the pieces of skin they pull off between their hands until they achieve the consistency they’re after, and then they hang them from their horses’ manes. Only after this can they ask their chief for their share of the booty. Some of them skin the entire body—”
“That’s enough, Ponticus. I’ve got the idea.”
Just then my father came into the tent and rushed to me anxiously.
“Brother, are you all right?” he asked me.
“Somewhat bruised, but I’ll get better soon. What about you? Let me have a look at you.”
He was naked and his skin was reddened and totally hairless, apart from what was growing on his head.
“You look like a salmon,” I said. “Is that how the Scythians torture people?”
“They were, in fact, preparing me for Olbia. She’s . . . a very refined woman with sophisticated tastes. I thought she’d be a barbarian, but I have to admit that I’m surprised. She has a tireless curiosity about everything that comes from our colonies. And—”
“But what’s happened?” I interrupted him with growing impatience. “What did she say to you?”
“What did she say to me? To be honest, when I walked in the only two words she uttered were, ‘Satisfy me.’ ”
Enough, already, I thought, rolling my eyes.
“Your brother has just found his usefulness,” Ponticus interrupted, with his practical view of the world. Then he turned to me with concern. “I hope you can find yours soon.”
“Maybe she’ll ask for me, too,” I mused out loud.
“I doubt it. If that were the case, she wouldn’t have allowed them to leave you in such a lamentable state. I fear she has a different fate in mind for each of you.”
“Hektor, do you think she’ll demand your presence again?” I asked.
“That’s her intention. She told me to get some rest and be ready for this evening.”
“Then you’ve got to help me. Tell me: Does she have a wound on any intimate part of her body?”
“Jason, you’re incorrigible! Look at the state you’re in, and yet the only thing you can think about is that I share morbid details with you.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m trying to prevent them from selling me at the slave market. Given that you’re going to be staying here, we can at least try to stop them from separating us. So now, answer my question.”
“Yes,” he admitted reluctantly, “her buttocks are very bruised, from riding, I presume.”
“That’s what I thought. So here’s my plan: tonight, take her some aloe. Just a little. Explain to her that I can heal her sores and relieve the chronic pain that she and her horsemen suffer from. If she doesn’t believe you, apply it to the sore of one of her slaves in order to convince her. Tell her that your brother can cultivate this rare plant on her lands, but that they’ll require his expert care if they are to grow.”
“That’s your plan?” asked Ponticus incredulously. “To heal the Scythians’ buttocks?”
“Whatever it takes. I loathe not being master of my own destiny. We need to gain some time to become acquainted with the tribe and plan our escape.”
“Escape, on the steppes, where there’s no place to hide? Haven’t you seen their arrows? The metal ones have three flanges and are so fast that no one sees them coming when they fire them from their horses at a gallop. No slave has ever managed to escape.”
“Then I’ll have to come up with a good plan.”
I wanted to tell him, “You see, my friend, my father and I don’t age, and we can’t stay here forever without them discovering this fact. What will happen when the Scythians realize what we are?”
My father silently agreed with me. I assumed that, like me, he was contemplating our new situation.
18
ADRIANA
Friday, February 24, 2012
I was getting ready for a dinner with my work colleagues when I heard the doorbell ring. I opened the door and came face-to-face with the same courier who had brought me Jairo’s invitation, looking at me with a serious expression. He handed me a package exactly like the earlier one. I opened it right there. The gold badge with the mare fell to the ground by my feet, and again I ignored it. The card, written once more in Jairo’s elegant hand, had a somewhat different message this time:
Never return a work of art.
With time, it always increases in value.
J. C.
I put the badge back in the package and gave it back to the courier.
This time I returned it with a message of my own on the back of the card:
Thank you yet again, Jairo.
I’m very conscious of the value of your gift.
That’s why I insist that I can’t accept it.
AAA
Ten minutes later the bell rang again, and I asked myself if I should start considering this to be sexual harassment. But no, it was neither Jairo del Castillo nor his little gold badge. It was my cousin Marcos. I opened the door, surprise clearly visible on my face.
“Don’t make a scene, okay?” he said with a look I didn’t like.
“Why would I do that?”
He handed me an old piece of paper inside a see-through plastic pocket. A page torn out of a diary.
“What’s this, Marcos?”
“Your mother’s suicide note.”
Those words, strung together into a single sentence, made my blood run cold.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Grandfather had it. They gave it to him when they closed the case. He went with your father to the police station. Your father didn’t want to keep it, so Grandfather took it.”
“They closed the case?”
“In reality they didn’t even investigate, because there was nothing to investigate. The police simply made a record of what had happened. Your mother committed suicide and left that note for you. We hid it from you because at the time you were too disoriented. Your family was out of control; you spent the whole time arguing at home; your father was going to move to Madrid and leave the two of you on your own in Santander, because your mother refused to follow him there—”
“Pardon?”
“They were going to separate, Dana.” He sighed. “Maybe it’s too much information for one day.”
“Don’t treat me as if I were made of glass.”
I hate those family things: the secrets; the promises to keep things quiet, which are almost always broken for no good reason. Although I have to admit that my solution—not having family—wasn’t perfect either. You run the risk of the same thing happening to you as happens to me: you’re the last one to find out about everything.
I looked at the note in my mother’s handwriting but scrawled as if in haste:
December 20, 1997
I’m sorry,
hija,
Day 354
“I found it when Grandfather died and we moved into his house. It was among his papers. I kept it in order to give it to you someday.”
“So you’ve known about it for years?”
“Yes.”
I looked at him in silence and grabbed the paper from his hand. “Would you please leave? I’m going to be late for a dinner.”
“Dana, listen, I—”
“You asked me not to make a scene, and I’m doing what you asked. Good night, Marcos.”
Marcos slammed the door behind him, and I was left on my own, looking at the note: “I’m sorry, hija.”
My mother, the verbose one; my mother, she of “You have to verbalize your feelings”; my mother, who turned things over in her mind more times than you would a tortilla, had said good-bye with a curt “I’m sorry, hija.” That definitely didn’t sound much like my mother. Although maybe the problem was me, refusing to allow that piece of paper into my life. Because if I were to do so, where did that leave all my unanswered questions?
I have to admit that the news that my parents were about to separate didn’t surprise me a lot. It was in fact more surprising that they had lasted together for so long, when they never had anything much to do with each other. My father had spent his whole life as a regional salesman for a company that made frames for glasses and had never spent more than a few consecutive nights at home. I learned early on that in his profession there are two very distinct types of salesmen: those who wear impeccable suits, shake hands with an exact amount of firmness, and finalize their sales with their clients while pretending to be friends; and those bald, hesitant little men whose ties are always off to one side and who dry their sweaty hands on their jackets before shaking hands. My father belonged to the latter group.
My mother, on the other hand, was the goose that laid the golden egg, at least in the latter stages of her life. She established herself as the family psychologist of the cream of Santander society, and thanks to those golden years, she left us the beachfront apartment in Laredo, which we enjoyed for barely a few summers. Then there was her office right downtown, as well as the apartment in Plaza de Pombo I’d now moved back into, on which she’d made a substantial cash down payment.
A year after my mother died, the company laid off my father, and he fell into deep depression. Or maybe he became depressed and then they fired him; I don’t remember the exact order of events. His unemployment benefit and my orphan’s allowance didn’t cover the outstanding mortgage payments, but he showed no interest in facing up to the situation. He was incapable of getting out of bed for many months, while his seventeen-year-old daughter did whatever she felt like doing as soon as she headed out the door of the apartment. In any event, that stage of behaving like a zombie didn’t last long—only until the order to seize the property arrived. Neither of us in that blessed apartment had ever bothered to open the mailbox or seen any notice of warning from the bank.
I realized then that I’d have to take charge. I found my mother’s appointment book and let her colleagues know that her office was available for rent. Fortunately, from that moment it was almost always occupied. I did the same thing with the apartment in Laredo, so we didn’t have too many financial worries from then on.
Not long after all this, my father insisted that we move to Madrid, arguing that there would be more opportunities there for someone determined to stick with his chosen profession. “Madrid is my El Dorado,” he kept repeating, and he took that notion quite literally. He managed to become the representative for a brand of eighteen-carat-gold-plated frames, a luxury product for which I wasn’t convinced he had the right profile. I reluctantly followed him to Madrid and enrolled in history at the Complutense University, although I became independent as soon as I could, hunting down every possible archaeological dig in order to become self-sufficient—right up to the present day.
It’s strange how all the pieces of my life were now starting to slot into place. That’s what happens when you can access the information that’s been censored.
I was in a foul mood when I hit the street and headed for the Machichaco restaurant. A soft rain started to fall just as I reached the corner of Lealtad and Calderón de la Barca, a few doors away from the restaurant.
I pulled up the collar of my jacket. Broken umbrellas were already piling up in the rubbish bins like so many free-form urban sculptures—the sort that make no sense but leave municipal budgets in a state of shock. I was about to go into the restaurant when my phone rang.
“Hey, Papá. I was just thinking about you.”
“Oh, I’m glad,” he replied, somewhat stunned. “And how are you, hija? Is everything going well?”
For a daughter who’s just found out that her father has spent half of her life lying to her, yes, I’m doing okay.
“Great. Did you want something?”
“No, just calling to find out how you are, and if you’ve finished your move . . .” He had a habit of rambling when he didn’t know what to say.
“Yes. No more boxes left to unpack.”
“And have you left anything behind in Madrid? I mean, do you have to come back here in the near future?”
“Well, to tell the truth, I wasn’t planning to. Has something bad happened? Do you need me to come?”
“No, no, nothing bad, of course not. It’s just that . . .”
Come on, out with it.
“It’s just that I’d like you to meet my friend . . . that is, my companion, or rather . . . um . . . my partner.”
br /> That really was a surprise. My father, the hermit, had a social life—more accurately, had a love life. Which meant I had a stepmother. Okay.
“Right. Fine. I have no problem with meeting her, but the reality is I wasn’t thinking of coming to Madrid just now. When I do, the three of us can get together, if that’s what you’d like.”
That’s the way, Dana; be gracious.
“Well, five actually. Marian has twin daughters. They’re really lovely, actually. We spend the weekends together, and we like the same TV series. You’ll really like your sisters.”
I’d just gone from having no father to having a stepmother and stepsisters, the whole kit and caboodle. But since when had he been dating this Marian? I’d spent a whole year in Madrid living a half hour away from my father’s place, and we’d never spent a single day together. And now he was in a rush to play happy families?
While I was talking to my father outside the Machichaco, sheltered from the fine rain by the canopy, Iago went by with Salva, Paz, and Chisca. Iago was wearing a hooded jacket and a scarf around his neck to keep him warm, but he was strolling along comfortably as if the rain wasn’t bothering him. The four of them waved to me from the entrance to the restaurant as they shook the rain from their wet clothes and umbrellas. I glanced at Iago as he headed inside and tried to concentrate again on my father and his urgent issues. But it was hopeless; with Iago’s arrival and the sight of those blue eyes, I’d completely lost my train of thought. Under those circumstances there was no way of carrying on a delicate family conversation.
“Papá, we’ll talk about this some other time. My colleagues are waiting for me to join them for dinner.”
“Okay, Adri,” he replied without much enthusiasm.
“Adriana,” I corrected him. “Oh, and Papá . . . I’m really pleased about your partner.”