“Look, Adriana, I’m improvising. I had no idea you were so close to the truth. We can’t provide any DNA samples for you to have analyzed. I know those companies. There are two in the US, Codeandme and Genetics, and one in Iceland, YourCodex.”
He knows them? I thought in amazement. I should have taken that as proof that he was no layman, that he knew what he was talking about, but there were a thousand other reasons to explain why he would know about them. I knew about them, and I didn’t go around pretending to be immortal.
“I know how they work,” he continued, “and we can’t take the risk. In the first place, those results would attract too much attention, especially the oldest ones. Twenty-eight thousand years without moving from Cantabria is a lot of millennia, and it’s unusual for someone to have not one single ancestor from elsewhere in all that time. That’s how they would interpret it. Second, those laboratories serve as genetic databases. So our DNA samples would be stored there for other studies.
“Look, Kyra and I have no idea what surprises our DNA is hiding. We’re on our own in this research, we’re beginners with few resources, and I’m keen to keep it that way. But a laboratory may find our results nonsensical and decide to check us out further without us ever knowing about it. We can’t live with that uncertainty.”
“That came across as really—I mean totally—paranoid,” I pointed out to him.
“We can’t expose ourselves, Adriana,” he said slowly.
“We won’t tell them they’re yours. We’ll conceal your identities,” I said, tightening the noose a little more.
“They’ll find out!” he yelled back at me again. “They’ll end up knowing! The samples will attract too much attention.”
Well, I thought, this has taken an interesting turn.
“If what you’re saying is true, I could get a sample from anywhere without any of you knowing. A fingerprint on one of Kyra’s glasses, or on one of those bowls of hazelnuts that Héctor is so fond of . . . I can do it,” I said defiantly. “You know I can.”
“Would you do it?” He positioned himself in front of me, scrutinizing me.
“Do you want me to believe you or not?” I challenged him again.
Fine.
Game over.
I could almost see the link between us being cut. Something delicate that had never worked out. Iago had just given up on me.
He went over to the door of the apartment and left it open for me to leave. I tried to hold his gaze. Impossible. His eyes were like ice. They hurt. They were impenetrable. They were no longer navigable.
I stood there, tongue-tied, incapable of making my way through the pieces of ice. For the first time since I had met him, I felt I was looking at an ancient man. He was unbending, severe, and withered inside.
When I crossed his threshold in silence carrying my laptop, disturbed and stiff with tension, he addressed me as one would an enemy: “You . . . don’t . . . have . . . my . . . permission,” he said, dragging out the words so that they would be more hurtful.
And hurt they did. They battered me inside for the rest of the night, which I spent wandering fitfully through the small streets of Puertochico.
When I got home, I dropped onto my bed, and sleep finally came to bring me a little respite.
36
ADRIANA
Monday, June 4, 2012
I have to admit that, during Iago’s outrageous story, several red flags had gone up. The first: Scythia, Jairo’s supposed homeland. When Iago mentioned it, the watch, the door knocker, and the badge with the mare popped into my head. They all looked like Scythian art. I had studied it in my day, but let’s say that the topic of the Eurasian steppes during the Bronze Age was not one at which I excelled during my time as a student. The second one: Iago’s actual age. Why ten thousand three hundred ten years—and twenty-eight thousand for Héctor? I knew that the gene OCA2 caused blue eyes, and that that mutation had occurred exactly ten thousand years ago. A study on it had been published in Human Genetics in 2008, and it was obvious that Iago was acquainted with it.
Aside from that, he was a genius at improvisation. There were no cracks in his story, no anachronisms in the details. Like the fact that the three men never had milk in their coffee because of genetically based lactose intolerance, while Kyra could digest dairy products. There were other, simpler ones: the coincidence with the surnames “del Castillo” and “del Castro” might simply have been creative flashes in a story being invented on the go. Then again, what mind would be capable of weaving thirty thousand years of family history? I only knew one, and that was the encyclopedic brain of Iago del Castillo.
But it was one thing for Iago to be a machine—which he was—and quite another for him to come to me with the story that he was born in prehistoric times. I never liked twisted mind games.
I was angry, but more than that, I was very worried about Iago. Was I dealing with a charlatan or a person who was ill?
Early the following Monday, I headed straight for Héctor’s office. I took the stairs two at a time, as I had done when I first visited the MAC. This time it was different. This time I knew too much, or not enough. Either way, balance was impossible to regain. I breathed in and knocked on the door, and Héctor’s warm voice invited me to come in.
“Come in, Adriana. I was expecting you.” I found him digging into some of his ever-present bowl of nuts. He gestured for me to sit down on the soft couch and settled down beside me.
“I imagine you haven’t slept very well these past two nights,” he said as he offered me some hazelnuts. “I’ve spoken with Iago, and I’m aware of what happened on Friday.”
“Well, then, I hope you’re going to offer me some explanation, like your brother forgot to take his medication.”
He ignored my response with remarkable calm.
“Tell me, Adriana, right now, what do you think is happening with Iago that would cause him to tell you such a story?”
“I’ve come back to one of my earlier hypotheses: a brain tumor. It would explain his amnesia crises and the crazy ideas I had to listen to. It would also explain why you’re researching telomeres. Based on what I could find, they’re linked to cancer. I think Iago’s in the denial phase of his illness, and maybe you’re going along with him.”
Héctor was listening to me with an expression of infinite patience on his face. He signaled for me to continue. What was it about this man that always made me trust him?
“You have to tell me. At this stage of the game, I’m not going to disguise my . . .”—I was going to say feelings—“my concern for Iago. Tell me honestly, is he ill?”
“No, he’s not ill. I understand that explanation would be more satisfying for you, but Iago’s brain is working perfectly well, except for the memory lapses, but he’ll learn to control those sooner or later. Although he didn’t exactly behave in a lucid manner with you the other day. You have the rare talent, or the dubious distinction—depending on how you look at it—of altering the behavior of a man who wasn’t affected by anything anymore. My son has been an automaton for a long time. At least now he’s feeling and suffering, though I don’t know if I should be pleased, as it’s not clear to me how all this will end. But in any event, you have been the catalyst. Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, “that wouldn’t explain the beard you saw me with in a photo taken forty years ago, would it?”
“True. That’s where my theory falls a bit short and I get a migraine that puts an end to my ability to think,” I had to admit. “That’s why I’ve come to talk to you. I see you as a level-headed man—”
“You’re right about that. Being sensible is what’s kept me alive for so long,” he said, interrupting me.
“I was saying,” I continued, with growing nervousness, “that I’ve turned to you because I need you to inject some common sense into all of this. I need you to deny everything Iago told me. If yo
u don’t want to give me any reasons, or clarify what I overhead, I’ll understand. It really was a private conversation you were all having, and I have no right to demand an explanation, but you must understand that what Iago told me has changed me too much. Tell me I should forget everything, that it’s a lie he invented to get out of a tight spot, and I’ll try to go on as if nothing had happened.”
“I’m not going to deny anything. And don’t fool yourself; you’ll never forget what Iago told you last Friday afternoon.”
That’s it, then, I thought. His response was one of the possible options I’d been expecting: that he’d back up Iago’s farce. The least desirable option, but I’d anticipated it.
Héctor rested his head against the back of the sofa, unperturbed as he drained his glass of water. “And that leads us to your decision to resign, right?”
“How did you know I was going to present my resignation?” I said, looking at him surprised.
“Because you’ve spent your whole life running away from your problems, and you’re not going to be capable of changing tack now,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Don’t you dare psychoanalyze me, Héctor,” I snapped. “I’ve come to you looking for your support. I don’t want to find myself repeating Friday’s performance with Iago.”
“You’re right about that. I was defending my son, and I lost my perspective. I ask you to forgive me if I’m not making it easy for you, but I’d be delighted if for just one moment you could see yourself from my point of view. You know, I’ve thought a great deal about what will happen between you and Iago. If I accept your resignation right now, you’ll continue down your path as an archaeologist, but not a day will pass without you asking yourself about Iago’s real age. You’ll investigate, you’ll become obsessed, you’ll look for clues, and I assure you that, during all those years, you won’t find us, we’ll make sure of that. The world is an enormous place and we have more than enough resources to disappear from wherever you might be for the rest of your life.
“But it could be that fifty years from now, a young man with the name of—what letter would Iago be up to?—with the name Tasio turns up, appears at your door and says to the old woman you’ve become, ‘So, do you believe me now?’ ”
That film played out in front of my eyes like a nightmare. A wrinkled me opening the door to an Iago in the form of Dorian Gray. I shivered and discarded the image immediately. Luckily, that would never happen.
“Look, Adriana,” Héctor went on, “one of the first things I had to force myself to renounce in order to survive was intervening—in tribal disputes, power plays, even in small family disputes. I’m used to not getting involved in Iago’s business, and he to my not doing so, but in this particular instance there are too many inflexible positions. Today, I’m going to hand something over to you, and I trust that you’ll give it the appreciation it deserves. I don’t want to be without it for too long, so I hope you’ll examine it, draw your conclusions, and then return it to me.”
He took his hand out of his pocket and held out to me a small piece of what seemed to be bone, perhaps from a mammoth tusk. It was a tiny figurine in the shape of a bison. But what was unprecedented about it was its dual nature. If you looked straight on, you saw a bison, but from above you saw the head of a man with a long beard, skillfully integrated into the back of the animal in a perfect transition. I couldn’t help taking a closer look at the piece in order see it better. I examined it carefully and then looked up at Héctor with disbelief.
“What is this, Héctor?”
“My amulet, my anchor, to remind me of my earliest life when all the countryside that backs onto this building was frozen. I know that tells you nothing, so I’ll use your vocabulary: it’s a portable figurine from about two thousand five hundred years ago, belonging to the Gravettian period. It wasn’t carved on our Iberian Peninsula, but in that era, as you know, the exchange of gifts between clans was very common, and objects traveled long distances. On this side of the Great Crest—what we now call the Pyrenees—there was no workshop that made anything like this. That’s why you’ve never found little Venus statues on our peninsula, for example; they never reached this far. But these sorts of objects circulated widely throughout Europe. This bison was the gift of a good friend who succeeded in understanding me when all around me there was fear and mistrust.
“The lesson is that everything you see can have a double meaning. Tell me, is it a bison or a wise man? In fact, it represents both of those things, but what changes is the perspective from which you look at it. So, Adriana, what do you think we are, then? A family that deceives those around it, or a family that survives and tries to fit in despite its circumstances? We’re both realities. Man and beast. Civilization and instinct. Both.”
He held out the piece, and I felt a reverential awe when I took it into my hands. I tried to control my trembling; I wasn’t used to the smooth feel of ivory. We archaeologists always handled ancient pieces with latex gloves to prevent contamination, but Héctor had just taken it out of his pocket, and there was no box of gloves in his office, so I decided it would only be a minor sacrilege, even though, on the digs where I’d worked, they had taken me to task for less serious misdemeanors than this one.
“Héctor, if this piece is authentic, it’s the discovery of the decade,” I said in a whisper. I was short of breath.
“At least,” he agreed.
“Why isn’t it being exhibited? I don’t understand. With this piece we would be able to attract the attention of the entire archaeological world.”
“Precisely for that reason.”
The more I examined the bison, the more authentic it seemed, despite the novelty of the man carved on its back.
“Adriana, the fact that they haven’t found hybrid figures of men and animals doesn’t mean that such an art form didn’t exist, just that none ended up in places where there are digs today. Tell me, what games did you play when you were little?”
I sat down on the couch again, holding the bison in my two hands, endlessly turning it over and over and rubbing it as if it were a magic lantern.
“Picture cards, jump rope, Barbie dolls, and dolls generally,” I replied, my mind elsewhere, “or we drew a hopscotch grid on the sidewalk with chalk and jumped over the numbers.”
“Are any of those things still around, either in your house or in your bedroom?”
“To be honest, I don’t know where they ended up. I imagine some toys got broken and were thrown out. I have no idea, Héctor. No one keeps everything they used during their life.”
“And does that mean that you didn’t play when you were little, that those games didn’t exist? Worse still, that there was no culture of play for children in the Iberian Peninsula in the nineteen eighties? Just because there’s no trace of that stage of your life in your current home, or because you’re not going to be buried with all those objects, does that mean they didn’t exist? Of course not. Then stop assuming that if it isn’t in a dig, it doesn’t exist.
“It’s amazing what a lack of imagination and artistic sensitivity you archaeologists display. Iago and I are fed up with your representation of us wearing remnants of skins as if we were in rags. Please! We had a sense of the aesthetic, if you don’t mind! And the same flair that now causes me to combine this blue tie with my gray shirt. In all the inhabited world, when have two tribes or clans ever dressed exactly alike—here, in Egypt, in Germany, in Ireland? What’s the point of writing doctoral theses on ethnicity if you then don’t apply them? The Aurignacian culture signified thousands of years of art throughout Europe. It wasn’t just what we painted in the caves, or the outlines we engraved on our spear-throwers. Let me tell you, when I was roaming throughout this continent, clans were identifiable by their feathers, their hairdos, their tattoos and body painting, or their beads, like any present-day African or Australian tribe, or like the indigenous tribes of the Am
ericas before they were almost exterminated. Like them, some of us wore breeches, others short capes, boots, hats . . .
“What’s the use in your finding ivory beads sewn onto clothing at the Sungir site, ribbons tied around the hair or the forehead, and teeth from Arctic foxes on belts if it’s not to reach the conclusion that status and hierarchies already existed in the Russia of twenty-five thousand years ago? You’re still debating about it, despite the fact that you already have the proof. It’s so hard for you scientists of this century to redefine your positions—”
I stopped him with my free hand. “Okay, okay. I’ve got it, already. Look, right now I’m incapable of concentrating on anything other than this figurine. Leave it with me, please, so I can analyze it.”
“Fine. Go down to the Restoration Lab if you like,” he said, throwing me the key. “Kyra is with her brother and the interns in BACus. You’ve got a couple of hours to yourself, then return it to me. Try not to let anyone else see you.”
37
ADRIANA
Monday, June 4, 2012
I went down the stairs to the Restoration Laboratory trying not to disturb the repose of the old oak boards. The bison figurine I was hiding in my pocket felt like it weighed as much as a real bison. I had the sense that if I ran across anyone, they’d notice the bulge, and I’d start stammering if they asked me about it. Luckily, Héctor was right, and I didn’t find anyone when I let myself into the room. I locked the door and refrained from turning on the lights. In the semidarkness, I simply removed the plastic cover from the microscope and switched it on. I grabbed a pair of latex gloves in my size that were sticking out of the cardboard box on the workbench, placed the figurine under the microscope, and twisted the eyepiece until the lateral markings were in focus. If it was a forgery, then the person who’d made it was very skilled.