“Let me put it another way,” he said, pushing a wooden bowl full of hazelnuts in my direction. “Are you sure you want to leave the future job of your life in Madrid to come and work with us? We started this MAC venture barely four years ago; who knows how it will end.”
“Don’t be so modest. They don’t give the European Museum of the Year award to just anyone. And to answer your question, yes, I’m sure. I would like to put down roots in Santander.” I shrugged my shoulders and added, “Call it homesickness.”
“I can understand that,” he smiled.
“Also, I need to work in a more dynamic institution,” I said in a burst of sincerity. “My instincts as an archaeologist are getting rusty.”
I don’t know what it was about Héctor, but something in his friendly manner encouraged me to trust him with information beyond the strictly professional. On the one hand, I wasn’t used to encountering this type of casualness in my work environment, but on the other, it was pleasant finally to be able to relax a little.
“Let me level with you, Adriana. This interview was a mere formality. Given your résumé and the reference Elisa provided for you, Iago made it perfectly clear that he wanted to hire you—no question. So if you accept, we could move on to the practical aspects. When could you start?”
I sank back in my chair, free at last of all the tension I’d been carrying inside me. I’m sure Héctor realized this, because he hid a little smile as he helped himself to the last of the nuts in the bowl.
To be honest, I’d been expecting the typical three-step job interview: condescending questions to start with, followed by a portion where you’re put under pressure to see how you react in stressful situations, and then the dollop of cream at the end to leave you with a pleasant taste in your mouth. But there was none of that. It wasn’t really an interview, more like a welcome.
Once we’d discussed a few details and determined my starting date, Héctor got up from his armchair, opened a drawer in the table, and took out a bunch of keys.
“Come on, I’ll show you around the museum. By the way, I see you haven’t brought an umbrella with you.” He walked over to the old brass umbrella stand—one of those that always have an English frigate painted on them—and extracted a large red umbrella in the same shade as the façade of the building. It had a wooden handle and a screen-printed outline of the museum on one side. “It’ll start to rain as soon as the gallego—the nor’easter—stops blowing.”
I looked at him in the same way I used to look at my grandfather when he got going on the weather. Héctor picked up on it and burst out laughing.
“Don’t look at me like that. The northeasterly wind always brings rain with it. A meteorologist would be able to give you the scientific reasons, but you’d better believe it. It’s always been so.”
“In that case, thank you,” I said good-humoredly, not the least bit inclined to disagree with him. I took the umbrella he was offering, and together we went downstairs to the exhibition halls on the ground floor, the only level open to the public.
An hour later, in the vestibule, Héctor said good-bye to me with a broad smile, although I had to wait quite a while before I could go out to my car: the storm was blowing with such force that not even the big umbrella was going to keep me from becoming totally drenched.
Once the downpour stopped, I drove to my apartment in downtown Santander, in the elegant Plaza de Pombo. I opened the door with a shout of, “Mamá, I’m home,” but she didn’t answer.
She never did.
I walked down the empty passage and headed for my mother’s study. I was exultant. I’d successfully passed my first test, and I felt strong enough to take on any task. Maybe this was the impetus I needed.
An orderly collection of black notebooks filled the bookshelf in front of me from floor to ceiling. The clues I really sought were somewhere in there. Because the fact is that the decision to move into my parents’ apartment was by no means accidental. Having spent every insomniac night of the past fifteen years haunted by an uncertainty, I’d finally decided to get to the bottom of it, no matter how unpleasant it might be—to find out exactly what had happened on the afternoon that changed my life and the life of my small family forever.
There was no going back.
2
IAGO
Saturn Day, the twenty-first day of the month of Beth, 10,310 SB
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Dawn had not yet broken when I parked my 4x4 next to Covachos Beach, a small cove facing Castro Island. Héctor leaped out, unable to hide his impatience. I was of the opinion that a man of twenty-eight thousand years should have better control of his impulses, but our fishing trips had always been my father’s undoing.
It made no difference whether we were in the Mesolithic era, keeping an ear out for the sounds of wild boars in the wood, or in the Middle Ages, searching for rivers that were free of corpses with faces pockmarked by smallpox, or dressed like peasants in an attempt—yet again—to keep our heads attached to our shoulders during the ups and downs of the French Revolution. It made no difference because, in essence, my father and I needed to get back to our old rituals like a person underwater needs to reach the surface to breathe.
He went ahead of me, his fishing rod on his shoulder, his tackle virtually unused, and strode into the still-black sea to cast his line. I made my way next to him and, after removing an almost-transparent piece of shrimp from the glass jar and attaching it to the end of the latest-generation hook, cast my own. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye in silence as he kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Stressed?” I asked, sounding him out.
“Yesterday was absolute madness,” he whispered as he checked his fishing line. “I’m sure you’ll eventually tell me why you went to Madrid without warning. You left me in charge of the MAC on my own, with a mountain of unresolved business.”
“I had no other option,” I said, lowering my voice as well. “Incidentally, how did the interview go?”
“It all went according to plan. Adriana Alameda is already on the books.”
“Do you think she’ll be useful?” I wanted to know.
“I think so, although . . . let’s try not to do her any damage, all right? She has a promising future.”
“If we make the exchanges discreetly, there’s no reason she should be implicated. And when we abandon the MAC, we’ll make sure we leave her well placed.”
“Fine,” he agreed. “And now will you tell me once and for all why you caught that flight last Thursday?”
“Kyra, Father. It was because of Kyra. She’s finished her research into antioxidants, and she’s assembling the data in order to reach her conclusions. She still has months to go, but she senses that there’ll be no definitive answer. This is a source of despair for her—and relief for us.”
“Okay, so calm her down. You’ve always been good at that,” he insisted, scowling briefly.
I shook my head and smiled wryly. “You still don’t understand. These last four years of peace for you and me are over. Kyra has lost patience. She threatened to leave the museum and start other lines of research independently, financed by Jairo. We can’t afford to have them outside our control. Right now there are some three thousand research projects worldwide dedicated to aging or to regenerative medicine. I have to continue to control what the two of them are doing; otherwise, they’ll end up finding an answer of their own accord.”
My father took a few more steps out to sea, ignoring the wave that almost swept him away. I followed him a few yards farther back.
“You still haven’t explained the trip to Madrid,” he insisted.
“I had to improvise. The other day, Kyra confronted me. She accused me of making her go around in circles and of not being as committed to the search for the longevo gene as she was. So, to play along with her, I caught the
first flight to Madrid and dropped in on the National Oncology Institute. A short while ago they sprang the news in various scientific journals that they had generated mice that had a forty-five percent longer lifespan and were resistant to cancer. I have a good contact there, so I paid him a surprise visit and sniffed out everything I could.”
“Rodents and cancer—that’s somewhat removed from what we have in mind, isn’t it?”
“That was precisely my intention. Anything that will make my sister waste time is welcome. But I have to say that it was more interesting than I had expected. They’ve genetically manipulated various strains of mice to incorporate a cancer-suppressing gene and an enzyme that keeps the cells dividing. What they’ve achieved is a mouse that’s lived the equivalent of one hundred thirty human years of vigorous youth and, moreover, free from cancerous tumors. Does that ring a bell?”
“Those mice fall a bit short of our mark, don’t they?”
“True. And I’m not really convinced that’s where the answers lie. That’s why I gave Kyra all the information, although I think she’ll dismiss it, too. Anyway, I’m assuming I’ll have to travel a fair bit in the next few months.”
Even so, Héctor continued to push.
“How much longer do you think you can go on deceiving her, Son?”
“I have no idea,” I had to admit, shrugging my shoulders. “I know I can be very convincing when I lead her astray, but sooner or later she’ll tire of it. And I have no intention of being the person who identifies the longevo gene. I don’t want to contribute to the creation of more people like us. Isolating the gene is only the first step. Sooner or later the knowledge will end up in the wrong hands, and we’ll have an elite group of Ancients roaming the universe.”
“You say that as if it were an aberration,” Héctor interrupted, annoyed.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I just think that a society composed of longevos, a society that lacks the capacity for regeneration that death and new generations provide, would end up converting any civilization into something resembling a stagnant quagmire. The same personalities would clash time and again over the centuries. Isn’t our own pathetic family proof enough for you?
“A world like that wouldn’t bring anything good with it. No government could afford the costs associated with a thousand-year-old population and the sociological changes that would bring with it. Everybody dreams of living forever, but what if our extreme longevity were to become the norm and anyone could live five thousand years? Would couples continue to promise to remain together ‘until death do us part’ if we were talking millennia? Or put up with an interfering father-in-law, or a warped sister, or any other toxic relationship imposed for centuries by blood ties? Who would want to spend five hundred, maybe even two thousand years working before they could retire? Social contracts would have to be revised. And that’s not even taking into consideration countries that have no experience of democracy. How many nations would have to tolerate the same dictator for centuries?”
Héctor was silent for a moment, as if he needed to digest my words. A lazy sun was beginning to break in the east.
“I know you’re raising all this to keep us united as a family, and as far as I’m concerned, Héctor, you really are the best father a man could ever have. Nevertheless, I think that in this matter you’re being too soft with your other children. You’ve always overlooked their mistakes, but this research will definitively affect what we are. As far as we know, you are humanity’s most senior member, so your word should count for something with them.”
“You know how obstinate they are. If they’ve headed down this path, neither of them will abandon it.”
“No, not as long as the circumstances remain unchanged. So we’ll have to consider changing them,” I replied, reeling in my line.
“What are you plotting, Iago? I know you too well.”
“Nothing yet, Father; I’m just gaining time. But you ought to know that, when the moment arrives, if I have to put the two of them in their place, I’ll do it, even if you don’t approve.”
“I’ve been duly warned.”
“Good.”
We both remained caught up in tense silence for a good while. Luckily, we hadn’t seen any other fisherman since we arrived at the beach.
“Get rid of these fishing rods; I’ve never seen anything more useless,” I said to Héctor finally. “I’m going to the Jeep for the spears. And take off those boots. You look like an astronaut.”
Back at the Jeep, I removed my clothes and left them in the trunk. When I returned to the seashore, Héctor had already taken off his ridiculous, modern-day fisherman’s costume. Naked, we were much more stealthy and unimpeded when it came to throwing the spears. We headed for the rocks by the little island, searching for fish trapped by the current.
Between us, we caught several magnificent bream. We cleaned the fish, and I put the fillets in a container of brine I’d prepared at home. I’ve been using the same recipe for centuries. I smiled briefly. I was remembering that Gunnar used to steal some of this solution to put on his hands to toughen them before setting sail on the Baltic Sea in his drekar, the dragon-headed longship he and I had carved together.
“They’ll be marinated by tomorrow evening. Will you come over for dinner?” I asked him, already in a better mood.
“When have I ever been able to resist your fish?” replied my father, patting me on the back as he smiled faintly.
I sighed, grimacing. “Tell me what’s worrying you, Father.”
“I know how unequivocal your plans are. That worries me—and even more so if you don’t share them. What are you thinking of doing?” he asked.
“Someone has to take charge.”
“Of what, Iago? Take charge of what?”
I looked toward Castro Island and maintained an obstinate silence.
I hope you don’t have to find out, Father.
3
ADRIANA
Monday, January 30, 2012
I had spent the last two weeks immersed in moving, and I still hadn’t finished. At last, in between unpleasant calls from my ex-boyfriend, who couldn’t come to terms with my departure, boxes yet to be unpacked, more uncomfortable calls from my ex-boyfriend, and the many miles back and forth that were wearing down my tires, the dawn of my new era had finally arrived. This very morning I was officially joining the MAC staff as the chief curator of the Prehistory Department.
I had an appointment with Iago del Castillo in the exhibition hall first thing in the morning, so I examined the display cabinets as I waited for him. Bifaces, spearheads, and some teeth were among the catalogued and displayed items, which I’d end up learning by heart. One item in particular caught my eye: a yellowed copy of a French magazine. It was uncommon to see paper displayed in my field no matter how old it might be. I went up closer to read the label: “ ‘Altamira Cave, Spain: The Mea Culpa of a Skeptic.’ L’Anthropologie, Volume 13, 1902.” I tried to decipher the original French text, but just then someone spoke behind me.
“So it’s Adriana, ‘she who emerged from the sea.’ ”
The voice traversed my body from top to bottom, unleashing a host of hazy memories. I took a moment to catch my breath before turning around. Whose was that voice? Had I heard it before?
The owner of the voice in question had the same features as Héctor, but he seemed to be about thirty-five years old, perhaps a little younger. Apart from the age difference, it was impossible to overlook the other feature that set them apart: he had the most incredibly blue eyes I had ever seen. Their penetrating iciness reminded me of the eyes of a Siberian husky. My own eyes registered dark, dark hair—somewhat longer and much more casually styled than Héctor’s. He was also considerably taller, about six foot two. He wore a long, expensive scarf together with a shirt with a Mao-style collar, which gave him a somewhat bohemian appearance. My mind classified him: a styl
ish hippie.
As to the rest of him, he had the sort of presence that fills a room and makes all conversation insignificant. His features and physique were striking—I’d almost say intimidating—although the limpid blueness of his gaze helped to dilute the effect. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t traditionally handsome, but with those eyes and that athletic body, he could get away with anything.
I didn’t know it then—how could it even have occurred to me?—but the extraordinary color of his irises gave away his age. The first blue-eyed person was born ten thousand years ago, thanks to a mutation that had successfully spread throughout Europe. The fact that his eyes were that color meant that Iago could be no more than ten thousand years old, and it also meant that Héctor could be older—much, much older—as in fact proved to be the case. But during those first few moments in his striking presence, it wasn’t Iago’s age I was thinking about.
“Well, well, are you acquainted with the content of the entire calendar of saints’ days?” I asked, forcing myself to stop scrutinizing him.
“Oh no,” he replied, laughing. “But I like to know the meaning of names. It’s important, don’t you think? You carry them throughout your lifetime.”
“In my case the meaning is literal: my parents spent their honeymoon cruising the Adriatic Sea. Have you ever heard of a TV series from the sixties called The Love Boat?”
“The Love Boat. Yes, my parents used to talk about it when I was little.”
“Well, the ship they used in the series, the Pacific Princess, was refitted as a pleasure craft ten years later.”
“You’re telling me that you were conceived aboard the Love Boat?”
“In some undetermined spot in the Adriatic, yes.” I smiled, pleased with the effect this small anecdote from my life had had on him. I stepped toward him to greet him. “Iago del Castillo, I presume. You look like your brother. You must be tired of hearing that.”