It was a beautiful morning. It had turned into a lovely day, with no clouds shading the total blueness of the summer sky. Iago would arrive in a couple of hours and everything would be right again. The outside world would continue on its course without us; it had no need of us, and we had no need of it, either.
When I finished lunch, I went up to my office and found his Post-it note stuck to my desk. His slanted handwriting announced, with hugs and kisses, “I caught an earlier flight. I’m waiting for you under the cliff edge.”
I grabbed the yellow square of paper and ran downstairs, nearly colliding with Héctor on the way.
“Are you in a hurry?” he said with a smile.
“Yes, Iago just got back,” I said, showing him the note. “I’m going to find him.”
I suppose you should keep up appearances in the presence of your prospective father-in-law, but a twenty-eight-thousand-year-old father-in-law belongs in a special category. Héctor stood looking at me with a strange expression in his eyes as I started to run toward the entrance to the MAC.
I reached the lavender plant and hid my high-heeled shoes under the bush. I climbed down as quickly as the wound on my back allowed and landed on the rock ledge in under a minute. At first I didn’t see anyone. Iago must have gone inside the darkness of the cave.
If only.
A gust of wind lifted my hair, and I felt a warm breath on the back of my neck. I hated Jairo’s hoarse voice more than ever before.
“You have no idea how upset I am with you.”
I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t: he had his hand around my throat, squeezing my windpipe, in total control of the amount of pressure he was applying. When he thought I was about to lose consciousness, he relaxed his grip and allowed me to gulp in some air.
“I need you to be conscious,” he whispered. “Have you already spoken to Elisa?”
I shook my head, because I couldn’t speak, and if I had been able to, I wouldn’t have been able to enunciate any words, because my vocal chords were being expertly crushed by what felt like a pair of pincers.
He muttered something about a miscalculation under his breath, but I didn’t hear it very well.
“Fine, let’s proceed,” he said, concentrating fully on me again. “What made you think you could meddle in the affairs of an immortal? Elisa told me about your little revelations last night. She was furious. I had to use all my skill to calm her down. Is that how you treat your new family, betraying it at the first opportunity?”
“Elisa is family, too,” I managed to say despite the pain whenever I took a breath. “I don’t want my cousin and my nieces and nephews to suffer because of your whims.”
“That’s none of your business.”
I tried to turn my head toward him in an attempt to escape from the pressure of those fingers, which were gripping me relentlessly.
“Look in front of you,” he said, forcing me to obey him. “Do you see that seascape?”
How could I not see it? The sky and sea in front of me were flaunting their blues, but another blue was missing, Iago’s eyes, that tiny detail that sometimes makes the difference between perishing and surviving.
“I’m going to be compassionate with you. That beauty will be the last thing you see.”
Was he really being serious? Was he going to execute me right here, for such a senseless reason? Up until now I’d thought of him as a more or less despicable dandy. Now the ugly truth was holding me by the neck. My instinct for survival had been atrophied all this time.
“Listen, Nagorno, you don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, you’d better believe I do! That’s not the way to treat me. If you only knew how disappointed I am in you . . .”
“That’s what I was talking about: how we treat each other.”
I felt his grip loosen—a little.
“You and I have something, an understanding,” I said, my throat in agony. “You know it, don’t you? You must have sensed it. With me you can be yourself in a way you can’t be with anyone else, right?”
“Adriana, in reality . . .” His other hand ran through my hair. Gently. Very gently.
I lost patience. “Then stop acting like a B-grade villain.”
That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have said that. I had no idea that Nagorno never accepted an order from anyone. He squeezed my throat again and lifted me off the ground.
I was already seeing the white light at the end of the tunnel when I heard the dry crack of a bone breaking behind me. Then Jairo’s grip lost all its strength and released me. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I sprang forward, mystified. When I turned around I saw Jairo’s inert body stretched out on the ledge.
Was he dead?
There was a rock about the size of my hand lying a few inches from his head. Instinctively, I looked up toward the only spot where that rock that had saved my life could have come from. I saw the huge outline of a person several yards above me, but I couldn’t see the expression on his face, because the sun was behind him, leaving his face shaded. He was holding another large rock in his hand.
Iago’s hand.
He sprang down without giving any thought to his safety, in two enormous strides where he should have taken four. He landed by my side with a jump of several yards. He landed cleanly on his feet, just like a mountain lion.
It took me a moment to recognize him. What I mean is that it was Iago, they were his features, but they looked like a throwback to another epoch, less civilized, more primitive, or perhaps more brutal; features similar to the death masks of the criminals in the wax museum. Beneath those hard features was the Iago I knew, but that man had also been a murderer at some stage in his life.
“Is he alive?” I asked him when I saw him crouching over to check for a pulse in Jairo’s neck.
“Of course he’s alive. No blow from a rock is going to end my brother’s life,” he said gravely. “Now, let’s get out of here before I use this rock again.” And he threw it far out to sea and watched the sea swallow it.
“And you’re going to leave him here, unconscious?” I said, staring at him with incredulity. “Iago, the tide’s coming in.”
“He’ll survive, take my word for it. I’m not in the mood to toss him over my shoulder and haul him up that steep rock face. Are you going to do it?”
“No,” I replied after giving it some thought.
I wasn’t able to do it, of course, but the real question was, would I want to? My throat still hurt, and I still felt the pressure where his fingers had been. No, maybe I didn’t want to.
“Then there’s nothing more to discuss,” Iago concluded dryly.
I started to climb up, refusing the offer of his extended hand. The good news was that the pain around my neck had momentarily made me forget the annoying tightness across my back. A few yards from the top I was pleased to see the outlined silhouette of the lavender bush again. As soon as I reached it, I tore off a few sprigs and inhaled the aroma with the desperation of an addict seeking its tranquilizing effect. Iago sat down, also tore off a few sprigs, and rubbed them between his hands.
“My father called me as I was on my way from the airport. Something didn’t seem quite right when he saw the note you showed him. I guess he’s a better graphologist than you.” He put his legs around mine, sitting in what seemed to be his preferred position. “I hadn’t told anyone that I’d caught an earlier flight, so as soon as I got his call, I assumed the worst. Tell me what happened.”
I brought him up-to-date about what had occurred with Elisa the other day: her phone conversation with Jairo, her blind belief in the story of a Jairo meekly in love with her, our argument in my office, and all the dirty linen that had been aired.
“You should have told me all this yesterday. I’d have seen it coming, and I’d have marked out my territory, even if it was from Copenhagen.”
&n
bsp; “You weren’t in the mood for it yesterday,” I said in my own defense.
“Now, listen to me; this is important. If it has to do with Jairo, you must tell me immediately. Promise me that, please.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“You may not be conscious of it now, but it could be that that promise saves your life down the track,” he said, examining my neck with his hands. I assumed that Jairo’s fingers had left their mark.
“So now what?” I asked.
“I have a conversation pending with him when he wakes up. You shouldn’t have believed he was accepting you into the family just like that on St. John’s Eve. He was simply sizing us up. He always does that when he’s getting ready to attack. First he measures up the enemy forces, then he harasses, retreats, and observes, decides on a strategy, and finally attacks. Don’t keep giving him reasons.”
“And what are you doing in the meantime?” I asked, irritated.
“Preparing myself,” he answered as he gazed toward the west.
“Preparing yourself for what?”
“If we get to that point, you’ll have no alternative but to see it for yourself,” he said with that unequivocal tone of voice I already knew, and which closed off any further discussion.
I got up and held out my hand to him. He took it and we walked toward his car.
“This hasn’t been the reunion I fantasized about last night,” he said dolefully. “And anyway, I still have to bring you up-to-date on my investigations. Let’s take a ride to the beech groves of the Saja Nature Park, if that’s okay with you. I need some nature. Do you know it?”
“Yes, I used to go camping there in the summer.”
“I built a cabin there, a place where I once lived. Nothing major or durable. I think there are only a few stones left.”
“I’d love to see those ruins.”
“Come on, I’ll show them to you. It’ll be the perfect spot to make love.”
I nodded and we got into his car, although once we were inside I couldn’t avoid sitting in his lap in the driver’s seat. I held his face between my hands and sought out my blue refuge. As long as I could go back to it, everything was fine. Fine, too, if I could return to those lips, which I found to be as eager as mine, or to the urgent heat of his groin.
Some time later we were a bundle of arms and legs intertwined without rhyme or reason, and my mind was blank again, although this time for a much more pleasant reason. Iago didn’t overlook my most recent war wounds and, as had become his custom, he lightly licked my skin where his brother’s claws had left their mark. Soon the air in the car became unbreathable because of the heat our excited bodies were giving off, and sensible Dana—whose throat I’d happily have slit—removed herself from Iago’s seat and returned to the passenger’s seat.
“You said to the beech grove, right?” I asked, short of breath.
“To the beech grove, then,” Iago replied with some difficulty.
52
IAGO
Mars Day, the seventeenth day of the month of Duir
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Patricio opened the front door of the villa as dusk was falling, nodding his head as a sign of respect. We’d always got on well, despite Jairo. He was loyal and discreet. A rare jewel.
“He’s in the hall with the models, but he has company,” he warned me.
“Thanks, Patricio.”
I crossed the marble vestibule while all the gods in the pantheon turned in concern at my passage. When I reached the staircase, I came across my father, who gestured as if he was going to stop me.
“I’ve already spoken to him,” he said, putting a hand on my chest.
“That’s of no use to me. You always end up forgiving him,” I replied, removing his hand.
“And you end up falling for his provocations. You should hold off a while before saying anything to him.”
“I’m not ad-libbing. I’ve been expecting something like this since St. John’s Eve.”
My father scrutinized my face before deciding to believe me. “As you wish,” he said finally, yielding.
“Trust me, Father.”
I held his gaze, though it was painful, because I saw his millennia-old tiredness battling to ensure that we all continued to get on well, and his sorrow, because this scene kept repeating itself over and over again.
Once the sound of his footsteps had disappeared upstairs, I walked into the hall and made my way between the models of the people my brother had helped dispatch to the other world. Jairo was pretending to be absorbed in the Battle of Odessa, polishing the amputated legs of a high-ranking figure. My brother had a bandage on his head, which made him look ridiculous, for once. The lump caused by my rock was clearly visible underneath it.
“You’ve taken your time to come,” he said without looking up.
I ignored his greeting.
“Right, let’s get up-to-date,” I said, grabbing the soldier from his hands and throwing it against the wall. I sat on top of some Ukrainian hill, level with his bandaged head. “I owe you two favors: the first one for saving my life in Britannia in that damn massacre. What you did today cancels that one. The other favor,” I continued, “was in the seventeenth century when you killed half of County Cork to free me. I intended to return that favor with the accursed genetic research that would enable you to have your own lineage and leave us in peace once and for all.” I paused to catch my breath. “Listen carefully, because I have no intention of repeating this: if Adriana comes to harm from your machinations, I’ll abandon the research. I’ll leave Santander and change my identity, and Lyra will be left on her own with her theories. I’ll consider myself debt-free to you. And by the way, you’re one step away from me no longer treating you with the benevolence of a brother.”
I turned around and strode out of the hall without waiting for his reply. Would my brother understand that this time I was absolutely serious?
“You’ve never tried to kill him?” Dana’s voice slipped inside my head as I started the car for the drive back to Santander.
“A couple of times, in Siberia,” I’d said in response to her question, two hours earlier, as we were lying on a bed of beech leaves we’d improvised for ourselves on the forest floor.
“And what happened?”
“He didn’t die. The first time, I stabbed him between the ribs with my dagger, under his heart. It usually causes a slow and fairly painful death. But I didn’t manage to kill him. He simply recovered. I had taken advantage of one of my father’s absences, on one of those occasions when Nagorno wouldn’t stop plaguing me, even though he was tied up like a mastiff to the tentpole. I admit it would have been a cowardly crime, but it was what we were both seeking. I attributed his recovery to good fortune. The scene repeated itself decades later, with a different weapon. His wound healed again; it was as if he wanted to mock me.
“Neither of us has ever told our father. I have no idea if he really is an immortal, but it’s clear that the capacity of his cells to regenerate is far superior to ours. My theory is that our mutation, like many others that provoke illness, also has distinct levels. I think Nagorno has the top level. I prefer to believe that, rather than that he really is immortal and he’ll still be walking this earth when we’re not around to put the brakes on him. It’s a thought that worries me, and it’s the first time I’m sharing it. I’ve never discussed it with my father or with Lyra. They’ve never tried to kill him, as far as I’m aware. They just believe that he’s good in battle.”
Dana was thoughtful as she removed leaves from her hair. She looked beautiful, naked in the middle of the forest, like the Celtic goddess whose name she bore.
I had planned to drive to her apartment in search of some peace, but I turned off and took the road that ran along the bank of the River Pas. I switched off the engine on a steep slope and sat there staring at the riv
erbed.
53
IAGO
7,608 SB, Scythia
690 BC, in what is now known as Ukraine
The two youths silently approached the boy concentrating on his search for translucent stones by the water’s edge. Nagorno spent his days harassing the goldsmith to teach him his skills so that he would be able to make conical earrings, necklaces, and plaques engraved with animals as gifts for his mother. Olbia, on the other hand, became daily more bitter toward her son, for he showed little interest in devoting hours of training to developing the skills every Scythian male had to master before becoming a man: riding, archery, and the use of the akinakes, or short dagger.
“I have mastered all the skills of a warrior, Mother. Let me spend my time doing what I enjoy. That’s the advantage of being the son of Kelermes,” he always replied, engrossed in the tapping of his little hammer on the gold plaques.
“It’s time for you to take down your first enemy. The next battle we fight, you’ll be expected to come with me. It will be your baptism by combat, and I won’t allow you to return until you have the head of an enemy to flaunt before your people.”
“Mother, stop thinking about the dead. My father concerns himself with that already. You should only be concerned with looking as beautiful as possible. Come, try on these earrings.”
Then, according to Ponticus, Olbia would reluctantly step forward and put on the jewelry that her son, standing on a stool, was offering her.
It had been ten years since Kelermes had marched off, and by now no one believed he would return, so the Scythians were beginning to ask themselves if the boy who showed so little interest in war would make a good chieftain for them. The two sons of Sirgis, who had died of some sort of fever, were already adolescents, and the contrast between their muscles, honed by hours of training, and the still-childish body of Nagorno left no room for doubt as to who was going to be the better warrior. We’d all heard that they used to torment Nagorno, but no slave would have dared intervene.