“Yes, I think it would be best,” he said without looking at me, and he raced down the stairs as if my apartment had some contagious disease and he didn’t want to have anything to do with the place.
55
ADRIANA
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
I closed the door after Iago had come back in, and we stood in the passage of the apartment with serious expressions on our faces. I rested my back against the wall and allowed myself to drop until I was sitting on the floor. Iago sat down, too, and waited for me to speak.
“How do you do it?” I asked him.
“Do what?”
“How do you manage to keep so many things that concern you quiet? How do you manage to muddy the truth and allow people to misinterpret you?”
“Because I’m gambling with my life whenever I say anything. The instinct to survive is stronger than the instinct to see justice done. There’s no merit in that, my love.”
“Marcos believes that I’m somehow to blame for what has happened with Elisa.”
“How shortsighted,” he commented.
“Whatever, but what he’ll be left with from this incident is that I’ve failed him, that I stood with my arms crossed when I could see what his wife was going to do.”
“The two of you are getting too close to Jairo,” Iago warned me. “This isn’t going to end well. You have to stay on the periphery. Elisa made her choice, and your cousin will have to get out of the situation as best he can, but you need to stop interfering in their business.”
“I don’t understand the attitude you and your family have toward Jairo.” Unable to contain myself, I exclaimed, “It’s as if you are afraid of him!”
“I know it won’t mean anything to you, but you haven’t seen Nagorno in his purest form. And don’t confuse that with bravery. I don’t care if you consider me a coward, but that won’t change how I behave, now or in the future. I’m telling you that you’re like flies bothering a rhinoceros. He’ll just sweep you away with a flick of his tail. Stay well away, because when the moment comes even I won’t be able to stop him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because now I definitely have something to lose,” he said as he gave me a kiss. “That gives him an advantage.”
He got up and held out his hand to pull me up. “I fear we’re going to continue to talk about my brother during dinner,” he said to me with a resigned look on his face.
“We’ll try not to let that happen,” I replied.
Then he lifted me up in his usual manner, allowing me to wrap my legs around his waist, and we moved down the corridor unhurriedly until we reached the kitchen.
We ate dinner without saying a great deal, talking about recent events in the MAC in an effort to invest the day with an air of normality, but it didn’t work. Iago went along with me absentmindedly while I tried to plough on with the conversation. In the end I left my fillet half-eaten and cleared away Iago’s plate.
“What’s the matter, Iago?”
“I’m wondering if you’re not having second thoughts already.”
“Second thoughts about what?”
“About us. About the fact that we’ll never have a normal relationship. About my strange family. About my problems with Nagorno. About the fact that my concerns are much more ancient than yours.” He ran his fingers through his hair in the way he always did when he was worried. “I don’t know if we’re prepared.”
“I have no idea if I’m prepared or not, Iago. It’s the first time I’ve been with a man who’s ten thousand years old. Are you prepared? What I mean is, have you experienced a similar situation before, or were all your partners unaware of your real date of birth? The night you revealed your secret to me, you said it was the first time you were telling anyone about it.”
“And that’s the case. I’ve never spoken about it before.”
“So I take it that what we have together is different for you.”
“You can’t begin to imagine,” he murmured.
I took a moment to think about it, although in fact I had nothing to decide.
“I don’t know, Iago. It’s taken a lot for me to take this step. I don’t want to throw in the towel so soon. And anyway, you’re the sexual fantasy of any archaeologist worth her salt. Let me enjoy an ancient sapiens for at least a little longer.”
“I’m not ancient. Anatomically, I’m as modern as you, and I think I’ve already proved it.”
“The Cro-Magnon is standing on his dignity,” I said, but he didn’t even smile.
Pointless, I thought, giving up. I’d worked the joke as far as I could, but Iago wasn’t in the mood for clowning around. He was in another space, in the middle of a storm cloud.
“Dana, aren’t you frightened by what happened with Nagorno this morning?”
That was a normal enough question.
“Do you really think he was trying to kill me, or was he just bluffing?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell with my brother. I don’t doubt he would have been capable of doing it, but on the other hand I think he’s just looking to harass me through you.”
“For any specific reason?”
“Because of what I mentioned to you: he can’t stand it when things go well for me. That’s when he becomes most unbearable. And also because he wants me to focus on the research, and maybe he’s scared that he can’t control how my being with you might influence me. Have you ever heard of collateral revenge?”
“No, and I’m not sure I want to.”
“It’s a custom that supposedly began in Corsica several centuries ago—the vendetta trasversale—although my brother seems to have applied it ever since he was born. Maybe he inspired it, who knows? When someone feels aggrieved by another person, he takes revenge on their entire family. It’s certainly produced good results for Nagorno in the past, sadly for me. I ought to have figured out he’d start with something like this.”
“Do you think he’ll try again?”
“I don’t think so. I gave him an ultimatum this afternoon: if he comes anywhere near you again, I’m going to abandon the research, and that’s higher on his list of priorities than irritating his brother. I believe he’ll control himself from now on, but you can’t imagine how painful it is for me to have you caught up in our family affairs.”
“You saved my life a few days ago and risked your life doing it. You saved me again today. That’s enough compensation for now.”
“Well, let me know when it stops being enough,” he said gravely, as if he was struggling for words.
“I don’t think that moment will come, but if it does I’ll tell you,” I promised him, faking a composure I was far from possessing.
That night we snuggled together in bed, but I couldn’t fall asleep, and I’d swear he couldn’t either, despite the fact that he was very still beside me. The shadows couldn’t hide the fact that his eyes were fixed on the ceiling of my bedroom.
I’ve never considered myself an overly brave person, and the memory of Jairo’s hand around my throat gave me goose bumps every time I closed my eyes. I wanted him out of my life, out of Iago’s life, out of Santander, out of the MAC. The wound on my back hadn’t hurt all day. I hadn’t even thought about it. It was as if someone had rubbed an eraser over it and the mark no longer existed. But as soon as I lay down on the bed, the full force of the pain came back, together with the sense of asphyxiation in my throat left by my sociopathic almost-brother-in-law.
It was strange to be experiencing a life being overtaken by events. Beside me, in the middle of the night, sheltered by the dark, I could hear the wheels turning inside Iago’s mind. What did a ten-thousand-year-old man think about when his brother persisted in punishing him throughout the millennia? What plans was he capable of devising? How far would he be able to go without betraying himself or his family? I hated being
caught in the middle, the weak link in the chain. But I was also beginning to understand Iago’s burden, the clenched jaw whenever his brother appeared, the constant self-control during the social get-togethers, the permanent conflict of always expecting the worst from him. I forced myself to stop giving prominence to an individual who was probably sleeping like a log at that very moment, if he wasn’t trying out circus moves with three Amazons.
After a few hours, exhausted, I decided to break the uncomfortable silence. “Iago.”
“What?” he whispered.
“Can’t you sleep?”
“Mmmm.”
“All right, come on,” I said.
I lay right behind him, my chest and stomach right up against him, holding him to me. I began to inhale and exhale deeply using my diaphragm.
“Concentrate on breathing with me, okay?”
He obeyed, nestling his body even closer to mine; we were like two spoons welded together. I gradually took him down the path to sleep, and a short while later I fell asleep, too.
Sometimes the day dawns with the promise of cuddles and kisses. Sometimes that promise is fulfilled and you can’t reproach the day, even if it turns out to be nothing like what you were expecting. You can only ask one small thing from those sorts of days, and luckily that request is always granted: that they end as soon as possible, and that a new day arrives.
56
IAGO
Mars Day, the eighteenth day of the month of Duir
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
I awoke with the first light of dawn, thinking vividly of Lorena. Dana was sleeping by my side after a long night during which she’d barely rested. I dressed silently and left her a note with a credible excuse. With a bit of luck, she would still be asleep when I got back, and she wouldn’t even have to read it. Too many weeks had gone by without seeing Lorena, and a sense of urgency carried me down the stairs and toward her apartment.
She opened her door in her deep red silk pajamas. “What a lovely surprise to see you here,” she said with a welcoming smile. “I was thinking of stopping in on Paseo de Pereda one of these days.”
That’s precisely why I’m here.
“I haven’t come to spend time in your bed,” I warned her before she assumed the wrong motive for my visit.
The sooner this is over the better.
“Oh, all right.” She hadn’t been expecting that. “A drink, then?”
“Yes, that might be good,” I agreed.
“So why have you come, then?” she asked, heading for the drinks cabinet.
“To tell you that we’re not going to see each other again,” I said, stepping inside with my hands in my pockets and closing the door behind me.
She weighed up my words for a moment. “It’s because there’s someone else, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Why deny it?
“Well, that explains everything. You haven’t really been here the past few times. I thought you were stressed over the museum, so I didn’t say anything. You and I have never had a relationship based on an exchange of confidences anyway, have we?”
True.
“Lorena, we’ve never demanded anything of each other, starting with exclusivity. Now I’m asking you to end this without any great drama.”
She turned away, perhaps so that I wouldn’t be able to read the disappointment on her face. Then she pulled herself together and turned back to me.
“You’re right. My apologies. I’m behaving like a love-struck schoolgirl. It’s just that . . . I don’t know . . . I hadn’t thought it would end just like that.”
Incredulity. There it was: the first stage of mourning.
“She must be very special,” she said, trying to coax it out of me.
The smell of lavender on the tips of her fingers; the scar on her forehead; the way she has of repeating my name over and over again when we make love; the fact that my eyes are the first thing she looks for when she comes into a room . . . I could go on, but your life would end and I’d still be giving you reasons. But I remained silent, and my silence exasperated her.
“Don’t I at least deserve an explanation?” she yelled at me.
Anger: we’d moved on to the second stage in less than a minute. This promised to be quick. A good thing for her.
“Lorena, please don’t go there. It’s not your style. Let’s end this with pleasant memories.”
She finished her drink with one last sip. I pretended to sample mine.
“It’s a real shame, Iago. We’ve had a really good time together over the years.”
She turned toward the window to cover up the movement of her hand wiping away her tears. I pretended not to notice. That looked a lot like the third stage: depression. I waited quietly until she’d pulled herself together.
“Okay, okay. I get it,” she said, changing her approach. “It’s just that I had a small gift waiting for you, a toy for you to try out. Let’s have a dignified farewell.”
She unbuttoned her silky-smooth pajama top in the forties-pinup-girl manner that had given her such good results with me and all the other men she selected. She revealed what the pajama top was concealing without embarrassment: a lovely La Perla bra, see-through apart from some lace on each cup in the shape of a rose that exactly covered each nipple. Size 36D—the magnificent result of plastic surgery.
Cover yourself up, for heaven’s sake.
I appreciated what I was being shown for a second. We’d already reached the fourth stage: negotiation. It would have been painful to go backward only to have to begin again.
“Good-bye, Lorena.”
I left my untasted whiskey on top of the elegant credenza in the vestibule and left her apartment without looking back. The final stage of mourning, acceptance, would prevail of its own accord within a few weeks. I couldn’t help her with that.
I had a few phone calls to make along the same lines. The sooner I made them, the sooner I’d avoid the possibility of any uncomfortable confrontations with Dana. I walked toward the esplanade, dialing the phone numbers I knew by heart. Then I stopped by the Esperanza Market and arrived back at Dana’s apartment with a freshly baked breadstick under my arm, some fish—for a change—and several pounds of fresh fruit.
57
ADRIANA
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
A black coffee,” Héctor ordered as soon as he came into BACus.
Seated at our usual table, somewhat removed from the rest of the MAC staff, who were eating their lunch and pretending not to be hanging on to our every move, Iago, Kyra, and I were chatting, oblivious to the daggers Elisa and company were aiming at us. Héctor joined us, muttering an excuse, his face serious. We had been talking for a while when the Waterboys claimed Iago by phone. He jumped up and, with a concerned “I’ll be right back,” rushed out of the café.
Cifuentes, from accounting, walked into our territory armed with several urgent documents and removed Héctor from our ranks, leaving Kyra and me on our own.
The day had started with unpleasant weather, that wind blowing from the northeast, which, according to Iago and Héctor, so clearly announced rain. Maybe I’d been contaminated by the heaviness of the clouds, I don’t know, but I was feeling like Sisyphus as he rolled his huge boulder up the steep slope.
“Héctor brought me up-to-date regarding my brother’s latest little number,” said Kyra, stirring her milky coffee. “I’m sorry you had to see him in full medieval mode. I don’t know if you know, but Héctor has exiled him for a while.”
“Exiled?” I responded in astonishment.
“Yes, let’s just say he’s been removed from the sphere of our lives for a short spell. In reality, Héctor is the only one who has any degree of authority over him. And it will do us good not to have him close by until everything returns somewhat to normal. It will also be good for that cr
azy cousin of yours, Elisa.”
“I see you know all the details.”
“Yes, although I bet she’ll make it her business to sink you at the MAC without anyone finding out about her indiscretion with Jairo.” With a snort, she said, “Anyway, some things never change. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. You’re now getting a glimpse of what it’s like to be close to this family. Why do you think I want my own longevo children? Why do you think I’m supporting Jairo in his wish to have them? It’s always been like this with this family: conflict, conflict, and more conflict.” She became lost in the spirals she was creating in her coffee. “I don’t want to wander the world again on my own, but I can barely stand them when the three of them are together.”
I kept quiet, somewhat uncomfortable with all this confidential information I was hearing. Speaking of which, where the devil had Iago got to? We were going to lose the entire morning in BACus, and we were already seriously behind with the schedule. I had been glancing over at the entrance intermittently for a while, but nobody had come in.
Héctor joined us again after escaping from Cifuentes, and the three of us left BACus in silence. After we’d seen off Kyra, Héctor accompanied me to the Prehistory Hall and, after various attempts to contact Iago by phone, decided to stay and help me with the panels.
He picked up one of them and carried it to the back of the space, with me following. “There are a few things I want to talk about with you,” he said.
I nodded, resigned. Carrying on transcendental conversations with longevos was acquiring all the dimensions of a pandemic.
“Now that you know about us, I’m not going to deceive you. The MAC will last a few more years and then, quite simply, we’ll all disappear, using some convenient excuse. But if it should happen that you stay on with us, we could create an emergency archaeology business together. Iago, you, and I. You could help us to recover our past, and from your perspective, you could prevent many archaeological remains from staying buried forever under concrete. No more sites exhausted after decades of excavation. You’d always have fresh material within reach of only a few blows with a pickax.”