“Do you remember the tunnel that led from the cupboard? It didn’t end a few yards down, level with the laboratory, as you and I thought. If you break a false cement floor, it continues down to the cave at the back of our rock ledge.”
She sat down in the armchair to absorb what I was telling her.
“I don’t think you need to wait for the DNA, Iago. The marquis of Mouro escaped through my office, didn’t he?”
“Yet again,” I agreed. “We’ve solved a couple of mysteries in one hit. I think I now know the identity of the body. Did you pick up any notable absence at Jairo’s funeral?”
“No, I think all the blonds of Cantabria and its surrounds were there.”
“Patricio was missing. In fact, I’ve been trying to locate him since the night of the accident, but he’s not answering his phone. The last time we saw him was before Nagorno’s exile, and there’s nothing to prove he came back with him that weekend, despite the fact that, as I said to you at the time, I thought I saw him at the Esperanza Market.”
Dana’s hand flew up to her mouth as she remembered something. “Yes, you did see him,” she said with conviction. “Yes, he did come back to Santander. When Kyra and I were at the cemetery, Jairo invited us to dinner at his villa, and he said they had more than enough food to cover those festive days. He said ‘we,’ plural. Kyra and I assumed he was talking about himself and Patricio.” She looked at me questioningly. “So now what, Iago?”
Good question.
“Now I have to confirm the DNA results, and then I’m going to have the most difficult conversation in my life.”
76
IAGO
Saturn Day, fourteenth day of the month of Ngetal
Saturday, November 10, 2012
I called him first thing in the morning. I knew he’d be awake, possibly distracting himself with some good novel. We’d barely spoken since the day of the accident, as if we didn’t have the strength to disguise our grief from each other. I asked him to pick me up in his car, and once I was sitting next to him I told him to head toward Arnía cove. My father obeyed without any enthusiasm.
“I’m not in the mood for a walk on the beach today, Son.”
“I’m not either, really. I just don’t want to run the risk of being overheard.”
“You and your paranoias,” he muttered.
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye without answering him. He’d stopped shaving, and he had begun to look like the father I had known in my childhood. I ignored his dark mood for the rest of the journey. When we finally parked the car, I invited him to come down to the beach and, with an air of resignation, he followed me down.
We walked in silence for a while until, with a heavy heart, I forced myself to speak. “I’ve brought you to the beach where everything began for me, because perhaps this conversation will be the one that puts an end to the family that’s left: you and me.”
“I’m in no mood for riddles, Urko. Just tell me what you have to say and be done. You’ve got the DNA results, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Father, I have. It’s not Nagorno’s body.”
My father came to a halt, making no attempt to hide the relief on his face. “Who is it, then?”
“I have a theory, though I don’t think I’ll ever be able to prove it. I think he killed Patricio.”
I explained the existence of the tunnel and my suppositions as to how Nagorno might have gotten away. He took his time digesting the news, but it didn’t escape me that his mood had greatly improved.
“What about the telomeres? Did he take the research with him or not?”
“Dana was there when he was copying the data from Lyra’s computer to a flashdrive, but she managed to get close to him and steal it from him. I wish she hadn’t done it, because she has no idea how close she was to risking her life for nothing. Even if Nagorno had gotten away with the flashdrive, it would have gotten wet and maybe even been lost in the sea. Nevertheless, let’s admit it: we’ll never know. If he really did escape through the tunnel, kill Patricio, go back down the tunnel with the body, and put it in the water, he would have come back that same night through the tunnel so he could return to the lab and make another copy of the research data. You and I should have burned that damn lab after Lyra’s death, but it was too much to ask even of us longevos to think about that.”
My father nodded silently as he walked along the end stretch of the beach, avoiding the boulders in his path. He was waiting for me to speak, so I continued. “Anyway, I haven’t told you the second part.”
“The one you believe will cause our separation, right?”
You’ll see soon enough.
I breathed deeply and fired away. “I tested not only Nagorno’s DNA but Lyra’s as well. I had my doubts, but the test has confirmed it: Lyra is my daughter.”
I glanced at him, but he didn’t show a flicker of emotion and kept walking.
“I already knew it, from the very first moment. And I’m glad you’re finally brave enough to admit it. It must have been hard for you to keep quiet for so long. Your sin has been your punishment.”
“You knew?” I exclaimed, stunned. “How could you be sure? Not even Bryan was able to tell me who the father was.”
“I never had any intention of impregnating her. I didn’t want to leave her with a child in her precarious situation—a misfit who was remote from the village. I was taking willow seeds and other prophylactic plants, and I didn’t sleep with her when she was fertile. A precaution you clearly didn’t take.”
“Why haven’t you said anything all this time? Why didn’t you tell Lyra the truth?”
“Because she rejected me from the outset, believing that I was the father who had abandoned her. By contrast she always had an affinity to you, the brother who searched for her for decades and always looked after her. If we’d told her the truth, she would have rejected you, too, for being her real father, and she would have forgotten about all of us. Lyra has had a family life, which is what she deserved.”
“Do you think Lyra knew? She had our DNA at hand for four years.” That doubt had often kept me awake.
“No, I don’t think she even suspected it. There was always rejection of me and admiration for you in her eyes.”
“It should have been the reverse,” I muttered.
“Maybe, but that reality never was reversed.” He gazed at the horizon, taking his time. “I hope you feel lighter today.”
“Not yet, Father. Not yet.”
The revelation that my father knew the secret about Lyra had thrown me, and the burden of my debt to him made me feel as if I were carrying the world on my shoulders. I don’t know if I had thought carefully about what I was now going to tell him, I don’t know if it was smart to admit it, but I do know that I didn’t want to go on having barriers or lies between me and the only blood family I had left.
No more centuries or millennia of lies. Let him know; let him decide.
“I injected a telomerase inhibitor into Nagorno’s heart.”
He looked at me as if I’d just disembarked on that beach from a spaceship from another planet.
“You did what?”
“I still haven’t perfected it,” I explained, “so I’m not certain of the outcome, but if my calculations are right, from this moment his heart will start to age like the heart of any normal person, although the rest of his body will maintain the appearance of a longevo. What I’m trying to tell you is Nagorno probably won’t realize that within the next seventy years he is likely to have some sort of heart attack, and he’ll die.”
“And you did this behind my back?”
“I’m sure you would never have accepted it.”
“Indeed.”
“Someone had to do it, Father, and it was clear to me it wouldn’t be you.”
He sat down on some rocks at the end of the beach, his face reflect
ing his helplessness.
“So is this what I’ve achieved, after trying for millennia to keep the family together? My offspring killing each other.”
“I haven’t killed him; I’ve removed the gift you gave him, which he’s demonstrated he doesn’t deserve.”
“And we do?” he shouted, beside himself for once. “Tell that to the wives and children we’ve abandoned along the way.”
“Of course we don’t deserve it,” I murmured.
A tense silence sprang up between us until finally he exploded with the worst possible decision. The one I feared most; the one I never wanted to hear from his lips.
“I must go and look for him. I have to warn him.”
“I was afraid of a reaction like this, and despite that I’ve confided in you. Go and look for him if you wish, spend his last few decades with him, but I beg you not to tell him. He mustn’t know what I injected into him. If he knows, he’ll spend all that time researching it, or using any of the thousand ways he has to force you and me to tell him the truth. You don’t fix that with exile, Lür.”
But I looked at him and, over and above his obstinate silence, all I could see was that he’d made up his mind. And the words hurt—they hurt even before I uttered them—but even so, I said them. “Our road together ends here, Lür. I wish you a long life, but if Nagorno survives because you warned him, I won’t consider you my father again.”
“So be it, then.”
And there, on that beach where I saw light for the first time, each of us walked off in a different direction. The umbilical cord stretched until I noted a persistent tug, and then it broke.
A short time later I arrived at the cemetery. I made sure I was alone and took the bottle out of an empty niche near the one belonging to Sofía Almenara. I changed aisles and placed it on top of Lyra’s headstone again, just as I’d done every dawn since my daughter died. I sat there for hours, staring at the bottle.
“Do you see him, Lyra? This ruin of a man is your father.”
Since the day of her conception beside the river, I alone had been responsible for all the misery of her two thousand five hundred years of existence. And finally I reached my decision. I threw a stone at the bottle, and it rolled far away from my daughter.
77
ADRIANA
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Iago and I had spent the previous evening talking. I was still finding it hard to come to terms with the fact Lyra was his daughter, rather than his sister, but when he told me, more than anything else I understood his relief. There was something more human in his eyes; they looked more vulnerable now, not as hard. I admit I felt more at ease with, and less intimidated by, the new Iago.
“Dana, this will happen many more times,” he had told me. “I’ve lived through ten thousand years of conflict. Today it’s a daughter, tomorrow the men I killed . . . I haven’t been a paragon of virtue. It’s enough that I’ve survived. There’ll be moments when I prefer not to tell you about my past.”
“Yes, I’m beginning to understand that.”
“Do you think that what we have together will last?”
“I have no idea,” I answered.
Maybe we wouldn’t experience “happily ever after.” Maybe. But his existence was already interwoven with my life. And after the last series of events, we were fused together like metal after a nuclear explosion.
I looked at my empty bedroom one last time and smiled at the thought of my father’s face when he saw it like that, assuming it ever occurred to him to visit Santander. I didn’t want to go on having the furniture of my mother’s murderer in her apartment. There was no way for a soul to rest in peace under those circumstances. The rest of my things were in boxes again, waiting to be transferred to the house Iago and I had found a short distance from the MAC.
I heard the sound of keys behind me and a whistle when Iago came into the room.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“The movers took the furniture away this morning. Can you guess where?”
“Well, no.”
“To Elisa’s new apartment. You should have seen her face when I told her of my intentions, but she didn’t refuse. I think she’s the only person who continues to appreciate things that have anything to do with Jairo.”
“She’s not the only one,” he said solemnly.
“So it’s definite that your father is leaving Santander?”
“Yes. We’ve hardly crossed paths since our walk on the beach, and if we have, it’s been to sort out our business affairs and settle practical matters.”
“Do you think he’ll come back someday to live with you?”
Iago shrugged. “Who knows. I imagine so. If he’s capable of forgiving Nagorno over and over again, I have no doubt he’ll end up understanding my motives as well. As far as I’m concerned, it all hinges on whether or not he tells Nagorno what I confided to him. If he does, it will be difficult for me to forgive him.”
We sat down on the floor and embraced in the middle of the empty room.
“I don’t know, Dana. I’m tired of the fact there’s never an end to Nagorno’s stories. It’s an endless cycle, and this time I’d found a way to stop the wheel. But at too high a price, you know. There isn’t a family anymore. TAF no longer exists.”
Maybe I can do something about all this, I thought.
“You can make new ones,” I said, changing the direction of the conversation.
“I’d like it to be with you,” he whispered, resting his head on my shoulder. “It wouldn’t be your normal family. How much would that matter to you? How far would you go?”
“Are you talking about what we’ll do when I get old and you’re still as cheeky as you are now? Well, that depends on the two of us. Hypothetically, I guess we’ll have to move in ten years’ time or so.”
“Or twenty, if we do a good job of pretending I’m growing old, too. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“Of course. Then we’d hit an uncomfortable stage when you don’t look the age to be either my partner or my son. We’d have to assume people would whisper that I’m a cradle snatcher until the years passed and then you’d have to pretend you were my son or my nephew—whatever fits the circumstances at each stage.”
“And the children—have you thought about that?” he asked.
“I’d prefer them to know about your true nature right from the start. I’d like them to be with you when I’m no longer here. There’s no reason you should have to renounce them ever again.”
“For once . . .” he said, looking into the distance. “To see them grow up for once, and not abandon them.”
“We’ll find a way to make it all fall into place,” I concluded.
“You realize our plans mean that we won’t have a fixed place of residence?”
“You and I have always been seminomads. Anyway, there’s loads of digs out there waiting for us. I hope the idea of setting up an emergency archaeology business is still in the cards, even if your father goes away for a time,” I said with a smile as I looked at my watch. “And speaking of work, there’s not much time left before the big day. I’m going to head over to the MAC. I want to go over all the details before the opening.”
I got up off the floor and said good-bye to him. “I’ll see you there in a couple of hours. Don’t be late, okay?”
As soon as I was out on the street, I rummaged in my bag and took out my mobile. “Héctor, it’s Adriana. I have to talk to you. Where are you?”
“Leaving the house. I was just on my way to the museum,” he replied, a note of surprise in his voice.
“I’d prefer that we met somewhere else. Wait for me at the lookout in front of Los Peligros Beach,” I said and hung up without giving him time to object.
Héctor was far too considerate not to turn up, so I got into my car and took Castelar Street. A f
ew minutes later I parked on Reina Victoria and spotted his silhouette sitting on the bench. He had bags under his eyes, and he’d grown a beard. He held out his hand to me, as he had the first day we met, but I could see no sign of a smile.
“I feel uncomfortable in your presence, Adriana. I feel I’ve failed you, and I understand if you’re angry with me,” he said by way of a greeting.
“What are you talking about?”
I sat down beside him, and the two of us just remained there, gazing at the bay of Santander, as if we could detach ourselves from our real problems.
“My decision to go in search of Nagorno. He’s your mother’s murderer, so it would be perfectly normal for you to hate him and to hate me because I’m going to try to save his life.”
“I’ve come to speak to you about Nagorno, but not about the business with my mother. As far as that goes . . . I’m going to take some time to work through that. Too many things have happened that will take time for us to absorb—those of us who were there. Lyra is dead; I won’t see Nagorno again; you’re going off to look for him . . .” I sighed. “That’s all huge for me, and what I’m about to do may be huge as well.”
“What’s it about, then?”
“I’ve come for Iago’s sake, but he must never know about this conversation. Not while I’m alive, not after I’m dead. You feel uncomfortable with me because you forgave Nagorno? Then keep this promise, and I’ll deem everything to be squared away between us, all right?”
He scrutinized me for a good while, trying to work out possible scenarios, and finally agreed. “So be it, then.”
“Some time ago I asked you to tell me what happened between Iago and Nagorno in Scythia, and you did so. You gave me your version—what you saw, what you know. But today I’m going to tell you something they’ve both kept hidden from you for three thousand years, something you should know. Nagorno told me in Lyra’s lab, I presume because the second time he really did intend to kill me. I also know Iago would never have told me. I hope when you find out, you’ll see your son Iago in a different light. Maybe then you’ll finally understand the loyalty he has maintained toward you, everything that’s had to happen because he stayed by your side, everything he’s put up with in silence.”