Zig Zag
Jose Carlos Somoza
Unknown publisher (2011)
* * *
JOSE CARLOS SOMOZA
ZIG ZAG
A NOVEL
Translated from Spanish by Lisa Dillman HARPER An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers This book was originally published in Spanish as ZigZag by Plaza Janes in Spain in 2006 and in hardcover April 2007 by Rayo, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HARPER An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 10 East 53rd Street New York, New York 10022-5299
Copyright © 2007 by Jose Carlos Somoza Translation copyright © 2007 by Lisa Dillman ISBN 978-0-06-119373-6
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper paperbacks, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
First Harper paperback printing: August 2008 First Rayo hardcover printing: April 2007
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If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."
For my sons, JOSE and LAZARO The sea I sail has never yet been passed.
Dante, Paradiso, Canto II
PROLOGUE
The Outskirts of Olleros Andalusia, Spain July 12, 1992 10:50 P.M.
IT was neither foggy nor dark. The bright sun shone high in the sky. The world was green and filled with the scent of pines and flowers, with the sounds of cicadas and bees, and the gentle gurgling of a nearby stream. Nothing could disturb the idyllic scene, so bright, so vibrant, he thought. Though without knowing why, the thought itself disturbed him. Maybe he knew that any connection to perfection, thought or otherwise, could easily be destroyed; that there were thousands of ways a twist of fate (or something more sinister) could crush even the highest of spirits. It's not that he was a pessimist, but he'd reached a certain age, and the experiences he'd accumulated made him suspicious of anything that seemed so much like paradise.
He walked along the stream. From time to time, he stopped and looked around, as if he were soaking up his surroundings, deliberating even, only to then keep going. Finally, he reached a spot he liked. A few trees provided just enough shade, and there seemed to be less dust in the air. The air itself was cool. A little farther on, the path hugged the rocky banks of the river and came to an end at a stony hill. Here, he thought, he could count on solitude. It was almost as if he'd found a sort of refuge, or a shelter. He planned to sit on a large, flat rock and cast his line, taking pleasure in the wait, the quiet, the sparkling water. Nothing could be more relaxing. He crouched down, dropping his fishing rod and small tub of bait onto the ground.
He heard the voices when he stood back up.
At first he was startled, given the calm silence that preceded them. They were coming from some place on the hill he couldn't quite see, and judging by their high pitch the voices sounded like they belonged to children. They were shouting, probably playing some game. He assumed they lived in one of the nearby mountain houses. Although the presence of other people irritated him slightly, he tried to convince himself that children playing in the distance provided the ideal counterpoint to a perfect day. He took off his baseball cap and wiped the sweat from his face, smiling. Then, he froze.
It was no game. Something was wrong.
One of the kids was screaming, very strangely. The words were unintelligible, all blurred together in the still air. It was clear that whoever was shouting was not happy. A child screaming like that was in serious trouble.
Suddenly everything—even the birds and insects—went quiet, as if the world had stopped to take a breath, a pause at the start of some extraordinary event.
A moment later there came a very different kind of scream. A shriek that pierced the clean air, and seemed to shatter the china-blue sky.
As he stood beside the stream, he realized that this summer Sunday morning in 1992 was not going to turn out how he'd imagined. Even if only slightly, he knew that everything had forever changed.
Milan, Italy March 10, 2015 9:05 A.M.
IT was almost unreal, the way that scream kept reverberating for the long minute after it had stopped. Like embers of sound in Mrs. Portinari's ears, the scream had shattered her domestic silence. After a very brief pause, she heard it again, and only then was Mrs. Portinari able to react. She took off her reading glasses, which were attached to a tiny pearl chain, and let them hang from her chest.
"What on earth?" she said aloud. Despite the fact that given the time (9:05 according to the digital clock on the bookshelf, which had been a gift from the bank where she deposited her pension checks), the Ecuadorian cleaning girl had not yet arrived and, thus, she was alone. Ever since her husband died, four years ago, she talked to herself all the time. "Good God in Heaven, what the...?"
There it came again, louder.
Mrs. Portinari was reminded of a fire in her old apartment building in downtown Milan, fifteen years ago. She and her husband had almost lost their lives in it. After he died, she decided to move to an apartment on Via Giardelli, close to the university. It was smaller, but quieter, more fitting for a woman her age. She liked living there. Nothing bad ever happened in that little neighborhood.
Until that moment.
She ran to the door as fast as her swollen, arthritic joints would let her.
"Blessed Virgin!" she whispered, clutching the object in her hands. Later, she realized it was the pen she'd used to write out her weekly grocery list. But for the moment, she held onto it as if it were a crucifix.
Several residents of the building were out on the landing. All were looking up.
"It's coming from Marini's place," yelled Mr. Genovese, the man from across the hall. He was a young graphic designer whom Mrs. Portinari would have been quite fond of were it not for his very flamboyant manner.
"The professor!" she heard someone else shout.
The professor, she thought. What could have happened to that poor man? And who was shrieking so horrifically? It was definitely a woman. But, whoever it was, Mrs. Portinari was sure she'd never heard cries like that before. Not even during that terrible fire.
Then came the pounding footsteps of someone rushing down the stairs. Fast. Neither she nor Mr. Genovese immediately reacted. Dumbfounded, they stood staring at the landing. United in their fear and pallor, they suddenly seemed the same age. With her heart in her mouth, Mrs. Portinari steeled herself for whatever she might find: criminal or victim. Instinctively, she knew that nothing could be worse than standing there listening to that tortured soul howl. Hearing those echoes spiral through the air without being able to see who was making them shook her deeply.
But when she finally saw the face of the person screaming, she realized, with absolute certainty, that she'd been very wrong.
There indeed was something far worse than the sound of those horrible screams.
PART ONE
The Phone Call
Dangers are no more light, if they once seem light…
SIR FRANCIS BACON
01
Madrid March 11, 2015 11:12
A.M.
EXACTLY six minutes and thirteen seconds before her life took a drastic, horrifying turn, Elisa Robledo was working at something quite ordinary. She was teaching an elective on modern theories of physics to fifteen second-year engineering students. She in no way intuited what was about to happen. Unlike many students, and even a fair few professors for whom the setting proved formidable, Elisa felt more at ease in the classroom than she did in her own home. That was the way it had been at her old-fashioned high school and in the bare-walled classrooms of her university, too. Now she worked in the bright, modern facilities of the School of Engineering at Madrid's Alighieri University, a luxurious private institution whose classrooms boasted views from the enormous windows overlooking campus, perfect sound from their superb acoustics, and the rich aroma of fine wood. Elisa could have lived there. She unconsciously assumed that nothing bad could happen to her in a place like that.
She couldn't have been more wrong, and in just over six minutes she would realize that.
Elisa was a brilliant professor who had a certain aura about her. At universities, certain professors (and the occasional student) are the stuff of legend: the enigmatic Elisa Robledo had given rise to a mystery everyone wanted to solve.
In a way, the birth of the Elisa Mystery was inevitable. She was young and a loner; she had long, wavy black hair and the face and body of a model. She was sharp and analytical, and she had a prodigious talent for abstraction and calculation— characteristics that were key in the cold world of theoretical physics, where the principles of science rule all. Theoretical physicists were not only respected, they were revered—from Einstein to Stephen Hawking. They fit people's image of what physics was all about. Though most people found the field abstruse (if not wholly unintelligible), its champions always made a big splash and were seen as stereotypical, socially awkward geniuses.
Elisa Robledo was not cold at all. She was passionate about her teaching, and she captivated her students. What's more, she was an excellent academic, and a kind, supportive colleague, always willing to help out in a crisis. On the surface, there was nothing strange about her.
And that was what was so strange.
People thought she was too perfect. Too intelligent and too worthy to be working in a mediocre physics department at a business-oriented university like Alighieri, where no one truly cared about physics. Her colleagues were sure that she could have had her pick of careers: a post at the Spanish National Research Council, a tenured professorship at a public university, or some important role at a prestigious center abroad. Elisa was wasted at Alighieri. Then, too, no theory (and physicists love theories) adequately explained why, at thirty-two, almost thirty-three (her birthday was in April, just a month away), Elisa was unattached, had no close friends, and yet seemed perfectly happy. She appeared to have all she wanted in life. No one knew of any boyfriends (or girlfriends), and her friendships were limited to colleagues with whom she rarely if ever spent free time. She wasn't conceited or even arrogant despite her obvious good looks. And although she accentuated her attractiveness by wearing a whole range of perfectly tailored designer clothes that often made her look downright provocative, she never seemed to be trying too hard to attract the attention of men (who often turned to gawk when she passed) with the clothes she wore. Elisa spoke only about her profession, was courteous, and always smiled. The Elisa Mystery was unfathomable.
Occasionally, she seemed unsettled. It was nothing concrete: maybe a look, or a momentary dullness in her brown eyes, or just a feeling she gave people after a quick conversation. As though she was hiding something. Those who thought they knew her—Noriega, the department chair, among others—thought it was probably best that she never reveal her secret. For whatever reason, some people, regardless of how insignificant their role in others' lives, or how few close moments they've shared, are unforgettable. Elisa Robledo was one of them, and people wanted it to stay that way.
Professor Victor Lopera, one of Elisa's only real friends, was a notable exception. Sometimes he was overwhelmed by an urgent need to unravel her mystery. Victor had experienced the temptation on several occasions, the most recent being last year, in April 2014, when the department decided to throw Elisa a surprise birthday party.
Noriega's secretary, Teresa, had come up with the idea, and everyone had jumped at it, including some students. They spent a month enthusiastically preparing, as if they thought it would be the ideal way to infiltrate Elisa's magic circle and touch her ephemeral surface. They bought a cake, balloons, a giant teddy bear, and candles shaped into the number thirty-two; the chair even went in for a few bottles of champagne. They shut themselves into the seminar room, decorated it quickly, drew the curtains, and turned off the lights. When Elisa arrived that morning, one of the custodians told her they had called an "urgent faculty meeting." Everyone waited in the dark. The door opened and Elisa's hesitant silhouette was framed by the doorway, outlining her cropped cardigan, tight pants, and long hair. Suddenly, laughter and applause erupted, the lights were turned on, and Rafa, one of her best students, was there recording the young professor's disconcerted expression on one of those state-of-the-art video cameras that was no bigger than a pair of eyes.
The party was brief and made no inroads at all into the Elisa Mystery. Noriega said a few emotional words, people sang the same old songs, and Teresa stood before the camera, waving a funny banner with caricatures of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Elisa Robledo sharing a cake (Teresa's brother, a graphic designer, had made it). Everyone was jovial and affectionate and tried to show Elisa that they gladly accepted her without asking anything in return, except that she continue to enliven them with her mystery, to which they'd grown accustomed. As always, Elisa was perfect, her face an ideal picture of surprise and happiness. She even seemed a little moved: her eyes looked like they'd welled up. Judging from the video, and seeing her perfect body outlined by her sweater and pants, she could have passed for a student, or maybe the presenter at some spectacular event or (as Rafa later told his friends on campus) a porn star winning her first award. "Einstein and Marilyn Monroe, all rolled into one," he said.
But an attentive observer would have noted something that didn't quite fit. When the lights had flipped back on, Elisa's face had changed.
No one really noticed because, after all, no one spends their time scrutinizing other people's birthday party videos. But Victor Lopera had caught the fleeting yet significant change. When the room lit up, Elisa's features reflected not the emotion of someone caught off guard but something deeper, more disturbed. Of course, it had lasted only tenths of a second. As instantly as she had flashed that pure reaction, she had then smiled and gone back to being perfect. The Mystery. But for that brief moment her beauty had been transformed into something else. Aside from Victor, everyone watching the video laughed at her "surprise." But Lopera saw something else. What was it? He wasn't sure. Maybe just displeasure at something she really didn't think was funny, or intense shyness, or something else.
Maybe fear.
Victor, intelligent and observant, was the only one who wondered what it was that Elisa might have thought she was going to find in that dark room. What kind of "surprise" had distant, beautiful Professor Robledo thought awaited her in that darkened seminar room, before the lights went on and she heard the laughter and the clapping? He'd have given anything to find out.
What was going to happen to Elisa in a serene classroom that morning, in just over six minutes, would have given Victor Lopera some clues, but, unfortunately for him, he wasn't there.
ELISA always tried to give examples that would appeal to the insipid minds of the rich kids who sat in her classes. None of them would ever major in physics, and she knew it. They just wanted to breeze through abstract concepts superficially, pass their classes, and get out of there as quickly as possible, degree in hand, so they could stroll into privileged, hotshot positions in business or technology. They couldn't care less about the whys and wher
efores that had comprised the basic enigmas of science; what they wanted were the solutions, the effects, the concrete answers they had to come up with in order to get their grades. Elisa tried to change all that, teaching them to think about causes and the unknowns.
At that moment, she was trying to get her students to visualize the extraordinary phenomenon of our reality having more than three dimensions, possibly many more than the easily observable length-width-height trio. Einstein's theory of relativity had proven that time was the fourth dimension, and the complex string theory that was challenging contemporary physics hypothesized that there were at least nine further spatial dimensions—something almost inconceivable to the human mind.
Sometimes, Elisa wondered whether people even had a clue about all the varied and important discoveries that had been made in physics. Here we were well into the twenty-first century—the Age of Aquarius—and the general public still couldn't get enough of so-called supernatural and paranormal phenomena, as if we'd already solved all the mysteries of the natural and the normal. It didn't take flying saucers or ghosts to see that we live in a very disturbing world. As far as Elisa was concerned, there was far too much to take in right here in this world, even for the wildest imagination. And she planned to prove it, at least to the fifteen students sitting in her small class.
She started with a fun, easy example. First, she put a transparency up on the overhead projector. On it, she'd drawn a human stick figure and a square.
"This man," she explained, pointing to him, "lives in a world with only two dimensions: length and width. He's worked hard all his life and earned a fortune: one euro." She heard a few snickers and knew she'd grabbed the attention of several sets of glazed-over eyes. "So that no one can steal this euro from him, he decides to keep it in the safest bank in his world: a box. This box has only one opening, on one side, which our man uses to deposit his fortune, and which no one else can open."