"I'm happy for him too," Victor spluttered. "I mean, not entirely. Well, for him I am, but not for you. I mean..."
"I don't care. Honestly. Blanes and his sequoia aren't the be-all and end-all."
She felt better after that blow. She'd always tried to adapt to new situations, and this was no exception. And since she'd now actually have some time to relax, she decided she'd reorganize her life. She might even call her own private "spy," Javier Maldonado, and return his dinner invitation, asking him a few questions, just to clear up some things she'd been brooding over since Valente had spoken to her. Have you been spying on me? Do you work for Eagle Group? She could just picture his face.
Then she remembered the bet.
Well, that was OK, she was pretty sure Valente would forget about it. When Blanes said, "Come with me," he probably forgot all about bets and trotted after him like a puppy.
But what if he didn't? What if he wanted to play this thing all the way out? She considered the possibility, and it made her very nervous. There was no way that she was going back on her word. She'd do whatever he said. But she also had to assume, or at least hope, that he wouldn't go too far. She'd give in, hoping he'd do the same. She was almost sure that Valente was more interested in humiliating her than anything else, and if she was casual about it and gave in to his demands, he'd lose all interest.
I'm going to call your cell phone. Just once. I'll tell you where you have to go, and how, what you can wear and what you can't...
All of a sudden, she felt uncomfortable with her cell in her pants pocket. It was like having Valente's hand on her thigh. She pulled it out and looked to see if she'd missed any calls. None. Then she placed it on the table like a gambler staking it all on one number. When she looked up, she could see the alarm in Victor's eyes; he seemed to read her thoughts.
"I think I crossed a line yesterday," he said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have spoken to you like that. You probably misunderstood me. I... I didn't mean to scare you."
"You didn't scare me," she replied, smiling.
"Well, I'm glad to hear you say that," Victor said. But his expression showed that he was anything but. "All day yesterday, I kept going over it in my head, thinking I'd been a little over the top. I mean ... Ric's not the Devil incarnate or anything...."
"I'd never thought he was. But thanks for clearing it up; Satan might have been offended."
Something about that comment charmed Victor. Seeing him laugh, Elisa did the same. Then she glanced down at her almost untouched sandwich, her cell phone lying next to it. She added, "I just don't understand how you two ever became friends. You're so different."
"We were just kids back then. When you're a kid you do a lot of things that, later on, you'd never have done."
"I suppose you're right."
And then, out of the blue, Victor began to talk. It was like a torrent or a violent storm, his sentences like thunder rolling from his lips, but the thoughts that impelled them were more like lightning, striking from deep within him. Elisa listened carefully since, for the first time since she'd met him, he was talking about something other than physics or theology. He stared off into space, reeling off his tale as he did.
As always, he spoke about the past. About that which has taken place and continues to take place, as Elisa's grandfather had once explained it to her. Things that once were and therefore still are. He spoke about the only thing we ever really speak about when we're honest, because it's impossible to go into detail about anything other than our memories. And as she listened, the cafeteria, the conference, and her professional concerns melted away. For Elisa, all that existed right then was Victor's voice and the story he told.
It had taken her several years to realize, but she saw that her grandfather had been right when he once said, "Other people's past might be our present."
TIME is, indeed, strange. It carries things off to remote places we have no access to, and yet still has a magical effect on us. Victor turned back into a child, and she could almost see both of them: two lonely boys who were both incredibly intelligent, maybe had the same tastes, were ruled by their curiosity and thirst for knowledge, but also by interests that other boys their age wouldn't dare express. The two of them did, though, and that's what made them different. Ric was the leader, the one who decided what had to be done, and Victor—Vicky—complied, perhaps fearful of what might happen if he didn't, or perhaps just hoping for his turn.
The thing he liked most about Ric was also his biggest shortcoming: his solitude. Abandoned by his parents, raised by an uncle who was increasingly remote and indifferent, Ric had no boundaries, no rules of conduct, and he thought of nothing but himself. He saw everyone and everything around him as a theater whose only purpose was to delight him. Victor became a regular in the audience of that theater; but when he got older, he stopped attending the fantastic performances.
"Ric was unlike anyone else. He had an incredible imagination, but he was also very down to earth. He didn't delude himself. If he wanted something, he'd give it his all, do anything to get it, regardless of who or what stood in his way. At first, I liked that. I suppose that's what happens to anyone who meets a guy like that. Back then, Ric's world revolved around sex. But he was always cynical. For him, girls—all girls—were always inferior. When he was a kid, he used to cut out pictures of the girls in his class and paste them over the centerfolds' faces in girlie magazines—which he had a ton of. Which was funny at first. But then I got tired of it. I really couldn't stand the way he treated girls like objects. They were just things he could get pleasure from. He never loved any of them; he just used them. He liked to take pictures, film them naked, in the bathroom. Sometimes he paid them, but a lot of times they didn't even know they were being filmed. He had hidden cameras."
He paused for a moment to look at Elisa, searching for some sign that he should stop. But she motioned for him to continue.
"As if that wasn't enough, he had the money and the space to do whatever he wanted. We spent summers at Ric's family's summerhouse near a town in Andalusia called Ollero. Sometimes we brought girls there. It was just the two of us, and we thought we owned the world. Ric would take raunchy pictures. And then, one day, something happened." He smiled and pushed his glasses up on his nose. "There was this girl I liked, and I think she liked me, too. Her name was Kelly. She was from England and she went to our school... Kelly Graham..." He lingered over the name for a minute. "Ric invited her over to the house, but I didn't mind. I was sure that he knew Kelly was off limits. But one morning... I found them ... Ric and Kelly..." He gazed at Elisa, nodding slowly. "Well, anyway, I'm one of those guys who only gets mad once in a blue moon, but... but..."
"But when you do, all hell breaks loose," Elisa helped him.
"Yeah. I called them every name in the book. I mean, looking back on it, it was just a little kid's tantrum. We were only ten or eleven years old. But seeing them... kissing and ... touching each other... Well, let's just say it was a shock to me. Anyway. We argued, and Ric pushed me. We were outside, on some rocks by a river. I fell and hit my head. I was lucky there was a man there who'd come to go fishing. He picked me up and took me to a hospital. It wasn't anything serious: a few stitches. I think I still have the scar. But what I wanted to tell you was ... I was out for a few hours. And when I came to that night, Ric was there with me, begging me to forgive him. My parents told me that he had sat by my side the whole time. The whole time," he repeated, his eyes misty. "When I woke up, he started crying and saying he was sorry. I think it's important to have friends when you're a kid, to really know what friendship is. That day, I was closer to him than ever. Does that make any sense? You asked me what brought us together... Now, when I think about it, I think it was things like that that brought us together."
He fell silent and sighed deeply.
"I forgave him, of course. In fact, I thought we'd be friends forever. But then things changed. We grew up, our lives took different paths. We didn't stop speaking, but s
omehow it was worse than that. We put up barriers. He still kept trying to get me to be like him. He told me he kept inviting girls to Ollero. He'd film them secretly, sometimes while they were making love. Then he'd show them his home movies and blackmail them. 'You think your parents would want to see this? Or your friends?' he'd say. And he'd make them pose some more." After another pause, he added, "Of course, he never got in trouble with the police or anything. He was very careful, and they'd always keep their mouths shut..."
"Did you ever see it?" Elisa asked. "The whole blackmailing side of things, I mean."
"No, but he told me about it."
"I'll bet you he was just showing off."
The way Victor looked at her, it was as if she were someone he really admired who'd just really let him down.
"You don't understand... You have no idea how Ric treated them..."
"Victor, Ric Valente might be a pervert, but deep down he's just a third-rate clown. I know that for a fact."
"You think you could disobey him?" he asked sharply, suddenly. His slow manner of speech instantaneously evaporated. "You think that if you accepted his terms, you'd be able to get out of anything he ordered you to do?"
"What I think is that you still admire him, despite it all." Now she was fed up. "Valente is an idiot who's never so much as been slapped by his parents, and you think he's an unscrupulous sadist who'd commit the most heinous acts imaginable without batting an eye. Or maybe you just like to think that..." She shouldn't have said that, and she knew it. Immediately, she wished she could take it back. Victor stared at her, totally solemn.
"No," he said. "You're wrong about that. I don't like it at all."
"What I meant was..."
The cell phone rang. Almost frightened, Elisa snatched her cell off the table to look at the screen. Unknown number.
For a second, she recalled Valente's words the day before, his watery eyes taking her in from behind his bangs. I'll tell you where you have to go, and how, what you can wear and what you can't, and you'll listen and obey every word... And that will just be the beginning. I'm going to have the time of my life, I swear... For a second she was afraid to answer. It was like her phone's insistent ring was inviting her to enter a different world from the one she'd previously known, a world in which her talk with Ric Valente and Victor's whole story were just the preamble. Maybe—she thought—it would have been better to be a coward or to lie than to accept his sinister invitation...
She looked up hesitantly and glanced at Victor, who seemed to be begging her with his hangdog eyes not to answer.
And that was precisely what made her mind up, that private fear she perceived in him. She wanted to prove to Ric Valente Sharpe and Victor Lopera that she had mettle. No one and nothing was going to scare her off.
At least that was what she believed back then.
"Hello?" she picked up, her voice steady, having no idea what she was about to hear.
And when she heard it, she froze.
After she hung up, she stared at Victor, mouth agape.
HER mother, astonishingly, canceled all of her appointments at Piccarda and took her to Barajas International Airport on Tuesday morning. She was very obsequious, openly exclaiming how happy she was. Maybe—she thought—what she was happy about was the fact that her little chickadee was finally going to fly away and leave the expensive nest. OK, let's not be so negative, especially not now.
Her greatest joy was seeing Victor. He was the only one who came to see her off. He didn't give her a kiss, but he patted her back.
"Congratulations," he said, "though I still don't understand how you did it."
"Me neither," she admitted.
"It was only logical, though. That he pick both of you, I mean. You were the top two students in the class..."
She felt a knot in her throat. Her happiness was absolute; she wasn't even thinking about Valente, whom she would no doubt meet up with in Zurich. After all, neither of them had won the bet. As usual, they'd tied.
There was still over half an hour before her plane took off, but she wanted to wait at the gate. So before going through security, mother and daughter looked at each other in silence, as if deciding which of them would take the next step. Suddenly, Elisa held out her arms and hugged the elegant, perfumed body before her. She didn't want to cry, but tears slid down her cheeks despite her best effort. Taken by surprise like that, Marta Morande kissed her daughter's forehead. It was a light, cold, discreet peck.
"I hope you're very happy and that it all goes really well for you, honey."
Elisa waved and put her bag through the X-ray machine.
"Call me, and write me, don't forget," her mother said.
"Lots of luck, lots and lots...," Victor repeated. Even after she could no longer hear him, watching his lips move, it seemed that he still repeated the same thing again and again.
And then Victor and her mother's faces were gone. She watched Madrid out of the plane's window, and, from so high up, she felt as if she were opening a new chapter in her life. He called me. He wants me to go to Zurich to work with him. It's unbelievable. Everything changed for her. She'd stopped being "Robledo Morande, Elisa" and entered a new world, totally different from the one she'd feared. A world that seemed to be waiting for her, winking at her from up in the sky. She smiled and closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling.
Years later, she would think that had she even remotely suspected what that trip held for her, she would never have boarded the plane, or even picked up her cell phone that Sunday.
If she'd had any idea, she would have run home and locked herself in her room, sealing the doors and windows forever. But at the time, she didn't have a clue. Not the slightest idea.
PART THREE
The Island
"The isle is full of noises…"
SHAKESPEARE
12
A pair of eyes watched her as she moved, naked, throughout the room.
That was when she first got the feeling that something was wrong. It was just a vague premonition of what was to come, though at the time she didn't know what it was. Only later did she come to realize that those eyes were just the beginning.
Those eyes weren't really evil; they were just the door to evil.
SHE didn't start to feel uneasy until they took her to the house.
Right up until then, everything had seemed normal, even fun. Having a man in an expensive suit waiting for her at the airport in Zurich, holding a sign that bore her name, seemed like a charming confirmation of Swiss meticulousness. She stifled a giggle when she realized, rushing to keep up with his long strides, that she'd assumed he was a colleague and was about to start discussing physics. Actually, he was the chauffeur.
The ride in the dark Volkswagen was enjoyable, and she stared out the window at the lush landscape, so utterly different from the wide-open golden fields surrounding Madrid. She saw a thousand different shades of green, and it reminded her of the colored pencils she'd used in her sketchbooks as a girl (actually, weren't those Swiss pencils?). She'd been to Switzerland before: in college, she spent a few weeks at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva. Now, they were going to the Technical Research in Physics laboratory in Zurich, where she had a room reserved. She'd never been to the famous lab where the sequoia theory was born, but she'd seen countless pictures of the building.
That's why she frowned when it became clear that, in fact, this was not where they were taking her.
They were probably a few kilometers north of Zurich (she'd seen "Dubendorf" on a sign), on what looked like a farm with pretty trees, a well-manicured lawn, and fancy cars parked at the entrance. The producer's house. They're filming a movie. The chauffeur opened the door for her and grabbed her suitcase. Is this where I'm going to stay? But she didn't even have time to think. A man who'd clearly been to the same tailor as the chauffeur asked her to take off her jacket and then patted under her arms and down her legs with some sort of metal detector. He found her hou
se keys, cell phone, and loose change, all of which were returned intact. Then he led her through the silent house, in which the hardwood floors shone so deeply they seemed to reflect the water from the lake. Finally, he left her with another man who said his name was Cassimir.
If his name and broken Spanish hadn't already given him away, Cassimir had plenty of other qualities that made it clear he was not from the Iberian Peninsula. He was blond and built like a house, and his pasty Anglo-Saxon skin tone contrasted sharply with the black turtleneck and gray trousers he wore. He was obviously in charge of welcoming her. He asked all the requisite questions. Had she had a good flight? Had she ever been to Switzerland before? And so on. As he asked her these and other questions, he led her to a bright office and asked her to have a seat at a hardwood desk made of what looked like cherry. Behind Cassimir's chair, a large window opened onto the clear, sunny Swiss day, and to Elisa's left (Cassimir's right), a long mirror reflected a double of the room, showing another Elisa with wavy black hair, a pink tank top that underscored her tan skin and white bra strap (her mother couldn't stand that she let her bra strap show; she found it "vulgar"), tight jeans, and tennis shoes. Also reflected was an enormous Cassimir clone in silhouette, his fingers laced together. She stifled a laugh, recalling an erotic video she'd downloaded off the Internet once, in which a girl was asked to take off her clothes in the office of a (porno) film producer, while from the other side of the two-way mirror, someone watched her. I know someone is watching me from the other side of that mirror. This is white slavery, and they're assessing the goods before they accept them.