And now, facing the barrel of Alcázar’s gun, he could see that night laid bare, unveiled; his mind let the wall come down brick by brick, no more lying: the shed, the image of Laura on the ground, crying, her skirt up above her hips. And Gonzalo there, at the barn door.
“I told you to stay in the well.”
But he was afraid, afraid of the dark. And then he saw his father, hunched over the typewriter. What was that verse, how did it go? And Gonzalo whispered, almost to himself, “The first drop to fall starts breaking down the stone.” And Elías’s eye turned, searching for him in the darkness. And then finding him in the corner doorway.
“You were there, at the police station,” Gonzalo remembered. “You talked to my mother, you told her what happened. And she tried to scratch your face but you held her wrists. And then you threatened her, told her that if she laid a hand on Laura you’d take care of her and make sure everyone knew what kind of hero Elías Gil really was.”
Alcázar swallowed. His tiny eyes glimmered, like hard kernels beneath his bushy brows, far from a universe expanding, their center filled with profound sadness. He recalled the hard candies he used to give Laura, the way they laughed together and the times he was almost convinced by her enthusiasm and her faith, almost stood up to the Matryoshka. She believed in human kindness, believed that evil could be defeated, and nearly got him to join her ranks. After Cecilia died, Laura was the only decent thing in his life. And he betrayed her.
“Too late to open that door, Gonzalo.”
He walked over to Siaka and aimed at his temple.
Gonzalo tried to stop him. “Let him go. He won’t say a word, and I won’t either. I swear.”
Siaka leaned his head against the wall and dragged his shoulders up. He swallowed and faced Alcázar’s eyes.
Siaka had seen too many men like this. Cowards who were brave only when they had a weapon in their hands. Weak men who became strong when others were afraid. Throughout his life, his flesh had suffered at their hands. He was tired. Laura was right, she was always right: He could win, and in order to win he didn’t have to beat them, just had to stare them in the face. Again and again, over and over, one after the other, until they were laid bare, until they were forced to face their own shortcomings—sick, incomplete beings. It was enough to start, to be the first. Others would come later. She’d already done it. Now it was his turn.
“Don’t listen to this guy, Inspector. If you don’t pull that trigger and blow my brains out right now, I promise you I’ll drag myself down to the prosecutor’s office and tell him absolutely everything I know about the Matryoshka. And you’ll be the first one they come after. So you’d better get it over with, here and now.”
Alcázar listened to him and noted not a trace of fear or doubt.
“You’re right, son. It’s too late to change anything.”
The shot echoed through the room and then throughout the house, and so did Gonzalo’s desperate cry as Siaka slid to the floor, staring at him all the while, eyes wide open.
29
THE LAKE, NIGHT OF SAN JUAN, JUNE 23, 1967
Elías didn’t know how long he’d spent hiding like a swamp creature before deciding to approach the house, trampling the poppies that grew between the paving stones along the path. The night air was soft and peaceful, yet he was sweating profusely, his heart pounding so hard he feared it would give him away.
Through the window he heard the joyous sound of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture being played on the record player and saw Anna dancing in circles in the candlelight, holding her daughter’s hands. Tania was shrieking with laughter, flying through the air, and her laughter took forever to reach Elías. In the brief moment during which he observed them unseen, he wondered, dazed, if the blood on his shirt and hands was real or he’d only dreamed that he just shot Igor Stern in front of a dozen witnesses as well as two bodyguards.
He gazed at his trembling fingers. The police were probably already looking for him, Ramón’s son leading the pack. And this time his childhood friend could do nothing to help him.
The music stopped, and when he looked back through the window, Elías was confronted with Anna’s flushed face, staring fixedly at him. She bent down and said something to Tania, and the girl scurried upstairs. For a moment, Anna seemed undecided but then marched straight to the door and stood before Elías, arms crossed, blocking his entry. Elías saw the face she made after noticing his bloodstained shirt and hands, and he bluntly answered the question in her eyes.
“I killed him,” he said, no trace of pride or of guilt.
Anna looked at him with something resembling nausea, touching a hand lightly to her stomach before quickly recovering. Her eyes took him in, inquisitive.
“And what do you expect from me?”
Right at that instant, firecrackers exploded in the distance. It was the night of San Juan, a night of witches and magic, the moon and bonfires purifying everything. Simultaneously, they raised their heads to a star-filled sky and watched the first colorful explosion extend like a wave and then disintegrate into a thousand bright particles of light, illuminating the surface of the placid lake. When the glow died out, they gazed back at each other. The candles backlit Anna’s silhouette in the doorframe but her face remained in shadow. Elías’s form was partially lit by the moon. They both looked like ghosts. But they were real. Elías reached out and tried to touch Anna’s face, but she jerked away in disgust.
“Don’t you dare touch me.”
Shocked, he rubbed his brow. “You’re free now.”
Anna gaped, eyes open wide as if he were insane. She let out a cackle that rose up from deep within her and seemed to struggle to the surface, then shook her head in genuine shock.
“You can’t be serious. Do you actually want me to believe you killed him for my sake?”
“For you, for Irina, for Claude, for Michael, for Martin, for me.”
Anna’s laughter grew agitated, almost rabid. She hated him, God how she hated him. Almost as much as she’d hated Igor Stern.
“Were you expecting me to leap into your arms, Elías? To revere you? Kiss your feet like my savior? You’re a little late—thirty-four years, in fact,” she spat, unable to keep these last words from escalating into a sorrowful sob, which she fought back, rubbing the back of her hand furiously over her red eyes.
So-called honorable people think that not doing anything ill judged—sometimes, not doing anything at all—is enough. They’re swept along by inertia, openly accepting their venial sins and extolling their own virtues with much chest-thumping. They all judge from the safety of their winged chariots, dripping decency and honor. But the rules of civilized society were useless in the barbaric land of Igor Stern, and Anna had long ago crossed the Rubicon. Indeed, Igor had bequeathed her the dubious legacy of his empire, and with it the worst of himself. If only she hadn’t bitten the apple of knowledge, if only she’d held out a little longer before bending to his will; but it was too late now. She’d tasted power and control, and the absurdly fine line separating what the naïve refer to as good and evil.
“Where were you when I was three, five, eight, ten, twelve years old? Where were you when I was screaming, crying in fear every time Igor passed me to his men so they could rape me, force me to endure every humiliation under the sun? Where were you when I was hiding under the bed, freezing and trembling, in the hopes he wouldn’t find me when he was drunk? You never came to my aid when I tried to escape, never protected me from the world. I learned to do that on my own, and I had to learn fast. And then it finally came to me: I was his creation, and only when I accepted it would I stop suffering.”
And with that realization, she stopped resisting the hands that shaped her and allowed herself to fall; nothing mattered anymore, and she discovered it wasn’t so bad in the dark. Anna became an obliging and adaptable young woman, proved herself to be quite cunning and with a tal
ent for manipulating men. And she had the patience to keep her mouth shut, to listen and learn.
“What did I learn? More than I wanted to and much more than I needed to know about human nature.”
As the years went by she became more and more distant, isolated from anything outside the bounds of Igor’s world of brothels, dirty dealings, drugs, and weapons. She grew up under his strict rules and then adopted them as her own, earning the respect of Igor and his men. Did he ever once behave like a father, ever love her, even in his own twisted brutal way? No. Never. But at times he managed to pretend, creating a fairy tale existence in which she sat among princesses in a box seat at the opera, in which Paris looked like a postcard view from the windows of a limousine driving along the Seine in the wee hours of the night, in which the water lapped calmly to the song of a gondolier in Venice.
Anna came to admire the fear and respect Igor inspired, one always inseparable from the other and so close to the admiration that even his enemies professed. He molded himself into a dandy who never raised his voice or argued over the details of his operations. But when Igor made a decision, he expected it to be carried out to the letter, without delay, and everyone knew it. Nothing and no one moved him. And was that not, after all, a virtue of the gods?
“I was never the little girl you think you remember or, if so, it certainly wasn’t for long.”
Her voice was blunt, but she was weakening, showing a touch of anxiety. Look at me now, said her tearstained eyes, because neither you nor anyone will ever see me waver again. The night of San Juan was unfolding before them, the bonfires in town already burning, although from the house their ghost lights were only faint glimmers. It was supposed to be a beautiful night, a night when people fell in love, when the heavens and the earth almost touched. Families in all their finery gathered jovially around the plaza, grandparents brought out chairs to sit in, people played guitar and tambourine and dulzaina, they laughed and drank and forgot their cares. But their joy was infected with evil as it spread across the valley and made its way up to the lake and house, enveloping Elías and Anna.
There was a moment of silence, and then Anna raised her head and straightened her shoulders. She’d regained control.
“Do you think killing Igor somehow cancels out your debts? Don’t be a fool. Deep in your hearts, you and Stern are the same. You have the same desires: power, pride, vanity. You dress yours up in virtue, but he was more honest. Control over others became his obsession, the activity he found most captivating. He prided himself on knowing every corner of the human soul, but you eluded him over and over. Like that stupid story about the coat that you lost your eye over; he never stopped talking about it. He told that story over and over, and he admired you for it, as if it was worthy of him, something his own son had done, or his brother. That’s the paradox: The more he admired you, the more he hated you; and the more your reputation as a hero grew, the more detestable he became, because he wanted to be like you, to have the recognition you got from your equals. It’s a symbiotic relationship: You pretend to care about principles but don’t hesitate to betray them if it’s in your interest. You did it with my mother, you let her drown to save your own life. You gave me to Igor to save your life and didn’t hesitate to sell out your comrades to the Spanish police to take revenge on Igor. He never condemned you for that, because he’d have done exactly the same thing if he was in your position.
“What offended him was your cowardice, the way you refused to accept your true nature. You tortured and killed pretending it was in the name of ethics, whereas he simply called it pragmatism. He was convinced that human nature is inherently corrupt, but you hid behind your nauseating theoretical idealism.
“You’re no better than him, Elías; in fact, you might be worse. You come here to my house, show me clothes stained with Igor’s blood, and think I’m going to absolve you, going to uphold your honesty.”
Anna Akhmatova was now gazing at Elías, calm and watchful.
“It’s tempting, isn’t it? The idea that we could just hug, pretend we’re not what we are, forgive each other for the sake of a past that’s not the same for either of us. But don’t fool yourself: You’re a coward. You killed Igor in broad daylight in front of all those witnesses because you want to be remembered as the killer of a Soviet mafioso and not as a traitor or a man with feet of clay. You thought he was going to denounce you, thought that Velichko’s report would become public and prove that you were a collaborator, that it would show your ties to the murders Beria ordered and to Igor’s dirty dealings throughout the war. But even more than that, what scared you was the possibility of people knowing that you collaborated with Ramón Alcázar, finding out you were dealing directly with the commissioner of Franco’s secret police. All of those dead comrades jailed or disappeared because of you—that was something your vanity could never accept. You still want your place in history and a place in your son’s memory. You expect to be admired when you’re dead. And deep down, that’s all it is: narcissism.”
She fell silent and then cautiously weighed her next words, aiming them with care before she fired, attempting to destroy Elías.
“Igor Stern is dead. But I’m not, and I know all the same things.”
Elías struggled to breathe and felt the stabbing pain in his eye socket, the worms were gnawing their way into his brain again, making him feel insane. He held his head as though it was about to explode.
“Don’t threaten me, Anna. I don’t deserve it; this isn’t fair. You can’t possibly remember what it was like.”
Shockingly, Anna allowed herself to reach out and stroke Elías’s eye patch.
“I’ve been there, many times, after what happened. It’s funny how the grass has grown back over everything; people no longer recall, it’s as if it never happened. You’re right, I can’t remember. But I do know everything that happened afterward.”
Instinctively, Elías grabbed Anna’s wrist and yanked her fingers away. He’d fought his whole life against Igor Stern and had never been able to beat him. By finally killing him, Elías thought he would be able to take Anna—Stern’s most prized creation—from him, but even from the grave, Igor was mocking him. Anna was slipping from his grasp like the stranger she was, and he could feel hatred on his fingertips, scalding him.
“What do you want? What do you want from me?”
It was an absurdly naïve question, one that forced her to come up with something. Her fingers undulated like the tentacles of a jellyfish, trapped in Elías’s fist.
“You disappoint me. What do you expect? What do you think I’m going to do? Why do you think I’ve come, after all these years? Out of nostalgia? Curiosity? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You’re going to report me.”
Anna gazed at him curiously.
“Maybe I’ll wait until your son grows up to tell him the truth. Or maybe I’ll follow your daughter everywhere she goes, waiting for the moment to pounce. Or maybe I won’t do any of that, maybe I’ll just carry on my way and forget about the Gils altogether…if you do something for me.”
Anna’s face was like the surface of the lake, tranquil, no dark waters, no danger.
“What do you want?”
“Two things, both of which are mine by right.”
“Don’t be coy; tell me what they are, damn it!”
“First, I want my mother’s locket back. It never belonged to you and nor did she.”
Elías Gil gazed at her, perplexed. A cold gust blew through him, one that seemed to come from the Siberia within him, from his empty eye.
“What’s the second thing?”
Anna took a step toward the light streaming out from the doorway. Beyond it, the moon was reflected on the lake’s surface.
“Your life. The life you should have lost in the river. I want you to kill yourself at the lake where you take your son fishing.”
Elías sta
red in shock and sorrow. “Anna, I saved your life in that river.”
“And then gave it away not long after,” she retorted, unyielding.
Elías was suddenly overcome by infinite exhaustion. He closed his eyes and remained still, frustration coursing through him.
“No!” he replied categorically.
She smiled. She’d been expecting this.
“Do you know what this means for you and your family, as long as I’m alive?”
Elías clenched his fists and caught a dark glimpse of another way out.
“As long as you’re alive…”
He pounced, lifting her off the ground, one hand wrapped around her neck, and then hurled her down, attempting to restrain her with his knees and other hand. But Anna was not a submissive woman. She fought back, writhed and clawed, kicked and bit ferociously. He had to hit her with all his strength to stop her from fighting and then wrapped both hands around her trachea. Elías was in a frenzy, out of control, and all of the rage he’d felt over the course of his entire life flowed through his hands in desperate waves, screaming, Kill her! Save yourself!
“Mamá?”
The little girl’s voice rose over his shoulder. Elías lifted his head and saw her standing brightly in the doorway, long red hair falling loosely over her bony, freckled shoulders. The girl’s eyes were like copper, wide with fear. And Elías saw himself reflected in those eyes, saw himself as what he most hated, saw himself on the train tracks, vanquished and at death’s door, witness to the death of a majestic elk felled just yards away, blood streaming from its mouth and forming a tiny river in the snow. He saw Irina, her hand outstretched, holding out her fingers and asking him to stand up.
His memory became manic, fighting him as hard as Anna was, and Elías released the pressure on her neck and stared at his hands in shock, not recognizing his own fingers. He was like a tree that’s been axed and needs only one final push before it falls; all it took was Anna’s knee for Elías to collapse, sobs racking his entire body. She struggled to stand and dragged herself over to Tania, taking her daughter desperately in her arms and then locking herself and her daughter in the house, closing all doors and windows.
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