Gonzalo was tempted to reply, No, of course it’s not. After all, he himself had sacrificed quite a lot just to get things to this point, but it didn’t matter. He was starting to intuit that something in Javier had changed, that he’d become a different young man, more subdued and sure of himself, more restrained. The experience he’d been through had definitely cracked his shell. He was no longer an arrogant, anguished boy but a man calmly attempting to face things head-on.
“This has got to stop,” Javier said. “At some point, the chain has to be broken. I killed Carlos, and I did it out of hatred and jealousy—hatred and jealousy of my own mother. That’s what happened and that’s what I’ll tell the police when we walk out that door.”
Gonzalo sat down beside him, lowered his voice considerably, and squeezed his son’s forearm.
“You don’t have to do that, Javier. If you’re trying to punish your mother and me, we accept our portion of the blame. But you don’t have to go through this; there’s got to be another way.”
Javier shrugged and looked his father in the eye. He had his mother’s inborn pride and his grandfather’s mistrust, but he was certainly Gonzalo’s son even if he wasn’t fruit of his loins. Deep down he was a Gil to the core, a dreamer who willed himself to believe that if you tried hard enough, you could alter destiny.
“There is no other way, Papá. We both know that.”
“That bastard deceived you; the son of a bitch took advantage of you, used you, and seduced your mother just to hurt you. You owe him nothing, Javier. Nothing.”
“So, it’s better for us to be malicious than for others to be virtuous—is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Gonzalo looked at his son long and hard, and then said selflessly, “It was my fault. I should have paid more attention. You were crying out for help, but I was too angry with your mother, your grandfather, you. I was in a daze and didn’t even realize it. None of this would have happened if I’d done what I should have. But I can fix it now, son. I don’t want you to go to jail; I could never forgive myself.”
Javier gazed sadly at his father. Sometimes you couldn’t keep the lid on things; silence and lies could be the norm for only so long. Javier wasn’t a pawn and didn’t want what had happened to his parents to happen to him. He was unwilling to pay the price of silence for the rest of his life, to be indebted to someone, always waiting for them to show up and call in the favor.
“I don’t want to owe anyone anything—not my grandfather, not the inspector or my mother or even you.”
Gonzalo appreciated his son’s honestly but couldn’t applaud this folly.
“We always owe someone, Javier. Our lives are bound to others. We make decisions thinking of ourselves, but what we do affects so many other people, and we rarely keep that in mind.”
Javier shook his head resolutely. “I don’t want to be like you or Mamá. I don’t want silence to eat away at me. It’s my decision and you have to accept it.”
“What do you think is going to happen when they lock you up? Your life will be over; it will be as if all those years never existed. When you get out you’ll be incomplete, feel like something is missing, and what’s missing will be all of that time. Think about it.”
Javier shrugged again. He didn’t want to think about it. It scared him too much. He fell silent for a second and saw that Tania was watching him from the hallway. They smiled at each other and she waved timidly.
“When I get out, I’ll start over, far from you and Mamá.”
“Son, let me help you—please!”
Javier smiled. He felt no bitterness. Goodbye to the elite university his grandfather was hoping he’d attend; goodbye to the gossiping friends whose sharp tongues would cut him to ribbons. His parents would have to deal with the shame and ridicule of a public trial. The whole world would see the dirty laundry of a perfect family aired, would judge them mercilessly, hypocritically. Then if they were lucky, time would pass and people would forget about them, and maybe over the course of years, Javier would forgive his parents and his parents would forgive him.
Two months later, taking into consideration that he was a minor when the events occurred and making allowances for some extenuating circumstances, the judge sentenced him to eight years in a juvenile detention center for homicide.
When the sentence was read out, Gonzalo collapsed. He paid no attention to Lola, who sat sobbing on a bench farther back. Agustín had decided not to appear, to avoid additional media attention that might make things worse for his grandson. Gonzalo was able only to hug him and exchange awkward words for a minute before the police led him off in handcuffs. Seeing his son’s wrists shackled was more than he could bear.
“We both know it could have gone far worse,” he said an hour later, trying to console Lola as they sat in a café across the street from the courthouse. They smoked openly now, and although their fingers intertwined on the table for a moment, it was simply by chance, like mountains of memories that collide with no intention of joining and then pull apart once more.
“What are we going to do now?” Lola asked mechanically, toying with a sugar packet that ruptured, spilling the contents onto her saucer. She looked older and had large bags under her pretty eyes. The corners of her mouth drooped in exhaustion and a deep wrinkle furrowed her brow.
“Take care of Patricia, see to your father’s affairs with regard to the indictment. Keep working at the travel agency and visiting your son on Sundays, look for the silver lining and prove to him that you’re out here fighting to save the world so that when he gets out he’ll find it just as it was.”
Lola pushed her coffee cup away and traced a curve in the sugar crystals.
“I mean us, Gonzalo. What’s going to happen with you and me?”
Nothing, he thought. What needed to happen had already occurred. The only thing left was the sad and humiliating epilogue: paperwork, agreements, signatures on a divorce settlement. Then would come the struggle to get along and act civilized, marked by the need to stay in contact through Patricia. Detached discussions about her education, practical questions that would allow them to slowly drift apart.
Lola saw what was on Gonzalo’s mind and a sense of failure consumed her.
“Would we stand a chance, if it weren’t for Tania?”
The two women had seen each other only once, exchanging a strained greeting, but neither had forgotten the encounter.
“We don’t need excuses, Lola. Not us.”
Gonzalo was hoping to leave as quickly as possible and get back home. His rented apartment was starting to resemble a home. Tania had moved in, against her mother’s wishes. She seemed destined to fight with her mother about those she picked as lovers, but he wasn’t concerned. Anna and Gonzalo had reached an agreement that Tania knew nothing about.
And as soon as he walked out of the café with Lola he was going to fulfill his end of the bargain.
“I have a message from my father,” Lola said, seeing that Gonzalo was ready to stand up.
“What message is that?”
“They’ve stopped construction on the lakeside development. In fact, the whole project is being abandoned. ACASA’s investors have pulled out.”
Although he didn’t know the details, Gonzalo was not surprised.
“And what does that mean?”
“My father is willing to sell you the land; he no longer needs it. He’ll give it up for a purely symbolic price, in exchange for your testimony—if this goes trial—not being too aggressive.” She’d emphasized that trial was only a possibility.
Gonzalo burst out laughing. “That’s a charming way to put it. But the truth is, now that my mother’s dead, I no longer have any interest in the house.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Esperanza had died of a heart attack in early December. “Death by giving up” was how the doctor at the nursing home had put it. She had
simply told her heart to stop beating. She had left no last will and testament, but had left a motley pile of papers that they’d handed Gonzalo in a cardboard box that now sat in the back of a closet with her books and journals. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to go through it all yet.
“As far as not being ‘aggressive’ goes, I don’t know what your father is talking about. After all, what do I know that the prosecutor and judge—and by this time, the press—don’t already know? Unless I’m sorely mistaken, your father is going to worm his way out of this just fine. He knows the ins and outs of the system; this is his game, and I bet he’s enjoying his last battle. It’s going to be a tough one, up to his standards, which is something I never was.”
“But that woman is still around, isn’t she? The old lady in charge of the organization? She could hurt any of us, not just my father but the kids and me, too.”
Gonzalo took no joy in watching Lola humiliate herself this way. He didn’t want her to beg, to act desperate. Nervous, he glanced down at his watch. It was getting late, and Tania had arranged for him to meet Anna at Flight. She’d warned him that her mother would not tolerate being made to wait.
“She won’t bother anyone but your father. You have my word.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Because I’m one of hers now, like it or not. Tania is pregnant with my child, and Anna, in spite of herself, is a traditional old woman who dreams of a house full of kids running around, saying good night before bed. She wants grandchildren and great-grandchildren to spoil, and big Christmas dinners, and a son-in-law to pass the throne to when the time comes. And even though she might not be happy about it, that’s going to be me.
That’s what he was tempted to reply, because it was essentially true. But it was a truth that Gonzalo still wasn’t prepared to accept, even to himself. He slipped a hand into his pocket and felt the metallic touch of Irina’s locket and then glanced up at a television perched on a stand high up in one corner. It was January, and on the news they were talking about an area of low pressure that would bring cold temperatures and heavy snowstorms to lower altitudes. Winter was hitting hard.
“Because I have something that cancels our debt.”
Gonzalo never made it to that date, never got to close one door on the past and open another to an uncertain but possible future.
When he stepped out of the café, he saw Tania on the other side of the street, standing by her car. He didn’t like seeing her smoke; their child was now growing in her smooth taut belly. Squeezing the locket between his fingers, he began to cross, determined to leave the past where it belonged.
“Hey, Mr. Lawyer. You didn’t think I’d forgotten about you, did you?”
Gonzalo felt a chill. No. Not now, he thought, recognizing Atxaga’s voice.
But the present is always more dogged than the future.
For a fraction of a second, Gonzalo thought it was all connected: Atxaga’s voice, the sound of his saliva as he swallowed in fear, Tania’s scream, the sudden flash, the blast in his temple, and everything slowly fading to black.
And then lying on the ground, slipping away, the confirmation of the weatherman’s prediction.
It was starting to snow.
EPILOGUE
BARCELONA, FEBRUARY 2010–JANUARY 2014
The woman I’d arranged to meet over the phone had a pleasant voice, but I was still nervous. That morning I shaved carefully, searched my armoire for a decent shirt, and dug out a tie from back when I was in high school. I looked reasonably presentable but couldn’t help feeling ridiculous. Standing in the rain in front of the shuttered shop where we’d agreed to meet, ducking to avoid deadly umbrellas, I wondered what I was doing there, what I was playing at. I’ve always been more like Fitzgerald than Hemingway, the sort who prefers battling my own soul to actual battlefields.
I had just begun to consider the possibility of beating a hasty retreat—after all, I’d held up my end of the bargain—I’d shown up. And then I saw her. I knew it was her even before she pulled off the red hood of her raincoat and stared at me with eyes so gray and captivating that I’ve never forgotten them, though I doubt I’ll ever see them again.
“Are you the writer?” she asked dubiously, wondering if she’d made a mistake. When I replied in the affirmative, she couldn’t seem to hide a certain disappointment, as though suspecting I wasn’t up to the task.
She looked me up and down shamelessly. “How old are you?”
I hesitated before replying, which made me sound like a liar. I remember her eyebrows—so sharp they looked sculpted—and a raindrop sliding down her nose. She must have been close to fifty but was one of those timeless women whom you dream of your whole life.
“You seemed older on the phone,” she said, and it sounded like a reproach, as though I’d somehow faked my low voice.
She hunted around in her purse for a key and crouched down to unbolt the metal shutters, and as she did I glimpsed a tattoo beneath her dyed-black hair. It looked like faded butterfly wings, but I didn’t dare ask. Instead I bent down to help her raise the shutters, screeching like a rusty drawbridge on a medieval castle.
“So this used to be Flight?”
It smelled musty, with a lingering stench of excrement. There was hardly any furniture, only a few dust-covered tables and broken chairs. The bar had been destroyed and the floor was covered in boards, broken glass, and garbage.
“I’m going to sell the place,” she said by way of excuse. “Since Vasili died there’s no one to take care of it, and I can’t do it.”
“When did Velichko die?”
She’d undone her raincoat, which was now dripping onto the dusty floor and leaving little drop marks in the dirt. Her slender figure and bright red coat contrasted vividly with the grayness of the place.
“In March 2003. A few months after his report was published, alongside the study put out by the Institute of Russian History and the Nazino Memorial. That was his great success. I think he lived to see it published and then decided that it was okay to let go.”
I had recently read both reports and knew what had happened on Nazino in 1933. Alfonso, a bookseller friend of mine, had passed on to me the documentation he’d gotten hold of. It had been released after glasnost, thanks to political commissar Vasili Velichko’s report. Immediately, it struck me as something that deserved to be studied in detail, and I thought of turning it into a novel. But I soon lost heart. There were almost no written documents about it, much less testimonials. So I put an ad up on the Internet, soliciting information.
Two weeks later, she called.
For more than two hours, she told me most of what I’ve written here. Although, as I now understand, it wasn’t actually me she was telling it to.
As she paced up and down Flight, sadly melancholic, she put a glass in its place here, picked a photo off the floor there, dusted off a sketch, and talked and talked and talked. Sometimes she seemed not to realize she was mixing in Russian, and although I didn’t fully understand I also didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought or the stories that left me stunned, convinced that her accounts were unique and also concerned that my lack of Russian would keep me from doing the stories justice.
So I sat there and listened and observed her. At times she seemed irritated and furious, as though it had all happened just days or months ago and was still fresh in her mind’s eye. At other moments she seemed to wilt, become overwrought, almost cry. But she never quite did…
I asked almost no questions, even though there were plenty in my head. I articulated only one, and it was a silly one.
“If Gonzalo knew what kind of things Anna did, how could he be willing to become part of it? Those were the same things his sister had fought against.”
Or maybe it wasn’t a silly question after all. For a moment I saw a glimmer of complicity in her eyes.
“We
’ll never know.”
“That’s not a very fair answer.”
She smiled, honestly amused at my naïveté. I think it was at that moment that she decided to put her faith in me, if not my talent. She opened her purse and handed me an envelope containing a letter.
“Read this and then decide if you want to tell the story. I won’t object, but I do have one condition: If you write this story, I want you to include the letter, word for word.”
I don’t like it when people impose conditions on me, but I think if she’d asked me, at that moment, to throw myself under the next bus, I would have, so strong was her power of attraction. I promised I’d read it carefully. She nodded and gave one last nostalgic look around Vasili Velichko’s place.
“I brought you here because I wanted you to see how characters turn into stories.” And before I knew what she was doing, she took out a little camera and snapped my photo. “For my personal gallery,” she said, with what struck me as a touch of malice.
When I got home I read the letter, which was accompanied by an article that had been published in 1992 in a magazine whose name I won’t mention. The article was signed Laura G. M. and called “A Million Drops.” I read it attentively and found a condemnation, full of passion and sadness, of the mythos surrounding Elías Gil. She laid his public life bare, and although nowhere did she refer to his private life, it was obvious that something shadowy lurked beneath the tale. It was impossible to believe that anyone who knew Elías Gil’s life story—his and Esperanza’s—couldn’t read between the lines. Last, Laura denounced Gil as a double agent for over three decades; this was why those who admired Elías had repudiated her. Even Esperanza, her own mother.
The letter that this woman gave me was from Esperanza and had been written in 2002, shortly before her death. It was addressed to the ghost of Elías. Several paragraphs of tiny scrawl that took me hours to decipher:
A Million Drops Page 61