"It belongs to the Vendel Period, it was found in Öland. I know what you're going to ask me and the answer is yes, the false copy is behind glass in the Museum of History in Switzerland. This is the original. I always kept hold of it, even though it was a bad memory for me, the first serious conflict with my son."
"Carry on," she urged.
"The berserkir were a class of warriors, or rather mercenaries, who fought in combat as the personal guard of the kings of the north. They were highly sought after in times of war, but no one wanted to know anything about them following the battles. They were associated with a strange bear cult. They drugged themselves with a mushroom that was very common in those birch tree forests, the amanita muscaria, and they entered into a violent kind of frenzy where they couldn't distinguish friend from foe. I saw them fight on several occasions, and it's true that they had a supernatural strength. Their wounds didn't affect them and they remained standing for longer than is humanly possible, but once the effects had worn off, they fell into a stupor and often died from dehydration. They had no home and lived off the hospitality of the jarls, the men who were free like us, and tended to take them in during times of peace.
I think I remember his name was Skroll. He wasn't a man, he was a demon. And I'll always remember him as such."
"A demon? Why, what did he do?"
"He took the bright part from Gunnarr and gave us back the darkest longevo of all."
7
Melted in black
ADRIANA
"Iago, the sun's coming up," I interrupted, looking out the bedroom window.
Some fluffy white clouds were clearing in front of us.
"Today you have to spend the whole morning in the Altamira Neocave. Why don't you leave Gunnarr's teenage years for another time and finally tell me why he's come back?"
Iago stirred uneasily.
"What else do you want to know? Isn't what I told you enough?"
"No, Iago. I think you'd finish quicker if you told me what happened at the battle of Kinsale."
"Kinsale..." he repeated with a lost look over the Cantabrian sea. "If you knew everything that was lost in these very waters, further north..."
"That's exactly what I want you to tell me. I understand the stress you're going through after seeing Gunnarr again, but I'm not sure if you're reacting as you should. I'm not even sure if you're reacting at all. Tell me what happened in Kinsale, that's the only way I can help you."
"Maybe I don't want to, Dana. Maybe it's one of those memories that I don't want to share."
"God damn it!" I shouted, standing up. "We always end up at the same place, there's always something that you don't want to tell me. But this time it's important, you have a furious thousand year old son roaming Santander, and we have no idea of his intentions. Do you want to brush this one under the rug as well?"
Iago looked at me with those composed eyes of his, but he didn't even bother to answer me. He did that a lot, that thing where he refused to argue, not wanting to get into a discussion.
"Fine, Iago. So there's nothing else to talk about. I'm going to MAC to work," I said, with a tired look.
"I'll come and pick you up at noon. If you want we can go for lunch at the Posada del Mar and discuss this more calmly," he said, trying to make an effort to patch things up.
"Whatever," I said. I knew that there was no way to drag him out of his silence.
But, as always, Iago was way ahead of my thoughts.
"Is it too much for you?" he wanted to know, pulling me towards him and wrapping me up in the Scottish blanket.
"What do you mean?"
"I asked you before whether these kinds of situations are too much for you, so much so that you wouldn't want to take things any further with me. I asked you whether you could handle being on the sidelines of my past, even if it was for your own safety," he ran off, as if the lines had been written in his head for quite some time.
I thought about his words. We often over-analyzed our differences. They were so obvious that it was hard enough to ignore them on a daily basis.
"Do you want me to be honest, Iago?" He sat up.
"There is such a huge disparity between your past and mine that we can only really focus on living in this present. But if your past catches up with our present, such is the case with a son retuning in search of some kind of retaliation, our precarious balance gets completely thrown of course."
"That's the thing, Dana. That is exactly the thing. The past always comes back to haunt a longevo."
"Fine, Iago. I get it. I'll step to the side, I'm not a part of this," I said, standing up, not wanting to argue anymore.
I walked out of our house and got in the car, heading towards the museum.
I made small talk with several colleagues and turned down several invitations to breakfast at the BACus. I closed the door to my office to shut out the hustle and bustle of my colleagues. I needed silence. After an all night vigil in the 9th century, my reflexes were minimal.
I concentrated on the Catalog of items from the Bilbat, the Archaeological Museum of Alava. The year before we had signed a collaboration agreement with them and they had given us a good amount of Paleolithic items. The temporary exhibition had come to an end and it was getting near the time to return the items that were on display, although we weren't planning on returning all the originals. Some spears and various personal ornaments would stay with us.
During that year with Iago I had become a renegade archaeologist. The MAC continued with its discreet prestige thanks to its exhibitions, but Iago continued with his task of recovering items from all the periods he had lived through.
The difficult question of how to falsify them, now that neither Lyra nor Nagorno could do it, was a matter I preferred to stay away from, and the fewer details I knew, the better, so as not to put my national and international Archaeological career in jeopardy. If the falsifications were ever brought to light, my name would never be associated and I would always claim ignorance. However, it was pretty obvious that a person forced to invent official false identities ever since the first records of time were started would have all sorts of contacts in the falsification underworld.
Although that wasn't my main concern that day. I couldn't stop thinking about the whole Gunnarr situation. What didn't fit in there, in that whole scenario? What was out of place?
And then I realized what it was. Gunnarr had said "Hello, father" in front of me. If the longevos' legendary reservations to share their secret was true, why hadn't Gunnarr been more careful about hiding the fact that Iago was his father in front of me, if he didn't know who I was?
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up because I could feel danger. Brutal and intense like an electric shock.
I have to call Iago, I have to warn him. Gunnarr's reappearance isn't a coincidence, he knows about everything that's been going on.
But I didn't have time to dial Iago's number, because right at that moment I heard a noise from behind me.
A wooden-sounding click that came from a huge cupboard behind my desk. That cupboard, in which, a year before, Iago and I had discovered a tunnel that ended at the rocks, twenty meters below the rug I was standing on right now. The tunnel which we suspected that Jairo del Castillo had escaped through after Lyra rammed him with the Big Bastard and made him jump off the cliff. The same one that we had cemented over some time later, trying to put an end to that era, of the reign of Nagorno in those domains.
It all happened so quickly, just like most important events in life happen. I didn't have time to turn around. I can only remember a huge hand and a wet rag —not even clean or new—, crushing my nose, my cheeks and my mouth, forcing me to breath that citric smell, so sweet that I gave into it without putting up a decent fight.
Then blackness, like in one of those old films where they kidnap the leading lady by leaving her unconscious using a rag soaked in chloroform.
8
I want it to hurt
IAGO
&n
bsp; I checked the time on my cell for the third time. I'd arranged to meet Dana at the restaurant forty minutes ago and I was still practicing how I was going to apologize for our argument that morning to an empty chair.
To tell the truth it was the first time that my wife had stood me up like that, so I ended up ordering a grilled monkfish and went back to the MAC to look for her. She'd be buried under a pile of documents, or maybe still upset about our argument.
I went up to Dana's office, but her desk was tidy and she wasn't there. Adriana was reasonably tidy, although I had to admit that more so at work than at home. I guessed that she had already left, maybe she had gone to have lunch at the BACus or maybe she was with a colleague.
She hadn't answered her cell all morning and I'd left several messages, although she hadn't bothered to answer them. She must have been much angrier than I'd thought.
At around four o'clock I went to look for her at BACus, but there were only a few employees there having a coffee before starting the afternoon shift. I went over to the most probable suspect, the colleague Dana and I shared many meetings and spare time with.
"Salva, did you have lunch with Adriana today?" I asked the head of the Ancient Period.
Salva took his baseball cap off and rubbed his hand over his recently shaved head, a gesture that he repeated several hundred times a day and of which he wasn't fully aware.
"No, I saw her go upstairs to her office first thing this morning, but she must have left for some kind of emergency, because we had a video conference with the Bibat team and she didn't come to get me.
Emergency? What kind of emergency could she have had? I wondered, intrigued.
"Thanks anyway, I'll see you later," I said, going up to the bar.
"Jose, was Adriana here this morning?" I asked the waiter. Jose had that special kind of memory that I often saw in bars: he always remembered what each customer ordered, what time they came through the door and who they came in with.
Jose shook his head, noting my concern with the precision of a psychologist.
"Ok. If she comes in, tell her that something urgent has come up and to call me asap."
"Is everything alright, Iago?" he asked, while polishing a glass with the MAC logo on it.
"Everything's fine, Jose. But don't forget to tell her, ok?"
I started up my car and headed home, but Dana hadn't been there all morning. Everything was just as I'd left it before leaving for Altamira. Our life together suspended in a moment that I could make out in an instant. The bed was reasonably made. The books were in their unstable pile next to the armchair. I grabbed the keys for her old house and took the freeway to Santander. A few minutes later I was at her parent's apartment in the Plaza Pombo, but it was so cold and soulless that I didn't stay for more than a minute. Just enough time to see that Dana hadn't visited her memories in months.
I left another voicemail, slightly longer, slightly more anxious than the last.
I checked my cell, her Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Archaeologists accounts, were she often spent hours, in case she had updated her status. Nothing at all.
7pm. I decided to go back to the MAC. Where else could she be? I took a deep breath and went from office to office, asking everyone if they had given her a ride to Santander, or to our house. Chisca, Nieves and Onofre hadn't seen her, none of the interns had, or the new guy in Restoration. I took another deep breath and knocked on the door to Elisa's office. She was the most improbable of all the possibilities, but I still had to try.
"Elisa, by any chance have you seen Adriana today?"
She looked up in surprise. Since Jairo del Castillo had entered her life like the fire of Hades, burning her like any other citizen from the 21st century, she'd been wandering around the museum with an absent look on her face. She'd cut her hair and dyed it black, adding another twenty years to the black circles that pulled her eyes downwards. She always looked at me for slightly longer than necessary. I think she was trying to find some trace of my brother in me, as if she was trying to convince herself that he had once existed and what she went through with him a year ago —that humiliating episode in the Real Hotel with the handcuffs and the iron bars— had actually happened.
After hearing her negative grunt, I felt someone touch me on the shoulder and I turned around with a start.
"Boss, have you found Adriana yet?" asked Salva, who had been waiting patiently in the doorway. "The guys from Vitoria are pretty pissed because she didn't turn up for the video conference."
"No, I haven't seen her!" I shouted. "And stop asking me! Show a little initiative and sort it out on your own!"
Elisa, still sitting in her office, lifted her head, as if my shouting had roused her from a daydream. Salva, on the other hand, took a few seconds to react. He tugged on his cap and turned around, ready to go down the stairs.
"Ok, boss. Fine," he managed to say, drooping his shoulders.
I felt bad and ran down the stairs after him.
"Salva, I owe you an apology. I shouldn't have shouted at you, you were just doing your job."
"Don't worry about it, boss. Bad day?"
Good question, I thought.
"I'm still not sure. An empty day, if anything."
"Well, then I hope it gets better soon."
"Me too," I said, almost begging.
9pm. I now faced the disconcerting reality that no one had seen her all day, but at least I knew that Dana had gone to the MAC, given that her car was still parked there.
At that point I was sure that something had happened to her, or that she was more upset with me than I had originally thought, or maybe I had hit a nerve, one that should never be hit if you didn't want to hurt someone that you cared so much about.
Once again, I punched in the nine digits that separated us and I recorded my concerns.
"My darling Dana, this is the eleventh message that I've left. Many hours have passed and it's not funny anymore. I understand that you're angry, and I hope that we can talk about this calmly, or not so calmly, tonight, about everything that's been left unsaid. We'll talk about the Neolithic Age, about the battle of Kinsale and the fall of Rome, if necessary. I promise that I'll draw you a color map of a bedroom at Çatal Hüyük, of the public buildings and the town square. What I want to say, Dana, after this clumsy attempt of reconciliation with information as bait, is that I am sorry about the way this morning's conversation went. Look, I don't know if this is our umpteenth first great crisis, but we work it out together, ok? What I'm asking you is that you please give me a sign that you're alive, that you're breathing or walking around this world that we still dwell on. I promise to be patient."
11pm. I was mad, I admit it, but would she really behave like this, not come home at night without letting me know? And leave her car at the museum? I absentmindedly stirred the soup I was having for dinner.
But what are you doing, Urko? She's not like that and you know it.
I left the Swiss spoon in my soup, I left the soup in the bowl, I left the bowl on the table. I put a warm parka on, preparing myself for the cold I would face that night, and once again, drove to the museum.
I had a spare set of keys to Dana's car, and after parked my car alongside it, I got in, expecting to find something out of the ordinary, but I didn't. I crossed over to the building, which at that time was deserted and quiet. I had an uneasiness in my stomach that wouldn't allow me to digest the damn soup, and I was about to throw up as I walked into my office, searching for some comfort on my couch to think calmly.
And that's when I saw it: the dagger, the engraved runes, the piece of paper.
Carved on my desk were a few words in the old runic alphabet, the Younger Futhark, which was the variation used by the Danish.
I quickly translated the message that my son had left:
DOES IT HURT, FATHER?
BECAUSE I WANT IT TO HURT.
Next to the last rune, Gunnarr had rammed an old Viking dagger into my desk. It might not have been a thousa
nd year old original, but it was worn and it was obvious that it had had frequent use. The small piece of paper that had been run throught with the knife contained the continuation of the message in the carving, but in a crude Castilian Spanish written in the Roman alphabet:
"I need it to hurt in order to be able to consider you as my father once more.
It will be quick, start looking for us.
You will reach her by air or water.
Will there be thousands, will they be beautiful?
It won't be big, you will find Massacres and Cathedrals."
I stifled a scream and bent over. Gunnarr The Trickster, son of Kolbrun, son of Nestor, had taken Dana to God knows what remote place and he had had the nerve to leave me a clue.
I pulled the dagger out of the desk and jabbed it into his words, beside myself. Splinters of wood were flying about, some embedding themselves in my hand. I didn't feel anything, other than the warm splash of blood that hit my sweater, just above my wrist.
I turned the light off and walked over to the window. Mother Moon had a dangerous look to her. Both of us knew what we had to do. I covered up the mess on the table with several heavy copies of catalogs and returned to our home with just the piece of paper and the dagger sticking out of my pocket.
Two hours later, unable to sleep, I wandered the deserted streets of a dark, cold, hostile Santander.
I looked at the city in bewilderment, as if an earthquake had destroyed our landmarks, the Paseo Pereda, the Eastern Market, the Stone Crane, the Monument to the Santander Fire...
We had boiled Dana's existence down to its mere exchange value.
I'm on the verge of breaking into a thousand pieces and the universe won't even notice, I thought. It's going to ignore me again. It will turn its back and tomorrow a new Sun will rise in this part of the world.
The Sons of Adam: The sequel of The Immortal Collection Page 4