Offering to the Storm

by Dolores Redondo

  The difference in temperature after Engrasi’s sitting room made Amaia shiver. She buttoned up her coat, raising the collar to keep her neck warm as she and her sister walked side by side in silence.

  ‘What did you want to say to me?’ asked Flora impatiently once they were out of sight of the house.

  ‘Give me a chance, I’ve had a very tough day. I need time to think. I said I’d walk you home, didn’t I?’

  They continued in silence, passing a patrol car, and a couple of neighbours out walking their dog. Flora’s house in Elizondo was beautiful, newly built, detached and surrounded by a tiny garden filled with flowers, which someone watered for her when she was away. They stopped outside the entrance while Flora unlocked the front door. She didn’t attempt to say goodbye on the step. Amaia’s resolve made it clear that she hadn’t accompanied her sister out of politeness.

  They went straight into the sitting room, where Amaia paused to look at the enlarged photograph of Ibai she had seen at the house in Zarautz. It was set in a slim, metal frame that enhanced the beauty of the black-and-white portrait. Could her aunt have been right about Flora’s feelings for Ibai, especially given the way she pretended to ignore Amaia’s interest in the picture, flinging her coat on to the armchair on her way to the kitchen. After a moment, Flora called out:

  ‘Will you join me in a drink?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a whisky.’

  Flora returned carrying two tumblers of the amber liquid. She placed one on a side table, sat down on the sofa, and took a sip from her own glass. Amaia sat down close beside her and, seizing her sister’s free hand the same way Sara Durán had done to her that afternoon, she placed in her upturned palm the walnut she had taken from Anne Arbizu’s grave.

  Flora couldn’t conceal her fright; she dropped the walnut as if it were a hot coal, spilling half the contents of her glass on to her skirt. Amaia retrieved the nut from between the two sofa cushions, held it between her thumb and forefinger, and raised it level with her sister’s eyes. Flora gazed at it in horror.

  ‘Get that thing out of my house.’

  Amaia looked at her, feigning surprise.

  ‘What are you so afraid of, Flora?’

  ‘You’ve no idea what this is.’

  ‘Yes, I have. I know what it signifies. What I don’t understand is why you leave them on Anne Arbizu’s grave.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have touched it, it’s … It’s for her,’ she said, her voice heavy with pain and grief.

  Amaia observed her sister’s expression as she gazed at the walnut.

  Moved, she slipped it back into her pocket.

  ‘What did Anne Arbizu mean to you, Flora? Why do you leave walnuts on her grave? Why won’t you admit that you loved her? Believe me, Flora, no one’s going to judge you. I’ve seen too many lives destroyed by people who refuse to accept who they love.’

  Flora put her glass down on the table and with a paper tissue started to rub furiously at the stain on her skirt. Then all at once, she burst out crying. Amaia had seen her sister cry like this before at the mention of her relationship with Anne. The sobs rose uncontrollably from her belly until her whole body was trembling; her breath came in short gasps. She scrunched up the tissue she had used on her skirt and tried to soak up the tears streaming down her cheeks. She sat like that for a while, until at last she was calm enough to speak.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ she managed to say. ‘You’re completely mistaken. I loved Anne the same way you love Ibai.’

  Amaia looked at her, bewildered.

  ‘I mean I loved her exactly the same way you love Ibai. Because Anne Arbizu was my daughter.’

  Amaia was dumbstruck.

  ‘I was eighteen when I had Anne. Perhaps you remember the summer I went to stay with our aunts in San Sebastián … Well, I never actually stayed with them. I had the baby and gave her up for adoption.’

  ‘You were going out with Victor—’

  ‘The baby wasn’t his.’

  ‘Flora, you’re telling me that …’

  ‘I met a man, he was in the livestock trade and came to one of the cattle fairs, and … What happened, happened. I never saw him again. A few weeks later I found out I was pregnant.’

  ‘Didn’t you at least try?’

  ‘I’m no fool, Amaia, and I wasn’t one at eighteen. It should never have happened, and it had undesired consequences. But my head wasn’t filled with foolish, romantic notions. He was just passing through, a one night stand.’

  ‘Did our parents know?’

  ‘Ama did.’

  ‘And she agreed that you should—’

  ‘No. To begin with, I managed to conceal the pregnancy. I saved up some money; abortion was illegal in this country, so I found a doctor across the border who carried out this type of procedure. He performed the abortion, or so I believed from the amount of blood that came out of me, not to mention the excruciating pain. That butcher ripped out my ovaries, Amaia, he destroyed my insides, made it impossible for me ever to have another child. And yet, he failed to do what he was supposed to do. Despite losing all that blood, I found I was still pregnant. I was in such a bad way when I arrived home, that it was impossible to hide it from Ama. She took me to see Nurse Hidalgo, who staunched the bleeding. Naturally, Ama was in shock. Of course they didn’t consider me capable of bringing up the baby myself, so it was decided we would keep it a secret until the birth, when the baby would be given away. She made me swear not to tell anyone, not even aita. She told me that this mishap might offer me the chance to change my fortunes. Once, when I brought up the subject of adoption, she looked at me as if I were speaking another language, and insisted that the baby wasn’t going to be adopted, but rather given up.’

  Amaia broke in, alarmed at what she had just heard.

  ‘Did she explain what she meant by giving her up? Did Ama introduce you to the sect?’

  ‘I didn’t know about any sect. I only met Nurse Hidalgo, who saved my life and was going to help me give birth. They were going to take care of it, and that’s all I wanted to know. And yet, there was something about Fina Hidalgo that reminded me of the abortionist who butchered me. She was all smiles and assurances: I shouldn’t worry, they would make my problem go away, and afterwards my fortunes would change. I’d heard stories about midwives not tying the umbilical cord, allowing unwanted babies to die in pregnancies that had reached full term. Amaia, I don’t know or care what you think of me, but you must believe that I wanted the best for that child. I wanted her to go to a good family, with prospects, as they used to say then. When I was six months pregnant, before it became impossible to hide my bump, I cashed in my savings, and went to Pamplona, to a charity set up by nuns to take in wayward women like me who had fallen pregnant out of wedlock. It wasn’t so bad. I stayed there until I had the girl. The day she was born, I said goodbye to her, and agreed for her to be adopted, on condition that she went to a good family. Then I went home. I continued to go out with Victor, I carried on with my life and the matter was never raised again. But Ama never forgave me, and she made sure I paid for it.

  ‘You can imagine my surprise when I heard that the Arbizus had adopted a baby girl, and I looked in the pram and there she was: Anne. I would have been able to recognise her among a million babies,’ she said, the tears once more rolling down her cheeks. ‘I lived all those years in resentment, watching my little girl grow up in someone else’s house, afraid to give her a second glance lest I betray my feelings, tormented by her presence, which chained me to this village so that I could be close to her. And then, all of a sudden, last year, she came to see me. She turned up at the bakery one evening to tell me she knew who I was, and who she was. Amaia, you can’t imagine what she was like, so beautiful, so self-assured and intelligent. She had looked for her birth mother and had found me. She didn’t blame me for anything; she said she understood, all she wanted was to go on seeing me without hurting the feelings of her elderly parents … She even propose
d we announce it to everyone, after they had passed away. She gave me that picture of her when she was a baby,’ she said, pointing to the photograph that took up most of the wall.

  ‘I thought that was Ibai,’ said Amaia. ‘I did wonder when you’d taken it.’

  ‘Yes, the resemblance is striking; it breaks my heart when I see your little boy, and at the same time I can’t help adoring him because he looks so like her. In the brief time I knew her, she made me feel things I never thought I could feel. Anne is very special, more than you could imagine. I’ve never been so happy, Amaia, and I never will be again, because just when I thought I’d found happiness, he killed her, he killed my little girl …’ Flora abandoned herself to her grief, without restraint. After confessing all her sins, she seemed no longer to care if her sister saw her in that state.

  Amaia had been listening to her, speechless. Of all the relationships she had imagined between Anne Arbizu and her sister, this was the only one that hadn’t occurred to her. She watched Flora weep, feeling moved and at the same time understanding many things.

  ‘And is that why you killed him? Did you kill Víctor because he killed your daughter?’ Flora shook her head, rubbing her hands over her face to dry her tears, which seemed unstoppable. ‘Did you know what Víctor was up to?’ Flora shook her head again. ‘Flora, look at me,’ she said, forcing her sister to calm down. ‘Did you suspect Víctor of killing those girls?’

  Flora looked at Amaia, realising she must be cautious. If Ros was right about anything, it was that Amaia would never accept her crime, no matter how she dressed it up.

  ‘I wasn’t sure until I went to see him that night at his house, and he confessed.’

  ‘But you were carrying a gun, Flora.’ She didn’t reply. ‘So you must have suspected. What made you think Víctor killed Anne?’

  ‘I knew him better than anyone.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, but when did you find out?’

  ‘I found out, end of story.’

  ‘No, Flora, that isn’t the end of the story: he killed two other girls besides Anne, and many more, even before you and he were married. When did you find out? Did you suspect him, but you let him go on until he dared to touch Anne?’

  ‘I had no idea, I swear,’ she lied. ‘It never occurred to me that Victor was responsible for the basajaun crimes, not until Anne’s death.’

  ‘Why? Why when he killed Anne?’

  ‘Because of the way he chose his victims,’ she said suddenly angry, her tears drying up. ‘When he killed Anne, I understood how he chose them.’

  Amaia remained still for a few seconds, observing her sister.

  ‘Flora, we believe Víctor chose young girls between middle childhood and adolescence, and that his victims were random, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time: Carla got out of her boyfriend’s car up in the hills, Ainhoa missed the bus, Anne led a double life, carrying on relationships her parents knew nothing about.’ Flora shook her head, a bitter smile on her lips. ‘What are you saying, Flora?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake! And you’re supposed to be the expert,’ she snapped, her habitual impatience surfacing once more. ‘What did he do to their bodies?’

  Amaia looked at her sister, unsure where this was leading.

  ‘He unbuttoned their clothes, shaved off their pubic hair, removed their high-heeled shoes, cleaned off their make-up, and …’ Amaia paused, reflecting, and looked at her sister with fresh eyes, as she went over it again in her mind. He restored them to infancy, erasing from their bodies all signs of adulthood; then he displayed them, hands upturned in an act of surrender, leaving them on the banks of the River Baztán. Like offerings to the past, to innocence. The ritualistic nature of his crimes had been obvious from the start. He had even killed them by robbing them of air. She shuddered at the thought. ‘What are you saying, Flora? Explain.’

  ‘He gave them up, he sacrificed them,’ she said dispassionately.

  ‘But … But, did Víctor know? Did you tell him?’

  Flora pulled a face that vaguely resembled a smile.

  ‘Me? I’d have cut out my own tongue rather than tell anyone, least of all him.’

  ‘Then how did he find out? How did he discover that Anne was your daughter?’

  ‘I told you, Ama never forgave me.’

  ‘Rosario told him!’ declared Amaia. ‘She told Víctor that Anne was your daughter. Why would she do that, to break up your marriage?’

  ‘No, we were already separated.’

  ‘Then, why?’

  ‘Possibly so that he would carry out what she considered her mission, the same way she planned to kill Ibai that night she disappeared, just as she tried all your life to kill you: to finish what she started with our other sister.’

  ‘Do you think Víctor chose his victims because they were failed offerings, sacrifices that had been left unfinished?’

  ‘I don’t know how he chose his other victims, but he killed my daughter because I didn’t give her up, because she told him to.’ Amaia gazed at her sister astonished. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Flora, I’ve just realised that for most of your life you hated our mother, possibly more than I did.’

  Flora rose, picked up the two empty glasses, carried them out to the kitchen, and started to wash them up. Amaia followed her.

  ‘Why leave walnuts on Anne’s grave?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Anne wasn’t like other girls. In many ways she was exceptional, and she knew it; she had an extraordinary power over others, which I don’t know how to explain.’

  Amaia remembered the way Anne had seduced Ros’s husband, Freddy, how she’d concealed her double life from her parents, the ploy she’d come up with to dispose of the mobile phone Freddy called her on, which had them scratching their heads during the investigation, and her adoptive aunt describing her as a belagile, a witch.

  ‘It was Anne who told me about the walnuts, how for centuries they symbolised the power of women in Baztán, how this power could be concentrated inside a tiny walnut in the form of a desire, and that she knew how to use it … Silly adolescent fantasies, you know how we like to feel special at that age, but she believed it, Amaia, and when I was with her, so did I. She told me that this power doesn’t end when you die, and I like to think that Anne’s energy is somehow concentrated in those walnuts. They are all that unites us now, the only offering I can make to keep her soul alive.’

  ‘And yet you’re so terrified of what might be in her soul that you can’t even touch the walnut?’

  Flora didn’t reply.

  Amaia sighed as she contemplated her sister. Flora was cunning. She had opened up, probably more than at any other time in her life, and yet Amaia was convinced she had tried to slip a few lies past her. She would have to use her own cunning to identify them.

  ‘What about that elaborate charade you and Ros performed at Aunt Engrasi’s, about the bakery?’

  ‘That was no charade. Things are exactly as we told you. Of course, Ros and I haven’t resolved all our differences, but we’re trying.’

  Amaia looked at her sceptically. Ros and Flora had never agreed about anything in their entire lives, and the idea that they would do so overnight, just when the swords had been drawn didn’t ring true. Although she couldn’t prove anything, it had her wondering.

  She left Flora’s house and, without looking at her watch, walked up the hill to the police station. As she approached, she saw that the main gate was closed. She opened it with her security card and greeted the two officers on duty. She headed for the second floor, to where they kept the files containing information on the basajaun case. She devoted the next few hours to arranging on the board photographs of the crime scenes, the three victims, the autopsies they had filed away a year ago hoping never to have to revisit them. Ainhoa Elizasu, Carla Huarte and Anne Arbizu stared back at her once more. She sat down facing them, studying Ainhoa’s shy expression
as she looked into the camera, Carla’s provocative pose, and Anne’s intense, powerful gaze. She remembered their dead bodies, stretched out on San Martín’s steel slab, the statements of their parents and friends, the profile of the killer they had elaborated in that very room:

  He slashes their clothes and exposes their bodies, which have not yet matured into the women they aspire to be. And he removes their pubic hair – a sign of sexual maturity – from a place which symbolises their sexuality, as well as the violation of his ideal childhood, and he substitutes it for a pastry that symbolises the past, the traditions of the valley, a return to childhood … The killer feels justified, sure of himself, he has a mission to fulfil, and he will continue recruiting young girls, restoring them to innocence.

  The words of the hidden witness in the Opus Dei house flashed into her mind: ‘The ideal age for an offering is between birth and two years, when the soul is still in transition. After that, a child of any age will do, until adolescence when another transition occurs, which makes them desirable to these forces. But it’s easier to justify the death of a two-year-old baby than a teenage girl.’

  The perpetrator of those crimes, which even the press had described as ritualistic, had suffocated his victims, robbing them of air with a fine piece of cord, acting with such expertise and efficiency that he barely left a mark on their bodies, which he then carried over his shoulder to the banks of the River Baztán. There he proceeded to tear open their clothes, leaving their young bodies exposed to the moisture from the river; afterwards he shaved their pubis, combed and parted their hair, arranging it in tresses on either side of their head, placed their hands upturned in an attitude of surrender like virgins, like offerings, in a purification ceremony, a return to childhood, little girls once more, chaste once more, offerings once more. She looked up their places of birth, although she remembered perfectly. Ainhoa was from Arizkun, Carla and Anne from Elizondo. She stood up, captivated by Anne Arbizu’s gaze, still fascinated by her power more than a year after her death. Disturbed, she avoided those penetrating eyes as she approached the board, tentatively placing three fresh dots on the map where the river traced its sinister course.