The Immortal Collection (A Saga of the Ancient Family Book 1)

by Eva García Sáenz

  How can I explain to you that . . . ?

  “Any more questions?” I asked, sipping the last of my coffee.

  “Did they have language?”

  “Of course they did. Though their language was rudimentary, with just two or three vowels and more examples of onomatopoeia than we have.”

  “How can you assert that without batting an eyelid? At this stage we only know they had the gene that enables the capacity for speech, but until the similarities with our gene are examined, we can’t be sure.”

  “I’m also up-to-date on Operation Neanderthal Genome,” I replied. “Although I understand that you’re not asking me for a summary but rather that I give you my opinion. But go on: give me your conclusions. Based on the data we have, do you believe they spoke?”

  “I think we can’t know that right now. We have to wait for the complete DNA sequence.”

  “That’s obvious, but think about it for a minute. Allow yourself to make inferences based on the evidence, as you were suggesting we help our visitors do in the new Interpretive Center,” I insisted. “We have Neanderthal burial grounds throughout Europe and Eurasia. All the tombs face the rising sun. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “Not enough to allow us to conclude that they spoke,” she reasserted as she finished off the last crab pincho.

  “But enough to be able to deduce it. How else could they have done it? Those discoveries suggest a common religion, or at least belief in some sort of life after death. How can something so profound be transmitted without articulating a single word? Tell me, Adriana, are you one of those people who only believe in the answers we can get from fossils?”

  She was silent for a few seconds before she answered. And she refused to pursue my line of thought.

  “Iago, I think we’re caught up in the classic archaeological debate. I also think that we won’t be able to shed light on the questions it raises for a few decades.”

  “You’re right,” I conceded.

  And it may not be in your lifetime.

  “In any case, you’ve won my respect as a prehistorian. The salmon pincho is yours,” she said, pushing the dish in my direction and winking.

  With her smile and that wink, she did know how to conclude an argument, I conceded. “Well, well, much appreciated.” Especially the salmon. “Come on. Let’s head back to the office.”

  In my mind I erased the earlier thought that she was going to be easy to work with.

  And despite that, I smiled to myself.

  What the hell! If nothing else, we won’t be bored together.

  9

  ADRIANA

  Tuesday, January 31, 2012

  As soon as I left Iago I went straight to the restroom on the ground floor. I locked the door behind me and began to bang my head against the cubicle door.

  Idiot, idiot, idiot.

  Dialectical arguments between archaeologists were routine on digs, almost a ritual in the profession. It was a means of training the up-and-comers, a quick way of teaching them to defend their ideas in an article or at a conference. But that was a world away from behaving like a pugnacious rapper from Detroit on my first day with my new boss—the Iagopedia, no less. I had traversed that world in scarcely four hours. I doubt that anyone in the history of mankind’s stupidity had ever gone that far.

  With that bad taste in my mouth, I drove back to Santander, which was drowning in the midday rain. On the street I passed various Santander women running with plastic supermarket bags covering their hair. A few minutes later I was standing in the front entrance of my building, scrabbling in my back pocket for my keys. I almost bumped into one of my neighbors, who was taking out his garbage in his espadrilles and sliding all over the sawdust-sprinkled floor. We exchanged a brief greeting, and I got into the elevator.

  “Mamá, I’m home!” I yelled as I came in the door.

  My parents’ apartment was exactly as my father and I had left it when we moved to Madrid. It was like traveling back to the nineties. The décor now seemed awful, but all the answers lay inside these walls, so I grabbed some fruit and headed for my bedroom.

  Right. Step one of my investigation: review the facts from a reliable source—me. I walked over to the bed and lifted the mattress. My old diary was still there, on top of the slatted base. I sat down on the bed, and the pages seemed to turn themselves until they reached that fateful date:

  December 8, 1997

  I can’t feel well today, and I won’t for a long time.

  Today, after yesterday’s fight, my mother made her move. Checkmate.

  Down and out.

  Forever.

  Today she’s made me an orphan.

  Today Marcos came on his scooter when school finished. Teresa dug me in the ribs to let me know “I think that boy’s come to pick you up.”

  I decided to make myself seem intriguing and didn’t tell her he was my cousin. When I reached him, I realized his eyes were red.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  And he grabbed me by the shoulders as if he needed to support me. I was level with his Adam’s apple, which was going up and down like a yo-yo.

  “They’ve just found your mother in her office.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The police say it might have been an overdose. There was an empty bottle of pills in the desk drawer. Do you know if she was depressed or taking medication?”

  How could the best psychologist in Santander be depressed? Are you crazy? I thought, though I didn’t say it.

  “I don’t understand what you’re asking me. Have they pumped out her stomach? Have you come to pick me up and take me to the hospital?”

  “She’s dead, Dana.”

  “I don’t understand,” I repeated, confused. “We had coffee together at breakfast this morning. We didn’t talk a lot, because we were still angry after last night’s fight, but she was fine. You have to believe me. She was fine. She was fine!” I yelled at him.

  “Calm down. Let’s get out of here. The whole school is watching us.”

  “The hell with them. Give me the scooter.”

  “No way.”

  “Give me the scooter, Marcos, dammit! Or I’ll tell my aunt and uncle what you got up to during the Santillana fiesta.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you tell my parents. You’re not taking the scooter.”

  He wrapped his arms around me so strongly that it hurt my ribs and forced me to keep still. Then he moved my hair away from my ear and whispered, “Let . . . me . . . get . . . you . . . out . . . of . . . here.”

  He said it like that, separating the words just like you do with foreign visitors when you’re trying your best to get them to understand you.

  “Come on, you’re not alone. I’ll be there for you on this.”

  That was when I fainted.

  December 10, 1997

  This is the first night home by myself. My aunt wanted to stay, but I didn’t let her. Now I regret it. I’m in the kitchen with the TV switched on, unable to stop looking at the chair I saw my mother sitting on for the last time. It’s four in the morning, and I can’t sleep. Until yesterday I believed I was a seventeen-year-old adult. Now I realize that I’m going to have to live on my own, but I have no idea where to begin; my mother took charge of everything. My father went back to Asturias tonight claiming he couldn’t cancel his appointments. He told me that sales have been bad this month, that he won’t reach his target, and that the funeral cost him a fortune. I looked at him as if he were from Mars. What’s he talking about? We have more than enough money; Mamá earned enough to last four lifetimes.

  The funeral was this morning. When we got to the cemetery, there was another funeral taking place; we saw a dark casket and two small white ones going past. Grandfather told me that there’s always someone worse off, that he learned th
at lesson during the Civil War, that the young woman crying in front of the graves in the next aisle had lost her entire family. I didn’t see her, but that thought consoled me. Then, tired from having spent the whole night at the wake, I sat down on the steps of a mausoleum a few yards from the niche where they were going to put my mother’s remains. There was an elderly man leaning against the wall, and we spoke for a while. That man made me realize that I’m not the only one who’s suffering.

  My father got back from a business trip last night. They didn’t locate him until Tuesday night, because while my mother was dying, he was trying to close a deal in Oviedo—which is always better than being with your wife when she says good-bye to this world. He couldn’t cope, as usual. He behaved awkwardly, and he didn’t take in anything. They asked him what wood he wanted for the casket, and he didn’t care, then what wreaths, and his response was the same. Finally, my aunt stopped asking him and took charge of everything.

  I know we’re going to have to talk now about what happens to me until I turn eighteen, but I’m not worried about staying on my own in Santander. My father can come back here from his business trips whenever he wants. I have my aunt and uncle, and Marcos, and Grandfather.

  Mamá is dead. Mamá is dead. Mamá is dead.

  I’m not going to stop writing this until I believe it, once and for all.

  My mother once explained to me that grief has five stages, and that she used to help her patients move through all of them without any one of them becoming pathological. I remember that the first two stages were incredulity, then rage. I don’t remember what the third and fourth were, but the last one was acceptance.

  I intend to stay in the first stage. I think that’s the best place for me.

  I asked Grandfather for the autopsy report, but he told me the finding was “poisoning caused by the consumption of antidepressants,” because they have no way of telling if it was accidental or deliberate. She left no suicide note, but they say that tends to be the case with suicide, especially if it’s an educated person like her. So the police don’t favor either of the two possibilities. The only thing I know for sure is that she was taking antidepressants and she didn’t tell me.

  Worst of all is that I’ll never know if she abandoned us or simply miscalculated the dose. I don’t know, and I need to know. I have to know if she was so angry with me that she chose not to give a damn about me, and to leave me on my own in Santander. Does a mother do that? While I’m not the best of daughters, the punishment does seem a bit excessive.

  This is beginning to sound like anger, and I know there’s a long way to go before I reach that damned fifth stage: acceptance.

  I closed the diary and wrapped myself in the duvet. I’d forgotten some of the details of those long-ago days, like my encounter with that elderly man. I tried to recall him, but I couldn’t remember how he looked. Bushy eyebrows, maybe, a shaved head that made it difficult to work out his precise age, and a weariness in his gestures. That conversation, on the other hand, came back to me as clearly as if we had had it just a few days ago.

  “You’re the daughter, aren’t you?” he’d said, barely looking at me.

  “Did you know my mother?” I asked reluctantly, trying to be polite. At first I thought he was a colleague from work or a family acquaintance.

  “No, I’m sorry. I haven’t come for your mother’s funeral, though I offer you my deepest condolences.”

  “So how do you know I’m the daughter?”

  “Because everyone’s watching out for you.”

  Of course. It was easy to pick that up.

  “You seem very calm.”

  “I did my crying at home,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “Public displays of emotion embarrass me.”

  Something like admiration flashed briefly across his face; we liked each other. I still didn’t feel up to going back and confronting my mother’s niche, so we remained sitting there for a while in silence.

  “Is that young man who keeps looking over at you your boyfriend?” he asked eventually.

  “No, he’s my cousin.”

  “That’s better,” he said with that resonating voice of his.

  “Why better?”

  “Because I can see that he’s concerned about you, and a cousin will be around longer than a boyfriend,” he replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  I smiled for the first time in hours. I liked his frankness, and the fact that he didn’t treat me as if I were made of glass, like the rest of my family.

  “You’re here for the other funeral?” I asked, changing the topic in an attempt at friendliness.

  “Yes. At my age I avoid going to as many funerals as I can, but I couldn’t miss this one. Do you see her?” he asked, pointing at the young woman my grandfather had been talking about. “I’m worried. She’s a strong woman, she’s been through a lot in her life, but this is different. I sense she’s broken—broken inside. That’s something new, definitive. I don’t know what will happen now.”

  “No matter how much she might have suffered in the past, this is undoubtedly the worst that can happen to anyone. Is there anything worse than death?”

  “So many things . . .” he said by way of a farewell, without even looking at me as he stood up. “The worst thing about death is its impact on the people who are left behind.”

  And, feet dragging, he headed off after his family’s funeral procession.

  I remember wishing that he was a member of my immediate family, or someone close to me: an uncle, a mentor, a guide. That brief encounter broadened my limited view of the world. Right then I decided to put aside my self-pity. There were problems outside my own personal space. The memory of that elderly man walking away bent over by the weight of his grief reminded me of something I’d experienced recently, though I couldn’t identify what it was. Did he remind me of someone? Not that I was aware of. But that worn-out yet steady voice comforted me again.

  I fell asleep with the notebook by my side that night, feeling a little less alone than usual.

  10

  IAGO

  Mercury Day, the twelfth day of the month of Luis

  Wednesday, February 1, 2012

  That afternoon after work, I parked the Jeep on the lower stretch of the road known as Cuesta de las Viudas. As I walked up the road, I greeted a number of aristocratic women of the sort who never missed their daily game of cards. Santander was like that: a city where people always dressed up to go out, as if each day were a Sunday.

  My father had opted for a huge house in the Sardinero neighborhood years ago, and whichever way you looked at it, the house was too big for him. When I walked into the sitting room, I found him on his feet, searching his library for a novel that would counteract the indolence of the long February evenings. Flames licked the blackened bricks of the fireplace. I sat down, trying to restore some heat to my body, and began to play absentmindedly with a stick.

  “So what was your impression of Adriana?” he asked me.

  “Professionally?” He nodded his head by way of reply, and I shrugged my shoulders. “In one sense, she’s lived up to my expectations: academically, she’s first class, and she’s confident about her expertise—”

  “But . . . ?” Héctor interjected, noting my misgivings.

  “But she’s somewhat inflexible, one of those who only believe in the official versions.” I poked a log with the stick, provoking a few tongues of fire.

  “That’s to our advantage if she’s going to work with us. I don’t want anyone imaginative who’ll start inventing theories if they see strange things,” he said, gazing out beyond Los Peligros Beach.

  “I agree, though it’s a pity that with an intellect like hers she would have so little imagination. Still, she’s saved us from a real mess.”

  I told him about her suggestion that we set up an Interpretive Prehistory Cen
ter, and I could tell from his satisfied smile that he found the idea as seductive as I did.

  “And how did you find her, um . . . nonprofessionally?”

  “Magnificent!”

  Just then the wind whipped against the window and startled me. At which point I became aware of a presence right behind me. I hid my irritation.

  “Who’s magnificent?” asked my brother, intrigued.

  He had a bad habit of entering without warning, and he was as stealthy as the shadow of a cat. Sometimes the wind warned me of his arrival. Sometimes.

  “Jairo, what are you doing here?” I asked, putting a credible smile on my face. “I was just telling Héctor that there’s a new waitress at the Siboney.”

  “Well, we’ll have to drop in, then. Shall I swing by and pick you up tomorrow evening at ten? We have a date with Jessica and Erica, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “The girls of today have such interchangeable names. I’m not sure if they’re Jessica and Erica, or Carla and Laila.” With a gesture of annoyance, he added, “What difference does it make, Brother?”

  “It does make a difference.”

  But as I was finishing the sentence I was forced to rethink. Jairo was right: What did it matter? It wasn’t just the names. The women’s features and, even more, their trivial and brief life experiences were as interchangeable as their names. Our life provided a tedious flood of women with no beginning or end.

  “Have you brought the weapon?” Héctor interrupted in an attempt to change the subject.

  Jairo opened his briefcase with the flourish of a magician to show us the dagger. I stood up to admire it. The light from the fireplace flickered along the spotless blade. My brother was a craftsman whose skill never ceased to amaze me, a genius at forgeries. He had reproduced the star piece in the Cantabrian Peoples exhibition with pinpoint accuracy.