by Daniel Caet
“Now you, honey, quickly!” and Becca obeyed.
As soon as she entered the light, her body felt as if it were absorbed by a large vacuum cleaner and a second later the light disappeared and she found herself in a small dark space while Liliath's arms helped her up from the ground.
“Take your time, Becca!” she said sweetly. “This door is a little different from others and sometimes it can make you dizzy.”
Becca sat in the chair where Liliath had taken her and took a deep breath trying to regain control of her body. Finally Sadith appeared in the room and the light that the door gave off disappeared allowing Becca to get her eyes accustomed to the gloom that surrounded her and see that they were in a basement or storage room, full of objects of all condition, from gigantic paintings covered with fabrics to chairs like the one she was using that had known better times. Charice was half lying on a kind of armchair so old it didn't even look like it anymore. The only ones who seemed to be perfectly after the trip were Sadith, Liliath and Eustace. Looking at them, Becca realised that her group had grown by one person. On the other side of that deposit of forgotten things was an old woman, who must have easily exceeded eighty, dressed impeccably in clothes that were clearly not the type they sold in the stores where she used to buy and who looked at her with a kind smile, but without saying a word.
“Becca, this is Sofia, my Sofia,” Liliath explained.
“I'm so glad I finally meet you, Rebecca!” she said approaching her and giving him two kisses on the face that completely dislodged Becca. “Your mother has told me so much about you. I was already afraid that I would leave this world without knowing you.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Becca replied shyly.
The old woman guided them up three floors to a living room decorated with extreme exquisiteness and objects that reminded Becca of the kind of things that can be seen in a palace. On his way up, Becca noticed that the first floor of the building was clearly the back room of some type of business, with filing cabinets and a work table from which one could see in the distance and through dense curtains a stained glass window that opened to the street. The second and third floors looked like areas enabled as housing. The light that flooded the room where the woman had taken them illuminated everything and was reflected in the gold and silver of all the decoration.
“Please, sit down, you are at home! Let me bring you some tea,” she said, leaving them alone in the living room.
“I don't know about you, but I've been calculating what the stuff in this room is worth for a while, and only the armchairs in which you have put your butts would indicate that this lady is a millionaire,” Charice said, surprised and delighted, making Liliath laugh.
“Sofia has dedicated a lifetime to the sale of antiques, Charice.”
“Tea is ready. I have also prepared coffee in case someone prefers it,” the woman interrupted, entering a service cart full of silver teapots and coffee makers, cups and a considerable selection of pastries and other sweets.
“Thank you very much, Sofia. I'm so sorry to bother you,” said Liliath.
"Oh, my God! You know I would do anything for you, Anya.”
“Anya?” asked Becca, surprised by the term with which she referred to Liliath.
“It's Hungarian. It means mother,” the woman explained with a smile.
“Mother?” Becca replied with wide-eyed eyes looking at Liliath.
“Oh no! It's an affectionate term, I'm not her real mother,” Liliath replied smiling.
“And yet you are the only mother I remember,” the woman replied. “You see, Becca, your mother saved my life many years ago. Thanks to her I am here. I owe her more than anyone in this world,” the old woman said, but seeing Becca's strangeness she decided to explain herself better. “Although we are in Spain and this is the country that has been my home for more than sixty years, I was not born here. My family is originally from Hungary, specifically from Budapest. My father was a Jewish bookseller who made a decent living until the horror of the Nazi scourge came one day knocking on the doors of our houses. Those that had been happy lives were broken by the force of hatred against the Jews that fed the German machinery. It was the year 1944 when all our lives were destroyed. The Germans invaded Hungary and made all the Jews move to a specific area of the city. An area closed to the world where they could control us, a ghetto. But that was only the beginning,” the woman continued. “I was only five years old, but I remember as if it were today the day my father was taken, all the men capable of working. He didn't even have time to say goodbye to his wife and his little girl. He was dragged into a truck with many other men and we would never see him again. Over the years I tried to find out what had happened to him and discovered that he had been taken to a work camp in the city of Terezin and months later to a place of terror, Auschwitz. The Reich government had decided to launch what they called the last solution, the total extermination of the Jewish people.” The woman made a stop in her story and Becca felt a great sorrow for that poor old lady who still remembered such distant things with such pain.
“You don't need to tell us more,” Becca whispered, approaching the woman and taking her hand.
“Actually I must, little one. It is important that you understand how lucky you are to have the mother you have,” she said, staring at her. “Just a few weeks after my father's departure, my mother fell ill. Typhus. A disease that devastated the ghetto due to the lack of food, hygiene and medicines to which the German soldiers subjected us. Just ten days later, my mother passed away and I was completely alone. A five-year-old girl in a devastated world without parents protecting her, it seemed that my destiny was written. The neighbours who lived with us in the ghetto did their best to take care of me, but they all had their own offspring, children as helpless as me. In the midst of all that darkness, when it seemed that nothing could save the Jews of Budapest, a ray of light flooded everything. One night they woke us up at dawn, it was very cold and they told us to take as much warm clothes as we could. I took a blanket that I used to sleep with and it was the only thing I had left of my father and I went outside following the other children of the ghetto. Two trucks were waiting for us outside and my first thought, like everyone else's, was that they were doing with us the same thing they had done with my father, whatever that was. But there was a difference. The parents of all those children were also there to calm their children and assure them that they were being taken to a safe place, a place they could not go to. The tears of the children and parents surrounded me, but I did not cry. I had no parents and I had no tears left. Arms grabbed me from behind and a sweet voice whispered that I had nothing to fear, that she would take care of me. Those arms did not abandon me all the way, neither me nor the rest of the children. That day your mother took two hundred and fifty children out of the ghetto, two hundred and fifty creatures who were saved from certain death and could have a life, one full of the burden of memories, but at least a free and dignified life.”
Becca fought in vain the tears that filled her eyes and tried not to look at her mother. The old woman, seeing that she felt uncomfortable, decided to continue talking.
“Some time later, your mother found me a family that loved me and took care of me in Switzerland. There I grew up until one day I met who would be my husband, a beautiful Spanish antiquarian who stole my heart as soon as I laid eyes on him. We got married and I came with him to Spain, to his antique shop in the middle of the old Madrid as they say here and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Becca didn't know what to say once the woman finished her story. She had Liliath sitting in front and now she understood how unfair she had been with her. She had based her judgment of the woman who was her mother exclusively on the part of history that Helel had made known to her through his writings, but she should have understood that was only a small part of a tremendously long life in which many things must have happened. No one could deny that her mother had done horrible things, but that did not mean that was
the only thing in her persona and that old woman had just shown her in a few minutes that there was much of her mother she did not know, much more than she supposed.
The rest of the afternoon was lost in the conversation of that woman who had a whole life to tell. Charice was delighted with the number of famous people Sofia had come to know and from who, for the most part, kept the odd memory in the form of dresses, jewelry, furniture and other stuff. The two looked like soulmates separated by a few decades. When they finally ran out of tea, Sofia told them that she had prepared rooms for them on the lower floor where they could rest and cool off before dinner, so everyone headed towards them. When she was about to leave the room, Sofia went to Becca.
“Rebecca, dear, would you have a moment?”
“Yes, of course," Becca answered curiously.
“Would you mind joining me, please?” said the woman leading her through the maze of rooms beyond the living room to a room without windows and decorated with old rugs hanging from the walls that overloaded it and turned it into a slightly claustrophobic space. “Your mother has told me that you need help finding something you've lost, is it true?” she asked, locking the door behind Becca.
“It is. Well, it's really a person,” said Becca, sitting in a chair in front of a completely empty carved wooden table.
"I see. Your mother thinks I could help you and I would like to try. I don't know if your mother has told you about a certain talent I possess.”
“No. She told me she knew someone who could help me, but she didn't give me any details.”
"You see, little one, I am what is usually called a seeker, let's say I have the ability to find things. It is a variant of what we commonly call the gift of vision. There are people who are able to see beyond the threads of destiny to decipher the future. I have never had that talent, however I am able to see the present.”
“The present? Everyone can see the present, I don't want to offend you, but I don't understand how that is a talent.”
“I was waiting for that answer,” the woman laughed as she placed a huge bowl of silver material on the table. When I say that I can see the present I mean that I can see what happens anywhere in the world, even in the smallest room of the most remote house in the most forgotten country in the world. As you can imagine,” she continued,“it took me a long time to gain control to segregate the images and be able to see what I wanted to see, but your mother helped me acquire that control.” The woman took a jug of the same silver material and poured water into the bowl.
“What's that for?”
“My power, my vision is linked to the water element, I need it as a catalyst, as a vehicle to be able to see.”
“May I ask how accurate this is? I mean, is there any chance we won't find the person I'm looking for?”
“What do you know about antiques, Rebecca?” the woman said in response to her question.
“Honestly, nothing.”
“Let me explain something to you then. The most valuable antiques are not those that are sold every day at auction houses, but those that nobody owns, those that have been lost over the years for different reasons and no one has been able to relocate. My husband and I managed to have a considerable agenda of tremendously powerful men and women interested exclusively in possessing what no one else can possess. All thanks to my power, my ability to find things that no one else can find. Believe me child, if that person you are looking for is on the face of this world, I will find it.”
“That is precisely my problem, it is possible that he is not on the face of this world.”
“Even if that is the case, we all leave a mark on this world, a mark that is not physical but energetic, spiritual. Even if that person is no longer here, at least I can tell you where he has been for the last time. But for that, I need something that belonged to that person.”
“I'm afraid that is going to be impossible, the only things I own from him are in my house in Scotland or my mother's house in Romania,” Becca replied, thinking about Helel's books.
“Could you tell me who I'm looking for?”
“My father,” Becca replied after a moment's hesitation.
“In that case we still have a chance,” said the woman, removing a pin decorated with precious stones that she had on her chest. “A few drops of your blood in the water and leave the rest to me.”
Becca hesitated, but finally took the pin and pricked her thumb until the blood gushed bright and deep red. She dropped a couple of drops into the water in the bowl and sucked her finger to stop the bleeding. The old woman nodded as she smiled and introduced her right hand into the water, stirring slowly. Her eyes went blank and she began to murmur words in a language that Becca did not recognise, but which she assumed must be her native language. The minutes passed and the woman remained submerged in her trance without giving signs that indicated the success of her search until, suddenly, she fell silent and her eyes stared at Becca. Suddenly, the water in the bowl began to boil and the woman withdrew her hand with a groan that immediately took her out of her trance.
“You're good?” asked Becca. “What has happened?”
“It has happened that I have found him and, believe me, he is not very happy about it.”
“So you know where it is? Where can I find him?”
“Give me a second,” the woman replied, rising from the table and leaving the room. She returned a few minutes later with a rag that covered her right hand where it was evident that she had suffered a burn from the boiling water and a large book. The woman sat down again and began frantically searching the pages of the book. “I'm sure it's here, but where? Where? Aha! Here it is,” she snapped suddenly, indicating with her hand a huge photograph of an infinite white statue on one of the pages of the book. “Le génie du mal, the genius of evil. This is where you will find him.”
Becca stared at that image. The statue represented an enchained angel with a beauty and sadness as he had never seen before, an image that captivated as soon as she laid eyes on it.
“But ... where is this? I have no idea.”
“Le génie du mal is a statue found in Liege Cathedral, in Belgium.”
Becca informed everyone during dinner of what Sofia had been able to find out and her intentions to travel to Liege to try to locate Helel.
“There is something I don't like, it seems too obvious a movement for what we know of Helel. The genius of evil? Seriously?” Sadith argued.
“Do you think it can be a trap of some kind?”
“I don't think he has reasons for cheating of any kind, what I think is that he knows you're looking for him and that this is nothing more than an appointment. He has taking months trying to attract you to him and somehow he is summoning you to the place where he wants to have you. Helel knows that we will never let you go alone and I wonder if he summons you to Liege for the same reason.”
“Be that as it may, I need to see him, talk to him. That is probably the only way to end all this.”
“I understand, but Sadith is right,” Liliath replied. “If you are going to play this game on Helel’s grounds you must be aware of the risks that this implies, it is possible that we cannot help you even if you need us. I beg you to think twice before acting, Rebecca!”
“I can't afford second thoughts, mother,” Becca replied. “For better or worse, I will go to meet him and be prepared for what I have to face. The question is whether he will be prepared.”
Becca's words echoed in the dining room submerged in the silence of all the diners. Those people were risking a lot for her and Becca was aware. That trip on which she had embarked was not a trip she made alone and above all she had to make sure that they were all safe, she was not going to allow what happened to Marcel and his family to be repeated. No one else would die for her. She knew that she was facing forces beyond all human understanding, but she also knew that if there was someone who could help her understand those forces and how to defeat them, it was someone who had been part of them, her father. F
or a moment, Becca reflected on how much her life had changed in just a few months. A change that she had not asked for, but which, deep down, from the beginning she knew it was inevitable, it was part of herself, of her genes, of her history. That night they laughed and celebrated as if they had something to celebrate, maybe just being alive. That night there were no angels, no demons, no past, no future. Just the moment they were living, the joy of having around her people she loved, whom she had learned to love. People who filled her heart with heat, a heat that she had lacked. That night she made love again with Eustace, several times. With almost desperate desire, not as if it were the last time, but as if it were the first. She told him that she loved him, without shame, without qualms, without fears and he corresponded. She dawned in his arms and that gave her the energy she needed for the next chapter in her story, one in which this time she pretended to be the only writer.
The next morning Sofia had made sure they had clean clothes of their size and that smelled new, ready for them and a car waiting for them at the door. They had breakfast together and when they had finished they said goodbye to the woman who melted into an intense hug with each and every one of them.
“Take care Sofia and thank you very much for your help,” Becca whispered.
“Whenever you need it, you'll have it again, little one. You have a hard experience ahead, but remember that above all, you are a survivor. Do whatever it takes to survive, Rebecca,” the woman replied and Becca wondered if for a moment Sofia had been able to see the future.