by Luz Gabás
Brianda ran her hand along the surface to appreciate the smoothness of the polished wood and the tiny pieces of bone and boxwood that formed decorative motifs that looked Moorish. There were so many magnificent objects in the house, but if she had to choose one, it would undoubtedly be this. In the center was a charming little door decorated with a simple lintel and closed with a minute lock.
“I suppose the most important things were kept here,” she observed.
Corso took out a minuscule key from a drawer and opened the compartment.
“Yes, as you can see, a real treasure chest,” he joked.
Brianda stroked the interior, in which there were small pieces of wood in each corner like columns. All four had been polished, but one of them had a slot, invisible to the eye but not to the touch. Suddenly, her heart jumped, and she was filled with emptiness. She brought her hand to her brow and found it cold and damp. She had to lean on the table to prevent herself from fainting.
“What’s the matter?” asked Corso in alarm. “You’ve gone pale.” He looked at his watch and realized the tour had lasted almost two hours. “It’s my fault, exhausting you with so many explanations. Would you like a drink?”
Brianda shook her head. The dizziness had already passed. Perhaps it was just a reaction to so much overwhelming art—a touch of Stendhal syndrome.
“I’m fine, thanks.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “Maybe just some fresh air.”
Corso led her back to the entrance hall, then hesitated.
“We could go out to the garden, but the workers are out there. Are you sure you don’t want something to eat? Or would you prefer to see the tower? The views are stunning.”
Brianda looked at her watch.
“Oh, is it getting late?”
It was, but she didn’t know when she’d have another chance to be alone with Corso. She was desperate for any excuse to stay in his company.
“Just let me know. I have all the time in the world,” he said.
“Then I pick the tower.”
So, there’s the infamous precipice, Brianda thought, carefully peeking through one of the openings on the second story of the tower.
Behind Lubich Manor, the land fell off into a deep ravine. From up here, she could see that the buildings were resting on solid rock. She struggled to imagine the complicated scaffolding that had been needed to build the walls of the tower and the back part of the house. A marvelous landscape unfolded above the chasm: vast, fertile lands that extended from the edge of the Lubich forest on the right and Beles Peak on the left to the foothills of even higher summits in the distance, their peaks already covered with snow. Brianda now understood that Lubich Manor had been a fortress. She wondered who the original owners had been so afraid of. The ravine must certainly have received many bodies in its depths. She wished she knew more about the history of the valley.
“What do you think?” whispered Corso. “Was it worth the climb?”
Brianda nodded without taking her eyes from the horizon. She felt Corso so close, but didn’t dare turn around and meet his eyes. A sudden breeze brushed her cheeks, offering some relief to the heat running through her body.
“I’ve spent many hours up here,” he admitted. “When I arrived and saw the amount of work that was needed, I had serious doubts. The first thing I rebuilt was the tower, maybe because from here I could see everything. Later, the more often I came up, the happier I felt about the progress I was making. Now I feel like this is my place; that I finally found it.” He let out a little laugh. “It sounds nice: my place.”
“And why wasn’t your place in Siena? This is so far away from your home and your family.”
Corso shrugged.
“I don’t know. But the day came when I knew I needed a change.”
His words only heightened Brianda’s curiosity. It was as if she wanted to hear from Corso’s lips the answers to the questions she was continually asking herself.
“But what made you change?”
Corso was quiet for a few long moments. Brianda regretted being so bold, but she resisted apologizing.
“Soon after my father’s death, I was in an accident. My best friend, Santo, died.” Now Brianda did turn to look at him, and Corso was grimacing with the pain of it. “It wasn’t my fault exactly, but I was driving.” Instinctively, he raised his hand to his scar. “It took me a long time to get over it. I don’t know if I have, really. I named my horse after him to keep his memory with me always. Then, when I received this inheritance, I took it on as penitence and as a challenge. I needed something different, far away, and something that demanded so much effort that it would force me to keep going—”
He stopped abruptly, as if embarrassed at being so open with a near stranger. He bent down toward her and asked, “And you, Brianda, are you just here for vacation? Will you be staying in Tiles for long?”
Brianda blinked. For the first time in weeks, she knew something with certainty. Next to Corso, in this soaring tower, her heart screamed that all she wanted was to stay here forever.
She dropped her gaze, ashamed of her own desires. Incapable of answering the simple question, she thought of what Corso had said. His life changed because people close to him died. But she had nothing like that to point to, no excuses. She had not found peace in Tiles, and she was afraid she wouldn’t find it by going back to Madrid either.
She looked at Corso’s face. If only she had a physical mark to make her suffering seem real, obvious proof of a wound—and of healing. She wanted to run her fingers along the long, deep scar …
And then she did.
She gently stroked the man’s cheek, from his right eye to his chin. She noticed the contrast between the soft burnt skin, and the roughness of his unshaven face.
She hoped he would not pull away, and he did not. Corso closed his eyes and seemed to enjoy her caress, lightly pressing his face against her fingers. He put his large, leathery hand on top of hers and guided it toward the other cheek and then to his lips. He kissed her fingers with exquisite tenderness before continuing the journey to his chest, where he kept her hand wrapped in his for a few eternal seconds, as if checking for a signal to release her, which she never gave him.
Then, Corso circled her waist with his arms and brought her toward him. He leaned down in search of her lips, and she offered them up in a tentative kiss, shy and contained at first, then increasingly steamy and hungry. He leaned back against the wall beside a pair of windows open to the void to make her more comfortable in his arms. Brianda could feel every inch of his body pressed to hers, and she felt a sensation of abandonment and need, of urgency and intimacy that she hoped would never end.
Brianda momentarily opened her eyes and found herself staring into the vast landscape beyond the tower. Her head spun, but this time, the vertigo felt good. She leaned into the intoxicating feeling of the oscillation of the stones, the fields, the trees, the peaks, and Corso’s body. For the first time in months, she welcomed the symptoms that had been causing such grief. She wished that her racing heart, her trembling and weak legs, and even her fear would force her to seek permanent refuge in the strong arms of this man.
For an indefinite spell, each kiss, each caress, each touch of her fingers marked a territory that she yearned to return to immediately after leaving. She felt as if, at any moment, their intimacy might transform into a physical and temporal abyss. Before falling into it, she had to hurry to share with him the urgency to get undressed, recognize each other, examine each other, attach to each other, feel the tension of each muscle and the dampness of the skin, sway with each other, and share knowing whispers and sighs.
Brianda felt she had to love him before there was no more tower to protect them, before the vertigo of her guilt and confusion returned. Her sudden love felt as old as the graveyards, the monasteries, the manor houses, the churches, the stone blocks of the walls, and the antique desks on which others like them had leaned, with their own hopes and fears, worries, desires, and fr
ustrations, long before she ever rode with Corso on the back of his black Friesian.
She had to love him because, without knowing why, she knew she needed to make up for lost time.
12.
The insistent beeping of a car horn broke the spell. Then they heard a high-pitched, cheerful voice. Corso brusquely separated from Brianda. She instantly missed the heat of his skin on her body. Corso peeked out through one of the arches overlooking the patio and swore. He began to get dressed as fast as he could.
“What’s the matter?” asked Brianda, sitting up to collect her clothes.
“My wife—”
Brianda heard nothing more. Feeling like she’d been struck, she threw her clothes on while he ran down the stairs. When a cry of joy came from below, she cautiously peered out and saw a beautiful black-haired woman throwing herself around the same neck Brianda’s arms had just embraced. Anguish flooded her chest.
Corso took some luggage from the trunk of the car, threw a quick glance upward, and disappeared into the house with the woman. Brianda tottered down the stairs, feeling like instead of flagstones there was something viscous under her feet. Elsa’s words at the monastery about the significance of the number three beat in her mind like a diabolic drum. Material, spiritual, intellectual. She had fully felt that man, she had absorbed his breath, she had wanted to cling to him and ask him to help her free herself of worry and suffering. Infinite, eternal, all-powerful. She barely knew Corso, but she had felt a powerful force attracting her to him, as if he’d emerged from the depths of time, before death and beyond it. But three was the sum of two plus one.
And at that moment, the one too many was her.
Checking that no one would see her, she ran across the patio, her eyes blind with tears.
She found Luzer in the exact spot she had left him, at the gate that separated Lubich from the woods. In spite of the urgency that gripped her, Brianda hesitated. She was afraid that as soon as she crossed the threshold, he would attack her for having disobeyed. Then again, maybe she deserved punishment.
What had she done?
A van stopped beside her.
“Hop in, I’ll give you a lift,” said Jonas. “I didn’t realize you were leaving.”
Brianda didn’t want to talk to anybody, but she was already going to be late for lunch, there was no phone signal, and Luzer’s eyes were terrifying.
She got in.
“Wow, time just flew by!”
“Are you surprised?” Jonas laughed. “Look, I’ve worked in many places, but this is different. In this house, you know when you start but never when you’ll finish.”
Brianda’s head was spinning. Surprise seemed an insufficient word for what had happened. After the confusion and disappointment caused by the arrival of Corso’s wife, Brianda was crashing back to earth. How was she supposed to face Esteban? She was grateful for a fast ride to Anels House, where Isolina and Esteban must be worried, but she wished she had more time to collect herself. Her back and knees were sore; the taste of Corso was on her lips, his fingerprints on her skin. She needed more time to practice the casual voice she’d have to fake to explain her delay.
“It’s an incredible place, for sure,” she said. “A bit big, maybe.”
Overwhelming. Impressive.
Like its owner.
Why hadn’t he said he was married? She felt betrayed. But that was stupid, she reflected. She hadn’t said anything about Esteban either, though he had seen them together.
“You need to be very rich or very crazy to do what Corso is doing,” continued Jonas. “Or both.”
Or maybe just brave, thought Brianda, brave enough to take risks and change your life. She envied his courage, the same courage she now needed to control her nerves. She couldn’t understand how she had given herself to him like that just a few days after meeting him. And even worse? It had been the most amazing encounter of her life. And there was something more disconcerting still: her current agitation wasn’t just guilt or shame at being unfaithful to Esteban, but the realization that she would do it again in a heartbeat. Even if Corso was married. She doubted anyone else in the world would understand her. On the contrary: anyone else would think her stupid, irresponsible, and unfaithful. And rightly so.
As the van neared Anels House, Brianda cringed. There was no way she could look Esteban in the eye. He’d be able to tell that she had willingly thrown herself into the arms of a stranger.
Jonas parked in the yard of Anels House. The door opened and Isolina appeared.
“That was a very long walk, dear!”
“You wouldn’t believe where I’ve been,” said Brianda, forcing herself to act normal. “Thanks for the lift, Jonas.”
She rushed into the house, locked herself in the bathroom, and took the quickest shower of her life, scrubbing herself clean. As she changed her clothes, she had to make a tremendous effort to recognize herself in that woman who had enjoyed Corso in the tower. She had acted like a hormonal teenager instead of an adult in a committed relationship. It was not as if sex was strange and new. She’d had physical relationships with other men before Esteban, and with him, sex had evolved from the initial passion to the measured, customary enthusiasm of recent times. Except for the current bad patch, she’d never had any complaints in the bedroom. But if she was truly satisfied, why had her encounter with Corso been so powerful, so desperate, and so painful, even afflicted?
She felt a throbbing in her chest. Something dormant inside her had awoken.
Why, damn it? she thought. Why now? Wasn’t she confused enough?
When she came back downstairs, everyone was already at the table. Isolina had decided to celebrate Esteban’s last day in Tiles with a special lunch: roast beef and several elaborate vegetable dishes.
“We thought we’d have to start without you,” said an irritated Esteban. “Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry,” apologized Brianda. “I didn’t mean to take so long.”
With feigned cheer, Brianda began to tell them about her walk along the path to Lubich, her surprise at finding the mansion, and her natural curiosity to look around the place. She had run into Jonas and Corso, and the two of them, she lied, had shown her around.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Colau lift his head when he heard the Italian’s name.
“It was excessively ornate for my taste,” she lied again. “There are so many antiques you’d think you were in the past, or maybe at a museum.”
She was lying so well that it just made her feel worse about herself. Here she was betraying two of the people she loved most, telling them one lie after another. Right after betraying Esteban with her body. And with her soul?
“And what was the owner like?” Isolina asked. “Imagine living all alone in such a huge house!”
Brianda took a sip of wine. The owner was the best thing that had happened to her in a long time. Yes, she had also betrayed Esteban with her soul. She felt her cheeks beginning to burn.
“He’s actually pretty friendly, maybe a little long-winded about his things. I didn’t know how to stop him politely so I could get out of there—”
She was about to add something about his wife but caught herself. In fact, she had not met her … fortunately. She drank more wine to have a good excuse for her red cheeks. Torrid images of her body intertwined with Corso’s flashed through her mind. She felt sick. Esteban didn’t deserve this.
“He must have enjoyed himself, showing off his antiques to you,” Esteban said acidly.
“He wasn’t showing off!” Brianda retorted, instantly regretting her defensive tone.
“Ah, no?”
Brianda avoided Esteban’s look.
“He was just describing them is all.” She managed to sound casual, even with her heart beating wildly. The more she talked, the greater her sense of guilt grew. “Since I don’t know much about those things—”
“And did he tell you why he’s here, this Corso?” Colau suddenly asked. His tongue
seemed to reject the name.
“He inherited the house,” Brianda answered.
“Inherited it? Who from?”
“Apparently, it’s been in his family for centuries,” Brianda explained, “but since they lived far away, nobody had taken charge of it.”
Colau frowned. “Do you know if he has any old documents?”
“I didn’t ask him, actually.”
“Colau, what’s with the interrogation?” a surprised Isolina wanted to know. “You’ve never been so interested in Lubich. Does it have something to do with the witch trials? I don’t remember Neli mentioning any women from the mansion.”
“I have my reasons,” replied Colau.
Isolina threw him a reproachful look. “You never kept it to yourself before when you found something interesting. I just don’t know what’s gotten into you recently.”
An uncomfortable silence followed. Brianda stared out the window at Beles Peak, the unmoved witness to everything that happened in this place. The sun had lost its morning intensity, but the rocky mass still shone. She observed how different the mountain was depending on where you were looking from. From here, it seemed like a triangle of straight lines, overbearing in its solitude. From Lubich Manor, the slope spilled down from the summit, deformed into threatening angles, one on top of the other, until fusing with the fields. She wondered which part was the most beautiful or the most real, the front or the hidden part, the part everybody knew or the one nobody knew, the present or the possible.
She thought of her forebearers being whipped and executed for witchcraft and shivered. Centuries ago, another Brianda had looked at this same mountain. Did she wonder about its shape, its lines, its colors? What was she like? What were her worries?
In the past, another Brianda had existed in Tiles, but that radiant morning, she was the Brianda who climbed the tower of Lubich, absorbed the landscape, and crowned the summit of Beles with her soul. For a few hours, she had fully belonged to that place. But the moment had passed. The sky was growing overcast. The wind began to rustle the leaves on the trees.