The Antiquarian

by Julián Sánchez

  “I didn’t need to. Like always, let each reader think whatever they want.”

  “The Stone could give its holder enormous power. That’s what Manolo told us. Do you think that’s what made her do it? Ambition?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Enrique. I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t have come to ask.”

  He smiled, amused by some private thought he didn’t share.

  “Do you think the Stone’s magic powers were real?”

  “Before, when we were in the thick of the investigation, I thought they were, that anything was possible,” she replied. “Now … I guess … no, I don’t believe in it. It’s … too irrational, too strange. Magic doesn’t form part of our times. But what about you? What do you think?”

  “Me? The Stone disappeared as soon as I threw it at Mariola and it fell to the presbytery. As much as Fornells’s men looked for it, it never appeared. We’ll never know if its supposed power was anything but a legend. They think someone in the audience took a souvenir home from the concert. Who knows?”

  “What do you mean they ‘think’ someone took it? What other explanation could there be?”

  “I’d rather think that God, seeing that humankind was incapable of using it correctly, took it back for Himself. I know that’s an old-fashioned, romantic interpretation, out of step with the times, but it’s nicer to explain its disappearance that way than chalking it up to pure and simple greed.”

  “You still haven’t answered my first question.”

  “Let’s come about,” he said, momentarily dodging the matter.

  They were about to reach the other side of the bay, near Ondarreta Beach. The maneuver was necessary to keep from running aground on any of the sandbars in the area. With one hand still on the helm, Enrique used the other to trim the jib. The boat responded to his orders with a docility that proved how deep his knowledge of the Hispaniola was.

  “You won’t be able to handle my explanation. It’s too … ,” he searched for the word, “strange, to put it one way.”

  “Try me.”

  “I think she did it … for the Stone.” He gauged Bety’s reaction. If she was surprised she didn’t show it. “It’s a very complex matter that I’ve thought long and hard about, without much of a conclusion. Don’t get me wrong, but when I think about it, the ideas seem to fly around my head, without giving me time to pin them down. See, I don’t think it was ambition, lust for power, or greed. Once she found out about the Stone’s true meaning from Samuel, she decided to get it, at any cost.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she had no other choice.”

  “You’re right, I don’t understand you.”

  Enrique flashed another, not quite as natural, smile.

  “The Stone was invested with magical powers. That magic is what made Mariola act like she did. Manolo knew, through Shackermann, that the Stone had to be hidden to keep it out of ‘simple mortal hands.’ Remember it was meant for a deadly purpose. It was so loaded with negative energy that even the Jews, led by the mysterious S., kept it concealed, protected by a secret ritual, and whoever violated it would meet instant death at the hands of a powerful demon. The Stone, to put it in comprehensible terms, was alive—not alive like you and me, but possessed by the presence of a sephirah. The Stone was conscious of itself and longed to see the light. And Mariola was the channel it chose to do it.”

  Dazed, Bety looked at him uncertain of how to react. She didn’t know whether to laugh or try to refute the whole outrageous bundle of bullshit justifications. He decided for her.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? I can see it in your face. You think I’ve gone nuts. That the pain has gotten to me. That the books I was reading every day after I finished working on the computer have dulled my wits. Well, you’re wrong. And I’m going to try to show you why, though I don’t feel obligated to, by you or anybody else.

  “Think back to the very beginning. The Stone was hidden next to the Ark so that no one could fall under its spell unawares. Only the highest priests, as they could resist its powers, had access to it. With the fall of Jerusalem, the Stone traveled into bitter exile with one of those priests, a responsible man, as he knew that leaving it there would mean giving whoever found it a power that shouldn’t fall into human hands. And also responsible, because the temptation to use it for his private purposes must have been very great. Years, perhaps centuries, later the holder of the Stone, a descendant of that original priest, settled in Barcelona with others of his people and prospered with time. Only the envy of the resentful—and as always there were many of them—incapable of rising in society on their own, brought on the ruin of the Jews. The atmosphere became unbearable, and robbing and killing soon followed. S., probably a rabbi with kabbalistic knowledge, knew that his days in Barcelona were numbered. Sooner or later, they would be stripped of their possessions and expelled. That meant that the Stone was in danger. If they took it with them it would be confiscated; if they left it behind it would be discovered. Casadevall was the answer. In him, S. found someone he could entrust the secret to. Casadevall believed him and became the next depositary of the Stone. But he couldn’t resist the powerful magic the Stone had over him either. If his mission was to hide it forever, why do you think he wrote the stupid manuscript we named after him, and that partly caused my father’s death? Why would he do it? I’ll say it loud and clear: he had no reason to! The Stone made him do it.”

  He finished off his sentence, out of breath. The ideas that had been flitting around his head for months seemed to be taking shape, and he wasn’t about to waste the chance to share them with someone else. Bety couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It seemed plausible. But no! It was idiotic to think in such terms! Enrique didn’t give her any more time to think. Once he had caught his breath, he dove back into his wild tale.

  “The power, the magic, whatever you want to call it, is undeniable. Diego de Siurana was the next to fall under its spell, and he paid for it dearly. He came close to discovering it, but by sheer chance, the Inquisition kept him from reaching his goal. And yet, he stoically withstood the longest torture session on Inquisitorial record. How can you explain that? No one could survive the barbarity they put him through. How can you explain his not talking? One word and his suffering would’ve been over. Sure they would’ve executed him, but they’d have done a clean job, and no more torture. Do you know why he didn’t talk? Because the Stone sealed his lips. The Stone knew what would happen to it if it fell into the hands of the Inquisition: they would’ve destroyed it. And remember what I first said: it’s not alive, but it knows what’s good for it. That’s why S. and his brethren had it hidden in a secret place, with knowledge of it restricted to a handful of initiates.

  “When Artur found out it existed, even though it was indirectly, the Stone awoke from the lethargy it had been isolated in for centuries. At first, Artur didn’t know what the mysterious thing was. By intuition he knew it had to be important, because the ritual used by S. to protect it was even described in one of his old books on the occult. Up to then, neither Artur nor I, nor anyone, would ever have given credit to ancient spells and remedies from dusty, half-forgotten books and manuscripts in his library. He himself kept them only for their historic value; to suggest anything else would have been absurd. But he’d read them and vaguely remembered that formula. That very Saturday morning he called Samuel to ask him about the object. His friend couldn’t give him a solution; the magic from the past gets forgotten and tainted with time and is kept only in the memory of old, wise men. He said that it might have been the Stone, but he wasn’t sure; his knowledge of it was limited, and it was little more than an old legend to him.

  “That sealed his fate. Samuel, by pure chance, or maybe it wasn’t chance at all, talked to Mariola that very afternoon in the shop. The next day, Artur died.”

  “Do you really mean to let her off the hook with that pack of lies?” Bety exploded. “She
was sick, Enrique. Someone who kills someone else as a means to an end is suffering a severe mental disorder; they can’t distinguish between right and wrong. She deliberately killed Artur because, even before he knew the magnitude of his discovery, he had found Casadevall’s hiding place. She killed Manolo in cold blood for the exact same reason. And she was about to do the same to us. Enrique, hard as it may be for you to accept, Mariola was a merciless killer. A psychopath, in fact.”

  “A psychopath?”

  “I haven’t been able to get her death out of my mind for the past six months, either. I’ve also done some investigating on my own, though not in the same direction. I’ve read psychiatry and psychology books until my eyes stung. And Mariola, by the universally accepted definition, was a full-blown psychopath. Only the brilliance that comes with insanity could have allowed her to commit such a masterful crime: to use her knowledge on where the Frenchman was hiding to report him and tie him to Artur’s death. That cleared her path.”

  “I can’t accept that. I know Mariola killed my father. But I also know that she let herself fall down to the cathedral floor to keep from dragging me to my death.”

  “That doesn’t exactly redeem her of her guilt.”

  “There is no guilt. She was acting under the influence of the Stone, beyond her will.”

  “I can’t believe this!”

  “See? I told you it would be pointless. To you she was a psychopath. For me she’ll always be a hapless woman who fell under an irresistible spell, the legacy of a distant past, when the world, and people, were different from today. Listen to me! What happened to her could’ve happened to you, or to me, if the Stone had appeared in our lives. And by the way, have you bothered to stop and look at yourself? At first, the Stone was nothing to you. It was me who was acting funny and hiding things from the police. But then it was you who fell under its spell, possessed by the desire to have it. That’s how it happened! The Stone influenced us all! And you know it! But what does it matter?” His resignation was obvious. “You’ll never believe because you don’t want to question the values of the world that today’s society has built. To do so would be to ask yourself too many uncomfortable questions, questions that you’re better off stowing away in some corner of your little blond head.”

  Bety thought about Enrique’s behavior over the past months. After Mariola’s death, the conclusion of the police business, and the hardest part of Carlos’s postsurgical recovery, he had returned to San Sebastián. She had called him at least twenty times before he deigned to answer. He asked to be left alone; he had a lot of work and he needed as much quiet as possible. With all possible goodwill, she’d wanted to help him forget. But it was obvious that Enrique wanted to withdraw into his world, and leave her out; her and all his San Sebastián friends that she spoke to. She deduced that it was to finish his new book. But after some time she reached the conclusion that there was more to it than that.

  The conclusion she reached after weighing the appropriateness of deciphering his cryptic words was negative: she had nothing to gain, and the real reason for her visit was another. She’d wanted to talk about Mariola, and that subject was now cleared up. But there was a second topic that had haunted her night after sleepless night: the Stone. And part of what she meant to say was closely related to Enrique’s theories.

  “Imagine I accept your story, and believed in the Stone’s capability to influence its own fate. If that’s so, the person who picked it up couldn’t have turned it in to the police; they’d keep it for themselves.”

  “It’s likely. There’s no way to know.”

  “But that person wouldn’t know anything about it. They wouldn’t know what it was, or what it was for. If they didn’t know its shape, they could even confuse it with something decorative, like a paperweight, for example.”

  “So?”

  “There’s something that doesn’t quite match up between your theories and what happened. You say that the Stone is potentially dangerous, and that there are certain rituals to keep just anyone from having access to it. Supposedly, if a person didn’t know its properties, they wouldn’t be inclined to use it in any way, as they’d be unaware of the properties. Right?”

  Enrique nodded.

  “So how can you explain it falling into the presbytery, and into the hands of some random person?”

  Enrique was silent.

  “When I go back over what happened that day, there’s one vision I can’t get out of my mind. So many things happened, it’s silly to remember this and nothing else, but … I remember Mariola pointing her gun at you. She told you to hand over the Stone and you rummaged around in your pocket until you found the leather bag. Then, when you threw it in her face, I watched it fall with absolute clarity. And then … well, you know the rest.

  “On its own, it’s unimportant. It seems ridiculous for something like that to keep running through my mind, but it happens to me when the pieces of a puzzle don’t fit correctly. That scene is the first piece of the puzzle.

  “The second is when you got out of the hospital. Once your arm was set, and after that never-ending interrogation early the next morning, Fornells told us to go home. We did, and when you were about to open the door you couldn’t find your keys. It didn’t surprise you that they weren’t in the right place. It seemed absolutely natural. You muttered that you must’ve lost them and we got the spare from the neighbor across the street, an old friend of Artur’s.

  “I didn’t think anything of it. Between the showdown in the triforium and that horrible night in the hospital, losing them didn’t seem odd at all. But as time’s gone by, the picture of you fumbling through your jacket pocket just seemed stranger and stranger to me. There weren’t that many things in there. You had the revolver, the house keys, and the Stone with its leather bag. There was nothing else. That was it.

  “There’s nothing strange in joining the two pieces of the puzzle. You were nervous, as anyone in your situation would be. You put your hand in your pocket and touched the gun. Mariola had hers pointed at you, though she didn’t know you were armed. Maybe the unusual slowness I noticed in your actions was because you didn’t know what to do. Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe as she was pointing the gun at you, you slipped the Stone out of the bag, and the keys into it, to give the impression, with the weight, that the Stone was in it. No one would have thought you’d ever risk such a precious object in the trap you’d dreamed up to surprise Mariola, which allowed you to come up with the clever deception in just a few seconds. And when everything was over, you found the Stone in your possession, without anyone suspecting anything. That’s what happened. And my theory, as ridiculous as it sounds to me, fits perfectly with yours: the Stone couldn’t let itself fall into the hands of an unsuitable person. That’s why your keys turned up the next day next to the empty leather bag.”

  “A nice theory,” Enrique said, in a barely suppressed mocking tone. “Simply overflowing with logic.”

  “So, is it true that you have it?”

  Enrique smiled timidly at first, then more openly, and finally regaled Bety with a spontaneous and sincere belly laugh. He appreciated the frankness with which she assumed the Stone’s final destination.

  “What do you think?” Enrique asked once he had recovered.

  “You have it. I’m sure of it,” she said with conviction. “It’s obvious. It’s more than just my intuition telling me.”

  “And why is the final destiny of the Stone so important? After everything we’ve been through, is it worth devoting even one more second of our lives to it? I think it isn’t.”

  “You’re a little inconsistent. You said you’d researched it through every source possible. If you did that, it’s because you thought it was worthwhile, and if you did it, it’s because you had it.”

  Enrique abandoned all signs of happiness or pleasure and took on the semblance of absolute concentration. He seemed to be calibrating how good an idea it was to continue with the conversation. On a few occasions, he manage
d to open his mouth, but the words died before they could be pronounced. Bety saw his inner struggle; part of him wanted to share, the other thought it better to forget.

  “We’re going to come about. Let’s go back to the port,” he said at last, eluding resolution of the conflict.

  For the first time in the last half hour, Bety took her eyes off Enrique’s face. They had left the bay without her realizing it, so absorbed had she been in the conversation. The mouth of Pasajes Port yawned not far from their position. The sky had clouded over completely. The clouds were dark as coal, heavy with water, and looking to burst open any second. In the distance, twenty to thirty miles out, a dark veil on the horizon—easily recognized by sailors—indicated that it had begun to rain. She felt the chill in her bones; the northern breeze blew with increasing intensity. After a day of southerly winds, a strong northwest wind known as a galerna was forming. Seeing her shiver, Enrique fixed the helm and went below decks. A minute later, they both had on foul-weather suits that would help them withstand even the worst sea storm without any variation in body temperature.

  “Aren’t you going to answer me?” Bety asked once she had warmed back up.

  “While we were in Barcelona, I discovered that it’s pointless to know the truth if it doesn’t match with our desires,” Enrique mused. “Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.”

  “I want to know, Enrique.”

  “Fine. It happened just like you said.”

  “So you do have it!”

  “No. Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Stone was too dangerous to remain in human hands. I didn’t want to join the list of people who’ve died for it one way or another.”

  “What’d you do with it?”

  “What Casadevall should have done. You might remember a conversation we had back in Barcelona. We were talking about why Casadevall had hidden it instead of getting rid of it.”

  “I vaguely remember that, yes.”