Immortal Love

by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

  “Who was he as human?”

  “He was Cesar Borgia. The one who inspired Machiavelli to write The Prince. The bastard son of that other Alexander, the Renaissance pope who ruled the Church with the libertinism and nepotism of an absolute king.”

  “Oh!” I said. For what else can you say when history, the history you studied at school becomes alive on a Saturday evening in, of all unlikely places, the waiting room of a hospital?

  “Listen, Carla. I have to hang up now. I need to talk with the Elders again. They forbade me to help Bécquer before, claiming that his paralysis had happened after he became human. But if Cesar caused it — ”

  “Then you can heal him?”

  “I hope so. As I hope they will send somebody to talk to Bécquer. He needs to explain to them that Beatriz stole his blood for they believe he changed her on purpose. Once this point is clarified, they may even revert their sentence. In the meantime, you keep Bécquer safe, all right?”

  “Of course,” I said, as if I could.

  A thousand times more eager to see Bécquer now that I knew the Elders did not want him dead for I hoped knowing this would stop him from trying to kill himself, I walked to the desk. Unlike the nurse, the receptionist seemed sympathetic to my request, or maybe she was just bored and glad to have something to do.

  “I’ll check with the nurse,” she told me.

  She punched a number on the phone and conveyed my request. “I’ll tell her,” she said shortly.

  “What is wrong?” I asked prompted by the note of concern I had noticed in her voice.

  “Probably nothing,” she said lightly, but her eyes did not meet mine as she gestured toward the elevator. “They want you upstairs. Third floor. A nurse will meet you there.”

  Too impatient to wait for the elevator, I ran up the stairs, arriving at the third floor flushed and out of breath. But it was fear, and not the running, that made my heart pump faster.

  The nurse who had talked with us before was waiting for me by the elevator. Her haughty look, I noticed, was gone.

  “I apologize,” she said when I joined her. “You were right, about your brother. He tried again.”

  “Did he? Is he — ”

  “He’s all right. We got him in time. But I believe it would be better if you stayed with him.”

  “Did he swallow more pills?” I asked as I followed her down the corridor.

  “No. He charmed one of the nurses into bringing him flowers. We always have extras from the maternity ward. New parents are too busy with their babies to carry all the bouquets they get. He smashed the vase and tried to cut his wrist with the broken glass.

  “You have to give him points for ingenuity,” she continued. But the image her words evoked of the blood spilling from Bécquer’s veins was so vivid in my mind that I felt dizzy, and for a moment I saw black.

  “Are you all right?”

  I opened my eyes. The nurse had grabbed my arm. I was glad she had, because my knees had grown weak. I took a deep breath. “Yes, of course.”

  “He’s not your brother, is he?”

  I shook my head. “No. He’s not.”

  “I didn’t think so.” I blushed — was my attraction to him so obvious? — “He was pretty vocal about not having any sisters. And also about not wanting anybody with him.”

  “Yet, you let me come,” I said as we resumed walking.

  Her smile disappeared. “In my experience, a suicide attempt is a cry for help. A disability is tough on a relationship. Until he has come to accept his condition, my advice is that you tell him that you love him. Unconditionally.”

  As I struggled with my reply, she stopped and knocked briefly on a closed door and, without waiting for a response, entered the room.

  Chapter Nineteen: The Pact

  Bécquer was lying back on a half-raised bed. His hair, tousled and matted with sweat, framed a face so white it could have been a sculpture.

  I stood by the door, not sure how to proceed while the nurse checked his IV and took his vitals. Ignoring her, Bécquer stared at me with his dark, sunken eyes. Still totally still, and silent. That he was still was not surprising as his arms, set parallel to his body, were strapped to the bed. The silence he broke at last, when the nurse left closing the door. Polite and distant, he thanked me for coming and asked me to take a seat next to his bed.

  “So, it’s you,” he said when I did. “The mysterious sister I never had.”

  Afraid my voice would break if I spoke, I only nodded. His wrists, I noticed as I looked down to avoid his stare, were bandaged.

  “Is that how you think of me?” he continued. “As the brother you must keep from harm?”

  I swallowed hard. “Ryan claimed to be your nephew. The nurse assumed — ”

  “Ryan is here?”

  He struggled to sit up as he spoke, the muscles on his naked arms flexed under the straps binding him to the bed.

  “Please don’t let him come,” he said as, defeated, he fell back. “I don’t want him to see me like this.”

  You should have thought of that before, I thought. But he looked so hurt and dejected I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  “He left already,” I said instead. “When the nurse told him he couldn’t see you until tomorrow.”

  Bécquer sighed in relief, then again his face tightened. “Does he think I’m a coward?”

  “No. He blames me.”

  “You?” Bécquer frowned, then nodded when I told him why. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Of course, you will,” I said, frustration and despair spilling into my voice. “And when do you plan to do that, before or after you kill yourself?”

  “Touché. I’m sorry, Carla. I really am. But I told you, I have no choice.”

  “Yes, you have. Federico spoke to the Elders tonight. Cesar lied to you. The Elders sentenced you to be human, not to death. To be human, not paralyzed.”

  He closed his eyes.

  I touched his hand with my fingers. “Bécquer — ” I started. Whatever I was about to tell him I forgot when I met his eyes for there was so much hope in them. So much despair. I leaned down and kissed his lips.

  Bécquer did not respond. I moved back.

  “Don’t play with me, Carla.” His voice was cold. His face unreadable.

  “I’m not playing.”

  “I overheard the nurse talking to you. I heard her asking you to pretend you love me.”

  “You think my kiss was a lie?”

  Bécquer said nothing.

  “You’re wrong, Bécquer. Besides, what the nurse said does not apply anymore. You will not be paralyzed for long. Nor human for that matter. Once you tell the Elders what really happened the day Beatriz became immortal, Federico is certain the Elders will reverse your sentence.”

  “They won’t. Because I did change her, and I’m taking full responsibility for it.”

  I frowned. “But that’s not true. Why should you — ”

  Bécquer’s face hardened into a mask, but for a brief moment his eyes met mine, and, as they did, an image jumped to my conscious mind: the image of Beatriz holding Ryan over the dam and of Bécquer facing her. And I knew, as clearly as if I had heard their words what the pact between them had been.

  “You promised her,” I said, and my voice came out broken, almost unrecognizable. “You promised Beatriz you’d take responsibility for her change if she let Ryan go.”

  It wasn’t a question. Had it been, his silence would have been answer enough.

  “I cannot, I will not, let you take the blame.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not your decision, Carla. You were not there. You have no proof.”

  “I may not have proof, but now that you’re human you cannot lie to the immortals anymore, for they don’t need your permission to search your mind. Federico we’ll have no problem learning the truth.”

  Bécquer swore and I knew I had won because he changed his tactic.

  “Carla, you don’t understand.” His voice
that had been hard before was now pleading. “I gave her my word. If I break it, Beatriz will not abide by her promise and Ryan will be in danger again. Not only him, your daughter — ”

  “Madison,” I supplied my daughter’s name automatically.

  “Madison will be in danger too.”

  I hesitated for a moment. Fear for my children weighed against my responsibility to make things right for Bécquer.

  “I have to tell the truth. I can’t let you take the blame for something you didn’t do.”

  “You said your kiss was not a lie, Carla. This is your test. If you care for me you will respect my wish.”

  “I can’t.”

  “So I was right. You don’t care for me. Or maybe you did. You cared for me when I was immortal. Not for this broken human I have become.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Prove it to me then. Stand by me. Don’t tell Federico about my pact with Beatriz. Convince him he can’t tell the Elders what happened between us.”

  “But — ”

  “Carla, listen. I’ve lived for a long time. Your children haven’t. They deserve to live more than I do. Besides, you saved my life. I owe you.”

  I sighed.

  “All right, I’ll support your decision.”

  “Thank you, Carla. So maybe it’s true you care for me a little.”

  His voice was light and teasing and his eyes were asking me to come closer. But I couldn’t move. I felt dirty. I had agreed to Bécquer’s request in order to save my children’s lives, but, deep down, I knew it was wrong. If the Elders knew the truth they would allow Bécquer to be immortal. But if I didn’t tell them, he would remain human and, maybe even, paralyzed.

  “It’s all right.” Bécquer said, serious now. “I understand you won’t want to stay with me under these circumstances.” Briefly, his eyes moved to his legs, then without a hint of self-pity, held mine again. “You owe me no explanation.”

  “Of course I want to stay with you,” I said, angry for letting my silence give him the wrong impression. “I love you, Bécquer. Your present circumstances are of no importance to me. I’ll stay with you as long as you’ll have me.”

  Bécquer stared at me for a long time. “Do you really mean it?”

  “I do.”

  Bending over, I kissed him again.

  This time his lips opened as they touched mine, and, just before I closed my eyes, I saw myself on his black pupils, dark mirrors reflecting my soul as it met his own. His lips were soft and warm, inviting yet demanding, his kiss both pleasure and pain. I wanted to scream and I wanted to die. I wanted this kiss never to end and I wanted to flee for I was scared of losing myself, of forgetting everything I’d ever been, or was, or planned to be. Yet, I didn’t mind. I didn’t care if I ever had a thought but this: That he was mine and I, his, this moment and every moment. He and I but one, a single soul. Forever.

  “Carla” he said when we at last parted. “Could you — ?”

  “Kiss you once more?”

  He smiled. “That too. But first could you untie me?”

  I considered his request. They had bound him so he would not kill himself, but now that he knew the Elders didn’t want him dead, he wouldn’t try again, would he?

  “Should I trust you?”

  Bécquer smile widened. “I’ll be a gentleman. I promise.” The mischief he infused into his words, made me believe, at last, that he would fight to stay alive.

  Bécquer flexed his arms when I finished, disregarding the UV tubing attached to his left hand.

  “Be careful.” I reached over the bed to stay the tubing that swung wildly.

  Bécquer winced.

  “Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

  He lay back and shook his head.

  But I knew he was lying because his eyes were full of pain. “Seriously, Bécquer, how do you feel?”

  Bécquer shrugged. “The truth?”

  I nodded.

  “If you were not with me,” he said, with a deprecatory smile, “I would think I had died and gone to hell.”

  “Maybe you have,” I teased him. “Maybe, like Sartre claimed, L’enfer c’est les autres. Hell is other people. And I am yours.”

  “No. You’re not, that I know for certain. Although, once upon a time, my private hell did have a woman’s name.”

  “Lucrezia.”

  I said the name without thinking, the name of the woman he mentioned in his diary.

  Bécquer frowned and, as I blushed under his dark stare, he sighed. “You read my diary.”

  “Only the first page. Rachel wanted me to read it to prove Cesar was real, although you had denied it. She thought you might mention him in your diary.”

  “Did she read it too?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Nothing happened between us.”

  “Rachel or Lucrezia?”

  “I meant Rachel. As for Lucrezia — ”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation.”

  He smiled ruefully. “Come,” he asked me and when following his suggestion I sat by his side, he took my hand. “Yes. I have to tell you about Lucrezia. But I fear that when I do, I’ll lose your respect. And your love.”

  “Because you still love her?”

  “No, Carla. I don’t love her. That’s not why. I’m afraid that you’ll think poorly of me because I’m ashamed of who I was and how I lived my life when I was human.”

  “You were Bécquer, when you were human. Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. How can you be ashamed? You’re admired, adored by legions of fans that have read your poetry, your legends, your letters.”

  Bécquer laughed. “My fans, as you call them, do not love me. They love the myth I created after my death. My so-called death, anyway. During my life, I was an unknown, a failure as a writer, a dilettante of sorts, working clerk jobs I couldn’t keep, writing pieces for newspapers, articles nobody read, searching all the time for that elusive perfect nirvana Lucrezia gave me when I was a child.”

  “So you loved her back then?”

  “If you call that love. What I felt for her was more like an addiction, a disease that stole my soul and poisoned my mind. And because in my ignorance I called that love, I spent my life searching for the intangible — a silver moon ray, a pair of green eyes, the impossible I could never have.”

  “Did Lucrezia love you?”

  “I doubt Lucrezia was capable of love. Besides, I was eleven when I met her, a boy still grieving the death of his mother. How could she love me? I was her human pet, nothing more. Later, maybe she coveted my young body and the adoration she saw in my eyes. And so for a while, we were lovers drinking in each other: me in her beauty, she in the glow of my love for her.

  “Until one day, she left me, without explanation, without saying goodbye. I spent the rest of my life longing for her, while she in turn took me as her lover or rejected me, only to taunt me again when I fell in love with someone else.

  “And, all the time, Cesar watched us — either jealous or amused, I do not know — biding his time to avenge himself for the few moments of bliss Lucrezia gave me.”

  “Cesar? The same Cesar who ordered you to kill yourself?”

  “The very same. Cesar was Lucrezia’s lover and her brother. In life and after death.”

  Of course. Cesar was Cesar Borgia, Federico had told me. Which made Lucrezia the infamously beautiful Lucrezia Borgia.

  “Cesar made her immortal against the Elder’s wishes,” Bécquer explained. “Apart from beauty, she had no merits of her own. She was not artistically, nor scientifically gifted, and thus by the Elder’s rules, she did not qualify to become immortal. But Alexander, the Elders’ leader, loved Cesar at the time and allowed Cesar’s defiance to go unchallenged. Eventually Alexander moved on to other lovers, and Cesar continued his affair with Lucrezia. They were still together when I met her in Sevilla.”

  “Is that why he hates you? Because once upon a time you and Lucrezia were lovers?”

  “He hates me becau
se Lucrezia made me an immortal against his wishes and, in his wrath at her defiance, Cesar killed her. He blames me for his actions.”

  “If you knew he hates you, how could you believe him when he told you the Elders had sentenced you to death?”

  “He believed me because I said the truth,” A deep, sarcastic voice answered from the door.

  Letting go of my hands, Bécquer leaned forward, his body tense as if preparing for a fight. A fight he couldn’t win, even if he were not bedridden, because the man standing by the door, dark and beautiful like an angel fallen from grace, was Cesar.

  And Cesar was immortal.

  Chapter Twenty: Cesar

  “The Elders want you dead,” the man said in heavily accented English as he stepped into the room. “I should know for I am one of them.”

  “You want me dead, Cesar, not the Elders. Their sentence was to make me mortal.”

  “And so you are, my dear Gustavo, quite mortal indeed. Unfortunately, mortals have a nasty habit of dying and so it is that a sentence to be mortal is equivalent, in my opinion, to one of death.”

  With a speed that would have betrayed him as being immortal had I not already known, Cesar reached his side then turned to me. “But I see you have company,” he said, appraising me. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  “You must leave.” Where Cesar’s voice had been sarcastic, Bécquer’s was cold. “The Elders are aware that you manipulated me, bending their sentence with your lies so I would agree to end my life. If I die today, they will hold you responsible. And if you hurt Carla, I will haunt you for all eternity.”

  Cesar laughed. “Would you really haunt me for all eternity? How poetic. But, of course, you always had a way with words. While I was more of a man of action. As for your lady, Carla did you say?” He turned again to me. “I’m Cesar. Cesar Borgia, at your service.”

  Grabbing my hand, he bent to kiss it. The chivalrous gesture an ominous sign, a warning that he set the rules.

  Bécquer swore and yanked the IV tubing from his arm. I held my breath, expecting the alarm to go off. But it didn’t. The numbers in the machine were frozen, which meant we had once more stepped out of time. Nobody would come to help us now. Which really made no difference as no human would stand a chance against an immortal. At the thought, the fear inside me grew exponentially.