He crossed the bridge and drove to a central plaza. He left his car parked near the church and the town hall. He continued on foot and found that the village extended for only a couple more streets. The countryside opened up before him, a vast white surface that stretched to the crags of the high mountains in the distance. The wind buffeted his face. He realized he was shivering.
Elías turned back to the ruined village. In the snow-covered streets, the only visible tracks were those of wandering animals. An intimidating loneliness took hold of him. Irrational fear crept into his heart. Perhaps a bear would appear or a pack of wolves would descend upon him. L’s description made sense now. It was a ghost town. It was past four o’clock and he needed to hurry. He didn’t want to be trapped here in the dark. These streets were possessed of a deep silence only the wind dared to profane. They’d been forgotten by man and by God many years before. He needed to get out.
He found a fairly large building on the main street. COOPERATIVE was the single word on the sign. The unlocked door opened to a sort of receiving hall with doors leading to several other rooms.
In the first of them, ten stainless steel tanks rose to the ceiling. Elías knew what a winery looked like; these were for fermentation. The filth of the room and the welter of gaps and cracks that marred the steel surfaces showed they’d long been abandoned, but somehow the distinct smell of fermentation still lingered. His stomach growled; the sweet odor subtly whetted the appetite. He returned to the receiving area and went to the next room. It was completely dark. He fumbled at the light switches, but, of course, nothing happened. He used his phone’s flashlight and found towering racks of barrels lining a narrow central passage. Here was the heart of the winery where the product had been aged. The vaulted ceiling high overhead reinforced the sensation of standing in a temple.
Elías followed the passage to where it ended at an immense wine rack that covered the entire wall. A few stray bottles were visible in the uppermost reaches. He put his phone down and climbed up to retrieve one. The brand was W, and the image on the label was attributed to Tàpies. A succession of red strokes resembling a baroque signature included a squiggle in one corner that formed a small W. It was dated 1985. He found bottles from other vintages with labels illustrated with paintings by Matta, Dorothea Tanning, Dalí, César Baldaccini, Andy Warhol, Hisao Domoto, Picasso, Rufino Tamayo, Lucian Freud, and then, on a 1990 label, the very painting that had been stolen from him. So it was a real Bacon after all.
All right; now at least he understood the connection between the paintings. It seemed this winery had hired famous artists to create the labels for the vintages. But what astonished Elías was the caliber of the artists and the many decades of wine these labels presented. The oldest he found was from 1907 with an image by Kandinsky.
He left and opened the last door. Behind it he discovered a conveyer belt with bottles still on it. Everything was covered with dust and spiderwebs. The production process looked simple, almost primitive: insert the bottles, fill them with wine, cork and seal them, apply the label. The unused labels were dirty and discolored, deteriorating as they lay ready for bottles that would never arrive. Elías checked the year to see when production had ceased.
Four years before he was born. Thirty years ago.
He saw another door in the rear wall. The lock quickly yielded to his knife. Inside, he found a small lab: carafes for wine, test tubes, stills, funnels, retorts, and refrigerator coils. And a box full to the brim with empty plastic vials just like those strewn across the floor in L’s uncle’s cottage. The lab’s product, whatever it was, must have been distributed in those vials.
He went outside and noticed a fountain in a side yard. It had two spigots, one labeled WATER and the other, WINE. The inscription read, If you can’t please her with water, forget her with wine.
He walked to the central plaza. The town hall was locked, so he checked out the church instead. It was built in the Romanesque style with a single nave and a very tall tower. The façade was stark—a tiny rose window was the only visible decoration. The heavy wooden door yielded to his push. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom inside. Narrow windows of alabaster glowed with a muted translucence that conferred an intimate serenity to the space. To his astonishment, the only visible Christian symbol was a bas-relief sculpted around the baptismal font that showed a man bent almost double. Elías assumed the figure was an Agote, since they’d settled in the Pyrenees, mostly in Navarra, after fleeing France. All the villagers must have been Agotes, he realized with a start. If they’d shared the place with Catholics, there would have been a separate door for them as dictated by tradition.
He approached the baptismal font. Instead of holy water, it contained traces of a dark liquid. Elías thought he could guess what it was. He tested his hypothesis by sniffing it. Wine. He dipped a finger in for a taste; it was still good. It certainly hadn’t been there for thirty years, for wine left out soon dried up or turned into vinegar. He felt a shiver of apprehension. Was this place haunted? He was in a church, but it was a sanctuary bereft of religious iconography. No statues of Christ or the Virgin or saints, and no illustrated Bible stories. Vines with shriveled leaves covered the walls. He made out a Cubist mural that showed a grape harvest amid twisting vines that formed many iterations of the letter W. The altar at the far end of the nave was covered with a white sheet mottled with dark spots. Wine stains? The rituals observed here weren’t Catholic, and it wasn’t Christ they worshipped. Perhaps they had replaced Him with their wine. It was obviously of great importance to them.
Elías had first heard of the Agotes on a trip through the French Pyrenees, and he’d found their story so extraordinary he’d later done some serious research. For centuries, Catholics had accused them of some intractable contamination, banning them from working in the fields or handling food of any kind. Court decisions in 1817 and 1818 granted them full status as citizens and prohibited such discrimination. They were tolerated and eventually integrated into the larger society. By the late nineteenth century, he knew, a village of such former outcasts could well have organized a wine cooperative. Hard work and attention to detail could have paid off. Their wine could have become sought after and could have brought profits sufficient to hire famous painters. Perhaps wine, their principal source of income, had assumed such a central role in their culture that they’d replaced Catholic symbols with others more to their liking.
Here, too, empty plastic vials were strewn across the altar and on the floor beneath it.
“You’re late,” said a calm voice behind him.
“What?”
Elías’s heart nearly leaped out of his chest. He stood frozen for a moment, not daring to move. He heard movement and turned to see an elderly man hobbling toward him. Long strands of thinning hair hung around the man’s face. His shabby clothing looked even older and more worn than he did.
“Nothing left for you to carry off, boy. Nothing.”
“I wasn’t planning to take anything.” Elías went to him and offered his hand.
The man ignored it and didn’t stop. He slowly made his way toward the altar.
“Do you live here? I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”
The old man turned and glared fiercely. “Be gone, you fiend! You should never have come back.”
“You’re confusing me with someone else, sir! I’ve never been in this place before.”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” the old man muttered. “Same face, same lies. Only a demon could look the same after thirty years.”
“I’m not whoever you think I am.”
“We punished you right here.” The man had finally reached the altar. “Those blotches on the sheet were made by your blood.”
“Why did you punish me?” Elías moved closer. He felt a shiver go up his spine.
“You took it all away. Everything. Right down to the ground we walked upon.” The old man spun around with a knife in his hand and lu
nged.
Elías parried with practiced ease and disarmed him. “Are you insane?”
The old man tottered and fell. Elías tried to help him up, but the fellow batted away his hand.
Elías tried his best to keep calm. “Do you live here?”
“I’ll never forgive you.” Those ancient eyes glared at him with a hatred that threatened to cut him to pieces. “We should’ve killed you when we had the chance.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think I’d better leave now.”
Keeping his eyes on the senile madman, Elías backed out of the church.
Elías hurried back to the town hall and kicked the front door with all his might. It opened. He’d take a quick look around and then be on his way before nightfall—and before the geezer could catch up.
A notice from the bishop’s office still lay on the mayor’s desk. Maybe the old lunatic had placed it there in some irrational attempt to freeze the day of catastrophe. On official Church stationery, it stated that the civil authorities had granted the episcopal authority deeds to all property in the village. Not only the church and school, but the town hall, all houses, the mill, and the surrounding agricultural lands as well. The bishop granted the villagers six months to organize an orderly departure. Then, it said, the police would evict anyone still there.
You took it all away. Everything. Right down to the ground we walked upon.
Suddenly, it made sense. Elías used his phone browser to check the property registrations. Many decades ago, the government had granted the Church the privilege of claiming any unregistered real estate. The Church wasn’t required to prove usufruct or ownership for any length of time, and the Church hierarchy had begun seriously exploiting that loophole in the nineties to claim real estate regarded for generations as communal property.
He recalled reading about a controversy concerning the deed to the mosque in Córdoba. The scandal had prompted the government to reform the practice, but by then it was too late. Twenty years too late, some blogger had written. The Church had already stolen everything it could lay its hands on.
This town, for example, Elías thought. The bishop’s office had seized all village property, evicted the inhabitants, and ended their way of life. With the exception of one ancient lunatic who’d somehow managed to stay.
But why had the old man accused Elías of stealing? Was he so divorced from reality that he perceived any stranger as a threat?
You haven’t changed a bit. Same face, same lies.
Elías went back to his car thoroughly confused. The Church had appropriated the town, then left it to crumble and collapse.
Whatever for?
Only one explanation was possible: the ecclesiastical authorities had decided to make the town disappear. They wanted to wipe it off the map.
And they’d certainly succeeded.
41
The bishop’s vicar was a man of fixed tastes and habits. Their meetings always took place in room 309. She always came to the hotel dressed as she had the first time: the short red dress with matching shoes and black stockings. Maybe the old guy appreciated this costume because it evoked some childish notion of the devil for him.
L opened the door and found the vicar waiting for her. He was standing at the window and gazing out through the gap between the two heavy curtains. She sensed instantly that something had happened. Her intuition warned her to run if she wanted to stay alive.
She slammed the door behind her. “Is something wrong?”
The desktop was empty. They’d agreed at their first meeting that, before the ritual of confession, he would place a monetary donation there to encourage her to reform.
“That’s something you’ll have to tell me. Won’t you?”
“I don’t understand, Father. I’m sorry.”
He turned and stared at her. “We have a problem concerning the papal visit.”
She kept silent and waited.
“Where are you from?” he said. L’s jaw dropped. “Answer me!”
“I was born in Madrid.”
“That’s a lie. You were born in the backcountry of Navarra.”
The threat in his voice was palpable, and L suddenly felt terribly vulnerable. She shouldn’t have trusted Elías, shouldn’t have assumed that the polite young man would just drop everything else and follow the trail she’d laid for him. Elías was useless. He’d become hopelessly bourgeois in body and soul. She’d overestimated him.
Her fear gave way to anger. “Who’s been talking about me?”
“Who gave you up, you mean? I happened to find out, just by chance, that my friend and I have been frequenting the same woman. Quite a coincidence. A couple of phone calls to check the details, and bingo,” he said with a snap of his fingers. “Now it’s my turn to tell you a story. I don’t have to, but I wanted to look into your face one last time. Your perfect face,” he said with a sigh. “You came to me as a sinner in need of redemption, and I took you in. I see now it was all a farce. You’ve never for a moment repented any of your actions. You only wanted to hold me and the Holy Mother Church up to ridicule.”
L had never perceived the slightest threat from the man before this. Now she saw that the real threat was the fantasy he’d created to justify himself. She turned to leave.
“Wait! I haven’t told you the story.”
“I’ll live.”
Then she heard him say something so unexpected that it made her let go of the doorknob.
“It’s not the painting that interests us most.” The man sounded nervous and morose. It was clear he took no pleasure in having caught her. “Oh, it does interest the bishop. Yes, of course. He has a personal stake in that collection, and I’m afraid he’s communicated his interest to the pope. It would certainly please His Holiness if we were to present him with the complete collection of degenerate art, especially considering what it symbolizes. Nevertheless, it would be a mere trifle to him. He finds something else much more interesting. I’m sorry that when all’s said and done you won’t be meeting him. I’m sure you’d have found him very attractive.”
“Then what does interest him?”
“Oh, right, of course. The crucial thing is to safeguard the work we in the Church have been carrying on for thousands of years. We already tried to eliminate your ridiculous little village, but instead of accepting your fate, the lot of you banded together and traveled around the region. That complicated things. And you, my dear, complicated them more than anyone else. The paintings aren’t that important. The ideas are the essential thing.”
“Ideas?”
“My understanding is that this W drug strips away every convention, social norm, guideline, rule—whatever. It’s a very, very dangerous drug.”
“Dangerous to the Church.”
“It’s a direct threat to established tradition and the social fabric. A menace to the society in which we live. What would happen if its use became widespread? We work through education and social pressure, a tedious and time-consuming approach. Too much W in the hands of the people would endanger everything we’ve accomplished.”
“It would endanger your Church, that’s all—a corrupt institution that serves only itself. W could draw people away from the Church, sure, but it would help them to think for themselves. And that’s a far surer way for them to find the path to the true Gospel of Christ. W might even give rise to a new church, an institution that would actually devote itself to helping people.”
“That drug must disappear.”
L realized his threat wasn’t only against W; it was against her physical existence as the keeper of the formula.
“What a shame,” she replied.
“What?”
“It’s a shame you don’t want to hear the story I’d rehearsed for you today. It’s about a pervert, a priest, actually, one who likes to masturbate while listening to stories about my most depraved clients.”
The man waved her away with a disgusted gesture and went to the door. He t
urned and pulled out his mobile phone. “I almost forgot. A friend wants a photo of you. May God guide you along the rest of your short path through life, baby.”
The vicar vanished through the doorway, and two men entered. The younger couldn’t have been thirty yet. He was dressed entirely in black. He sported a military buzz cut, and his hard face was disfigured with several deep scars.
L’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of the second man. Around fifty, he wore his sparse hair long and slicked back from a face with tiny eyes and a wide pointed jaw that gave him a sinister yet somehow attractive appearance. He wore a double-breasted jacket over an untucked white shirt and jeans. His shoes were black.
“We meet again at last.” Several days’ growth of beard softened the hard set of his mouth. Thin lips and large teeth were framed by tiny wrinkles that appeared with his crocodile smile. “I wouldn’t have bothered if you’d been any other whore.”
“It’s so good see you. I thought nobody was going to save me from that pervert.”
L knew him well, knew his elegant posture and arrogant, precise movements. In truth, her relationship with him was the closest she’d ever come to romance.
“I adore your sense of humor.” His hollow smile grew broader. “I really missed it.”
“I hope that’s not all you missed.” L’s face was impassive as she sized things up. Desperate situations always pushed her to the top of her game. But this time, she saw no way out. In no time at all, this situation was going to deteriorate from totally fucked to inescapably fucked.
“No, you know very well that that wasn’t all. There’s something else I’ve dreamed about every day since you left.”
“We had a good time.”
The Dark Circus Page 23