IN THE GREY, metallic dawn Ariadna faced the long avenue bordered by cypress trees. She held a bunch of red roses in her hand, which she’d bought on the way, by the entrance to a graveyard. There was complete silence. Not a single birdsong could be heard, no breeze dared caress the blanket of dead leaves covering the cobblestones. With no other company than the sound of her own footsteps, Ariadna covered the distance to the large spiked gates guarding the entrance to the estate, crowned with the words
VILLA MERCEDES
Mauricio Valls’s palace loomed behind an Arcadia of gardens and groves. Towers and dormers punctuated an ashen sky. Ariadna, a speck of white in the shade, studied the shape of the house that could be glimpsed between statues, hedges and fountains. She thought it looked like a monstrous creature that had crept up, fatally wounded, to that corner of the forest. The gate was half open. Ariadna stepped in.
As she walked, she noticed the railway tracks running through the gardens, circling the perimeter of the estate. A miniature train, with a steam engine and two cars, seemed to be stranded among the bushes. She kept walking along the paved path leading up to the main house. The fountains were dry, their stone angels and marble Madonnas blackened. The trees’ branches were covered in countless white chrysalises, now empty, like miniature tombs made of candy floss. A swarm of spiders hung from threads in the air. Ariadna crossed the bridge over the large oval swimming pool. Its water, greenish and covered in a fine layer of shiny algae, was strewn with the corpses of small birds, as if some curse had made them drop from the sky. Farther away were empty garages and staff buildings, buried in the shadows.
Ariadna climbed the stairs leading to the front door. She knocked three times before realizing that it too was open. Looking back, she took in the atmosphere of ruin that permeated the estate: with the fall of the emperor and his privileges, the servants had fled the palace. Ariadna pushed open the door and stepped into the house. It already smelled of a graveyard, of oblivion. A velvety half-light tightly gripped the network of corridors and staircases opening up before her. She stood there, motionless, a white spectre at the doors of purgatory, staring at the dead splendor with which Mauricio Valls had dressed up his days of glory.
A faraway lament reached her ears. It came from the first floor and sounded like the feeble whine of a dying animal. She walked up the wide staircase unhurriedly. The walls hinted at the outlines of stolen paintings. On either side of the stairs were empty pedestals on which she could still make out the marks left by looted figures and busts. When Ariadna reached the first floor, she stopped and listened for the moaning again. It came from a room at the end of the corridor, which she headed slowly towards. The door was ajar, and a powerful stench wafted from it, brushing her face.
Ariadna walked across the darkened room and approached a four-poster bed. In that light it looked like a funeral hearse. An arsenal of machines and instruments sat idly on one side of the bed, disconnected and pushed back against the wall. The carpet was strewn with rubble and abandoned oxygen tanks. Ariadna stepped over those objects and pulled back the veil surrounding the bed. Behind it she discovered a human figure twisted upon itself, as if its bones had turned to jelly and its whole anatomy had been recast by pain. The figure’s bloodshot eyes, enlarged on a skeletal face, observed her suspiciously. That guttural groan, halfway between weeping and suffocation, came out of her throat once more. Señora Valls had lost her hair, her nails, and most of her teeth.
Ariadna gazed at her without compassion. She sat down on one side of the bed and leaned over her. “Where’s my sister?” she asked.
Valls’s wife tried to form words. Ariadna ignored the stink she gave off and drew her face close to her lips.
“Kill me,” she heard her plead.