35

ADRIANA

Friday, June 1, 2012

B y the time Iago finally stopped talking, the sun had just hidden itself on the other side of the bay, leaving ever-darker strips of cloud in its wake. I was still sitting on the white sofa, wrapped up in the fur of some animal I couldn’t identify. I was hugging my knees, concerned not to let go of the computer in my lap. He continued to pace barefoot up and down the green living-room carpet, constantly looking toward the windows as if, by highlighting the direction of the outside world, some force of nature would come to corroborate his story. I knew it was my turn to say something, but for once no words emerged. In their place, irritation, disappointment, and rage had been piling up like heavy rocks inside my head.

Another part of me was trying to sketch out some sort of explanation that would justify this incredible senselessness. I rejected the possibility that it was simply a joke, a bit of nonsense between friends, a practical joke between colleagues. I could see the gravity of the matter in his face. I tried to imagine the motives someone might have for coming up with such a ridiculous smokescreen. It had to be linked to what I’d overheard in the tunnel. Something he had to hide from me at all cost. Maybe to protect himself, or to protect me from finding out the truth. Maybe someone else was behind it: some government, a group of lobbyists, a pharmaceutical company, private capital, industrial espionage, whatever. I was on the outside, and Iago wanted it to stay that way.

Fine.

Message received.

What I found humiliating was that he would need to invent a lie of such magnitude in order to keep me away from the truth. There were simpler ways. I would have understood. But the truth is that, at that moment, more than any other emotion, I felt insulted—as an expert in archaeology, and as a casual partner for one night, or whatever it was we had been.

“And so?” he pressured me.

“And so what?” I answered, in a foul mood.

“Now it’s your turn to speak. Say it, whatever it is, please. Just give me something.”

And I did. I looked at him with a blind, crushing fury.

“You’re angry,” he whispered, dejected. It wasn’t a question.

“Listen, I’m going to ask you just one thing. I don’t want you to see me really angry, and you’re one second away from that, so I don’t want to hear one more word of that absurd ‘immortals’ story.”

“Ancients,” he corrected me.

“Stop doing that!” I shouted at him, unable to control myself.

“Doing what?”

“What you’re doing: continuing to persist with your story, extending the lie.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want to see me extending a lie, believe me!” he let fly, almost without intending to.

There was something in his tone that made my hair stand on end, because I sensed he was sincere. And for the first time I asked myself if I really knew Iago at all or if, up to now, I had just been dealing with a magnificent disguise.

“Look, Iago,” I said finally, “I won’t say anything about what I’ve just heard. I never had any intention of doing so. Period. What you’ve just told me was in very bad taste.” I inhaled deeply to calm myself down. It didn’t work. “I’m exhausted, disillusioned, frustrated, and a thousand things more. Don’t walk me to the door.”

I expelled it all and then got up, laptop in hand, without waiting for his reaction.

Then he exploded. “Do you honestly believe that I’m capable of inventing everything I’ve told you?” he asked, beside himself. “All of it? What would be the point if it weren’t true? Do you have any idea how much I just exposed myself? Do you have any idea how few people we’ve ever told about our situation?”

He bit his knuckles in despair. “I guess you want proof, right?” he snapped, turning toward me.

I didn’t say a word. I refused to play along with his game.

“Do you want proof?” he repeated, shouting.

“Do you have any?” I replied, trying to sound as skeptical as I could as I returned to the couch.

Okay. Game on , I thought, changing my mind.

“We have objects that we’ve been preserving for various reasons over the millennia. We could let you have them so you could analyze them, but what use would that be? Would that convince you?”

I thought it over for a moment. We exchanged looks, and for once we were in agreement. I shook my head in silence.

“Even then you wouldn’t believe me, would you?” he said in a somber voice. “You’d think we’d got them from archaeological digs or on the black market, or that we had a lucky find in some antique store. Nothing could prove to you that they’re ours.”

“True enough. I don’t need a display of relics. I still wouldn’t believe you,” I was forced to admit. Then it occurred to me: “Give me a sample of saliva from each of you. I’ll send them to be analyzed. When I worked at El Sidrón on the Neanderthal Genome Project, I was in contact with the team of geneticists. I didn’t work directly with them—I was on site removing the bones—but at our meetings, we pooled our results. I’m not an expert in genetics, but I know several laboratories worldwide that offer ancestor searches and searches of family migration routes. You send them your sample in a kit they deliver to your house, and you get back the migration routes of all your ancestors. Do you want to prove your story? Then let me send off samples from the four of you. It would be interesting, wouldn’t it?

“If I haven’t got lost following your convoluted family history, the results would tell us that Héctor’s parents arrived in northern Spain at least twenty-eight thousand years ago, that your maternal line originated in Denmark about ten thousand years ago, that Jairo’s line comes from the Russian steppes two thousand seven hundred years ago, and that Kyra’s line was in France two thousand five hundred years ago. If I see those conclusions, I’ll believe you.”

“Look, Adriana, I’m improvising. I had no idea you were so close to the truth. We can’t provide any DNA samples for you to have analyzed. I know those companies. There are two in the US, Codeandme and Genetics, and one in Iceland, YourCodex.”

He knows them? I thought in amazement. I should have taken that as proof that he was no layman, that he knew what he was talking about, but there were a thousand other reasons to explain why he would know about them. I knew about them, and I didn’t go around pretending to be immortal.

“I know how they work,” he continued, “and we can’t take the risk. In the first place, those results would attract too much attention, especially the oldest ones. Twenty-eight thousand years without moving from Cantabria is a lot of millennia, and it’s unusual for someone to have not one single ancestor from elsewhere in all that time. That’s how they would interpret it. Second, those laboratories serve as genetic databases. So our DNA samples would be stored there for other studies.

“Look, Kyra and I have no idea what surprises our DNA is hiding. We’re on our own in this research, we’re beginners with few resources, and I’m keen to keep it that way. But a laboratory may find our results nonsensical and decide to check us out further without us ever knowing about it. We can’t live with that uncertainty.”

“That came across as really—I mean totally—paranoid,” I pointed out to him.

“We can’t expose ourselves, Adriana,” he said slowly.

“We won’t tell them they’re yours. We’ll conceal your identities,” I said, tightening the noose a little more.

“They’ll find out!” he yelled back at me again. “They’ll end up knowing! The samples will attract too much attention.”

Well , I thought, this has taken an interesting turn.

“If what you’re saying is true, I could get a sample from anywhere without any of you knowing. A fingerprint on one of Kyra’s glasses, or on one of those bowls of hazelnuts that Héctor is so fond of . . . I can do it,” I said defiantly. “You know I can.”

“Would you do it?” He positioned himself in front of me, scrutinizing me.

“Do you want me to believe you or not?” I challenged him again.

Fine.

Game over.

I could almost see the link between us being cut. Something delicate that had never worked out. Iago had just given up on me.

He went over to the door of the apartment and left it open for me to leave. I tried to hold his gaze. Impossible. His eyes were like ice. They hurt. They were impenetrable. They were no longer navigable.

I stood there, tongue-tied, incapable of making my way through the pieces of ice. For the first time since I had met him, I felt I was looking at an ancient man. He was unbending, severe, and withered inside.

When I crossed his threshold in silence carrying my laptop, disturbed and stiff with tension, he addressed me as one would an enemy: “You . . . don’t . . . have . . . my . . . permission,” he said, dragging out the words so that they would be more hurtful.

And hurt they did. They battered me inside for the rest of the night, which I spent wandering fitfully through the small streets of Puertochico.

When I got home, I dropped onto my bed, and sleep finally came to bring me a little respite.