70

ADRIANA

Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Day of the Dead

I bent over and put my ear to her mouth. Thankfully, she was still breathing; she was only unconscious. I pictured the tough battle that had taken place between them minutes before my arrival. More anxious than I was prepared to acknowledge, I pushed open the door to the Restoration Laboratory and ran to the office, ever more anxious, ever more nervous, and scared to death, I have to admit.

Take your time; he could be anywhere.

The second door, the secret door only the family knew about, was open. Everywhere was dark and silent, as if the building itself was striving to hide its owner, protecting him. I’d never felt the air to be as malignant as it was that day. I turned on the lights to get my bearings, and I could see Jairo typing furiously on the computer keyboard. I approached inch by inch as he strove to copy material onto a MAC flashdrive.

“All I want is confirmation,” I yelled at him, without daring to come any closer.

Much to my surprise, I didn’t find a cold, arrogant Jairo, an assassin to reproach for his crime. Instead, I found a grieving man, as affected by the most recent turn of events as I was.

“If only you could understand my motives, all the things I had to do to get Lyra involved. I was desperate to have children, Adriana. Do you think it was easy to kill two children related to me, and my therapist? And now it turns out she was your mother . . . ” he said, shaking his head in a gesture of helplessness. “I can honestly swear that until today I didn’t know you were her daughter. It’s a dramatic coincidence. Now, and forever, it’s your mother I killed, and you don’t know how much that pains me. It puts a distance between us for good.”

“Of course it does,” I said. “Stop justifying yourself; you’re just a murderer.”

“But are you listening to what I’m telling you?” he cried desperately. “No . . . You’re determined to make me the villain in this story.”

And I could see pain, pain at being misunderstood. Then, in response to my obstinate silence, he changed. I think he resumed his normal role.

“Fine, so be it,” he whispered. “You want to see the Nagorno your prejudice has fabricated, the barbarian born on the steppes. I thought you’d progressed beyond scratching the surface, but no, how could you? You’re just an efímera .”

“You became capable of killing her when you discovered she was going to warn Lyra?”

If I had ever seen any humanity in him earlier, it had completely disappeared. Now he was himself, Nagorno, with his icy, serpentlike voice.

“We both know that’s a rhetorical question, though you’ve won the right to know the details. You know, this business has made me recall that day when I went up the stairs to her office early and surprised her poking her nose into my business. I assume you were the girl on horseback in the photo on her desk, right?”

I nodded my head, because I didn’t want him to hear the tremble in my voice.

“Well, I have to thank you for making things so easy for me. At first your mother refused to take the pills in the bottle. I knew she kept the bottle in her drawer, because I’d once seen her covertly taking a couple of pills as I arrived for my appointment. I’d have killed her anyway, but the idea of suicide seemed a plausible solution, and a much cleaner one for both of us. I had to threaten her by saying I’d take the photo with me and go after you if she didn’t obey me. She was very dignified, I have to say; she didn’t beg or fall apart. You know I’ve always admired strong women. Your mother, wherever it was I dispatched her to, commands my respect.”

I locked away my rage inside a well-protected spot in my head where I could have access to it once all this was over. Iago hadn’t arrived yet, Kyra was out of action, and Jairo had just stolen the telomere research and was about to make his escape. I think the only thing in my mind was I didn’t want a world that contained his tainted bloodline. I had to take the flashdrive from him without him noticing. But how could I approach the spider if I was the insect?

First, eliminate the barriers , I told myself.

“Do you know what I’m feeling right now?” I asked him without coming any closer. “Yes, I already know the answer. You’re not the least bit interested, because I’m an efímera . But at least grant me the right to unburden myself.”

“As you please,” he agreed.

“Relief, considerable relief. Don’t get me wrong. I despise you for what you did, but I’ve spent half my life believing my mother committed suicide because of our differences when I was an unbearable teenager. The world seems a lighter burden to me now.”

“I don’t know that feeling,” he admitted with a shrug of his shoulders as he put the flashdrive into the inside pocket of his burgundy jacket.

So now what? I wondered. Jairo had to leave, and I was in his way, blocking his exit. That called for a change in tactics. Look for some connection.

“I know you’re going to go, and that I’ll probably never see you again in my lifetime, so why not be honest with you? You have the right to know certain facts, too.”

“What facts?” he asked, approaching me slowly.

“I hesitated between you and Iago right from the start,” I said.

“I knew it!” he whispered, allowing himself a look of triumph.

“The worst bit was when you took up with Elisa; I felt such jealousy. And you messed it up with your little scene on the rock ledge. If it hadn’t been for that, I would have gone with you.”

“It would have been the right choice. You’ll be bored for the rest of your life with Iago.”

“I know. He continues to be nothing more than a savage.”

I was now so close to him that I whispered that last sentence into his wrinkle-free face. Which then gave rise to a moment during which I glued my body to his, and anything could have happened between us.

Mission accomplished. The flashdrive was mine.

“He’s always been a wild man,” Jairo continued, unaware of my last move. “And he used to scream like a savage when we raped him during all those nights my mother demanded Héctor’s presence. Your Iago was a great help in gaining me the respect of my people.” He noticed that I’d gone pale. “He hasn’t told you anything about that? What do you think he used his miracle plant for? In the end he needed it more than the oldest horseman in my tribe.”

Mother of God! Ten years old and already ordering the sodomy of his seven-thousand-year-old brother.

“You son of a bitch . . . ” I spat at him under my breath.

A second later his hand was encircling my throat like the previous time, except that on this occasion he lifted me up high and threw me against the wall.

“No one—do you hear me?—no one in three thousand years has survived insulting me in that way.”

“That’s true,” said a voice I didn’t recognize behind me. “Until now.”

Someone had finally arrived, but I failed to discover who it was, because my skull ricocheted against the concrete wall and I didn’t hear anything more.