It
had taken her several years to realize, but she saw that her
grandfather had been right when he once said, "Other people's
past might be our present."
TIME
is,
indeed, strange. It carries things off to remote places we have no
access to, and yet still has a magical effect on us. Victor turned
back into a child, and she could almost see both of them: two lonely
boys who were both incredibly intelligent, maybe had the same tastes,
were ruled by their curiosity and thirst for knowledge, but also by
interests that other boys their age wouldn't dare express. The two of
them did, though, and that's what made them different. Ric was the
leader, the one who decided what had to be done, and
Victor—Vicky—complied, perhaps fearful of what might
happen if he didn't, or perhaps just hoping for his turn.
The
thing he liked most about Ric was also his biggest shortcoming: his
solitude. Abandoned by his parents, raised by an uncle who was
increasingly remote and indifferent, Ric had no boundaries, no rules
of conduct, and he thought of nothing but himself. He saw everyone
and everything around him as a theater whose only purpose was to
delight him. Victor became a regular in the audience of that theater;
but when he got older, he stopped attending the fantastic
performances.
"Ric
was unlike anyone else. He had an incredible imagination, but he was
also very down to earth. He didn't delude himself. If he wanted
something, he'd give it his all, do anything to get it, regardless of
who or what stood in his way. At first, I liked that. I suppose
that's what happens to anyone who meets a guy like that. Back then,
Ric's world revolved around sex. But he was always cynical. For him,
girls—all girls—were always inferior. When he was a kid,
he used to cut out pictures of the girls in his class and paste them
over the centerfolds' faces in girlie magazines—which he had a
ton of. Which was funny at first. But then I got tired of it. I
really couldn't stand the way he treated girls like objects. They
were just things he could get pleasure from. He never loved any of
them; he just used them. He liked to take pictures, film them naked,
in the bathroom. Sometimes he paid them, but a lot of times they
didn't even know they were being filmed. He had hidden cameras."
He
paused for a moment to look at Elisa, searching for some sign that he
should stop. But she motioned for him to continue.
"As
if that wasn't enough, he had the money and the space to do whatever
he wanted. We spent summers at Ric's family's summerhouse near a town
in Andalusia called Ollero. Sometimes we brought girls there. It was
just the two of us, and we thought we owned the world. Ric would take
raunchy pictures. And then, one day, something happened." He
smiled and pushed his glasses up on his nose. "There was this
girl I liked, and I think she liked me, too. Her name was Kelly. She
was from England and she went to our school... Kelly Graham..."
He lingered over the name for a minute. "Ric invited her over to
the house, but I didn't mind. I was sure that he knew Kelly was off
limits. But one morning... I found them ... Ric and Kelly..." He
gazed at Elisa, nodding slowly. "Well, anyway, I'm one of those
guys who only gets mad once in a blue moon, but... but..."
"But
when you do, all hell breaks loose," Elisa helped him.
"Yeah.
I called them every name in the book. I mean, looking back on it, it
was just a little kid's tantrum. We were only ten or eleven years
old. But seeing them... kissing and ...
touching
each
other... Well, let's just say it was a shock to me. Anyway. We
argued, and Ric pushed me. We were outside, on some rocks by a river.
I fell and hit my head. I was lucky there was a man there who'd come
to go fishing. He picked me up and took me to a hospital. It wasn't
anything serious: a few stitches. I think I still have the scar. But
what I wanted to tell you was ... I was out for a few hours. And when
I came to that night, Ric was there with me, begging me to forgive
him. My parents told me that he had sat by my side the whole time.
The whole time," he repeated, his eyes misty. "When I woke
up, he started crying and saying he was sorry. I think it's important
to have friends when you're a kid, to really know what friendship is.
That day, I was closer to him than ever. Does that make any sense?
You asked me what brought us together... Now, when I think about it,
I think it was things like that that brought us together."
He
fell silent and sighed deeply.
"I
forgave him, of course. In fact, I thought we'd be friends forever.
But then things changed. We grew up, our lives took different paths.
We didn't stop speaking, but somehow it was worse than that. We put
up barriers. He still kept trying to get me to be like him. He told
me he kept inviting girls to Ollero. He'd film them secretly,
sometimes while they were making love. Then he'd show them his home
movies and blackmail them. 'You think your parents would want to see
this? Or your friends?' he'd say. And he'd make them pose some more."
After another pause, he added, "Of course, he never got in
trouble with the police or anything. He was very careful, and they'd
always keep their mouths shut..."
"Did
you ever see it?" Elisa asked. "The whole blackmailing side
of things, I mean."
"No,
but he told me about it."
"I'll
bet you he was just showing off."
The
way Victor looked at her, it was as if she were someone he really
admired who'd just really let him down.
"You
don't understand... You have
no
idea
how
Ric treated them..."
"Victor,
Ric Valente might be a pervert, but deep down he's just a third-rate
clown. I know that for a fact."
"You
think you could disobey him?" he asked sharply, suddenly. His
slow manner of speech instantaneously evaporated. "You think
that if you accepted his terms, you'd be able to get out of anything
he ordered you to do?"
"What
I think is that you still admire him, despite it all." Now she
was fed up. "Valente is an idiot who's never so much as been
slapped by his parents, and you think he's an unscrupulous sadist
who'd commit the most heinous acts imaginable without batting an eye.
Or maybe you just
like
to
think that..." She shouldn't have said that, and she knew it.
Immediately, she wished she could take it back. Victor stared at her,
totally solemn.
"No,"
he said. "You're wrong about that. I don't like it at all."
"What
I meant was..."
The
cell phone rang. Almost frightened, Elisa snatched her cell off the
table to look at the screen. Unknown number.
For
a second, she recalled Valente's words the day before, his watery
eyes taking her in from behind his bangs.
I'll
tell you where you have to go, and how, what you can wear and what
you can't, and you'll listen and obey every word... And that will
just be the beginning. I'm going to have the time of my life, I
swear...
For
a second she was afraid to answer. It was like her phone's insistent
ring was inviting her to enter a different world from the one she'd
previously known, a world in which her talk with Ric Valente and
Victor's whole story were just the preamble. Maybe—she
thought—it would have been better to be a coward or to lie than
to accept his sinister invitation...
She
looked up hesitantly and glanced at Victor, who seemed to be begging
her with his hangdog eyes not to answer.
And
that was precisely what made her mind up, that private fear she
perceived in him. She wanted to prove to Ric Valente Sharpe and
Victor Lopera that she had mettle. No one and nothing was going to
scare her off.
At
least that was what she believed back then.
"Hello?"
she picked up, her voice steady, having no idea what she was about to
hear.
And
when she heard it, she froze.
After
she hung up, she stared at Victor, mouth agape.
HER
mother,
astonishingly, canceled all of her appointments at Piccarda and took
her to Barajas International Airport on Tuesday morning. She was very
obsequious, openly exclaiming how happy she was. Maybe—she
thought—what she was happy about was the fact that her little
chickadee was finally going to fly away and leave the expensive nest.
OK,
let's not be so negative, especially not now.
Her
greatest joy was seeing Victor. He was the only one who came to see
her off. He didn't give her a kiss, but he patted her back.
"Congratulations,"
he said, "though I still don't understand how you did it."
"Me
neither," she admitted.
"It
was only logical, though. That he pick both of you, I mean. You were
the top two students in the class..."
She
felt a knot in her throat. Her happiness was absolute; she wasn't
even thinking about Valente, whom she would no doubt meet up with in
Zurich. After all, neither of them had won the bet. As usual, they'd
tied.
There
was still over half an hour before her plane took off, but she wanted
to wait at the gate. So before going through security, mother and
daughter looked at each other in silence, as if deciding which of
them would take the next step. Suddenly, Elisa held out her arms and
hugged the elegant, perfumed body before her. She didn't want to cry,
but tears slid down her cheeks despite her best effort. Taken by
surprise like that, Marta Morande kissed her daughter's forehead. It
was a light, cold, discreet peck.
"I
hope you're very happy and that it all goes really well for you,
honey."
Elisa
waved and put her bag through the X-ray machine.
"Call
me, and write me, don't forget," her mother said.
"Lots
of luck, lots and lots...," Victor repeated. Even after she
could no longer hear him, watching his lips move, it seemed that he
still repeated the same thing again and again.
And
then Victor and her mother's faces were gone. She watched Madrid out
of the plane's window, and, from so high up, she felt as if she were
opening a new chapter in her life.
He
called me. He wants me to go to Zurich to work with him. It's
unbelievable.
Everything
changed for her. She'd stopped being "Robledo Morande, Elisa"
and entered a new world, totally different from the one she'd feared.
A world that seemed to be waiting for her, winking at her from up in
the sky. She smiled and closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling.
Years
later, she would think that had she even remotely suspected what that
trip held for her, she would never have boarded the plane, or even
picked up her cell phone that Sunday.
If
she'd had any idea, she would have run home and locked herself in her
room, sealing the doors and windows forever. But at the time, she
didn't have a clue. Not the slightest idea.
PART
THREE
The
Island
"The
isle is full of noises…"
SHAKESPEARE
12