Fermín went up to his friend and smiled at him weakly from the other side of the diesel drum. Daniel’s eyes shone in the light of the fire.

“If what you’re trying to do is catch pneumonia,” ventured Fermín, “may I remind you that the North Pole is exactly in the opposite direction.”

Daniel ignored his words and stood there, staring at the blaze as it devoured the pages, which shriveled among the flames as if an invisible hand were turning them one by one.

“Bea must be worried, Daniel. Why don’t we go back?”

Daniel looked up and gazed blankly at Fermín, as if he’d never seen him before.

“Daniel?”

“Where is it?” asked Daniel, in a cold voice that lacked all inflection.

“Excuse me?”

“The gun. What have you done with it, Fermín?”

“I gave it to the Sisters of Charity.”

A frozen smile surfaced on Daniel’s lips. Fermín, who had never felt so close to losing Daniel forever, stepped closer and put his arm around him. “Let’s go home, Daniel. Please.”

At last Daniel nodded, and little by little, in complete silence, they made their way back.

* * *

Dawn was breaking when Bea heard the door of the apartment open and Daniel’s footsteps in the hall. She’d been sitting for hours in the dining-room armchair, a blanket over her shoulders. Daniel’s figure appeared in the corridor. If he saw her, he did nothing to show it. He walked past her and made his way to Julián’s bedroom, which was in the back, overlooking the small square by the church of Santa Ana. Bea stood up and followed him. She found Daniel in the bedroom doorway, gazing at the sleeping child.

Bea put her hand on his shoulder. “Where were you?” she whispered.

Daniel turned around and looked into her eyes.

“When is all this going to end, Daniel?” she murmured.

“Soon,” he said. “Soon.”

Libera Me

Madrid
January 1960

1

In the gray, 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.