At last Mauricio Valls looked down and stepped into the garage with Vicente, who carried a small suitcase. Mercedes panicked. She had dreamed about this moment a thousand times without understanding what it meant. She rushed down the stairs, stumbling over bits of furniture and carpets in the steely gloom of daybreak. When she reached the garden, the cold, cutting breeze spat in her face. She hurried down the marble staircase and ran toward the garage through a wasteland of discarded masks, fallen chairs, and garlands of lanterns still blinking and swaying in the mist. She heard the car’s engine start and the wheels steal across the gravel drive. By the time Mercedes reached the drive, which led to the front gates of the estate, the car was already speeding away. She ran after it, ignoring the sharp gravel cutting her feet. Just before the mist swallowed the car forever, her father turned his head one last time, throwing her a despairing look through the rear window. She went on running until the sound of the engine was lost in the distance, and the spiked gates at the entrance to the estate rose before her.

An hour later Rosaura, the maid who came every morning to wake her up and dress her, found her sitting at the edge of the swimming pool. Her feet were dangling in the water, which was tinted with threads of her blood. Dozens of masks drifted over its surface like paper boats.

“Señorita Mercedes, for heaven’s sake . . .”

The girl was trembling when Rosaura wrapped her in a blanket and took her back to the house. By the time they reached the marble staircase, it was starting to sleet. A hostile wind stirred through the trees, knocking down garlands, tables, and chairs. Mercedes, who had also dreamed about this moment, knew that the house had begun to die.

Kyrie

Madrid
December 1959

1

Soon after ten in the morning, a black Packard drove up Gran Vía under the downpour and stopped opposite the entrance to the old Hotel Hispania. Her bedroom window was shrouded by the rain trickling down the pane, but Alicia could see the two emissaries, as gray and cold as the day, getting out of the car in their regulation raincoats and hats. Alicia looked at her watch. Good old Leandro hadn’t even waited fifteen minutes before setting the dogs on her. Thirty seconds later the phone rang. She picked it up at the first loud ring. She knew perfectly well who would be at the other end.

“Señorita Gris, good morning and all that,” Maura’s hoarse voice intoned from reception. “A couple of lizards who reek of political police have just asked for you very rudely and stepped into the elevator. I’ve sent them up to the fourteenth floor to give you a couple of minutes in case you might want to evaporate.”

“That’s very kind of you, Joaquín. What are you into today? Anything good?”