The Heart Has Its Reasons (38 page)

“Don't give me all this linguistic crap. All I want to know is why, thirty years after both of their deaths, you've decided to come up with this sinister plot and get me involved.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and lowered his eyes, as if trying to find the means to focus on his answer, his gaze fixed on the horrible
taupe wall-to-wall carpet that silenced my every step in that provisional lodging.

“Because it was the only viable option to bring to light Fontana's legacy,” he finally said, raising his eyes. “The only solution that occurred to me when all the doors were closed.”

“What doors?”

“The usual ones to go through the regular channels, that is, the Modern Languages Department.”

“And who closed them to you? Luis Zarate?”

“Who else?”

I recalled the chairman's words during our dinner at Los Olivos, his rendering of the facts on the day he received Daniel in his office.

“I don't believe you. You tried to coerce him; you expected him to behave according to what best served your interests. And he didn't accept.”

“I presume that's the version he's given you.”

“A version neither more nor less convincing than yours.”

“No doubt, but inaccurate. I never tried to coerce him. I simply suggested that perhaps the department should make operative use of its resources—”

“To intervene in the Los Pinitos matter, from what I gather,” I interrupted him.

“Exactly.”

“And although you didn't tell him explicitly, by mentioning those resources, you were referring to Fontana's papers.”

“I see you're clued in on everything.”

I chose not to answer; I just waited for him to continue.

“By then I had already begun to suspect that perhaps some interesting facts could be unearthed among the documents that were left behind in Fontana's office upon his death. Irrefutable documents that would show that Los Pinitos has historical importance, a solid reason to reject the plan to build an absurd and unnecessary mall in the area.”

“Something as significant as a Franciscan mission.”

“Exactly.”

“Because if it could be proven that a mission had stood there, as Fontana had come to believe, everything could be brought to a halt.”

“Or at least it could force a reevaluation. The Santa Cecilia town hall exerts its jurisdiction over the area, but lacks an ownership title; there is no evidence regarding whom it belonged to in the distant past. If we were able to explain that the place was once the site of a historic Franciscan mission, everything would have to undergo a revision. And the project, while this matter was being resolved, would have to come to a standstill.”

“That's why you've always been so interested in knowing if the legacy contained some mention of the alleged Mission Olvido. Why you've constantly been trying to wheedle information out of me. Why you always made an effort to control my work: first you give me a book so that I can learn the history of California, then I take you to see a nearby mission . . .”

“No, Blanca,” he denied forcefully. “I have never tried to control or interfere with your work. I've always had the utmost trust in you; the only thing I've tried to do at all times is to help you go forward. But you must believe me: it all came to a head as a result of Zarate's refusal. From then on, I had no other solution than to put the wheels of SAPAM in motion, maneuver it through the department without raising suspicions, and making the announcement public. And that's how you came onto the scene.”

I was still angry and frustrated, but as we spoke I grew increasingly curious about the reasons behind that dark plot, about the complex relationship between the three of them that had led Daniel to behave in such a fashion.

“Besides, I still don't understand what the recovery of Fontana's legacy has to do with all of this. If you were only looking for specific information on a mission, why waste my time classifying his legacy down to the last detail? Why force me to put order to the thousands of tiniest pieces that make up the puzzle of his life? I've been giving it my all for the last three months, Daniel, doing a job nobody cares about,” I said, raising my voice, unable to check my outrage.

“Wait, Blanca, wait . . .”

He spoke forcefully, gesticulating with hands that he'd finally taken out of his gray pants pockets. The clothes he was wearing were completely unlike those he usually had on when relaxing in Santa Cecilia. A good cut, good material, professional. Nothing like the wrinkled chinos and old denim jacket he had worn in Sonoma. His other face. His B side.

“Your work is of great interest—very much so. It's most valuable and fundamental, bringing sense to everything. But there are other matters.”

“Well, then, spell them out once and for all.”

“Let's see how I can explain this to you . . .” he said slowly, trying to come up with the right words. “The proposal to build a mall in Los Pinitos was the trigger—a very powerful trigger. But there was something else behind it. An outstanding debt.”

“With Fontana?” I asked in disbelief.

“Yes, with Fontana; with his memory and his dignity.”

“Are you telling me that thirty years after his death you still had to settle matters with your old professor?”

“That's right,” he admitted with an emphatic gesture. “To my great regret, that is so. Even though three decades had gone by since his death, and Aurora's—and although I'd completely rebuilt my life and all of that was part of the past—there were still loose ends between us.”

“I swear, this exceeds my power of comprehension,” I murmured.

“Deep down, it's all quite simple. Sadly simple. To summarize what turned out to be the most dreadful years of my life, I want you to know that, after that horrendous accident, I hit rock bottom. Like Dante in his Inferno, in the midpoint of my life, I found myself in a dark forest after having gone astray. I descended to hell, and did a few stupid things.”

“You still do.”

My comment didn't seem to bother him.

“But back then, unfortunately, they were much more regrettable. And among them was to refuse to have anything to do with the memory of my old teacher. After the accident I fled, literally. In truth,
I did not know what I was running away from, but wanted to get away as soon as possible, far from anything related to my previous life.”

“From your life with Aurora, I suppose.”

“Especially. From my ten years of happiness with a wonderful woman whom I said good-bye to with a long kiss at our kitchen table at breakfast and who that very same night I saw for the last time muddied on the shoulder of the road, covered with a bloody blanket and with her skull crushed between crumpled metal.”

I was moved by the harshness of his story; I was disconcerted by the naturalness of his account. I didn't say a word. I let him talk.

“But I overcame it. In time and with effort, after so much turmoil, little by little the despondency turned into a great grief, then into a bearable sadness, and in the end, a simple melancholy that in time slowly vanished.”

I sat in an armchair and he sat on the couch in front of me, face-to-face, separated by a low table with a few outdated magazines on top, a firewall between us. He then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

“I'm not some kind of disturbed idiot clutching at a shadow of an absence, Blanca. It's been many years since I came out of the darkness,” he declared. “It was a painful process but I learned to live without Aurora and was able to rebuild my life. But with Andres Fontana, unfortunately, it wasn't the same. I was so shattered by my wife's death, so lost and heartbroken, that I was never able to reconcile with his absence because I never shed a tear for him.”

“And then, after the passage of years, you announced this alleged fellowship and hired me to dust off his legacy. Not only in search of documentary evidence against the shopping center, but also to clear your guilty conscience without even getting your hands dirty.”

He did not answer me. He stared at me but didn't answer.

“I really trusted you, you know?” I went on, lowering my eyes toward the table that separated us. “Maybe you think my problems are insignificant compared to your own tragedy, but I also know what loss is,” I said, raising my eyebrows at him.

“I know, Blanca, I know . . .”

“I arrived in Santa Cecilia disoriented and badly wounded, fleeing, struggling to rescue myself from the wreck my life had become.”

“I know . . .” he repeated.

“And I clutched on to Fontana's legacy like a lifeline. Then you crossed my path, apparently always willing to help, to make my life easier, to make me laugh . . . to . . . to . . . And now . . .” I swallowed my feelings, trying not to fall apart. “I thought you were my friend.”

He extended a hand toward me but I moved back, refusing to accept his contact.

“Blanca, let me finish telling you what from the very beginning was behind my actions. Before you judge me, you need to know about Fontana, Aurora, and myself. Afterwards, do whatever you deem fit: banish me from your house and life, hate me, forget me, forgive me, or do whatever you must do. But first you must listen.”

The old photograph pinned with a thumbtack in Rebecca's basement came back to mind. The young, pretty woman with the broad laugh, white dress, and disheveled hair who was standing under the sun of Cabo San Lucas and whose life had come to an end one rainy night. Perhaps because of her I instinctively yielded.

“They hit it off from the start, from the moment Aurora and I settled in Santa Cecilia two years earlier. The three of us had a very close relationship, a relationship that far exceeded the boundaries of the purely professional. But between them, however, most likely because of their common condition as Spanish expatriates, they established a special bond with a mutual understanding that I myself sometimes didn't fully grasp. Invisible references and cultural codes, nuances that were beyond me and brought them closer together. A deep friendship ensued. And in time Aurora began to collaborate with him.”

“Doing what?”

“She would often accompany him in his search for documentation; they'd compare facts and scrutinize papers together.”

“She was a historian . . .” I ventured.

“Far from it: she was a pharmacist. In fact, when we arrived in Santa Cecilia she'd just finished her PhD in pharmacology in Indiana, where we'd lived the previous five years. Her field consisted of formulas
and chemical compounds, but, I don't know why—perhaps because he instilled that passion in her—she began to feel a bond with those old Spaniards who wandered these lands centuries ago. Her Catholic faith in which she was brought up must have influenced her as well, by then channeled toward a much more active social commitment. She worked with immigrants and the elderly, participated in adult literacy programs, that sort of activity—something quite praiseworthy despite living with the wild agnostic I used to be. She was gradually captivated by the old Franciscan missions. When the accident occurred, they were returning from Berkeley, where they'd gone looking for documents on what they called Mission Olvido. With both of their deaths, that research was left unfinished and the chapter on the uncataloged mission was closed inconclusively.”

“But—”

“Wait,” he whispered. “Let me continue. I think you still need to know a few more things. Fontana, in his will, left four heirs. Half of his savings were to go to Aurora, which I ended up receiving. From that money, which I'd never touched, came all the monthly checks written out to you.”

“And the other heirs?”

“The other half of the money went to Fanny Stern, still a child at the time. He felt a great fondness for her; her mother, Darla, whom you met that afternoon in the square, was the department secretary at the time. He had a special type of relationship with her.”

“I know. Fanny herself told me,” I said.

“He left it to Fanny formally, but for all practical purposes he left it to both of them. To the university he bequeathed his house, which was absorbed into what now are extensions to the campus. They tore it down years later and in its place built a laboratory, if I'm not mistaken. And I was named, let us say, his intellectual heir, and as such received the magnificent library that he'd slowly built over the decades. But his documents, his personal papers, his research . . . never reached me, and were left here, in Santa Cecilia, forgotten in a basement in Guevara Hall without anyone ever showing any interest in them whatsoever.”

“But you should have been the one to reclaim them: they were your mentor's legacy and you were his beneficiary.”

“I know. Legally, that was my responsibility. And morally too.”

“But you never did so.”

“No.”

“Because you were never interested in their contents.”

“Probably.”

“And because you wanted to cut all ties connecting you with the past.”

“Most likely.”

“Nothing else?”

He gave me a dark, piercing look, pressing one hand against the other, weighing his words.

In the end it was I who suggested the answer that he refrained from uttering.

“Perhaps there was also a wish on your part,” I said in a lower tone, “to distance yourself from Andres Fontana for good.”

He nodded. Slowly at first, more forcefully afterwards.

“I was never able to forgive him altogether,” he finally admitted with a heavy voice. “During my long mourning, in those dreadful months and years of pure grief, I cried only for Aurora. He, I only blamed. Not for having killed her: it was all an accident, that was always clear. But I did blame him in a certain way for having dragged her along with him, for having gotten her involved in something alien to her. For having, in a way, separated her from me, from my care, my protection . . .”