Authors: Eva García Sáenz
He caught it in mid-air.
"It's beaver. They're abundant in the north, we can catch them and trade them with other native villages. What have you brought from England in exchange?"
I smiled, Squanto spoke my language, in every sense of the word.
"Meet me back here in two moons. I'll bring broad-shouldered men to carry the goods. And tell the great
sachem
about me."
"Ok, Urko. I'll send a fast-footed messenger to the southeast, to the home of Massasoit. I'm sure that he will be interested to hear what you have to say."
"So be it," I said, squeezing his forearm, bonding the two of us.
"So be it," Squanto repeated, handing me my Toledo knife.
I ran back to the coast, where the boat was about to set sail back to Cape Cod to join the Mayflower. Standish's men had left me for dead, and were surprised to see me, although I didn't want to tell them too much.
As soon as I got back on the ship, I went to speak with Governor Carver and William Bradford. Both had a good level of common sense, and they were just as concerned about the financial viability of the company as they were about the souls of their parishioners.
The next morning I made preparations to leave again with the barrel of metal plates and meet back up with Squanto.
"You're leaving," said Manon, coming up from behind and helping me to load the barrel on the small boat they had lent me.
"That's right. I'm going to travel south and meet the leader of the natives, and then I'll try to set up a business network of beaver skins with the north. I'll come back to the colony when I need goods to trade and when I've got enough skins to send back to our associates in London. You also have a lot of work ahead of you. Build huts that will see you through the winter," I said, looking at the white sky. "I think it's going to be especially long and cold. Take care of managing the supplies. I don't think that there will be riots between the colonies for food, they seem to rather merciful. I'll come back before the thaw if I can. I'll try and bring seeds so as you can plant corn and beans, like the Indians."
"Don't try and console me as if I was a child. This land is rocky and frozen, it will be difficult to get any crops out of it," she said, wincing.
"The Indians did it. The land is plowed and the corn grows without a problem."
"Not until Spring. Where will we find food until then?"
"And don't the English know how to hunt deer, geese and rabbits?" I shouted, losing my patience.
"So you're not English then?"
I clenched my teeth. I'd never slipped up like that before, but that woman, that woman... What did it matter?
"The passengers are weak," Manon continued, changing the subject. "The Puritans only know city trades. You're leaving us in a damn cemetery."
"No, Manon. You're strong, you'll help the colony in the way you know best, you're a practical woman and they need you here."
"I'm not talking about me, God damn it! I'm not afraid of my death, I know my strengths. I'm saying that you're one of the only useful men in the colony and you're going to abandon us."
"I'm not going to abandon you, I'm doing this for the colony. If I was doing it for myself, I would go with the natives and forget about everyone else."
"Everyone? You ungrateful bastard."
She was right, that's what I was. An ungrateful bastard. I changed tactics and spoke with a softer tone.
"I'm going with the natives, this colony needs to return the debt it has taken on, and growing corn won't be enough. The London Traders want to see shipments of beaver skins, and to do that I have to gain the trust of the natives. They won't trade with us if we're hostile towards them. You wanted me to keep busy, well, I've found my occupation and I haven't even thought about the bottles which, by the way, you threw into the sea without my permission."
Manon kept gazing at the frozen coast. Everything was foggy and white around us. It started to snow again and fell on her everlasting black, woolen Puritan cape.
"Go then."
Hang in there, Manon
, I thought, jumping into the boat and rowing away.
Stay alive this winter and I'll come back for you.
Beware of the fury
IAGO
We boarded our flight early in the morning, whilst a sleeping and calm Paris bid us farewell.
"Do you still write five hundred words a day?" I asked her, seeing that she was taking a small notebook and a gold Parker pen from her purse.
"You know my routines," she commented, without looking at me, scribbling on the white paper as a smile crossed her face.
Yes, I knew them and remembered them. Manon used to write every night, after we'd put Peregrine to bed. We cleared the bowls from the table we had eaten on and she wrote by the flickering light of a candle, whose wax dripped down to form a new candle that would light another hundred nights of writing.
"This is nothing like the first storm after we left the port of Southampton, is it?" murmured Marion, once it was over, leaning against the window of the plane that was taking me back to Cantabria. "Now everything's much more aseptic."
"Don't you believe it, the weather in Santander has been rather bipolar over the last few days. The sky's become schizophrenic," I commented, worried, looking at some dark clouds that changed every few seconds.
It was one of those mornings when umbrellas and raincoats did nothing, because an aggressive wind drove the rain at will, soaking everything and everyone with its fury.
"There's no need to excuse yourself, unless you're one of those weather gods and you sent this gale for some specific reason," replied Marion, smiling, walking down the aisle of the plane that had recently landed at Santander airport and strolling out, as if that hellish water didn't bother her in the least.
A few minutes later, I took of advantage of the fact that Marion was waiting for her luggage at the baggage collection, to make a quick call to my father.
"Hector, prepare yourself," I said. "I'm going to introduce you to someone, but follow my lead. I want to see her reaction."
My father agreed and I went back to where a very resolved Marion was grabbing her Loewe luggage, with the ease of someone who has spent several millennia carrying their belongings around with them.
Half an hour later I parked the Jeep a few blocks away from the Paseo Pereda and we headed to my office, number 33. The trees that lined the
paseo
lashed at each other with their branches. The rain had cleaned the streets like a sprinkler and there were few people brave enough to go outside on that devilish day. But Marion and I barely flinched. As we calmly walked past the nineteenth century doorways, I was thinking about the next steps to take and she, I imagine, was lost in her own thoughts. I invited her up as I turned the key in the door.
"Marion, we're going to my laboratory, on the fourth floor. That's where we're going to do the research, but there's someone I want you to meet."
"Someone? There's someone else involved in this research?" she asked, stopping a few stairs further up, frowning. "You didn't tell me anything about that, and nobody else should know that I'm here. I don't know if you're aware of what I'm putting on the line here."
"It's not what you think. You'll understand in just a minute," I answered, nodding for her to go up.
My father was waiting for us on the fourth floor, with his back to us, looking out the window, wearing a fitted, stylish alpaca suit that took a few years off him. He'd grown one of those beards that was so fashionable lately. He looked like a hipster, and also slightly younger. Women had started giving him looks again when we were having coffee on the terraces of the Puertochico.
He turned around as we entered and was silhouetted against the light from the window.
"This is my father, Lür" I told Marion, not failing to notice the look on her face as I said it. "He's obviously a longevo, like us."
"Lür..." she repeated, almost reverently.
I heard her swallow and she slowly walked over to him, moving between the benches of my laboratory.
"Father, this is Marion Adamson. Although in 1620 she was known as Manon Adams. She was my wife in New England. I know that I never told you about the personal details of my life in the New World. I know you think that I dedicated all my time to the company, and I did, but there was more. Marion and I shared a decade together in the Plymouth colony. We had a son who we named Peregrine, who died during one of the many epidemics that we had to endure during those first winters. I thought that she had died as well, and she thought that I had died, without ever suspecting what either of us really were."
My father's eyes grew large and he looked at me without saying a word. I stared at him, begged him to stay calm, and he didn't ask any questions.
"Marion now works for the Kronon Corporation. Like us, she likes to stay up to date with the progress made in the field of anti-aging. A year ago, when I got in touch with her staff, she recognized me and we have just met up again. I've told her about the situation surrounding Adrian's kidnapping and she's going to help me find a way to revert the telomerase inhibitor."
My father waited for me to finish my impromptu speech, and then held his hand out.
"I must say that I wasn't expecting to meet someone like you today, Marion," my father simply said, with an air of indifference.
I shot him a glance, not understanding.
"May I ask how old you are?" Marion whispered, not noticing his cold reaction.
"Twenty-eight thousand years old," he replied.
To my bewilderment, Marion gave a small bow.
"You are very ancient, Lür. I feel rather overwhelmed in the presence of someone of your age."
"You're making me feel like a mommy," said my father, rather uncomfortably.
"I apologize. I imagine that you have many questions to ask me."
"That's right. You said Adamson, right? What other names have you had?"
"Maia was my first name, and then Maire, Mairead, May, Mae, Mirit, Miren, Muireann, Maeve, Mara, Maebh…"
Maebh? You were the warrior queen of Connacht?
I wanted to ask her, although I knew it wasn't the right time.
"The fortuneteller, the prophet, the chosen one, the madam..." my father recited. "It's a good name for a longeva, but I was asking about the surnames you've used.
"McAdams, Adansen, Adansohn, Adanova, Benadam, Adanez, Adanes…"
"Right," was all my father said.
I really didn't understand the interrogation he was putting her through. That wasn't my father's way of doing things.
"Father, Marion has other hobbies, other than spying on me and spying on biotechnology companies," I stepped in, winking at Marion. "She's been a travel writer for centuries. In fact, during our meeting in Paris, she told me that she wrote 'The Grand Tour' under the pseudonym of Thomas Nugent in 1770. I'm sure you remember it, father. The chapter 'Ruins of Pompeii' made it a fashionable site for thousands of English students to visi. I think it was the first time I heard the word 'tourist'. So I imagine that we owe that to you."
Contrary to what I was expecting, my father tensed up even more upon hearing the word Pompeii.
"Lür has been obsessed with that city for a couple of thousand years," I explained to Marion. "Always returning back to the excavation sites of the ruins, time and time again ever since they uncovered it in the 18th century."
"Pompeii, what happened there was a real shame, don't you think, Lür?" said Marion, walking to the window and looking out over the bay of Santander, as if she was expecting to see smoke billowing from our coast.
"Nature's worst, and maybe the worst of the human soul. Yes, it must have been apocalyptic," my father replied, holding her gaze as she turned around.
Marion raised the collar of her impeccable Burberry raincoat and walked toward the door.
"I hope you don't mind, but I need to eat something and I'm a person who really enjoys her solitude. Iago, I'll call you in a couple of hours and we'll get to work, if you want," her voice was sweet again and her face warm, but behind that façade was a woman who had already made up her mind.
"It's raining too hard, Marion. At least wait until it's calmed down a bit."
"The rain doesn't bother me, on the contrary, I find it very relaxing and the rain in Santander is a delicious sensation for the senses. Gentlemen," she nodded her head, "I'll let you get on with it."
We watched Marion walk out of the laboratory.
As soon as Marion and her timeless elegance had left, and walked down the stairs, to be swallowed up by the orgy of rain and wind that was waiting for her in the street, I turned to face my father.
"What the hell was that?"
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean? What just happened here, because I still don't understand your reaction? Haven't we been looking for people like us for thousands of years? Haven't we been the ones behind every search for immortals, elixirs, fountains of eternal youth...? And now I introduce you to someone who, without a shadow of a doubt, is older than four hundred years old, and you're suspicious?"