The Lost Origin (14 page)

“Yes, I knew all that. So,” I summarized, “the privileged classes of the Andean cultures predating the Inca deformed their skulls in one way or another to emulate the Tiwanakans, who were some kind of arbiters of fashion, but you haven’t told me the origin of these conical skulls.” And I pointed at the ceiling. “Are they from Tiwanaku?”

“Yes, actually, they’re from Tiwanaku. The occipital frontal deformation, which produces that conical shape, was historically the first that was done and was exclusive to the Tiwanakans.”

“And the Inca? Did they also practice this deformation?”

“No, the Inca did not. The only ones that continued it were the Colla, the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Tiwanaku.”

“The Colla?” I already in a state of mental disarray that was impossible to clear. “But weren’t the Aymara the descendants of the Tiwanakans?”

“The Colla and the Aymara are the same people. Colla was the name that the Spanish gave them because their land, the Altiplano region that surrounded Titicaca, was called Collao in Spanish, because the Inca had previously christened it as Collasuyu. This area also included the heights of Bolivia and the north of Argentina. These skulls that you see above you are from Collasuyu, specifically, as I’ve told you, from Tiwanaku.”

Clearly, everything was simple in the history of the American continent. First there were—or not—the Pukara, from whom originated—or not—the Tiwanacans, who in turn were the Aymara, but also the Colla, although now they were again called Aymara. This, at least, I understood, so I glued it to my memory before it fade like a dream.

Faced with the danger that things would continue to complicate themselves indefinitely, I decided that that was enough of deformed skulls and without considering it further, I extracted a stack of Daniel’s photocopies of the stone wall with the multitude of heads in relief and handed it to the professor who put out her cigarette in the flimsy little ash tray as if she were killing the
butt. After a preliminary glance, the look on her face expressed annoyance.

“Do you know what this is, Professor?”

“Tiwanaku,” she said, a little exasperated, putting on her glasses with a quick gesture and carefully examining the paper; I don’t know why her response didn’t surprise me much. “The so-called tenon heads, that is to say, anthropomorphic stone heads encrusted in the walls. They’re found on the walls of Qullakamani Utawi, known as the Semi-Subterranean Temple, a large open patio located near the Kelasasaya. You already know that Tiwanaku is an architectural ensemble in which the remains of some sixteen buildings are still visible which barely represents four percent of the total. The rest is located underground.”

I didn't know what could have caused that patent unease that the professor politely suppressed. While I gave her the digitalized enlargement of the little man without a body, the bearded ancestor of Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland, I made a mental note that I shouldn't ask her anything else about Tiwanaku; what I wanted to know, I would search for on the internet, especially pages with photos.

“I don’t know what this is,” she told me, looking at me over her glasses. “I’ve never seen it before in my life.”

“It’s not Inca?” I asked, surprised.

She looked at it with great attention, bringing it close to her face and moving it away again, by which I deduced that the glasses must work only intermittently, like a loose light bulb. That, or she desperately needed an eye exam.

“No, it’s not Inca,” she assured. “Not Inca, or Pukara, or Tiwanakan, or Wari, or, of course, Aymara.”

“And you don’t have any idea as to what its origin might be?”

She went back to looking at it attentively and pursed her lips as if she were going to give a kiss, extremely concentrated, and stayed like that for a few seconds. Sadly, the expression dissolved and I swallowed my laugh as if I had swallowed a piece of gum by accident.

“I can only tell you that it’s too figurative. The figure is perfectly drawn, with very vivid colors and shadows and gradations that give it volume. The beard situates it clearly in Europe or Asia, and because of these qualities, it can’t be earlier than fourteenth century. It certainly forms part of a much larger representation, since the edges cut off what seems to be a landscape of stones and branches. The only thing that seems vaguely familiar is that red hat which might be similar to the typical Colla hats that covered their deformed skulls. Look at those idols,” she told me, pointing at the statues wearing conical hats. “If you like, you can also examine them in much more detail in Guamán Poma de Ayala’s work,
New Chronicle and Good Government.
Your brother must have a copy.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” I said while I took back the little man with one hand, and handed her the photocopy of the square face with solar rays with the other.

“Tiwanaku,” she repeated after one glance, and again her face twisted into the same expression, and her voice, so peculiar, adopted a dark tone. “Inti Punku, the Gate of the Sun. For centuries it was thought that the figure crowning the piece was a representation of the god Viracocha. Discoveries of the Wari have shaken that hypothesis, and now the prevalent idea is that he is an obscure Staff God worshiped by both cultures.”

“No wonder it seemed so familiar,” I commented, leaning slightly over the desk to look at the upside-down image. “The Gate of the Sun. It’s very famous.”

She stood up as if some important idea had occurred to her and went to one of the shelves from which she extracted a very large book that she placed on the desk in front of me. It was a
volume of photographs, one of those that barely have any text, in whose open pages I could make out, as soon as she moved away, on the left, a picture of a block of stone with an opening for a door, on the upper part of which were three carved horizontal bands broken by a large central figure whose face was, without a shadow of doubt, the same one Daniel had blown up in the photocopy. On the right hand page the same figure could be seen in complete detail, much larger, so that I not only recognized its face but also, unexpectedly, what was under its feet—if a couple of little stumps coming out of its waist could be considered feet—and what was there was none other than the three-level stepped pyramid that my brother had drawn with a red marker. Why had Daniel enlarged the head specifically, and drawn the Staff God’s floor in red?

“That’s the Gate of the Sun which is called Inti Punku, and in Aymara Mallku Punku, or Gate of the Chief,” she explained. I wasn’t looking at her at that moment, so I couldn’t see her expression; nevertheless, her voice kept filling itself with shadowy tonalities heavy with anger, which obliged me to raise my eyes from the book to discover with surprise that her face was as imperturbable as a statue’s, and that only her hands were contracted with the tension. “It’s the most famous monument of the Tiwanaku ruins. It’s made from a monolithic block of volcanic stone weighing more than thirteen tons and measuring some nine feet high by twelve wide and twenty inches thick. The carving of the stone is perfect, precise…. Archaeologists and experts still can’t explain how it could have been made by a people who didn’t even have the wheel, or writing, or iron, or, what is more surprising still, the number zero, so necessary for astronomical calculations and architecture.”

Maybe the professor was a hard woman, maybe even a harpy, certainly Ona was not wrong in her opinions and commentaries about her, but I also would have added that she was completely mad. In a matter of minutes, she had gone from tautness to normality and back again to tautness without any reason that I could explain. Dr. Torrent couldn’t hide her pronounced bipolar character, and she couldn’t do it because, although she controlled her movements and expressions, her voice, so deep and distinctive, gave her away. That was her Achilles’ heel, the crack that made the wall crumble. Looking for a logical reason that could have provoked her dark mood, I thought that perhaps I had drawn out my visit too long and that it would be a good idea to leave as soon as possible. At that moment, she fixed her icy eyes on me, and her look was so glacial that I was ready to make my escape by backing humbly toward the door and making reverences like Chinese courtiers when leaving the company of the emperor.

“What else do you have in that pile of papers?” she asked abruptly.

“Do you want me to tell you, or would you prefer to see for yourself?”

“Let me see it,” she ordered, extending her hand for me to give her the sheaf of documents. There was not much left to examine: Besides the photographs of Tiwanakan skulls, which she had not yet seen, all that was left was the drawing of the stepped pyramid, the reproductions of the textiles and urns decorated with rows and columns of squares, and the photocopies of the maps, the one with the compass roses and the one by Sarmiento de Gamboa. Nevertheless, she occupied herself for a long time looking at everything as if it were new to her and enormously interesting. After five or six interminable and boring minutes, she opened one of the drawers in her desk and took out a big magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes’ but made of dark wood and profusely carved, and it immediately occurred to me it must be worth a mint. Such an object couldn’t easily be found in Barcelona’s antique shops. With her glasses resting in a wrinkle on her forehead and her gaze focused through the lens, she was contemplating the old maps with an unusual interest, to the point of making me think I had made the biggest mistake of my life by arranging that interview. If my brother was cured by the new treatment, and that woman, because
of what I had done, took possession of his research materials, I would have made an unimaginably large mess of things, and it was even possible that my brother would stop speaking to me for the rest of his life… or mine, depending on who died first.

At last, after a long time, Dr. Torrent let out a long sigh, set the magnifying glass and the papers on the desk, and took off her glasses to look me directly in the eye.

“You found all this in Daniel’s house?” she asked, modulating her radio announcer’s voice in such a way that it reminded me of the hiss of a snake (or at least how the hiss of a snake sounded in movies).

“In his apartment, yes,” I admitted, prepared to run out of there with all the documents.

“Let me ask you something…. Do you think all of this has something to do with the illnesses your brother is suffering from?”

I clicked my tongue before answering that very direct question, and, in this short interval, barely a few tenths of a second, I decided that I shouldn’t say even half a word more about anything.

“I’ve already explained to you that the doctors want to know if Daniel could have had problems with work.”

“Yes…. But I’m not referring to that exactly.” She put both hands on the edge of the desk and stood. “You see, this material, taken as a set, reveals that your brother was following a very different line of research than the one I entrusted him with. I wouldn’t like for you to take it the wrong way, by no means, but in some way that I can’t even imagine, Daniel borrowed all the documents from this very office. Without telling me.”

Was she insinuating that my brother had robbed her? What an idiot! I also got up from my seat and faced her. Despite being separated by the wide desk, my height allowed me to look down at her with all the cold disdain I was capable of. And I was capable of a great deal in situations like that one. For a fraction of a second, I involuntarily directed my gaze toward the framed photograph that sat on the desk, now exposed to my eyes with complete clarity, and the image of a smiling older man with a beard with his arms around the shoulders of two twenty-something boys glittered in my retinas. The typical American-style happy family. And Doris Day dared to insult my brother, the most honorable and decent person I’d known in my life. The only thief there was the professor herself, who wanted to take possession of Daniel’s work, using the dirtiest of tactics.

“Listen, Dr. Torrent,” I pronounced threateningly. “I’m not often in the habit of losing my temper, but if what you are saying is that my brother Daniel is a thief, this conversation between you and me is going to end very badly.”

“I’m sorry you’re taking it this way, Mr. Queralt…. I can only tell you that you are not going to take these documents with you again.” The professor had guts. “If Daniel were well, I would have a very long conversation with him and I’m sure that we would resolve this unfortunate business, but since he is ill, I must limit myself to recovering what is mine and asking that you be respectful, and that for the good of your brother, you keep completely silent about this matter.”

I smiled, and with a quick grab, I recovered the documents that she had left on the desk, supposedly out of my reach. I had never put up with nonsense and even less with insults, and if some idiot thought he (or she, in this case) could trick me and keep me from doing whatever I liked, then that person was completely, lamentably wrong.

“Listen carefully, Professor. I didn’t come here with the intention of having an argument with my brother’s boss, but I will not allow you to make up a story in which Daniel is a thief and
you a poor robbed victim. I’m sorry, Ms. Torrent, but I’m leaving with all of this.” And, saying so, I replaced all the photocopies and reproductions in my briefcase, then headed toward the door. “When my brother is feeling better, you and he can resolve this matter. Good day.”

I opened the door with a brusque gesture and went out, slamming it behind me. There was no one left in the department. My Captain Haddock watch showed that it was almost half past two in the afternoon. Time to eat, and, why not, time to spit all the insults I knew about that idiot whose ears would be burning for the forty minutes it took me to arrive home and permanently erase her from my life.

I didn’t go to the game, nor did I feel a need to. I spent most of the afternoon in the hospital with Daniel, and then I went to dinner with Jabba, Proxi, and Judith, a friend of Proxi’s whom, years before, I had dated for a few months. Judith was an outstanding person one could certainly confide in, but even if that had not been the case, it wouldn’t have mattered, because, before meeting in the restaurant, Proxi had already told her everything there was to tell. That being the case and considering the incidents that had occurred, I vented to my heart’s content, criticizing the professor and, by making fun of her, ended up getting over my bad mood. The only bad thing about the night was that if I hadn’t had my house full of people claiming to be my family, Judith would have stayed with me, since we still had good chemistry and neither of us liked to waste opportunities. But, in the end, it wasn’t my lucky day and that’s as far as things got. To make myself feel better and since I wasn’t tired, at two in the morning, after making sure the company’s computers were still looking for the Daniel’s damned password, I decided that it was as good a moment as any to risk at last the Spanish Conquistadors’ cursed chronicles. It was no longer just a matter of proving an outlandish theory; it had become a challenge to me, a matter of loyalty to my brother. I had failed him by exposing his work to his boss’s rapacity, and I had to compensate him in some way. If he ended up getting better, whether by the magic of words that Jabba and Proxi (and also Judith, who joined enthusiastically in the idea) spoke of, or by way of Diego and Miquel’s medications (which was more likely), I wanted to have something interesting to offer him, an idea he could explore, a dream that, who knew, might win him the Nobel prize someday, which would really humiliate his stubborn boss.