The Lost Origin (31 page)

“Tiahuanaco Cathedral, ladies and gentlemen! San Pedro!” he informed us suddenly, as we passed in front of a small colonial-style church with a lot of bicycles parked next to its railing.

Naturally, we barely had time to glance at it, because by the time he had finished yelling, we were already too far away. I would have liked to visit it to find out whether its stones still had the remains of old Tiwanakan carvings, but Yonson Ricardo, kicking up a great cloud of dust, was already stopping the car in front of a little ocher-colored house, which, with white letters painted on the facade, proclaimed itself to be “Hotel Tiahuanacu.” On the outside wall was a poster for Taquiña Export, the most famous beer in Bolivia.

“The best restaurant in town!”

Exchanging glances to discreetly communicate the serious doubts we had on the matter, we got out of the car and went into the place. Yonson Ricardo disappeared into the kitchen of the restaurant after introducing us to Don Gastón Ríos, the owner of the hotel, who very amiably accompanied us to a small table and recommended the grilled trout. The sun came in through the windows, and the living-dining room was very full of people who were chatting animatedly, producing an annoying background noise that forced us to talk in yells.

“It looks like our taxi driver gets his commission for bringing the tourists here in the kitchen,” Proxi voiced with a smile.

“In this country, they have to live on their wits,” I said. “They’re very poor.”

“The poorest in all of South America,” she agreed. “While you were sick from the altitude, I was reading the newspapers, and it turns out that more than seventy percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The dictatorial governments they had during the seventies made the foreign debt shoot up above four thousand million dollars, but the worst is that the money wasn’t meant for the country, but, according to this guy
¹⁴
quoted in an article, almost three quarters of it was deposited in personal accounts in North American banks. So, since then, the Bolivians pay more taxes, have lost their jobs, barely have health care, don’t get an education, etc., and all that just to return some money appropriated by four thieves. The poorest of all, those who live in the most extreme misery, are the indigenous, who don’t have any other option but to dedicate themselves to cultivating coca to survive.”

“I don’t get it,” Jabba roared, angry. “In Spain, if you ask the bank for a loan, they ask for everything including your mother’s baptism certificate. But some country led by shameless crooks asks for multi-million-dollar loans from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank and, hey, no problem: here are your millions, friends, do whatever you want to with them.
Now, of course, the people have to shoulder the consequences and pay it back, even if it means dying of hunger. I swear I don’t understand it!”

Indignant and riled up, we kept debating the subject, thinking up solutions that weren’t within the power of three miserable individuals lost in the world, and so we ate some kind of soup with some strange sweet potatoes and a lot of spices, without really noticing what we were eating. When they were bringing out the next course, putting the trout in front of us, the door to the dining room opened one more time to let in a large group of people dressed in tee-shirts, shorts, and sturdy leather boots. And, yes, the professor was at the front, next to a guy with a waxed head, glasses, and a short grayish beard. They were talking animatedly, followed by a troop of young archaeologists who made more of a ruckus than the whole dining room combined. Don Gastón, with a friendliness that dripped respect and devotion, headed toward them and led them to a large table in the back, which seemed to be waiting for them.

I felt my blood run cold. If they saw us, we were lost. My friends had also noticed their arrival, and the three of us were petrified like statues, following the professor with our gazes. She, fortunately, hadn’t seen us, distracted as she was by chatting with Don Gastón and the bald man. They took all the seats around the long table, and, with much enthusiasm, kept on with their racket. They seemed content.

“We can’t stay here,” Proxi murmured.

We couldn’t hear her.

“What did you say?”

“That we can’t stay here!” she yelled.

“But we can’t leave, either,” I warned. “If we get up, she’ll see us.”

“So what do we do?” Jabba stammered.

But it was already too late. From the corner of my eye, I could see how Marta Torrent moved her gaze, lost in thought, over all the tables in the room, and how, suddenly, she stopped at ours, and then on me, examining me attentively and changing her expression from happy to serious and concentrated.

“She’s seen me.”

“Fuck!” Jabba exclaimed, smacking the table with his hand.

It wasn’t worth the effort to keep acting like children playing at hide and seek. I had to confront that look and return the recognition, so I turned my head, looked at her with the same seriousness with which she was examining me, and weathered the storm with all the coldness in the world. Neither of us made the least gesture of greeting and neither of us looked away. I already knew her game, so this time I wasn’t caught unawares. It wouldn’t be I who backed down or lost my nerve. And we stayed like that for a few seconds, which seemed, like never before in my life, to go on forever.

When the situation was no longer bearable, the bald man leaned toward her and told her something. Without stopping staring at me, the professor answered him, then stood, pushing the seat back and beginning to walk sideways behind the table. She came toward me, so, like a mirror, I, too rose from my seat, left the wrinkled napkin next to my plate, and moved forward. But not much. Not enough for us to meet each other halfway. She was the one who should come to my territory, so I stopped two steps away, turning my back on Jabba and Proxi. I’m sure that she noticed my intention.

My friends had been right on the money when they recognized her at the excavation of Puma Punku, and it was I who had been wrong, blocked by a preconceived idea about how that woman ought to be and dress. Unfortunately, with her new look, she seemed much younger and
more human, much more of a person, and that bothered me. Luckily, she still had that icy expression that gave me back my assurance at having recognized the enemy. Her hair was white and messy, with the circular mark from her hat, and her work clothes took away almost ten years all at once. That surprising transformation didn’t escape my notice, especially now that I had her right in front of me, very close. We must have formed an odd image, because her head came up to exactly the height of my neck, yet despite that, she didn’t give the impression of being shorter than I. Such was the strength she exuded.

“I knew I would see you around here very soon, Mr. Queralt,” she intoned in her deep and beautiful voice, by way of a greeting.

“And I was sure I would find you when I came to Tiwanaku, Dr. Torrent.”

We stood in silence for a few seconds, watching each other defiantly.

“Why are you here?” she wanted to know, although she didn’t seem to have any doubts on the subject. “Why have you come?”

“I know it’s all the same to you,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest, “but, to me, my brother is the most important person in the world, and I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary to help him.”

She looked at me strangely, and, surprisingly, showed the beginnings of a smile.

“So then, either Daniel stole more documents from me than what you brought to my office, or you and your friends…,” she said, glancing quickly at the table behind me, “are very clever, and have managed to accomplish in few days what has taken others years of hard work.”

“I’ll let your repeated accusation of theft pass, because it’s not worth the effort to argue with you, Dr. Torrent. Time will put everyone in his or her place, and you will be sorry, one way or another, for having insulted my brother like that. By the way…,” I observed, stepping aside and using an exaggeratedly polite voice. “These are my friends, Lola Riera and Marc Martí. This is Dr. Torrent, whom I’ve told you so much about.”

Both of them, on their feet, held out their hands, and the professor shook them without changing the sullen look on her face. Really, no one smiled. Then she turned to me.

“As you have said, time will put us all in our place, Mr. Queralt. I don’t doubt it. But while it does, and given that I can’t know what your true intentions are, let me remind you that any excavation done in Tiwanaku without the necessary legal authorization is a very serious crime in this country, and carries penalties that could keep you and your friends in jail for the rest of your lives.”

“Very well, Doctor, but now it is my turn to remind you that in Spain, the theft or plagiarism of academic research materials is also a punishable offense, and that your prestige could be sunk forever along with your position at the university and your good name.”

She smiled ironically.

“Don’t forget your words,” she said, and, turning, slowly moved away with that elegant gait that I had already seen in Barcelona, and that didn’t fit at all well with her current appearance.

I moved quickly, returning to my seat, while Marc and Lola remained standing, like those dolls that have a weight in the bottom, and, as much as you push them, always pop back upright.

“Do you mind sitting, already?” I told them, angry. “Nothing’s happened here, okay? So come on, let’s eat, the trout’s getting cold.”

“I can’t believe it,” Proxi stammered, dropping heavily onto her chair. “Christ, did you hear how she threatened us?”

“Did I hear her right?” Jabba hesitated. “I still have my stomach in a knot imagining
myself when I’m sixty in a Bolivian prison.”

“Come on, don’t pay any attention to her! Didn’t I tell you what she was like? Did I not warn you? Well, now you’ve seen it for yourselves! She’s willing to do anything to keep us from wrecking her discovery! A discovery that belongs to my brother!”

Marc and Lola looked at me in such a way that I knew the professor had managed to make them doubt.

“Are you sure, Arnau?” Proxi asked. “Don’t get offended, please, but…. Are you completely sure?”

I clicked my tongue and sighed.

“You know Daniel, Lola. I can’t offer you anything beyond that.”

She lowered her head, upset.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just that that woman talks with such conviction that she could make even the Holy Ghost have doubts!”

“As hard as I try,” Jabba added, in low spirits, “I can’t imagine Daniel stealing. But I must admit that witch has made me distrust him.”

“So are we going back to Tiwanaku, or not?” Proxi asked, looking at me.

“Of course we’re going back. Even if we don’t get anything today, at least we can keep studying the way to get in.”

We finished eating, wrapped in a gloomy silence, and after paying the bill, we left there without looking once in the professor’s direction. Yonson Ricardo took us back to the ruins and promised to return at six o’clock to take us back to La Paz. But we were no longer in the same good mood as we had been in the morning. We walked around, dejected and serious, noticing how the cold got more intense as evening fell.

Like injured survivors of a shipwreck, we returned to the Gate of the Sun, and with the daylight dimming, we got to work examining the many details that marvelous work of art hid in its design, especially in the loaded figure of the god Thunupa. Any small detail seemed to be full of significance, but the real problem was that I at least had my mind somewhere else, and it was very hard to concentrate on what we were looking for. My mind wandered, trapped by the malicious look of the god’s round eyes, eyes that seemed to dive inside me, making familiar echoes resonate from a past so long ago it seemed unknown. I knew there was a truth there, but I lacked the weapons necessary to interpret it. I felt helpless in my ignorance; I wanted to know why people as normal as Marc, Lola, or I had worshiped that legless being thousands of years ago, why what was now only a figure that attracted tourists had once been a powerful—maybe feared, maybe loved—god, carrier of some inverted staffs that no one knew how to interpret, and why science was so protective of its own image of infallibility and so fearful of accepting truths that escaped its comprehension, or of asking questions that could guide it to uncomfortable responses.

Tired of being on my feet, and also of breathing such oxygen-poor air, I dropped onto the naked ground and sat with my legs crossed Indian-style, facing the same barbed wire, not caring if the giant ants walked up my legs. I was tired of not understanding, and I couldn’t have cared less if the professor, or anyone, passed by and saw me sitting on the ground like a rude guest. Jabba and Proxi had moved away to look from a certain distance, but I was sitting almost underneath the Gate, and didn’t plan on moving. Wearied by having gotten so far just to end up failing, I looked up at the god as if hoping he would right the injustice.

And he did. It was a spark of comprehension, an epiphany. The spot where I was sitting placed me almost at the feet of Thunupa, and when I looked up, suddenly the perspective of the
gate changed, offering me a new image of the god that unexpectedly clarified everything. How had it not occurred to us before? We had to pray!

“You have to pray!” I shouted, like a lunatic. “Come here, come here! The key is here. You have to pray for the god’s help!”

Jabba and Proxi, who were already running toward me, immediately understood what I was trying to tell them, and they dropped to the ground, kneeling at my side, looking upward, raising their eyes to Thunupa, the god of the flood whom you had to ask for help if a similar catastrophe happened again.

“Do you see it?” I cried. “Do you see it? Look at the staffs!”

From our position, the condor beaks that tipped the staffs were piercing the deep round holes that, like eyes identical to the god’s, were on the helms, ships, or extraterrestrial animals that covered the chimneys. What we saw perfectly clearly was the god brandishing those sticks and forcefully embedding them into the round cavities.