The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,55
shook his head impatiently. “It’s no use trying to explain it away. The place where we were born and grew up shapes us forever. Our origins determine our character and how we see, hear, learn, and draw conclusions.”
“Agent Dupree, I’ve lived as long in the United States as I did in the town of my birth. I came here as a child.”
“But you went back.”
“I went to a city in Spain, a place that has nothing to do with where I was born. I never particularly cared for my birthplace. I didn’t much dislike it either. It’s an ordinary, run-of-the-mill little town.”
“Elizondo.”
She reeled as if he’d struck her.
He wouldn’t leave it alone. “A place you never mention, known for folkloric traditions so powerful they enabled you to explain why the Composer found nothing grotesque about shoving a grandmother’s corpse under the roof of a farmhouse.”
“I remember those stories, but not the details. I thought they were foolish.”
“Are you sure you always felt that way?”
“Yes. Always.”
“You don’t recall a time when you really did believe them, maybe just for an instant? No need to feel ashamed. It’s a basic tenet of anthropology that the motivations and rationales determining human behavior all across the planet are fed by identical needs, anxieties, and fears. Those apprehensions shape people’s understandings of their place in the world. Your knowledge and mastery of the mythology give you the privilege of the damned. Sherrington had it, and so do you.”
She kept shaking her head, denying it.
He appeared to give up. He checked his watch. “It’s getting late. We have a tough day ahead, so we need to hit the hay.” Dupree got up and went to the bar to call the others.
Amaia sighed, relieved to have escaped his interrogation. Dupree returned and put a generous tip on the table. “There’s a reason why some people cut off all ties with the places where they were born and grew up. It’s always an unpaid debt. Be careful about unpaid debts, Salazar. They come due sooner or later.”
Amaia had to restrain herself from touching her scalp, where the scar under her hair was burning.
21
PREMONITION
Elizondo
Engrasi’s theory was that premonition was essentially a manifestation of the survival instinct, a capacity formed over centuries of human evolution but now mostly masked by the commercial abundance of developed economies. Premonition was the innate sensitivity to signs we used to be able to read in the air—all those changes constantly evolving at a level below consciousness that can signal an approaching storm, an upcoming birth, the menace of a predator, the outbreak of an epidemic, and even imminent death.
She believed in first impressions. In her view, that first encounter was the moment when the senses, the receptors of perception, were still fresh enough to read a situation accurately. Our perceptions advise us without the extraneous information that only misleads and misinforms us.
The knock on the door at eleven o’clock in the morning was completely out of the ordinary. She bristled. Engrasi wasn’t expecting visitors, and it was too early for Amaia to be back from school. She put down the book she’d been reading, went to the door, and was surprised to find Juan, her brother. He was usually hard at work this time of day. His appearance alarmed her. He was always dressed in his baker’s whites during the work week. Today he was outfitted in a sober marine-blue suit she’d seen him wear only in church on Sundays. She was even more alarmed by the fact he hadn’t called to let her know he was coming. Over the previous three years, Juan had come to her house only when summoned. Engrasi’s heart began to pound. Something must be wrong.
Later, when it was all over, she thought back on that first impression. She sensed the alarm bells, felt the surprise and amazement. She suspected, intuited, perceived . . . and yet she decided to hear him out because, after all, he was her brother.
She gave Juan a hug and a kiss, took his hand, and led him to the living room. He was reluctant to take the chair she offered; he stood in the middle of the room and gave her a broad smile. He began rambling on about how well the bakery was doing, the investments he was making in new equipment, how Rosario’s initiatives had brought in a lot of new business . . .
Engrasi refused to put up with his blather. “Why are you here, Juan?”