The Scroll of Seduction (34 page)

“We should open all the boxes,” I said. “And the suitcases.”

“I already have. There's nothing here. I went over everything you see inch by inch. What do you think I've been doing these past few nights? I'm telling you, there's nothing here,” he whispered, as if anyone could hear us.

“But don't you think that's odd? Why would they go to the trouble of dividing the room? Who needs an attic when the house is so big? It stinks in here,” I added. “Old clothes.”

“There are a few overcoats in one of the boxes. And a rat's nest. I think that's what smells so bad.”

“Yuck!” I felt a shiver run through me. It wasn't an unbearable smell, but it was bitter and unrelenting, and if I thought about it I knew I wouldn't be able to breathe.

In the semidarkness, Manuel swung the flashlight back and forth. The tapestry was a Virgin of the Annunciation. I could just make it out
in the flashlight's dim beam. A woman's face with a fixed stare. I lit a candle.

“Careful,” Manuel said, turning around. “What are you doing?”

“I want to look at the tapestry. That flashlight is not bright enough.”

Manuel glanced down at his flashlight and then back at me, offended. It was old, aluminum, and very weak.

“I've had this since I was a kid,” he said, shining it on the wall. “Anyway, what about the tapestry? It's all frayed and faded. I'm surprised they haven't thrown it out.”

“Exactly,” I replied. “And it's nailed to the wall.”

“Probably harder to get it down than just leave it where it was.”

I drew all the way up to it with my candle.

“And look,” I said, “it's a Virgin of the Annunciation with dark hair and eyes. I've never seen one like that. They're always blond.”

“The tapestry,” Manuel whispered behind me, finally taking my hint, then getting more excited. “The hole they took Catalina out by was covered by a tapestry. That's why Juana didn't know about the tunnel they'd dug. But, of course, I kept wanting to see a trunk, Lucía. Like an idiot, I expected to see the trunk. But wait. Let me think a minute.” He lit a cigarette and inhaled desperately, as if it were oxygen. The smell of tobacco was comforting there. “It's so obvious, really, isn't it? The hiding place behind the tapestry. Ages ago, I looked behind every single one in the house, behind every painting too. And then what happens? I get this far and then it doesn't even occur to me here. Just like it didn't occur to me that they'd built this wall to hide the obvious.”

He'd gone into a state of rapture, contemplating the wall.

The tapestry was nailed to a wooden frame that was attached to the wall. Manuel felt all the way around it. He'd have to use the chisel to get the nails out, he said. He handed me the flashlight. It flickered on and off, petering out slightly.

“Shit,” he said. “I didn't think to change the batteries.”

His hands were shaking slightly. His cigarette dangled from the corner of his lips. It upset me to see him so worked up. I was nervous too,
and my hands were cold. I felt like an archaeologist on the verge of a great discovery, but his excitement seemed to border on anguish. He yanked at the tapestry urgently, as if he were clawing desperately from inside a coffin, having been buried alive. What would happen if, rather than an exorcism, the find resulted in a reiteration of the curse that had plagued his family for so long? To come face-to-face with Juana's condemnation would be daunting, despite the centuries gone by, despite the fact that his blood held almost no trace of the Denias who'd imprisoned her. I was scared that this obsession would haunt us all: me, because of the child I was carrying, Manuel and Águeda because of the power they ascribed to the past. The nails were coming out. Dust tickled my nose. Suddenly, the flashlight went out altogether.

“Damn it!” Manuel shouted. “Hang on.”

I passed him a candle, which he lit with his lighter. Then we lit two more and dripped candle wax onto one of the old tables to hold them down. Finally, all of the nails on one side were out. Manuel held up a candle so we could see into the space behind it. I could hear his surprise, his breath.

“What can you see, Manuel?”

“There's a door!” he cried. “A door,” he repeated.

He was panting.

“A door!” I couldn't believe it.

We had to take the tapestry all the way off the wall. His impatience was contagious. We were both sweating. Hot wax was dripping onto my fingers and burning my skin. I don't know how much time passed before I helped him yank the tapestry off the wall and heave it over to one side. A narrow door stood in front of us. Manuel pushed it. It opened into a short, nearly circular space that seemed to have been hollowed out of one corner of the house and ended at a few steps that led down. We must have been in a really ancient part of the house. The walls were rough and uneven. Manuel was talking to himself, something about when the third floor was remodeled. His grandfather must have known about this, he whispered. We crept toward the stairs. Manuel had one candle. I had another one. I was leaning my hand into the darkness looking for support when I touched what felt like a wood engraving.

“Manuel,” I said.

He stopped. We both saw the niche in the wall at the same time; it had a wood cover carved with Mudejar patterns. Crisscrossed over it were two narrow cords and a wax seal stamped in red: a coat of arms: five stars and a wood beam, the Denia coat of arms. Manuel held the candle up to the wax seal and touched it, incredulous. Beads of sweat were forming on his white skin. I was shivering. He handed me his candle and yanked on the cords. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I saw that the cover to the niche was open, and there, inside it, was the trunk.

It was more like a small chest, covered in dark, almost black leather, with three lighter, vertical bands all the way around it. It was as if it had come from the dead, rather than just the past, like a strange replica of Juana's coffin in the monarch's crypt in Granada, resting beneath the sculpted tombstone of her parents, the king and queen. I clapped my hand over my mouth, trying to contain my irrational fears.

“Don't touch it, Manuel,” I said. He looked at me like I was mad. “We know where it is now. Let's just leave it, some things are better left unknown.”

He pushed me aside and then handed me his candle. Wax trickled down, burning me.

“Put that down and go get a few more,” he commanded.

I dripped wax on the floor and stuck the candle into it, then ran to get the two or three that we'd left on the table. Manuel shouldn't open that trunk, I thought, thinking of curses and spells in horror stories, archaeologists who died after discovering secrets in Egyptian tombs. I felt ridiculous, superstitious. I came back with the candles, and he handed me his lighter, telling me to light them and prop them up on the floor. Manuel's face had transformed. He was concentrating intently, but he also had a smile that seemed to have come from his childhood. He gazed at the trunk lovingly as he slid it toward him, carefully, delicately, as if he were holding a hand that had been reaching out to him for centuries, a hand, I thought, that could just as easily yank him back into the past forever.

Once the trunk was on the floor, I held the candle while he rushed to open the tiny gold-and-rose-colored locks. He was babbling to himself,
unintelligible sounds that only he could understand. I felt like a voyeur, witnessing his unbridled love for Juana; if it wasn't madness, it certainly resembled it. He loved her the way Juana loved Philippe, a love beyond death. A love of death, maybe. Manuel wished I were Juana, but in reality he was the one who resembled her. Not the Juana he wanted me to embody, but Juana the Mad who'd been imprisoned by her ancestors.

Manuel pulled two folders from the trunk, one looked modern and one ancient. He sat down on the floor in that cramped space, and I followed suit. Like him, I couldn't take my eyes off the folders. The passageway, the stairs, my curiosity to know where they led, would have to wait. Paler than normal even, Manuel looked like a man possessed. I don't think he was even aware of my presence. Beside him, silent, expectant, terrified, I trembled for other reasons too. After flipping through the newer folder that held who knows what documents, he opened the older one. I saw several sheets of parchment and got the chills. I recognized that distinctive medieval calligraphy, slightly faded, the words scrunched together with no spaces, no punctuation.

While he was absorbed in the text, I leaned against the cold wall and rubbed my eyes. I felt a deep, sweeping sadness pressing down on my brain.

“Manuel, I'm here. Read it to me too. Read it out loud.”

“All right,” he said. “Close your eyes.”