I looked at her in confusion.
“When …?”
“My mother died in 1905,” she said. “She was killed a few meters from here, by the sea—stabbed in the neck.”
“I’m sorry. I thought that—”
“A lot of people do. The wish to believe can conquer even death.”
“Who killed her?”
“You know who.”
It took me a few seconds to reply.
“Diego Marlasca …”
She nodded.
“Why?”
“To silence her. To cover his tracks.”
“I don’t understand. Your mother had helped him. He even gave her a large amount of money in exchange.”
“That’s exactly why he wanted to kill her, so that she would take his secret to the grave.”
She watched me, a half smile playing on her lips as if my confusion amused her and made her pity me at the same time.
“My mother was an ordinary woman, Señor Martín. She grew up in poverty and the only power she possessed was her will to survive. She never learned to read or write, but she knew how to see inside people. She felt what they felt, knew their secrets and their longings. She could read it in their eyes, in their gestures, in their voices, in the way they walked or their mannerisms. She knew what they were going to say or do before they did. That’s why a lot of people called her a sorceress, because she was able to see in them what they refused to see themselves. She earned her living selling love potions and enchantments that she prepared with water from the riverbed, herbs, and a few grains of sugar. She helped lost souls believe what they wanted to believe. When she gained a certain popularity, a lot of people from well-to-do families began to pay her visits and seek her favors. The rich wanted to become even richer. The powerful wanted more power. The mean wanted to feel like saints, and the pious wanted to be punished for sins they regretted not having had the courage to commit. My mother listened to them all and
accepted their coin. With this money she sent me and my siblings to the same schools as the sons of her customers. She bought us another name and another life far from this place. My mother was a good person, Señor Martín. Don’t be fooled. She never took advantage of anyone, nor did she make them believe more than they needed to believe. Life had taught her that we all require big and small lies in order to survive, just as much as we need air. She used to say that if during one single day, from dawn to dusk, we could see the naked reality of the world, and of ourselves, we would either take our own lives or lose our minds.”
“But—”
“If you’ve come here in search of magic, I’m sorry to disappoint you. My mother told me there was no magic; she said there was no more good or evil in this world than we imagine there to be, either out of greed or out of innocence. Or sometimes madness.”
“That’s not what she told Diego Marlasca when she accepted his money,” I objected. “Seven thousand pesetas in those days must have bought quite a few years of a good name and good schools.”
“Diego Marlasca needed to believe. My mother helped him to do so. That’s all.”
“Believe in what?”
“In his own salvation. He was convinced that he had betrayed himself and those he loved. He believed that he had placed his life on a path of evil and falsehood. My mother thought this didn’t make him any different from most men who at some point in their lives stop to look at themselves in the mirror. The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world. But Diego Marlasca was a man with a conscience, and he was not satisfied with what he saw. That’s why he went to my mother. Because he had lost all hope, and probably his mind.”
“Did Marlasca say what he had done?”
“He said he’d handed his life over to a shadow.”
“A shadow?”
“Those were his words. A shadow who followed him and possessed the same shape, face, and voice as his own.”
“What did that mean?”
“Guilt and remorse have no meaning. They are feelings, emotions, not ideas.”
It occurred to me that not even the boss could have explained this more clearly.