Opposite the kitchen door rose a monumental wooden staircase he’d assumed was the principal access to the second floor. Herminia walked past those stairs and went through a second door into a large square entry hall that led to a vast open two-story covered court. The entry was dominated by two facing archways that encompassed, respectively, the massive wooden front door and the access to a majestic white-stone staircase. The pale, chalky gleam of the staircase contrasted with the stone terrazzo of the entry floor and the mahogany wall paneling. Two lesser stairways halfway up the main stairs led to either side. The sweep of the main stairs crested at a hanging gallery that ran around the upper story of the main room. Doors off the gallery led to the various upstairs rooms.
He followed Herminia up the stairs, looking down over the balustrade at the sparsely furnished great room with walls hung with tapestries and a profusion of paintings. He was impressed to see how light falling from deep windows set in the stone of the upper floor sculpted pathways through the air, casting sharply defined shafts of sunlight that warmed the stone tiles of the entrance. The dark wood banister seemed both delicate and massive, reminding him of Renaissance courtyards. He speculated that this area might have served as a carriage court in an earlier age. Herminia took him into a wide side hallway lined with heavy doors. All were shut, plunging the passage through this wing of the house into sudden darkness. She didn’t sort through her key ring, so he assumed she’d had the appropriate key in hand since they left the kitchen. She inserted it gently into the lock of the first door, which opened with an almost inaudible click. Herminia entered the darkness with the confident step of someone who knew every inch of the house. Manuel supposed that after so many years of service, she could walk through the manor blindfolded, taking care of her tasks with never a false step. Disoriented by the pervasive darkness, he waited in the doorway, not daring to enter.
He heard the sound of a window swinging open. Herminia pushed back the shutters and the room presented itself. He was impressed. He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t the room he saw before him. Wood so dark it was almost black glistened in the doorframe, the flooring, and the window casements. Austere furniture of the same material, certainly antiques, stood out against the monastic white of undecorated walls. The space breathed of centuries of history and magnificent conservation of its high-quality furnishings. Even so, they differed little in their essence from those of his grim little room at the inn.
The single bed looked almost too narrow for a grown man, though the carved wooden headboard and side rails gave it the appearance of a bit more volume. The thick, white down comforter did little to offset the bed’s stark appearance. A dressing table featured a large mirror in a frame presumably of pure silver, and a heavy dark wardrobe matched the bed. The bedside tables held matching lamps: scantily clad nymphs sculpted in bronze lifted their arms high to hold up shades of Venetian glass. A crucifix hung at the head of the bed. Displayed on the opposite wall were an incongruous flat-screen television and the door of a heavy wall safe they hadn’t bothered to hide behind a painting.
He couldn’t help feeling both mystified and relieved. The bedroom had the clinical anonymity of a hotel room awaiting a new guest. The space was clean and aired, with a neutrality any guest could make his own. Not a single personal object was to be seen. Nor was there anything to suggest who the previous occupant might have been.
He looked around for anything that might confirm álvaro’s presence. He found nothing. It occurred to him that perhaps in the days since the accident, someone might have collected his things. Herminia stood silent behind him. He asked her.
“It’s all just the way he left it. Nothing’s been touched.” She murmured something about needing to tend to the kitchen and left, closing the door behind her.
Manuel went to the window and took in the view across an ancient seedbed and the garden sheds behind the manor. The tops of the trees in the wide hollow behind the house descended and spread out like a magic garden.
One by one he opened the drawers of the dressing table, only to find them all empty. In the immense closet the few shirts álvaro had brought hung perfectly ironed on heavy hangers next to two jackets he’d left behind. They hung abandoned within the closet. Their movement in response to the opening of the door created a disturbing impression. He wanted to touch them, to feel the soft fabric, to let his fingertips search for the elusive presence of their owner. He stood regarding them for a couple of seconds, and then he firmly closed the doors to break the spell. He was struck by the thought that everything álvaro owned should have disappeared with him.
Perhaps that thought was really a wish. Life would be much easier if our dead didn’t leave their belongings behind like so many empty nautilus shells. If every trace of their existence were erased along with them, their names could be forgotten and consigned to oblivion, like those of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
The adjacent compartment held two pairs of shoes and an overnight bag matching the one Manuel had filled hastily with whatever useless garments came to hand. He leaned over and confirmed his suspicion—it was empty. Inside one of the night tables, he found the book álvaro had been reading, and he recalled seeing his husband toss it into the suitcase. The other night table held a handful of receipts for frugal purchases. Manuel recognized the logo of a gasoline company. He didn’t stop to go through them; that he could do later.
In the adjoining bathroom he found álvaro’s toiletries bag in a drawer stocked with towels and wrapped bars of hand soap. The single toothbrush left in a water glass was the only sign anyone had regularly used this bathroom.
He took a look at the safe. It was an electronic model with a plain front and a four-digit keypad. Locked. He didn’t bother to try to guess the code.
He sat on the bed and unhappily surveyed the room. It would have surprised him less to have found himself in a teenager’s bedroom, frozen in time, where faded posters and forgotten toys were souvenirs of the rapid transition to puberty. This space contained not a single trace of álvaro. A profiler would have been at a loss, for these objects offered no hint of the occupant’s character. Man and dwelling place had remained strangers to one another. Upon consideration, he couldn’t help feeling relieved at this evidence that álvaro’s transit through here had been so evanescent it hadn’t left a trace. Manuel had searched his memory a thousand times or more trying to recall álvaro’s gestures and expressions, and he was certain now he’d never seen anything related to As Grileiras. It was somehow satisfying that álvaro hadn’t left an imprint upon this place. This was not his bedroom. This wasn’t his house.
Manuel gathered the cash receipts and credit card slips and stuffed them into his jacket pocket. He checked the overnight bag and, after a moment of hesitation, he opened the wardrobe and searched the two jackets hanging next to the shirts. In one he found another couple of cash receipts, and in the other there was a gardenia that had withered and yellowed but still retained its familiar perfume. The dry flower’s decadent dead beauty reminded him of a butterfly—the typically firm petals had become so limp they were almost transparent in his hand. The specter of that dead butterfly sent a chill up his spine; it was as if something wet, clammy, and disgusting had landed on him. In a superstitious reaction, he pushed the flower corpse into a pocket and unthinkingly rubbed his hand on the fabric to wipe away any trace of death.