Ortu?o continued. “I was horrified. I pointed to the bloodstains and protested to the prior, ‘The boy’s bleeding from . . .’
“He didn’t let me finish. ‘This child suffers from colitis and an ulcerated bowel. The intense fright caused a vessel to burst and gave him copious diarrhea. It’s a little blood, that’s all. You heard what the child said.’
“I said, ‘Brother Verdaguer wasn’t ill, and I haven’t heard anything about ulcers or colitis. I’m the only qualified medical attendant here, and if he was ill, I’d have known it. He’s injured, not ill,’ I told him. ‘I think we should call the police.’
“The prior stopped what he was doing at Brother Verdaguer’s neck, straightened up, and glared at me. ‘You’ll do nothing of the kind. I’m in charge here, and unless you want to spend the rest of your life at some outpost in the jungle, you’ll do what I say.’
“I went to the older boy, who was still speechless and couldn’t take his eyes from the body. I tried to pull him away, but he refused to move. So I stood in front of him to block his view and said, ‘We have to get your brother out of here.’ That suddenly broke his trance. He nodded, grabbed his brother’s hand, and shielded him from the sight of the body. But there was no need; the little one kept his eyes so tightly shut that he couldn’t have seen a thing. The three of us went to the infirmary.”
Ortu?o paused, checked his watch, and glanced at his wife. She was tending bar and entertaining a couple of regulars.
“What’s wrong?” Nogueira asked.
“Nothing,” the man replied. “I’m wondering if my wife’s going to tell me it’s too early in the day to have a drink.”
Nogueira agreement was emphatic. “That’s an excellent idea.” The others felt the same.
Susa was a bit taken aback, but she nevertheless brought them four glasses and a small bottle of local brandy. She expressed her disapproval by not serving the brandy and returning to the bar without a word. Lucas did the honors. Manuel saw the priest’s hand trembling as he poured.
Ortu?o took a couple of hefty swigs. “The little one cried all night long. He wailed even louder whenever I tried to approach him. He wouldn’t let me tend to his injury. I couldn’t even persuade him to take off the bloodstained pajama bottoms. It wasn’t until the morning that his brother managed that. The child spent the night curled up in bed with his brother next to him. I asked the older boy to see if the bleeding had stopped and got him to convince the little one to take a couple of tranquilizers with some water. They didn’t do much good. The prior appeared a couple of hours later with Verdaguer’s death certificate, already signed by the physician. As the monastery medical attendant I was required to witness it. I signed. Before he left he warned me again, ‘Don’t speak to anyone.’
“He came back at eight o’clock in the morning. The little boy had finally fallen asleep. The prior asked me if the bleeding had stopped and told me to give him the boy’s clothing. He wrapped it in a sheet and carried it off. álvaro was still at his brother’s side. He stared at the prior but didn’t say a word. He had fire in his eyes.
“The prior came back around noon and told me what I was supposed to put into the infirmary notes: ‘They had a very contagious influenza.’ I told him that wasn’t what the boy’d told me. He turned to álvaro, who stood there like a soldier on guard. The prior made me wait outside while he talked to the older boy. When the prior left, the little one seemed calmer and even had a bit of an appetite. But the older one, álvaro, hadn’t changed. He still had that black look.” He looked at each of the three men. “And let me tell you something. álvaro was young, but after that night he wasn’t a child anymore. I could tell he was feeling the same way I was. Call it the fire of righteous rage. I knew that neither of us was going to get out of this unharmed.
“That same day a chauffeured limousine came to pick up the older boy. I saw him standing in the hall with his suitcase while his father was inside talking with the prior. The marquis came out, gestured to the boy, and left the building. The last time I saw álvaro he was in lockstep behind his father, carrying that suitcase. I was struck by the fact the father didn’t bother to visit the little one. He marched álvaro off. There was no argument, no shouting. I don’t know what the prior told him; I just know that the father took the older boy away and I never saw him again. The little one, either, because after I drafted and signed my report, with no mention of influenza, I walked out of the monastery for the last time.”
A tense silence descended upon the four men. Manuel picked up his cell phone and punched in a number. The others’ expressions were bleak.
“Gri?án, I need for you to tell me when álvaro’s family acquired title to the grounds of the San Xoan monastery.” He waited in silence. It took the administrator less than a minute to bring up the information.
Manuel listened, ended the call, and put the phone back on the table. He pushed it away as if it were tainted by some terrible contagion.
“The old marquis and the prior signed the contract for the transfer of the seminary property in December of 1984. Up to then it had been owned by the monastery. The sale was made for the symbolic price of one peseta.
“They bought his silence. Paid him off with the land.”
Lucas was thunderstruck. He served another round of brandy and tossed his down like medicine. Manuel looked at him in alarm. The priest’s eyes glistened and blinked rapidly as he looked straight ahead at some invisible hell that seemed to have opened before him. Memories, comments, and stray words coalesced with brutal significance. Lucas raised his eyes to heaven.
Manuel wanted to reach out to him but couldn’t. Ortu?o’s narrative had devastated him, too, like a plow ripping open the earth’s surface and mercilessly bringing to light unimaginable horrors concealed beneath. And with that revelation returned the chill and lethargy that had immobilized his soul, the pain he’d managed to suppress in hopes it would never break free and force him to attend to it.
An irresistible tide of grief surged within him with such speed and force it swept him away. His vision clouded over and tears burst forth, so copious and violent they shocked his friends. The primeval force of that mute grief summoned them to embrace his pain.
Nogueira reached out and placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, reciprocating Manuel’s gesture of the night before. Lucas’s eyes were full of tears and anger; he rounded the table, dropped into the chair next to Manuel, and gathered him in his arms. Ortu?o sat motionless, fists clenched in seething anger, lips bared in a fierce grimace; he looked toward his wife, who gave him a questioning glance from behind the bar. He nodded, then took Manuel’s hand beneath the table. It lay motionless and unresponsive in his grasp.
Manuel wept. Tears flowed and spilled forth. Overriding emotion demolished his soul. Stunned and half-conscious, he was grateful for the battering that numbed his suffering soul with equal parts pain and revelation.
All four men were in tears. Ortu?o, the former monk, had suffered sufficiently from life’s misfortunes not to give a damn about the curiosity of the gaping clients Susa was herding out of the bar. When they were gone she lowered the blinds and locked the door. The dimness was relieved only by the low-wattage lamps at the bar and the dim daylight filtering through the transom windows in the back.