‘My mother lived in this house for forty-five years,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t even a house then, just a hut made of cane and old rubbish washed up by the sea. Even when she had earned herself a reputation and had the chance to get out of this place, she refused. She always said that the day she left the Somorrostro, she would die. She was born here, among the people of the beach, and she would remain here until her last day. Many things were said about her. Many people talked about her, but very few really knew her. Many feared and hated her. Even after her death. I’m telling you all this because I think it’s fair that you should know: I’m not the person you’re looking for, or you think you’re looking for. The one many called The Witch of Somorrostro was my mother.’
I looked at her in confusion.
‘When…?’
‘My mother died in 1905,’ she said. ‘She was killed a few metres away 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 even conquer 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 which 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 favours. 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 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.
‘And what was your mother able to do for him?’ I asked.
‘Only comfort him and help him find some peace. Diego Marlasca believed in magic and that’s why my mother thought she should convince him that his road to salvation passed through her. She spoke to him of an ancient spell, a fisherman’s legend she had heard as a child among the hovels by the sea. When a man lost his way in life and felt that death had put a price on his soul, the legend said that if he found a pure soul who would agree to be sacrificed in order to save him, he would be able to disguise his own black heart with it, and death, which cannot see, would pass him by.’
‘A pure soul?’
‘Free of sin.’
‘And how was this to be carried out?’
‘With pain, of course.’
‘What sort of pain?’
‘A blood sacrifice. One soul in exchange for another. Death in exchange for life.’
A long silence amid the whisper of the sea and the wind swirling among the shacks.
‘Irene would have pulled out her own eyes and heart for Marlasca. He was her reason for living. She loved him blindly and, like him, believed that his only salvation lay in magic. At first she wanted to take her own life, offering it to him as a sacrifice, but my mother dissuaded her. She told her what she already knew, that her soul was not free of sin and that her sacrifice would be in vain. She said that to save her. To save them both.’
‘From whom?’
‘From themselves.’
‘But she made a mistake…’
‘Even my mother couldn’t see everything.’
‘What did Marlasca do?’
‘My mother never wanted to tell me – she didn’t want me and my siblings to be a part of it. She separated us and sent each of us far away to different boarding schools so that we would forget where we came from and who we were. She said that now we were the ones who were cursed. She died shortly afterwards, alone. We didn’t find out until much later. When they discovered her body nobody dared touch it: they let the sea take it away. Nobody dared speak about her death either. But I knew who had killed her and why. Even today I believe my mother knew she was going to die soon and by whose hand. She knew and she did nothing about it because in the end she too believed. She believed because she was unable to accept what she’d done. She believed that by handing over her soul she would save ours, the soul of this place. That’s why she didn’t want to flee, because, as the legend says, the soul that sacrifices itself should always remain in the place where the treasonable act was committed, like a bandage over the eyes of death.’
‘And where is the soul that saved Diego Marlasca?’
The woman smiled.
‘There are no souls or salvations, Señor Martín. That’s just an old wives’ tale, gossip. Only ashes and memories remain, but if there are any they will be in the place where Marlasca committed his crime, the secret he has hidden all these years to mock his own destiny.’