“The Widow!” Clarke exclaimed, unable to believe his ears.
“That’s right, the Widow. At least, that’s what I’ve deduced. I’ve never actually seen her, nor found out anything concrete about her. A few garbled words my mother said as she lay dying have allowed me to reconstruct the story. My aunts died at almost the same time — all of them, including my mother, the victims of a strangely simultaneous (and highly suspicious) illness. It was then, around the time of Rondeau’s death at the hands of Cafulcurá (a death which no one will convince me was not due to some act of treachery by my half-sister) that the Widow’s representatives became extremely active in Buenos Aires. The claims on the inheritance, which had been undivided during my grandfather’s lifetime, became more strident. Of course, no one person could claim legitimacy against the others. This was the chance that snake in the grass De Angelis had been waiting for — perhaps inspired by dialectic effusions emanating from Salinas Grandes. He it was who gave Rosas the idea of enjoying the usufruct of all the possessions of my grandfather, General Aristóbulo de Gauna Alvear, while our quarrels went on — perhaps for ever. You should also know that we descend in direct line, albeit a collateral one, from the Hapsburgs, and one royal legacy has continued to figure in all our family’s papers: a large diamond, unique in the world due to its elongated form and the highly unusual way it was cut. Tradition had it that the diamond was handed down by the distaff side, but our logical tendency toward endogamy meant it had more or less stayed in the family, at least until the generation prior to mine. But my grandmother, its last legal owner, died before the eldest of her daughters had reached the age of fifteen, the date established for handing down the stone. Supposedly, presumably at least, it was my grandfather who handed it to his eldest daughter when she reached fifteen, but here comes yet another strange mystery: nobody ever knew which of the three sisters, my mother or the other two, was the eldest. Apparently there were exactly ten months between each of them, and since their mother had raised them hidden away in the nursery of one of our old patriarchal mansions, nobody could say which was which: they themselves must have known, I’m sure, but they never said a word. Did my grandfather know? He never made any comment either, and he was such a drunk and crazy old man that no one would have believed him anyway. The fact is that he died, and they, I am sorry to say, after living lives of easy virtue in their youth, turned into sanctimonious old maids. When they died there was no sign of the jewel. Everyone thought our grandfather must have given it to one of them, even if he had chosen at random. But that wasn’t the case. I should clarify one other small point: as a result of their amorous adventures, the sisters had given birth only to boys, with the exception, discovered much later, of my half-sister: the now infamous Widow. Are you following my drift?”
“I’m following it perfectly. Although, if this were a novel, I’d take the trouble to reread that last paragraph as carefully as possible. So, we’d reached the point where Rosas. .”
“Rosas, or rather that reptile of an Italian who advises him, used the fact that the legal inventory was incomplete because of the gap left by the diamond, to declare the inheritance proceedings frozen. It’s a common trick among us. What they were after in this case was to suspend matters until they could produce one of the female relatives with the diamond in her possession, so they could negotiate with her ways to divide up half the province of Buenos Aires between them. That’s all the facts for you. The rest is easy enough to guess.”
“I assure you it’s not so easy for me. Couldn’t you give me a helping hand?”
“It seems to me obvious that the jewel has been in the possession of the Indians all these years. It was just what they needed to extort any number of advantageous treaties from that monster of Palermo. When you appeared, the time for the great sleight of hand was ripe; and you were as good an instrument as any to set the whole thing in motion. Why else would Rosas have lent you his best horse? Repetido was the password that you innocently took with you to Salinas Grandes. Once you were there, while they were putting on a great show of pretense, things became more complicated. I have no way of knowing for sure what actually happened, but I have my suspicions. It’s likely there were arguments in the court about handing over the diamond, especially from the faction supporting Juana Pitiley. Leaving themselves without the stone could bring down Rosas’s greed on their heads, and perhaps even speed their own extermination (even though they must be getting a sizeable cut from the deal over the inheritance). If you remember, we saw, or almost saw, the supposed flight of a ‘hare.’ Well, the shape of the diamond precisely recalls that of a hare. As for the ‘legibrarian’ part of it, which I must confess was a surprise to me, it can be explained by the legend of its extraordinary shape. It was cut by an unknown Jew in Amsterdam on the orders of Emperor Charles the Fifth, to fit into Erasmus’s right superciliary arch so that he could use it as a monocle to overcome his astigmatism, for him to be able to ‘read,’ ‘read’ the ‘legible,’ if you follow me: a gift from the Emperor which was never sent as a result of the philosopher’s death.”
“Very original. So according to you, up in Salinas Grandes someone stole the stone?”
“Or faked stealing it.”
“What about Cafulcurá’s disappearance?”
“I haven’t managed to find an explanation for that yet, but you won’t deny it’s linked.”
“There are important holes in your story, Mister Gauna.”
“What’s important aren’t the holes, but what remains. If you look closely, it’s all holes, but the evidence to cover them is there. You must have heard that the Widow is preparing to move on. They say it’s to the Andes, but I have the feeling it’s to somewhere else: once she’s got her hands on the ill-gotten gains, she won’t stop until she’s reached Paris. And today I heard she’s preparing to celebrate the fifteenth birthday of someone who is supposed to be her daughter. . ”
“Yes, that’s what Coliqueo told me.”
“What he won’t have told you is that when she came through here she tried all she could to buy any fifteen-year-old girl available. . that can only mean that things have got out of control and she wasn’t ready for the playacting. What I don’t know is where. . But she didn’t take any girl from here, because Coliqueo refused to sell her one — not out of principle, of course, but to force her to stop somewhere else to find one, so that he could gain time. I’m sure that lunatic has also smelled something odd going on, and is trying to find out what it is. That’s why I think we should follow her traces now while we’re so close to her. . ”