Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

After the Ministry was destroyed, I devoted myself to study, I took two university courses, in theology and philosophy. For more than ten years I’ve been reading, learning about ideas, examining the images of devotion from the inside. When I first arrived at the Ministry I was seventeen, I was a scared girl, and in twelve years of spreading the word with Walter I turned into a good priest; today, with twelve years of university studies behind me, I still believe in Walter. I’m a monotheist. Nothing of what I learned in all those years has made me doubt what I felt about him, and if I could put the clock back and see the house in South Beach reemerge from the dust, I would renew my love and devotion to Walter, who represents the supreme idea of holiness.

I realized that she was about to finish, so I ventured to say, to ask rather, if Walter was so holy, why did he suddenly turn into a soldier and open fire when the police came for him? Jessica cleared her throat and took a sip of coffee. She looked around, nervous again, and said: there were weapons in the house, I don’t deny that, and the reason is that there was always money, a lot of money in cash. I never agreed with all that, but there were weapons and money. The way José tells it, it’s as if Walter was a sniper or something like that, but it wasn’t like that. José was in his cabin and didn’t see anything, he imagined it all. But I was in the tower and I know that the people who kept shooting right up until the end were Jefferson and the bodyguards. There were bullet casings clattering on the floor, the boys were jumping from one window to another and throwing each other cartridge clips, everything was filling up with smoke but they carried on; remember they came from the underclass, the school of the street. A shoot-out was a game to them, and better still, it was against the law. While this was going on Walter was kneeling on the floor, with tears in his eyes and an expression that had stopped being human. When fire started to engulf the house, he ordered us to leave and he stayed behind. In my last image of him, he is silhouetted against the flames, bare-chested and with his arms open in the shape of a cross. The Lord decided at that moment to come and take him back and that is why nobody found any traces, of his body or anything. He vanished into thin air.

Having said this, she looked at her watch anxiously and said, it’s getting late, now it’s your turn to tell me why you’re looking for me, and especially how you found me.

I hadn’t expected that question, so instead of replying, I took the message out of my pocket and threw it on the table. We’ve found you. She looked at it in silence and nodded, then said, so it’s because of this. I thought I saw, deep in her face, the beginnings of a smile. You traced the call back to the Coptic Church? I assume the answer is yes, otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here. Let me ask you another question, why are you interested in this story?

I came across it by chance, I said, a thread flung down in front of me that I decided to follow. I could have decided not to, but I did it for no other reason than that it was there. I did it because I could.

Jessica read the message again, and this time she did smile. Poor José, maybe he never even read it. Yes, I said, he did. I found it in his room, inside his book, Encounters with Amazingly Normal People. By the way, who was with you when you made the call? why the plural?

She left the paper on the table and said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I insisted: if you’d been alone you would have said, “I’ve found you” wouldn’t you? Jessica seemed confused and looked toward the door. That’s none of your business, let me remind you I’m under no obligation to answer your questions, this is a pointless conversation, do I have to justify myself? well, I won’t, but I will answer your question, the reason I used the plural is that I was referring to God, who is always with me. And now I have to go, they’re waiting for me at the church.

She stood up, looking nervous, and walked toward the door. Before she reached it, I said, is God the guest in Room 1209? As I uttered the question and saw her turn, something welled up in my memory: her voice. I had heard it before. It was the voice from the first night. She came back to the table and said, what else do you know about me? I looked her in the eyes. I know you went to the morgue at the Notre Dame de France hospital to see José’s body — actually I was starting to have doubts about that — and that you went there with somebody, I don’t know who, perhaps with the mysterious William Cummings, is that his real name? For the first time she looked at me with a defiant expression, and said, the person you’re referring to is a companion in faith, who’s been with me on and off over the years. He has nothing to hide and has no connection with José, so I would ask you not to call him “mysterious”; he’s no more mysterious than that young man who came in with you and is waiting for you at the back there, throwing those very crude glances at us, trying to figure out where our conversation is heading, do you think I didn’t see him?

That’s Momo, a young employee from the hotel. He brought me here because today is his day off, and he was coming to Tel Aviv to visit his mother. Why didn’t he come and sit with us? asked Jessica, but then she snapped her fingers and said, I know why, he was the one who told you about my calls, about the message, about Room 1209, tell him to come here. I refused. He doesn’t speak Spanish and he doesn’t know anything about this story. She paused again, then asked: what do you find so strange in the message?

It’s quite a coincidence that José decided to kill himself after reading it, don’t you think? But you didn’t know that. Why didn’t you put your name on the message? did you think those three words would be enough to tell him it was you? Jessica’s eyes filled with tears, and she said, I don’t know, I didn’t want to leave my name, maybe I felt scared again, I don’t know, you said people do things without knowing why, just because they can, well, this was like that, believe me, there is no puzzle, I simply didn’t want to.

Knowing you’d found him wasn’t sufficient incentive to stay alive, I said, why do you think he killed himself? and another thing, from the message I assume you hadn’t heard from him in quite some time, why were you looking for him? what was José running away from?

Miss Jessica took a deep breath and looked toward the door again. There are many things I haven’t told you, she said. In the last years of the Ministry, José used a power of attorney signed by me to steal large sums of money. He would put some little phrase like “miscellaneous expenses,” “contribution for Oregon Street,” “infrastructure,” and nobody asked any questions; at first it would be amounts like seven thousand dollars, but then they crept up to twenty-five thousand, and once even fifty thousand. He must have had someone advising him, because after a while it became very difficult to understand what he had done, and impossible to trace. Of course there was still money left in the Ministry, but it was all very strange. So I told Walter and he summoned José to the tower one night, just the two of them alone. He asked me to listen from behind the door, because he wanted me to help him figure it out afterwards. Walter said to him, are you taking money out, José? what do you need it for? He said he wasn’t taking it out for himself but for charitable works, and he didn’t know he had to justify himself. But Walter insisted. Look, brother, there are days when you withdrew seventy thousand dollars, why? what do you need so much money for? I want you to know something, José, if you want money just tell me straight out and I’ll give you all you want, this is just between you and me and all you have to do is ask, you know that, but don’t go taking out money here and there like that, it makes everyone nervous.