destroying archaeological knowledge? It is bizarre.’
Another silent hiatus. The manioc trucks were hooting in the streets below. Now Laraway swivelled in his chair, and tried a new tack.
‘Very well, then. Now let’s talk about your background. I know some of it, but not all. Your father… ah… died of cancer.’
Jess felt her throat close against the words. This subject. This subject. ‘When I was seven. Yes.’
‘Your mother is still alive?’
‘She lives in Redondo, LA.’
Laraway nodded. Then he picked up, and put down, a pen. ‘You were witness to your father’s decline? I do not wish to sound glib or presumptuous. And I am not a psychologist. However, you must have been quite traumatized?’
Jess tried not to blink too fast. To give anything away. She wanted the Sechura sea fog to slide in through the windows and fill the room and wreath her, wrap her with phantasmic shrouds, hide her away from this.
‘I guess I was… Yep. Yes, of course it did. I was very young. My brother was much older. He took it better. Losing a father that young, like I did, I must, it must always affect a child.’
‘Especially a daughter, vis-a-vis the father.’ Andrew Laraway smiled, distantly. ‘I do understand. My own father lost his father when he was just nine. I believe it affected him all his life. When you lose a parent at an untimely age, it is fundamentally destabilizing, you forever have the sensation that even the world beneath your feet cannot be relied upon. My father used to compare it to living in an earthquake zone, the Pacific rim of the emotions. Like here in Peru!’ He leaned forward, spoke more quietly. ‘Could you describe your father’s symptoms? As much as you remember them? I know it might be hard but it would be beneficial.’
Jessica felt the sick dread of something hideous approaching. Faltering, she gave her answer. For several minutes she recalled, as best she could, her father’s trembling; perhaps a fit; his anger and fear; his terrible decline at the end.
‘I was seven, like I say. Maybe I’ve blocked some of it out, maybe I am totally wrong.’
The next silence was the worst of all.
‘No. I don’t think you are wrong, Miss Silverton.’ Suddenly Andrew Laraway’s expression had gone from avuncular concern to something much, much darker. He cleared his throat. ‘Jessica. This is very difficult to say. I want you to prepare yourself.’
The panic was rising in her throat.
Laraway spoke very softly, his words like a soothing prayer in a silent chapel. ‘I wouldn’t normally do this but you have been demanding answers, any answers-’
‘Go on!’
‘Well. Here it is. The symptoms you describe in your father don’t sound like any cancer I know. They sound like Huntington’s Disease. And that is…’ He took a deep breath, and continued. ‘That is a very evil way to die. It begins, innocently enough, with a slight loss of coordination, maybe an unsteady gait, and… fine trembling in the hands. As the disease advances, the body movements become repetitive and jerky: spasticated; this is accompanied by wasting of the muscles, heart decay, and many other symptoms. Violent episodes, terrible depressions. Then comes the terrible darkness of pure dementia.’ Laraway’s gaze was unblinking. ‘There is, of course, no cure. Moreover, Huntington’s Disease is genetic. Many people who might have inherited the disease actively refuse a genetic test to see whether they are carriers. Why? Because it is incurable — therefore they don’t want to know. Likewise, some parents keep the knowledge of the disease from their children, so their lives won’t be blighted by the fear. As the poet said, “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof”.’
The panic in Jessica’s throat had been replaced by an icy cold. She was swallowing coldness. ‘You think I am a carrier?’
His smile was bleak, yet empathetic. ‘There are certain early indications. You have some symptoms which are otherwise rather contrary. The only way we can know for sure is if you have a genetic test. But that… well that is something many people resist.’
Her heart was pounding now.
‘Do I have all the symptoms?’
‘One of the crucial early presentations is epileptic fits, that’s a clinching diagnostic sign. The beginning of the real decline. You’ve not had any of those?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then we do not know. As I say, only a genetic test can tell us.’ He stood. ‘I am so very sorry. One is never sure whether to impart a frightening and potentially false diagnosis like this… However, you seemed distressed and confused, and very much wanting to know. And now it is up to you to decide. You might also consider calling your mother, and asking for the truth.’
He was reaching out a hand. After delivering this possible death sentence, he was just reaching out a hand.
Jessica stood, and shook his hand.
‘Jess, you must call me any time you like, you must feel free to come here whenever.’
‘Thank you.’
She walked to the door, looking at her feet as she did so. Was she stumbling? She was not stumbling. She was dazed, that was all.
At the door she turned; she had to ask one more question. ‘Dr Laraway, if you were me, would you have the test?’
His smile was sadly sincere. ‘I really don’t know, Jessica, I really don’t know. And that’s the truth.’
Closing the door behind her, she walked past the receptionist and took the elevator to the ground floor.
Outside, the thrumming, grimy, fervent and slummy city seemed the same as ever. Bewilderingly normal and scruffy; and yet everything had changed. Jessica stared at her cellphone. She could maybe call her mother right now and get the truth: did her father have that disease? Had she been lied to, to protect her from the fear? If they had lied to her, the lie was no longer working: she had the fear. She was too scared to even call.
Instead, and for a reason she could not fathom in herself, Jessica took a taxi from the centre of town to the Texaco garage, and the Museo Casinelli. Or where they used to be.
Climbing out of the taxi, she stared. She was glad she had come here. The charred and ruined buildings were a fittingly melancholy sight: a temporary wooden fence had been erected around the shell of the building, but it was rickety and already broken. She could see, through the gaps, the black spars of burned concrete, the spoil heaps of ash and dust.
At first she tried not to think of poor Pablo, down there, consumed in the fire. But she couldn’t resist: maybe she wanted to think of him. Maybe that was a good way to go. Burned to death, a few minutes of pain. Better than months and years of decline and terror, then madness and agony.
Jessica felt sick, right down to her lungs, sick and somehow guilty. Maybe she had brought this on herself. Perhaps she had dug up something horrible, an ancient evil, the god of death and killing.
She had woken the sleeping gods of the Moche, and now they would not be dismissed.
23
Highgate, London
The angel was sleeping and quiet.
Ibsen gazed, perplexed, at the marble angel lying on the marble grave. It was an odd concept, even in a graveyard sculpture. Did Victorians actually believe that angels slept? Or maybe it was dead? Could angels die?
‘Mark?’
‘Sorry.’ He wiped the last crumbs of all-day-breakfast sandwich from his lips, with a Pret A Manger napkin. ‘Just thinking, love. Sorry.’
His wife Jenny smoothed her nurse’s uniform; she had a small tray of takeaway salad on her knees. ‘You know I’ve only got thirty minutes.’
