The Fountains of Silence: Chapters 118–149

“I’m saying that you’re not shackled by poverty and silence. You could never understand what it’s like for me.”

The slap of condescension and the words filthy sins spark a familiar anger in Puri.

Daniel walks through the lobby to Nick, whose face is still mottled with remnants of the alley incident.

Fuga and Rafa are considered criminals. Rafa doesn’t want the authorities to know who he is or that he lives in Madrid. That could endanger his entire family. Once he’s released, he’ll probably disappear for a while. And Fuga, he was considered a vagabond.

Ana’s beautiful face is forlorn. “Are you not feeling well either?” asks Puri.
Ana gives a sweet smile and shakes her head. “Our spirits are a bit low.”

A fever indicates infection. If left untreated, the child could have a seizure or convulsions.

These shots, they’re downright provocative, Matheson. Provocative, that’s the word.

“There’s nothing wrong with her foot. She just has small toes. Don’t let your father hear you. He’s already groused about the cost of the adoption. She’s perfect.”

The museum director appears, pulling Daniel’s gaze from the plaque on the wall.

“But still the elusive bachelor,” says the man’s wife disapprovingly.

A haggard and grief-stricken Carlos Arias Navarro, the Prime Minister, speaking to the nation at 10:00 a.m., said in a breaking voice: “Spaniards. Franco has died. The exceptional man who before God and history assumed the immense responsibility of demanding and sacrificial service to Spain, has given up his life, burned up day by day, hour by hour, in the fulfillment of a transcendental mission.”

Others were glad to see what they considered a hateful period of Spanish history close and were impatient to get on with the task of forging a more liberal regime.

Married and annulled in three weeks.

What would they even talk about? How after a decade as a photojournalist he succumbed to his father’s pleas and joined the business to provide stability for his sister? How he and his father struggled to raise a teen girl in an era of upheaval and free love?

How he floundered through Hockadaisy sleepovers, David Cassidy concerts, Kotex errands, and a dreaded debutante ball?

She hummed her favorite melodies and hovered nearby during late paella dinners.

Tuxedoed waitstaff circulate with champagne and hors d’oeuvres while a jazz singer croons from an interior Juliet balcony.

It was an international call and the connection was quite poor. Or perhaps the caller was inebriated.

He developed film in the sea, broke his leg jumping from a helicopter, and worked through two bouts of dengue fever.

I expected you to look mealy and road-torn like the people you photograph.

Life’s a fight. Speaking of, I’m sure you read about Shep and the New York campaign scandal. What a doozy.

In addition to a radio, there is now a television in the suite and a modern rotary dial phone.

Women look twice at Daniel and Ana knows why. He’s more handsome than ever. Same lean build with jeans and boots, but an older, more alluring version of his rugged teenage self.

He was rattled and said he had seen a ghost. He felt certain you knew something was awry, that you could tell his behavior was odd.

Silence warps everything.

Is that why you became such a sad lone wolf? You were traversing the world, trying to forget about your one true love?

Daniel hears the ring of the decanter’s crystal stopper and liquid being poured into a glass.

“If we can confirm it, I want to tell her. Cristina knows she’s adopted. She’s a legal adult and one day she’ll want to track down her birth parents. She’s also compassionate and resilient. She’s helped us through losing Mom, more than we helped her.”

He probably looks like Ben, disheveled and untied by the snapping fingers of Madrid.

Nick regales a press attaché with stories about the photos.

He peers at Daniel through impossibly thick cataracts that milk his eyes.

“Have we been duped?” he asks. “These past few nights, do you think she was really upstairs, jet-lagged?”

“It’s so... austere. I can’t imagine our mother coming here,” she says.

“Señor Matheson, what a beautiful life your sister has. Clearly, she wants for nothing and every opportunity lies before her. It brings me indescribable joy to see how profoundly she has benefitted from adoption. That’s not always the case.”

He is never chastised, threatened, or laughed at for seeking explanation.

“It’s a vocation, from the Latin vocare, ‘to call.’ It’s a calling—to love and serve. We all choose to live out our vocations in different ways. Your father has a calling to oil. Your sister mentioned your calling to photography. Our former director, Sister Hortensia, she had a calling to orphans and placed so many of us.”

“But, something you said,” begins Daniel. “It resonates with me. You said that knowing is something that evolves, that what we think we know can be quite far from the truth.”

Thousands of babies were stolen from their parents during the Franco dictatorship in Spain, but the story was suppressed for decades.

As the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper put it 40 years ago, about a different regime, “A single personal despot can prolong obsolete ideas beyond their natural term, but the change of generations must ultimately carry them away.”

As the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper put it 40 years ago, about a different regime, “A single personal despot can prolong obsolete ideas beyond their natural term, but the change of generations must ultimately carry them away.”