Chapter 18: The Blue Ink

Ignacio Barrera had stayed silent in rooms like this for fourteen years.

He had never wanted so badly to speak.

"I paid nothing," he said.

His voice carried to the end of the table.

"That is an interesting answer," Octavio said.

He sat down again with a patient face.

"But there was a loan, and there was a bride, and there is a page in the newspaper. Gentlemen, I only ask what you are all thinking."

"Then I will answer all of you."

Ignacio crossed the room to the lawyer and held out his hand.

The lawyer looked at Consuelo.

Then, very slowly, he took a file from his case and gave it over.

It was the original contract.

Ignacio opened it on the table in front of the board and turned it to the last page.

The lawyer's black type stopped halfway down.

Below it, in blue ink that had faded a little in a year, was his own handwriting.

"This is the line your newspaper did not print," he said.

"I wrote it in this building the morning before the wedding."

He read it aloud.

"Thirty days after Renata Mendiola regains consciousness, the second spouse alone may end this marriage by her signature."

He turned the page.

"The first spouse waives any right to end it, to delay it, to contest it or to bargain over it."

Nobody coughed.

"The first spouse is me," Ignacio said. "I gave up every right I had."

He looked down the table.

"I did it so that no one in this room, and above all I, could keep her one hour past her own wish."

He read on.

"If she ends it, she takes the house and a sum equal to the loan, and the loan is cancelled."

"That is not the price of a bride."

"It is her exit, and she is the only person in the world who can use it."

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