“You look beautiful,” he told her when she’d finished.
“Don’t say that, you know I don’t like it.”
“You always were beautiful. Rosario was pretty, but you’re beautiful.”
“But you love her, so don’t talk to me like that.”
“Oh, but falling in love has nothing to do with beauty.”
Tali put her hands on her waist and had to take a deep breath to keep from shouting.
“You know what, Juancito, you need to let me know when you’re coming, because otherwise these things happen.”
“What things?” he asked, and he crossed his legs, sitting on the edge of the tub.
“The thing is that I never forget you, but I manage and I’m happy with my plants, my house, my dogs, I have my bed and some nights I imagine it’s you when I hear footsteps but other nights I sleep just fine, let me tell you. And suddenly you show up here with the kid and I get all stupid, I’m such an idiot, thinking you’re going to stay and we’re going to be together and all that nonsense. I even get it into my head—just listen to this—that my sister would be happy if you stayed with me. My poor, dear sister. You really piss me off, asshole.”
Someone knocked gently on the bathroom door and Juan said, come in, son. Gaspar entered shyly. Tali straightened up beside the sink and smoothed her hair, which she wore very long, almost down to her waist. Sometimes she thought she might be a little old for hair like that. Gaspar didn’t even glance at her.
“What happened to your finger?”
“I cut myself outside.”
“On what?”
“On a broken bottle that was there to keep cats out of the chicken coop.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“When they cut you there it hurt a whole lot.” Gaspar pointed at Juan’s chest.
“But that’s totally different,” replied Juan, and Tali saw him holding back laughter. “This is a little cut on my finger. And also, as I explained before, what hurts in the chest is the bone.”
“Right, because they sawed open the bone to operate on you.”
“Oh, honey, don’t talk like that!” said Tali.
“They sawed it open, you didn’t know?” Gaspar looked up at her, blinking as if the light bothered him. “They cut him down the middle and then they sewed him up again. It was to cure his heart, but I don’t think they cured it very good.”
Juan burst out laughing. He stood and picked his son up.
“It’s just that there’s no cure for your dad! You little animal, you’re scaring Tali.”
“I just wanted to explain to her.”
“I already told her all about it over the phone a long time ago.”
“Then I don’t need to explain.”
“No, you don’t need to explain a thing.”
“Aren’t we going to the water?”
“We’re going right now.”
Juan kissed Gaspar’s forehead and grabbed Tali’s hand to lead her out of the bathroom, but she said, you all go, you two are crazy. I want to change and wash up a little. Don’t make a scene, murmured Juan, and she shook her head. She needed a few minutes to herself, to look in the mirror, get the sunscreen and towels, wet her face, clean the blood from the tub, wait until her hands stopped trembling.
Let’s take my car, said Tali, I’ll drive. The lake was close and it was better for swimming than the river, which was treacherous along that stretch with its whirlpools and quicksand. The heat was stifling but the sky was clear, not a single raincloud. It still might rain later, but hopefully not, thought Tali; the January humidity could be torturous. She patted Juan’s leg before starting off. He had put on a pair of khakis and seemed very uncomfortable in the Renault’s seat, which was too small for him. Gaspar was silent in the back and Tali tried to draw him out by asking about the cartoons, but gave up when she received no reply. The boy was in mourning and so was she, and she well knew how sad that hot air was, the open oven of noon hitting them right in the face. His mother was dead. There was no consoling him.
She stopped the car at the roadside and got out. “Come here, Gaspar, I want to show you something,” she told the boy from outside.
In front of a wooden sky-blue house that looked on the verge of collapse, there was a tall ceiba tree in flower. Gaspar got out grumpily, but he listened.
“This is the tree your dad was telling you about. It’s Anahí’s, the little native girl’s.”
Gaspar walked to the trunk and stared up at the red flowers.
“There’s a cat on that branch.”
“Where?”
Tali approached and looked up; a yellow cat was sleeping sprawled in the leafy shade. Gaspar still looked serious, and she knelt down to look straight into his eyes. Your mom still loves you, she told him. She can’t be with you anymore, but she loves you like crazy. Gaspar covered his face and started to cry and sway, and Tali let him be. She didn’t look toward the car, didn’t want to know if Juan was watching, if he was coming over to intervene, if he was going to be furious that she was making his son cry. She’s never coming back, is she? Gaspar asked, and Tali didn’t want to answer that question, but replied the way she had to: that no, his mother wasn’t going to come back. Did you know she was hit by a bus? Yes, don’t you remember I was at the funeral? Maybe not, when you’re very sad it’s easy to forget things.
“There are a lot of buses here, I don’t like it.”
He’s scared to death, Tali realized, and she wanted to hug him, but there was nothing in the boy’s attitude that authorized her to touch him. He’s like his father that way, she thought; they’re both like cats.
“Around here we call buses micros. They’re a little different.”
She wasn’t going to make him feel better with that, but at least it was true.
“Let’s go to the water, okay?”
He doesn’t want to be far from his dad, thought Tali. Gaspar held his hand out to her and she took it, surprised. Back in the car he was still quiet, but at least he looked out the window: before, his head had hung down. Juan said nothing, just lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, filling his lungs with smoke as if the heat wasn’t enough.
The rest of the day was calm and silent even though the beaches at the lake were full of people. Gaspar received cheers and applause when he was able to float free of the safety of his father’s arms, and although he didn’t eat much at lunch, he did agree to play with some boys carrying spades and buckets who invited him to dig trenches. Stay close, where we can see you, Tali told them, and the boys said yes, ma’am and settled in less than three meters away. Juan swam far out in the lake, and Tali, alone under the sun umbrella, finally felt calm. She was ready now to listen to what Juan had to tell her. Because, she realized, he did have something to tell her. Juan was not her occasional lover. She was no mere river witch. They were both members of the Order. They could pretend to forget that, but not for very long.
Gaspar was still digging his hole—a real crater, said the other boys’ mother, who was keeping a close eye on them. A car radio was playing a melancholic chamamé; a fat woman was strolling along the shore with a black dog that leaped up at her and made her laugh; two young men were storing their fishing poles, bait, and catch in the back of a pickup: they’d soon be putting the fish on a grill somewhere. Tali recognized a man who had come to ask for protection two months back, and whom she had let enter the temple and pray to the saint, alone; she had blessed his skeleton figure with wine and ash. She also recognized a woman who had come to have her cards read, asking about her daughter: Tali had seen her dead, drowned, and she’d said so. One of the many girls the military had murdered and thrown into rivers, their eyes eaten by fish, their feet tangled in vegetation: dead mermaids with bellies full of lead. Tali didn’t lie, she wouldn’t give false hope. The fathers and mothers of young people who’d been disappeared by the dictatorship sought her out; they wanted, at least, to know how their children died, if their bodies were in a pit of bones or underwater or in a secret cemetery. The woman didn’t look at her now: she was playing with a little girl. Was this the dead girl’s daughter? She remembered that afternoon: it was raining, the sky was black. Unafraid of the lightning, the woman had left anyway, and Tali had watched her run down the dirt road. Then she’d gathered up the cards in the deck and had sat drinking mate, looking out at the dark gray day, watching the way the wind shook the peach tree and the other trees off in the distance, by the river. Ka’aru, she thought. She needed to speak more Guarani. She was losing the language, spending too much time alone.