“What are you thinking?”
“I’m not going to live ten more years, and I don’t want Gaspar to belong to the Order. If I can mark him with a seal that will prevent them from finding him, I’m going to do it. There are a lot of things that would have to happen first. I have to find the Other Place and get it to offer me the sign. It will surely require another sacrifice. I’ll give it one, of course. A sign on his arm, visible, that will disorient them. If they try to find him, they’ll get lost. They won’t be able to find out where he is, and if they do, they won’t be able to reach him. A sign, a mark, to hide him.”
“What about me? I don’t want to be apart from my son. Are you going to hide him from me?”
He kept drawing the phantom seal on Gaspar’s arm. The mark could only be made with violence: it would have to be a deep, painful, unforgettable wound, he told me. He would have to hurt Gaspar.
“And yes, he would also be hidden from you, even if you left the Order. But I want the seal to work only in one direction. It will keep the Order away from Gaspar. That’s what it would do, and only that. Gaspar could approach the Order, if he wanted. If he wants to see you again, he’ll be able to. He deserves that horrible freedom, and you do too, I suppose. I hope I won’t be alive for it if he wants to go back. The mark is going to drive him away from you and from me. I’m willing to make that sacrifice, and you should be too, in order to save his life. He will live with my brother. Luis is the only one who isn’t contaminated. It’s already decided, Rosario, and you’re not going to be able to stop it. If you aren’t with me, you’ll have your own decision to make.”
“You’re going to drive our son away from us, and you call that love.”
“Of course. Or is it love to steal his body?”
The most incredible thing was that we weren’t arguing. Even our voices were low, so the music would cover our conversation.
“And the Rite, Juan? Are you going to mark him before it takes place? Gaspar is the Recipient for your consciousness . . .”
“Gaspar is not the Recipient for anything. I’m going to mark him whenever the seal is given to me. I can also make the Rite fail, or pretend I can’t do it. You have to find out the rules. You or Stephen. That way I can make my plan, figure out how to stage a failure.”
Gaspar turned over in his sleep and rested his hand on Juan’s chest. He would often make that movement when he was asleep. I cried from jealousy. I was also crying because I didn’t want to decide, but I had to. The ceiling fan made the light from the bedside lamp seem to flicker; I looked into Juan’s yellowish eyes. He, too, was going to leave me behind. I didn’t answer him immediately.
“How can you even think of giving them our son?” he asked me.
“They trained me to obey,” I said.
“That convenience is over. Do I have to save Gaspar alone? Maybe I shouldn’t tell you my plans. Can’t I make you change?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I can change. Yes.”
The beach was still clean though the brown water was starting to wash up branches, dead flowers, lost hyacinths, even animals. It was always the same after a flood: the river robs, drowns, sullies, and scatters. I looked at Gaspar, who was playing on the shore. Physically, he was very different from his father. Dark hair, blue eyes, overwhelming energy. He already had a personality, and he wasn’t even three yet. He rarely threw tantrums. I only saw anxiety in his eyes when I went to spend a day in Asunción with Tali, or to teach class in Buenos Aires. But when I came back, I always found he’d been good during my absence, with Juan taking care of him, the two of them alone in that silent world they shared.
Since we’d learned the information about the Rite, Juan, Stephen, Tali, and I were never apart. We were all in agreement to save Gaspar, to stop the cycle. The discussion was settled. I didn’t have any more doubts that it was the right decision, but sometimes, still, the possibility of continuing Juan’s life, of keeping him alive inside Gaspar, seemed like a horrible miracle that was worth trying.
Juan was in Buenos Aires because he had found a door. Stephen was with him. This trip was to make sure the door was still open, that it was in effect a passage to the Other Place, and that it would open again for him. Finally, after so many years, the Other Place had appeared.
Something else had appeared, too, unexpectedly. Something the Order didn’t know how to deal with and that I had to take care of, because, in part, it was my fault.
Betty was the new problem, my cousin, distanced from the Order for so many years now. Why had I felt compassion for her? Some days earlier, we had listened together as the radio announced the coup d’état. She had cried; luckily, my parents were in another room, because they surely would have celebrated. My father had told me, though, that I needed to be careful with those who had taken power. He said the same about Stroessner’s soldiers every time I went to Paraguay. My dad was in agreement with them ideologically, but he insisted that they were animals. But I knew how to take care of myself. If I couldn’t ward off a few idiot soldiers after so many years learning from the Order, then it had all been for naught. And that’s without taking into account that I possessed a Hand of Glory. I’d never had any incidents. They didn’t even look at me. At the border, they waved me through respectfully.
Betty came down to the beach with her daughter, whom she sat beside Gaspar. They liked to play together. Gaspar didn’t seem to notice that Adela was missing an arm. Of course, Gaspar didn’t know that Juan had cut it off, certainly against the baby’s will and her mother’s. Not Juan, of course. The Darkness. The girl had been chosen. Betty had ignored my order not to leave the house during the days of the Ceremonial, and the Darkness had seen baby Adela, so tiny, younger and slighter than Gaspar. The mutilation on such a little body was shocking.
When Betty had arrived, I hadn’t been able to turn her away. She was my cousin, my childhood friend; plus, the Order wanted her back. She had shown up with her daughter in the middle of the night, covered in insect bites and scratches, panicked and dehydrated. She had run through the jungle with the baby, trying to escape. I’d known she had settled in the jungle nearby with the organization she belonged to, and I had always intuited how badly that plan would turn out, but Betty believed in herself. She and her comrades were trained, they had an arsenal. When she announced herself to the guards at the entrance to Puerto Reyes, alone and defeated, I took her in. I talked to Florence, to my mother, my father. Of course she’s welcome, they said. She’s part of the family, she’s a Bradford. The Ceremonial was in a few days. She would have to stay locked away until it was over, because Betty was not an Initiate. Later they would decide what to do with her and her return, which they had long hoped for.
Betty, however, had left her isolation, despite my orders and my pleas. She wasn’t rebellious, she was disobedient. She could be brave, I won’t argue with that, but she didn’t understand where the limits were. Why did she go out there? Why didn’t I lock her in? It was my fault. And her moment of curiosity had created another weight for Juan to carry, because now he also had to suffer for Betty and her daughter. How hard it had been to calm her down after she had unwittingly stumbled on the Ceremonial. She had no idea what she had seen, she didn’t understand it. She was in shock for weeks, raving about a black light that had taken her daughter—though that wasn’t what happened, it only cut off her arm—and then the man, she screamed, the man had healed the wound with his hands! With his hands! she repeated. The black light and the hands. She screamed all night. She went crazy. I halfheartedly took care of her daughter. It was lucky that Marcelina and Tali were there, because I didn’t have patience for Adela, who was nervous and whiny. I didn’t really like kids, just my own son, and not even him all the time. I had told Betty that the man with the hands was Juan, but she never did believe it. How annoying.