And how pleased Mercedes, Florence, and Anne had been with what they considered a gift, a black miracle. That’s what they called it: the youngest child ever touched by the Darkness—and she was in the family! Adela was a gift to the Order. Toss them both in the river, Stephen had told me. I would have happily done it, too, but there would have been consequences and I was still in danger, because I was disposable. I saw it in Mercedes’ eyes. You never deserved the honor of giving birth to that boy, she would tell me. By that point, my love affair with Puerto Reyes was over. The project at the museum was coming to an end and I wanted to live in a city, go back to Buenos Aires. I had proposals not just from the university, but from foreign institutions that had satellites in the capital.
“Where’s Juan?” Betty asked. I looked at her in profile: she had the Bradfords’ long nose, and widely separated eyes.
“He’ll be back tomorrow,” I said.
I couldn’t be specific. Betty was not authorized to know of Juan’s activities. Maybe someday. One way or another, she could eventually become a good Initiate. She had witnessed the Ceremonial in the most brutal way possible, with no guidance or warning or explanation. And she hadn’t gone crazy in the end. Belonging was in her genes. Her mother, Aunt Marta, was a Bradford, and had timidly returned to the Order in recent years, terrified because her daughter was a militant revolutionary. Was that worse than the Order? To her it was. The Order wasn’t wrong in its conviction that the disobedient will return: there was Betty, with the most spectacular return ever recorded. She’d made every effort to get far away from her family of bourgeois bloodsuckers, and yet chance and violence, night and terror had all brought her straight back into the heart of the Order.
Adela, the black miracle. Right now, Gaspar was sticking a dirt-covered finger into her mouth, as if he wanted to feed her, and Betty was smiling. If anyone had been watching us from the Paraná, they would have seen a tender picture. Two young mothers with their babies. It was about to rain, as always.
“We’re going to stay here for a while, right?”
“It’s safer for everyone,” I replied.
Betty pushed her hair behind her ears.
“All of my comrades around here were killed. You tell me it’s safe, but I don’t know whether to believe it.”
“We’re going to take care of you. They’re all captivated by Adela. You’ll live close to us in Buenos Aires, once we find a house.”
“Are they going to let us lead a normal life?”
“That’s one of Juan’s conditions. They want Adela to be near him. We’ll be watched, as always, but that will be good for you.”
Betty laughed, a bitter and ironic laugh that annoyed me.
“If you don’t want our protection, you can leave, Betty,” I told her.
“I don’t know what I want,” she replied. “I want to go back in time, I want to be with Eduardo, I want to forget everything.”
She picked up her daughter, and Gaspar complained the way he did when something bothered him, a whimper that vanished right away. A gentle breeze carried the scent of jasmine to the beach, and I saw Marcelina coming out with tereré, ice, and oranges.
“There are prisons worse than this one,” I told Betty.
She didn’t answer me but ran to help Marcelina, who was balancing the glasses, the pitcher, and the bag of fruit. Behind Marcelina, I saw Juan. He was back early from Buenos Aires. He wasn’t alone, but it wasn’t Stephen who was with him: it was another blond man, shorter than Juan but still imposing. I hadn’t seen him since I was a teenager, but I recognized him, and was surprised by the audacity of the visit. It was Luis, Juan’s older brother. He looked exhausted, his turquoise eyes sunken in his face. They had traveled together from Buenos Aires.
“Please, Marcelina,” said Juan, “could you bring the drinks inside? By the picture window, if you don’t mind. We’ve had a long trip.”
I went over to Juan and received, along with his kiss, the smell of gasoline and sweat. I caressed his damp back. Betty followed Marcelina inside: she didn’t like strangers to see her, not her or her daughter. She shielded Adela from the eyes of others, always focused so coarsely on her stump, and she also wanted to protect herself. She couldn’t be too careful, and she didn’t know this man with Juan.
The three of us went up to the house, Juan carrying Gaspar. Before going in, Luis paused for a second.
“It’s wonderful,” he said. From the catwalk, you could see almost the whole house. I remembered Luis was an architect.
“Von Plessen designed it. It’s very hot, it doesn’t work for this climate. The gardens are the nicest part.”
“They must be by Blanchard.”
Juan ignored us and went inside, while I stayed with Luis. Large hands with broad fingers; wrinkles at the sides of his impressive eyes that seemed not to blink, their color compact, artificial, similar to Gaspar’s; jeans with slight bell-bottoms. Juan was twenty-four years old, so his brother must have been thirty, but he looked older. He was polite, but clearly on edge.
Juan sat down on the sofa facing the picture window looking on to the orchid garden. Marcelina served fresh water with ice for everyone, left the oranges in the middle of the table, and went to get iced tea as well. Juan took off his shirt and sat Gaspar on one of his legs.
“Luis is here because he needs to get to Brazil. He can’t do it alone, and we need you to help.”
“Well, aren’t you blunt,” said Luis.
“What kind of runaround do you want me to give her?”
“Not a runaround,” said Luis. “But I’m asking for a favor. Let me do the talking.”
Juan raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Take it easy,” I told him. Then I turned to Luis: “Your brother gets like this when he’s exhausted. You must know already that his health isn’t good.”
Luis looked at his hands. He was wearing a broad gold ring, but it wasn’t a wedding band.
“You traveled all the way from Buenos Aires and didn’t say a word to each other,” I guessed.
“We took turns sleeping,” said Luis, and he looked at Juan with a hint of reproach.
“Well. His heart is quite decompensated, so I suppose that if he went to Buenos Aires to get you, it must be for something important.”
“I didn’t go to get him,” said Juan. “I went for what I had to do, and we met up. He told me he needs to get out of the country, so I offered him help.”
Gaspar leaned against his father’s bare chest and yawned. The circles under Juan’s eyes looked like he’d been punched. The ride back in the car had destroyed him. I was a little annoyed by his bad mood, but I knew him well enough to know that this was his way of showing affection—behaving like the world was a porcupine and he couldn’t find anywhere to sit.
Luis took a sip of water and explained. He was precise: I was grateful that he didn’t underestimate me.
“I work as an architect, and until last year I also had a position at a ceramics factory. My commitment in the factory was, or is, political. I also had territorial commitments. Over the past year everything got more complicated: the union secretary, a close friend of mine, was assassinated. They made it look like a car accident. I went on with my architecture studio, but two weeks ago a guy came and cornered me in the doorway and told me, “The only reason I’m not killing you is that you have a sick son.” He was wrong: my partner in the studio is the one whose kid has problems. It won’t be long before they figure that out. My girlfriend has already landed in Río. I want to meet up with her, and I can feel them breathing down my neck. Since the 24th, I haven’t been safe here anymore.”