“It’s treatable,” she said. “Gaspar told me about an accident and a blow to the head. He had amnesia, he says. They did some examinations and I’ve sent for them. I have a good friend who’s a neurologist, with whom I often work. I was surprised those examinations hadn’t been sent for before, but Gaspar didn’t mention the accident or his memory loss to the other doctors, and I assume not to you either. I understand, there’s no reason you would know. Sometimes epilepsy is the result of a lesion. It’s true that there don’t seem to be any signs of that in the examinations they’ve done so far. But, again, some cases of epilepsy are difficult to diagnose, and each one is different.”
“I don’t know what was going on with my brother. Gaspar told me very little. He did mention a car accident, but he didn’t seem to give it much importance.”
“He’ll tell you what you need to know. Everything he tells me, what goes on between the two of us, is confidential. I don’t think there is anything, yet, that you need to hear from me. When a person remembers the past, their autobiographical memories are verbally accessible, which means they can relate them in words. In trauma, memories are isolated and the person cannot access them voluntarily; that’s why Gaspar relives them in nightmares and flashbacks. It’s not just his friend’s disappearance. His father’s death took away his structure: they were very close. My job is to try to get some of those memories to become biographical, to get him to integrate them so he can tell them as stories.”
“And that’s possible?”
“Not always. I’ve seen patients after years of abuse who barely suffer a slight depression. Others collapse. Gaspar was very vulnerable. But we’re going to try.”
And she gave him instructions regarding three things: establish a routine—four meals a day, schedules, outings, movies—monitor Gaspar’s medication, and have him exercise. Luis wanted to know if Gaspar could see his friends again: the kids had called to ask. Not yet, said the psychiatrist. We can’t risk them being a trigger. When he asks to see them, we’ll consider it.
“He likes to read.”
“That too, then. Get him a library card. That way he’ll leave the house, and he’ll have a commitment to return the books. I need him to establish ties, to have simple responsibilities.”
The whole previous week they had watched on TV as the Carapintadas took over the Campo de Mayo military base. An attempted coup d’état, but this time the people had taken to the streets to defend the democratic government. Luis wanted to go to the demonstration, but he decided to stay with Gaspar instead. Negro Sánchez and Julieta did go into Buenos Aires, and they stayed in the plaza until Alfonsín came out onto the balcony and said, “Happy Easter,” the greeting that put an end to the attack on the base. Gaspar had said to him: “With me being crazy and all, we didn’t even notice the country was going to hell.” Instead of worrying him, the joke had given Luis hope. When Carlos Menem won the election in the midst of a disaster that scarcely resounded in the house in Villa Elisa, there were fireworks at a Peronist meeting house a block away, and Luis took Gaspar. He ran into an acquaintance who started raving about the new president; Gaspar sipped a Coca-Cola and wandered out of Luis’s view. When he came back, he was eating a sausage.
“You’re hungry! It’s a Peronist miracle!”
“It’s delicious,” Gaspar said with his mouth full. That night he ate a sausage and a half, more than he’d eaten all week. Two months after that, Luis noticed that the flashbacks, those terrifying blackouts, were no longer as relentlessly frequent. By the end of the year, they were happening so sporadically that even Gaspar dared to say out loud, over breakfast: Now I’m scared I’ll have an episode, because I’m having them a lot less, right? That’s what he called them, “episodes,” surely a term taken from therapy. Luis started to invite people over, friends of his, friends of Julieta’s. They stayed up late talking about politics, drinking beer, and smoking. Gaspar was suspicious at first—Who are these people you’re inviting? he’d ask. Eventually, he accepted it. And once he gained confidence, he stayed up with them, eating pizza and asking curious questions. By the end of the year Gaspar was eating almost normally, so much so that he even requested different pizza toppings and wanted to make sure Julieta would be there to keep the sauces from burning, and enough with the zucchini torte, it’s gross. He also agreed to go to the neurologist. When Luis watched the news or political programs and shouted at the TV, Gaspar would tell him, “Uncle Luis, don’t act crazy, they can’t hear you,” and the two of them would laugh. He wanted to sign up at the club to swim and run; only then did Gaspar tell Luis that he was bad at soccer. Luis wouldn’t believe it until they played a pickup game and ended up rolling with laughter on the ground, clutching their bellies, because they were both equally clumsy.
“So what team do you root for? And show some respect, jackass, don’t laugh at me like that.”
“Don’t call me a jackass, I’m mentally unstable and you have to watch out for me. I’m for San Lorenzo.”
“How about that. Me too.”
“Dad said all the men in the family were for San Lorenzo.”
“It’s true, your grandfather was too.”
There was a silence.
“You know, Dad wasn’t always mean to me, Uncle Luis. There were times when he read to me every night. Sometimes I’d read to him.”
“What did he read you?”
“Poetry. But don’t say anything because then people will call me a fag.”
“It’s not gay to read poetry.”
“I know, but I don’t need those problems. I know there’s nothing wrong with poetry or with being gay, he taught me all that. That’s what I mean, he wasn’t always bad, sometimes he was really good to me.”
“Your dad suffered a lot, and there are people who turn bitter when they have such a bad time of it.”
Gaspar leaned one elbow on the grass and his head on his hand to look directly at his uncle, who was sitting with his legs crossed and the ball on one of his knees.
“That’s true. But it’s not just that. I tell this to Isabel. I can remember a ton of things, but it’s like I’ve forgotten something important. I remember hardly anything about when we went alone to Misiones, for example, to my grandparents’ house. Mom had just died. And something happened there.”
“How did you get there?”
“By car.”
“And he drove? What a crazy son of a bitch. You both could have died. You don’t remember your grandparents?”
“Barely. But Dad didn’t want me to be with them, and he said Mom didn’t either. And they never tried to see me.”
“That’s true. But goddamn, you were alone. I’m sorry I abandoned you, son.”
“You didn’t abandon me.”
Luis tried to hug him, but Gaspar put out an arm to stop him: he wanted to talk.
“When we go back to my house, we have to go into the room where he kept his things, and you’ll see all his books. I want to keep some, I like to read. Sometimes he’d lock himself in for days at a time, and I wasn’t allowed to bother him.”