Plus, there was nothing in the house. Nothing dangerous, nothing evil. The house was clean. The things he saw, the apparitions of his father or Adela, belonged to him, not the house. He would bring them wherever he went. Ever since his father had hurt him, the scar on his arm acted as a kind of alarm: it throbbed and burned when he went near certain houses, some that seemed threatening, others that looked perfectly innocent. Gaspar understood that it was indicating places he shouldn’t go into, other houses like the one that had swallowed Adela. He couldn’t share that with anyone, either. Vicky and Pablo were the only ones he could tell, but he still couldn’t bring himself to see them.
That feeling and the inexplicable horror certain places provoked in him could have been caused by whatever it was the doctors and psychiatrists were struggling to name: the aftermath of trauma, epilepsy derived from the accident, some kind of mental illness. Gaspar played dumb, but he heard them talking. And he thought maybe one of them was right. Adela was nearly gone, but she still appeared in the corner of his room and stared at him in accusation. I loved you, she told him, her lips not moving, and you betrayed me. Still, he could live with those feelings, and the guilt. As long as the house in Villa Elisa existed, his uncle arguing with the radio in the morning, Negro Sánchez trying out different pizza toppings, and Julieta bringing him poetry books, he could trust that someday he would see his friends again. And if some impossible memory left him mute and paralyzed, he now knew it was also possible to reemerge from that immobility and sit in the sun with the chocolate his uncle always kept for him in the refrigerator.
The backyard of the house in Villa Elisa had been the first thing to improve, and Luis had started there just because it was the only thing Gaspar had mentioned. Without too much enthusiasm, and it wasn’t a request—he didn’t ask for anything in those first days—he’d said it would be nice to have a garden. Surprised, Luis remembered the postcards his brother had sent him when he went to have an operation in London, where the treatment options were better. Juan had always talked about the gardens and flowers and the English green; he sent photos of old, secret gardens, of public parks, and also of buildings and castles and churches. He’d thought they were very odd postcards coming from a boy who, though he did have physical limitations, was living it up in one of the world’s capitals. He decided not to show the postcards to Gaspar, not yet, but instead set to work: he broke up the cement and tiles, bought dirt and grass, dusted off some ideas from a landscaping class he’d taken in Río, and spent afternoons at the nursery choosing plants that were already grown. He thought about adding a pool, but didn’t have enough money. A canvas one would have to do. Plus, he would rather Gaspar go to the club to swim: it was better for him to get out of the house, and that was also what Isabel recommended. He and Gaspar had fun fixing up the garden. The kid was very good at following instructions, and he liked repetitive tasks. Luis thought they helped give him structure, and he understood, because he felt the same way.
With Gaspar’s improvement came some adjustments. Luis tried to make him understand that if he wanted money, he had to ask for it, but Gaspar took that instruction as a mere suggestion. When his weekly allowance ran out, he would go into Luis’s room and take what he wanted from the drawer. And sometimes he took too much. He didn’t ask for help with anything: if he wanted to get something that was out of his reach, he climbed; if one of his buttons fell off, he sewed it back on, and he sewed Luis’s while he was at it. That was good, endearing. But if he went into La Plata and it got late or he felt tired, he would take a taxi back: it was several kilometers, the taxi was really expensive, and they couldn’t afford it. Even worse: sometimes he didn’t come back until very late, in the early hours of the morning, and when he arrived and found Luis awake and anxious, he’d ask what was wrong, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for a mentally ill fourteen-year-old to stay out all night. If Luis scolded him, he shrugged his shoulders, not exactly with rebellion or indifference, but with a genuine lack of understanding. He couldn’t comprehend why he shouldn’t come home late, or why it worried others when he did. He cooked—always simple dishes, but he did it well: pasta with sauce, ham and cheese empanadas, and sometimes he ventured painstakingly into a potato pie, a Spanish omelette, a sponge cake, oven-baked hake with cheese. But he didn’t clean the kitchen or change the sheets or clear the table, nor did it occur to him to pitch in on weekends with a mop and bucket. He’s a rich kid, Julieta told Luis whenever he got angry.
For some months now, Julieta had been having meetings with lawyers representing Gaspar’s mother’s family. They had communicated to her that Gaspar’s grandparents would not demand custody or visitation. Really, they couldn’t intervene in the matter of custody, because Juan had done the paperwork while he was still alive. But Julieta had the feeling, peculiar but distinct, that Juan had bypassed them by giving his son to Luis before he died and that it bothered them immensely, which was why they had mentioned custody for no reason. Bypassed? What do you mean? asked Luis, and she didn’t know how to answer. It was an instinct. The lawyers seemed to concede from the start that the boy would not go with his grandparents, like it was a fight they’d already lost. The meetings were held at one of the properties of Gaspar’s maternal family—not the main offices, but a smaller branch. The meeting room was bizarre, Julieta thought. In addition to the fireplace, which was already out of fashion with its false firewood covering the gas screen, there was a wood stove and a samovar that looked authentic. It was never cold enough in Buenos Aires to justify such a display of heaters. The walls were covered with what she supposed were hunting trophies, but that were only the horns of different animals. Stags, bucks, she’d been told. Without their heads. The table was oak and very large, and they always had her sit at one end. The lawyers, a man and a woman, were polite and meticulous, but they took a long time, many months, to approve Gaspar’s inheritance, the list of property that would belong to him. Whenever she was leaving one of those meetings, Julieta had the feeling she would never see them again. But Gaspar’s monthly allowance, which was a lot, continued to appear punctually in the bank. Luis didn’t want to touch the money: he wanted to save it for Gaspar’s future. Julieta disagreed. She had told him so while the two of them were smoking in bed, talking in low voices so Gaspar wouldn’t hear them, though he tended to fall asleep wearing his headphones or with the radio on.
“He’s mature, we always say so. He’d be happy to share his money.”
“Maybe later. I don’t want their cash. It’s a nasty story, but I never knew how to unravel it, or never had the courage to. What am I talking about? That guy, the doctor, kidnapped my brother for his own professional benefit, and who knows what else.”
There was a silence, and Luis consumed his cigarette in three drags.
“Do you suspect something?”
“I suspect, but Juan never told me anything. Bradford was a prominent figure, the most respected doctor in the country. Fuck, the other day I went to La Plata and I found out they named the new medical school building after him. The guy was weird, and when he lost his hand, he got worse, he was like Narciso Ibá?ez Menta, but more British. Like the guy in the Saturday movies.”