“I have, I keep them because people don’t know how to take care of themselves and get infections, and I don’t want anyone blaming me.”
“Well, not now, you can give them to me later.”
“Later it is,” said Tali, and she took off her damp dress and lay naked on the floor. Juan lay beside her and Tali waited with her eyes closed until he was calmer and his breathing grew less labored.
She woke up in the morning alone on the mattress in the living room. Juan had covered her with a light sheet and brought over a fan. Tali looked at the wall clock. Six in the morning. Very early, but she couldn’t sleep anymore. She went to her room and looked at Juan and Gaspar as they slept. Despite the heat, they were in an embrace, Gaspar lying on his father’s chest and Juan’s arm around his son’s waist. Tali tiptoed away to get the Polaroid camera she had bought in Asunción. The camera was loud, but she hoped the noisy fan would cover the sound. They didn’t wake up when she snapped the picture, and she left the room to watch the image slowly emerge. The morning light filtering through the curtains had given it a special effect: they both looked less pale, more golden. Juan didn’t like photos, and she didn’t plan to show him this stolen image. When the picture dried she stashed it on top of the fridge, where he wouldn’t find it.
Gaspar’s pain was like an alarm clock for Juan, and that morning he was able to put his arms around the boy before he started crying disconsolately, caressing his hair until he grew calm. He took him to the bathroom to wash his face, then left him alone to brush his teeth. Tali had made them breakfast and left a note on the table. She’d gone into town to buy a few things she needed.
Juan wrote on the back of the note: Thanks for everything, we’re leaving, see you in PR. He heated the milk for Gaspar, who hated to drink it cold. The boy had climbed up to sit on a high, backless stool. He couldn’t balance and looked uncomfortable. Juan didn’t say anything, didn’t ask him to move to a chair. He couldn’t talk that morning, his head was pounding. He had dreamed of damp hallways and handprints on walls, of the dark light that could wound and bite.
“Where’re we going?”
“We’re leaving.”
Gaspar pushed his milk away and spat on to the table. He hated milk skin. I don’t want anymore, it’s gross, he said. Juan saw how his anger hardened his jaw, how he clenched his teeth. I don’t want to go, said Gaspar, crossing his arms. And why not let him stay? Juan thought. Why not leave him there with Tali, let her take care of his son? He could come visit from time to time. Or not: in a few years Juan would be a distant memory and Tali would be his mother, he’d grow up amid skeletons and the mysterious church, a boy of the river who would speak Guaraní and fish for catfish. Nights of grilled pacu and sex on the sand, and fishermen would wave at him from their sailing rafts. Or he could leave Gaspar along the road, someplace near the river. Or in the doorway of a hospital or police station. There were lost kids all over the country. Abducted kids, abandoned kids. The children the military stole from their prisoners. Someone would take him. There was an epidemic of illegal adoptions. Gaspar was lucky, he’d be welcomed with open arms: he was beautiful and undamaged, or at least not damaged much. Of course, what he was imagining was impossible. They would find Gaspar in minutes once he was unprotected. Tali was Adolfo’s daughter—a peripheral and rebellious initiate, perhaps, but still part of the Order. Gaspar would never be safe with her. There was no possibility of escape. He could fantasize about running away, and often did, but in reality, not only would they both surely be caught, but he also didn’t really want to renounce his power, he had to admit. Even with all the hatred, contempt, ambivalence, and repulsion he felt toward the Order, that power was still his, and he didn’t possess many things. Renunciation is easy when you have a lot, he thought. He had never had anything.
“Go get dressed.”
Juan got up and said do as I say, go, right now, and when Gaspar refused again, sniffling with his arms crossed, Juan slapped him on the cheek with his open palm, a blow that swung Gaspar’s face around, making him wobble on the stool and finally lose his balance. He fell and landed on his side with a dry thump, and the stool also toppled to the floor, barely missing him. Juan went over to him and yanked him roughly up, ignoring his cries, and saw the red mark on his cheek and his swollen lip. The pang of regret disappeared as soon as Gaspar started to cry. Stop it, he said. He grabbed his son’s hair and forced him to meet his eyes, straining his neck backward. He shook the boy’s head, and felt the soft, sweaty hair get tangled in his fingers. Don’t be weak, nothing happened. Gaspar tried to say something, the chair, the slap; Juan raised his hand threateningly again, and the boy stopped crying. Go get changed, he repeated, and don’t make me tell you again. Gaspar obeyed. He ran to the bedroom and left the door open. It was going to take him a while to get dressed—he would have to vent first, punching the pillow and shouting I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, but Juan could put up with that.
What he couldn’t put up with was that morning’s sun, his exhaustion, the constant pain in his chest. He no longer knew whether it came from his most recent surgery, from anxiety, or from some mechanism in his body that was breaking down like an old, irreparable motor that struggled more and more to start up until finally it choked for good.
He went to the bedroom. In one hand he held scissors and an envelope. Gaspar had put on Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt. He was sitting on the bed trying to put on his sandals, but he still didn’t know how to use Velcro.
“Let me,” said Juan, and Gaspar looked at him with dry eyes. He extended his foot so Juan could help him. His lip was swollen but not bleeding. The Franciscan sandals were new and at first Gaspar had hated them; he always wanted to wear sneakers. Maybe he had chosen them now to offer a truce. He’s smart, thought Juan.
“I don’t hate you,” said Gaspar. “I’m sorry, Daddy, do you forgive me?”
Juan didn’t answer. He used the scissors he’d brought from the kitchen to cut a lock of Gaspar’s hair, and the boy looked at him in surprise. Juan didn’t explain, just cut some more and then put all the hair into the envelope. Then he drew two signs on the front: Tali would know what they meant. They were necessary to protect Gaspar. He touched his back and remembered he needed to clean the wound where Tali had inserted the skeleton saint under his skin. That region and its bones. So many bones. Like the bones in the Other Place that Juan didn’t want—refused—to think about. Rosario had told him how the Guaraní had traditionally buried their dead in earthenware containers and kept them close, sometimes in their houses, because they believed they could be brought back to life. They would even keep them in those innocuous handmade baskets of braided reeds that were sold in markets and along the roadsides: the cadaver stayed there until it rotted and fell apart. Then the bones were washed and the family would store them in a wooden receptacle. Those old huts must have reeked. Rosario said that some evangelist priests had told of temples where those bones were worshipped, where the skeleton hung between two poles in a net or a hammock decorated with feathers. The place was perfumed, and the priests claimed that the skeleton was a demon and that it spoke.