Gaspar gave a general summary of his father’s wishes as he tried not to scratch the scar on his arm, which was burning as if someone were dripping hot wax on to it. Don’t worry, Dad, he thought, I’m not going to give away any inconvenient details. So you don’t have any contact with them, then? They sure are a strange family. No one knows anything about them, they’re rich but discreet. Not like my family. Still, there’s no comparing the two fortunes. They’re the owners of this country, seriously. You are! I’m not anything, said Gaspar. I tried to photograph it years ago, Andrés went on; the house, I mean. There’s a town nearby, but people there don’t see much movement in or out. I didn’t even make it a hundred meters down the private road, which is long. To me, the mystery is why they keep using that isolated house, which can’t be all that comfortable. Rich people who are that rich go for other kinds of summer places. They go to Punta del Este or places like that. People wonder what they do in there. They have other houses, said Gaspar, I guess they must spend a while at each one. They must have a lot, I’m sure, Andrés replied. Puerto Reyes is near Puerto Iguazú. Your dad sent me to Posadas. He didn’t want me to follow him, clearly.
Gaspar wondered what had happened between Andrés and his father, because the photographer’s story held a certain nostalgia. Plus, he remembered the details too well. But Gaspar wasn’t going to ask. Let Pablo ask for him.
Using a map, he located the Chapel of the Devil and, farther north, Puerto Reyes. Ever since he’d seen the photograph in the gallery, or maybe after he’d locked the door in the economics building, his epileptic hallucinations had become so vivid he’d started taking notes on what he saw. Near Plaza Rocha, the white-painted iron door of an abandoned house had opened on to a nocturnal swamp. He’d thought it was a garden with its tall reeds, but beyond the door it was night, though he could see clearly thanks to a light that didn’t come from the moon—there was no moon. He was able to walk up to the edge of the swamp—more like a lagoon, a recognizable landscape—before it went back to being a door and the headache destroyed his eyes. At the edge of the swamp, he saw a man’s body hanging from a branch, stiff and old and dry, brown from mummification, naked. He never thought it could be a mannequin. It wasn’t swaying.
That night he had dreamed of bodies and trees; of bodies hanging from trees. When he ate with his family, he felt dirty sharing the table with the twins, smiling at them, rinsing their pacifiers when they threw them on the floor. He felt the mummified body on his skin, so still, that otherworldly night. Julieta seemed to notice his discomfort: she’d made a pointed joke about his family. She’d asked him again to keep living with them. It was a dance, Gaspar thought now. A way of pushing him away by insinuating the desire to keep him, a very smart way of going in circles. Julieta loved him. Julieta had saved him just as much as his uncle had. But now she wanted to get away from him.
When he told Vicky about his avalanche of symptoms, she asked for a meeting to speak with the epilepsy specialists at the hospital. They came in rarely, and were very strange. Mad scientists, she called them. And they’d told her things that sounded impossible. Patients who, during seizures, would see fields laid to waste, bombings. They’re called oneiric landscapes. If you talked to them and told them about your episodes, you’d have no doubt this is epilepsy.
“My neurologist already tells me, Vicky. He’s a pretty mad scientist too.”
“Take the medication. This is no joke.”
“I’m actually taking it now. And it turns out, it’s worse. I hadn’t seen Adela in a long time. The other day I rode in an elevator with her. She cursed at me, and she didn’t have teeth. Plus, how can you explain what happens to you guys? You say you hear voices when there’s no light. Pablo is grabbed by a hand, he feels it. Epilepsy isn’t contagious.”
“Our stuff could be just in our heads. Trauma. Plus, our symptoms don’t keep us from functioning. Yours can be incapacitating.”
Pablo, who was stretched out on the sofa at Vicky’s apartment, said: I don’t feel like it’s in my head. I know the hand now. I don’t seek it out, but I’m not afraid of it. If I let it hold on to me for a while, it lets go. As if it didn’t know what to do. Poor thing.
“That could be your imagination,” Vicky insisted, and Pablo snorted.
“That attitude is going to kill us, my friend. I know you want to have a life. We all do. Lately, I even want a boyfriend. God, how ridiculous.”
“It’s my fault,” said Gaspar. “Tell me the truth: have you gotten worse? The things you feel happening to you, are they worse now?”
“It’s more frequent,” said Pablo. “Not worse, because I’m not scared of it anymore.”
“It’s worse,” said Vicky. “But the good stuff happens more, too. I’ve made better diagnoses than ever recently.”
Pablo sat up on the sofa and said:
“Hey, why don’t you try to diagnose Gaspar?”
Vicky crossed her legs, uncomfortable.
“It’s not like that. I can’t decide, it’s something that just happens.”
“It’s so weird it’s never happened to you with him, right? Try it. I’m sure that if you make an effort, you can.”
Vicky opened her mouth to explain again, but Gaspar interrupted.
“No,” he said. “Don’t try to get inside my head or anything like that. My dad used to do that. It’s repugnant.”
She looked at her hands, her eyes full of tears.
“You already tried.”
“You didn’t even realize.”
“What was there?”
“A pit,” said Vicky, and she looked up. “A black pit. I wouldn’t do it again.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You can’t lie to me!”
“Don’t fight,” said Pablo. “It’s worse if we fight, because there’s no one else who cares about this. We’ve already been over it a thousand times. Vicky, don’t you realize, for example, that hardly any articles were published in the papers after Adela disappeared? Gaspar has all of them. There are six. That’s it. Any kind of bullshit will get quadruple that coverage. A girl gets lost in a house and they never find her again. A girl who’s missing an arm. And then her mother disappears. They were just alone, like two air plants hanging there. And now, I start fucking this guy just to kill time, because he’s old so he fucks well, or better. There aren’t many, I’ll tell you. Or out of convenience, because he’s powerful, because he’s got a gallery and he belongs to the scene I’m interested in. Whatever. And it turns out the guy takes me under his wing, and when he does a photo show, there’s a portrait of Gaspar and his dad. A giant, impressive photo, impossible to miss. Vicky, ten years have passed and we’re in the same shitty place. Don’t argue over whether you could diagnose him or not. It’s the least of our worries.”
“You can’t hide something like that from me, Vicky. They’re getting closer,” said Gaspar. “They want to get my attention.”