God, let it be a mannequin’s, said the head doctor, and he went running out. It’s not a mannequin’s, thought Vicky, and he knows it but doesn’t want to admit it, he can’t say it out loud. The head doctor gave orders for an operating room, for cultures, for antibiotics. Luis is in septic shock, Vicky thought. While she waited in the ER to hear the results from the surgery—and attended a man who’d cut off a finger with a grill knife trying to pry meat from the freezer—she could think rationally. She realized, with utter clarity, that Luis was going to die. It was a human arm. It had bones. It was in the space between his heart and lungs. All of his organs could already be damaged from the infection. The arm was surely in a state of decomposition. That had caused the sepsis.
And that was only the start of the problem. Vicky apologized to her lead doctor and told him the truth: she knew the man who’d gone into shock. He was the father of a friend of hers. She needed to stop working. The doctor told her of course, that was fine, and Vicky sat in the surgery hallway. They left an arm like the one Adela was missing, she thought. They left it in his chest. Like the imbunche. Where had that memory come from? Chiloé, the Brujería sect. Adela in the forest. The river, Betty, furious and drunk, that summer in the south. He’s identical to his brother and that’s not a coincidence. This is an attack. An attack and a message. For Gaspar, first of all, but also for all of us. Vicky felt like someone was blowing on the back of her neck, like voices were whispering into her ear and always saying the same thing. You’ll be next. Or Pablo. Gaspar has to make a move.
The surgeon came out and Vicky approached him, told him the truth, too. The surgeon looked at her with all the frustration of a doctor who has failed, or encountered an impossible case. Then his look turned to sorrow, then to a slight distrust. He, too, was aware how macabre the situation was. This is black magic, thought Vicky, it’s macumba, it’s demonic.
“It’s a human arm, Doctor, and the sepsis is very advanced. If you know the family, you’d better call them. The wounds on the body are superficial. We’re going to report it: this man was tortured.”
Vicky ran out. She hadn’t been able to reach Gaspar for a couple of days. He’d fought with Marita and thrown her out. That’s what Marita had said through her tears, but she hadn’t said anymore than that. Sometimes Marita could be complicated, too, though she had the reputation of an easygoing girl. Vicky didn’t want to call Julieta: what was she going to say, and how? The only thing she could do was call Pablo, but when he answered, her phone was shaking so much she had to hold on to it with both hands to tell him:
“Bring Gaspar to the hospital. Kick his door down, because he won’t answer. Luis is here and he’s dying.”
She hung up, then slowly walked to the nurses’ station. She needed to lie down, rest her head that was spinning dizzily, and cry in peace around women, without having to explain something she couldn’t even think about, just telling them girls, you can’t imagine what a mess, what a disaster, what a nightmare.
The hatred spilled from her eyes along with the tears and Gaspar heard her scream it’s your fault, even if you didn’t do it, you did it. She didn’t think he had opened his uncle’s chest like a crazed hunter to insert a child’s arm inside, or a girl’s arm, really, because its little fingernails were painted, that’s what one of the nurses had said, such gossips the nurses, those little nails painted coral pink, specific as well as gossipy, those nurses. She didn’t say he had committed the crime, in just a few words she said the crime was his fault and she was right about that, he couldn’t argue with her there, so he let himself be hit, let her scratch his face, and he liked the salty taste of his own blood in his mouth. He could only think how it wasn’t one of the twins’ arms and that seemed like a victory, an insolent sign of feigned compassion. I don’t want to go in and see him, Vicky, I can’t see him. I’m not going in, period. And he wasn’t going to see him, it was a meeting with a ghost, he would be just like his father, they didn’t look so much alike, they’d never looked all that much alike, but the family resemblance, and like that, in the hospital, with all the tubes, the smell of death, his chest split, he was just like his father and Gaspar didn’t want that image and he wasn’t going to have it. You have to go in, Vicky was saying, because his whole body is covered in cuts and I looked at them, they’re inscriptions, letters. You decipher them. Copy them out, write down what they say. Take photos of him. Julieta screamed after hearing the doctor announce the inevitable and soon the police would come to ask the first questions and in a few hours they’d tie things together, one two three knots. The little girl’s arm. Vicky and Pablo and him, especially him, of course, the ones who’d gone into the house with Adela. Armless Adela. A little girl’s arm. Adela, my cousin, Adela, my blood. Who had poisoned that blood? A dead father, a dead uncle, both with the scar in the middle of their chests. And he had spent his days locked inside while this was happening. This was happening. Julieta was telling a policeman that Luis had left three days ago. She thought he’d stayed in La Plata for work or with his older son. Yes, that’s his older son. Adopted. His nephew. Sometimes he stayed over at his house but he always let me know, he always let me know, we have very young children, he always let me know. So I called Gaspar but he didn’t answer, Gaspar is the son, the nephew, the one over there. I couldn’t get him, the line was busy and I thought, that happens, the phone wasn’t working, they’d let me know the next day. I went to work and it was a tough day, when I finished I called home and nothing, I went to the site and nothing, but they told me the crew had the days off because it was raining and they couldn’t work in the rain, so I thought he went somewhere else on his days off, I thought about another woman, I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m sorry, I thought about whatever, I even got mad. Why didn’t I go to his son’s house? Because I got this idea in my head about another woman, I don’t know, I was in denial? Because I couldn’t understand why he didn’t come back? This was happening, thought Gaspar. Someone had taken his uncle when he was on his way to La Plata because the car had turned up, intact, in Gonnet. Near the city. A beautiful place, Gonnet, prettier than Villa Elisa, with modern houses, though it’s true the dive bars along the road were horrible, just awful, some of them even dangerous, Gaspar had gone and the girls who danced on the speakers were always high and beautiful and ferocious. The little painted nails, what color were they? Salmon? Coral? Now there were a lot of colors with aquatic names in addition to good old navy blue, azul marino, which wasn’t marino for marine, but for the Marina, the Navy. It had taken him a ridiculously long time to figure that out. Like the ridiculous amount of time he had wasted in his house making maps and plans and reserving plane tickets while this was happening. So, Gonnet. A house in Gonnet, one of those pretty houses. A house into which they had dragged his uncle after pulling him from the car. Surely he had thought that after all this time he was actually being kidnapped, and he was right, but it wasn’t the government doing it. Had they knocked him out to cut his sternum? Surely they had, because otherwise he would have fought back and he was strong, he was strong, the times he’d lifted Gaspar up, the way he held him against the wall when he needed to calm him down, the way he sawed wood faster than the others and perspired less than anyone. So they had put him to sleep and then they’d used the hedge trimmers and maybe a saw, they’d find that out from the autopsy, because there would be an autopsy, this was a murder. So, the house in Gonnet. How many people? Two or three? Who? They would tell him. In Misiones. Because they weren’t in the city anymore. They’d tossed a body at him the way bodies are tossed in Argentina. In Argentina, they toss bodies at you. Te tiran muertos. Now he understood what that phrase meant. The arm was from a random child, a little girl who was maybe already dead, the cops would do well to check for dug-up graves or even at hospitals. Maybe a girl had been reported missing. They worked at night, they worked in darkness. Why did they want him so badly? They wanted him, and they hurt him. They wanted him hurt. Hurt, he was easier to manipulate. That’s why he refused to see the body. The police would be interrogating him soon. He didn’t have an alibi. He’d kicked Marita out. Had he ordered delivery? He couldn’t remember. He’d gone out to buy things, that’s true. Food, and the map. Surely the guy at the Auto Club would remember, because he’d asked for a bigger map, bigger, as if he were half-blind. He didn’t have an alibi, but he didn’t care. What Julieta said was true. It was his fault. It was a message for him, they’d tossed a body at him. He didn’t want to see. One time, Luis had put bananas in the freezer and taken them out cold and drizzled hot chocolate syrup over them. His idea for a cheap, delicious dessert. He always let Gaspar have the TV remote. He never lost his temper on the soccer field. He said that someday he wanted to go and live in the mountains, but he also really liked the beach, what he most missed about Río was being able to go for a walk along the ocean, with the wind, the smell of salt in his hair. He had been at the birth of his two children and he hadn’t gotten drunk afterward and he hated it when people congratulated him, I didn’t do anything, it’s just a joy. A joy, Luis was a joy, and he would have had a peaceful, sweet future. The house in Gonnet, then, they stuck the arm in there and left him unconscious, or maybe not, maybe they woke him up and let him scream and agonize, there was nourishment in that, he had felt it, the suffering that can be eaten. And then, racked with fever and infection from the little arm, they left him lying on Rambla 32, there where the city began or ended depending on your perspective. There were ballads to calm suffering, lullabies, but he couldn’t go in and sing any because it was his fault, because he had given that permission to kill and mutilate. Julieta knew it, that’s why she was crying like that, with so much rage, because she knew. Vicky came out of the ICU and led him over to a corner. She grabbed his face to make him look at her. Vicky’s dark eyes. She was so beautiful. More than Marita. More than anyone. “The only thing written on his body is ‘let him come.’ That’s what the cuts say.” “What do you mean, let him come?” “That’s it, Gaspar: ‘“let him come.’ ” “Okay,” said Gaspar. “Is he going to die? Tell me the truth.” “It’s a matter of hours,” said Vicky. “Okay. I’m leaving tonight.” “You have to talk to the police,” Vicky protested. “After I talk to them, I’m leaving. They’re not going to arrest me tonight. Listen to me, Vicky, and explain to Pablo. Pablo is right downstairs. I don’t have time to talk to him. They’ve crossed the line. I can’t live among you all anymore. If I stay with you, you’ll be next. There can’t be anymore. They want me, I’m their blood. Take my house key.” Vicky was listening closely now. “In the apartment, on the bed, I left something, I want you to read it. It’s an article by Olga Gallardo called “The Za?artú Pit.” I can’t explain now. I want you to go and read it. Let Pablo read it. It’ll be there because they can’t go into my house and Marita won’t come back. You know how Luis said he was afraid of my dad sometimes? He told me something really strange once. He told me that when he was taking care of my dad, when my dad was little, maybe six years old, he’d just had an operation and my uncle was taking care of him. My grandparents, I don’t know, working. Doesn’t matter, right? Doesn’t matter. So Luis was taking care of him and he told me how my dad’s lips were covered in blood, like he’d eaten raw meat. Luis put water on his lips because they were dry and a nurse had brought cocoa butter, and later he used it and they stopped bleeding. But that time, when they were bleeding and my dad was screaming in pain, they must’ve had bad painkillers back then, how could they just let a kid scream in pain like that?” “Maybe they couldn’t give him any, it’s possible they’d make his pressure hit the floor,” said Vicky. “What pressure?” “His blood pressure, Gaspar. If the painkiller lowered his blood pressure, he’d die.” “Oh, maybe. Anyway, those nights in the hospital were horrible, Luis said, he was just a kid, too, after all. So, Dad screamed, all of a sudden, he screamed: no one hears the bones sing. That phrase, like a reproach. It really scared Luis. My grandparents were afraid of my dad. My dad saw ghosts. Luis didn’t, because Luis wasn’t marked. I don’t want to see him. He’s going to scream the same thing. Now they’ve marked him too, but they can’t make it last. The truth is I should have stayed in the house with Adela. It would have ended there. All this, all this time, it doesn’t matter, Vicky. It’s not time. Marita knows it should have been in a different life, don’t tell her this isn’t life and it isn’t time.”