How many times had he thought, “I want to be just like him?” The way he’d told Gaspar while they rode in the car, you have to always be respectful with girls, even if you’re not interested in them. The way, after he got mad about something and raised his voice and shouted, he always gave in to a joke and laughed and shook his head. The twins were going to forget him, they would miss out: the permission to do their homework on the patio, the races down the dirt road, the grilled fish at the beach, the what you wrote is really good, that teacher must be kind of dumb, she doesn’t have to understand everything but it’s a shame she didn’t understand this, because it’s so well written, and long!, and the words you use!, they were going to miss out on having him always accept them even when they messed up, even if they had ridiculous mental emotional psychiatric problems, they’d miss out on knowing there was someone who would never abandon them, would never back down, they could beat their heads against the wall until they broke their heads and the wall, and he would be right behind them, arms crossed, saying well then, shall we start by fixing your bones, your anger, or the bricks? You choose.
Gaspar paid a minuscule amount of money to the taxi driver who dropped him off at Ezeiza Airport, and he waited for the flight in silence, his backpack between his feet. He wasn’t bringing much, and if he needed anything he could buy it where he was going. It was his first time on a plane alone. He didn’t want to think about the previous times, which were few and always with Luis. The flight was short but they still served food, though he didn’t touch it because he couldn’t eat; he didn’t know if he would ever eat again. He remembered Pablo’s face when he saw him come out of the hospital: he’d almost asked him to come. Pablo would have done it. Vicky had to stay with Luis. They would follow him, he thought. Both of them. They knew where he was going.
In Posadas he spent an hour looking for a place to rent a car. The heat was going to give him a headache, though he was wearing dark glasses and he’d wet his hair several times. He started to down pills: they would work better on his empty stomach. He found a relatively cheap Clio, rented it for a week, and, after concentrating for a kilometer to be sure it handled easily, he opened the map from the Auto Club. Puerto Libertad, the town closest to the house, was near Iguazú, just meters from the Paraná River: across the river was Paraguay. Three hundred kilometers. How was he going to manage not to think for three hundred kilometers? He turned the map and lit a cigarette, trying not to burn the map or himself. The car had air conditioning, but when he turned it on it stank of gasoline, so he kept it off. He was no expert in cars. In theory, his epilepsy meant he shouldn’t drive, but Luis had taught him anyway, because he believed a person needed to know how to drive, otherwise they weren’t fully free. Luis wasn’t an expert either. All the cars he’d bought turned out to be clunkers. Gaspar remembered him standing in front of every ruined car and saying what bad luck, his hands on his hips as he stared at a raised hood billowing smoke. It’s not the car that’s the problem, Negro had shouted at him once, you forgot to put water in, what kind of asshole doesn’t put water in a car, I ask you? They’d been on their way to Punta Lara. For a picnic or to go fishing? It was before the babies, before the pregnancy. Why did he never name the twins? Salvador and Juan. Gaspar had thought Juan was named after his father, but Luis, a little ashamed, admitted the name was for Perón. He hadn’t been able to negotiate the full name, Juan Domingo, with Julieta. He turned on the radio. Brazilian stations came in clearly, but he didn’t want to hear that language, obviously. Would someone tell Mónica and the girls? They hadn’t been to visit in a long time, but New Year’s cards still came, and phone calls at birthdays and sometimes presents. Luis had gone to visit them twice, alone, just a week each time. Gaspar had stayed with Julieta both times. Luis came back with Garotos and records and some books, saying that book design was much better in Brazil than Argentina. He had promised to take Gaspar to see Río, a promise that was delayed by the babies. Gaspar didn’t much care for the beach, but Río was more than just Copacabana, it was also dark streets and staircases and twilight at bars in inner neighborhoods. They were going to miss out on that, too—him, the twins, everyone.
“They’re not going to let you in.”
The restaurant at the service station had a name, Los Lapachos.
“They have their own police, just imagine. A lot of people come to take photos. A lot! People are obsessed with taking pictures of it. I give them directions to the place, but it’s not going to happen. If you do get in, let me know, I have a lot of interested folks.”
“I’m going to try, we’ll see,” said Gaspar, and he took a sip of cold Coca-Cola with two headache pills. It wasn’t as intense as he’d thought it would be. With the sun in his face the whole trip, he’d expected to see black flowers start growing in the blue sky, taking over everything. Instead, it was a slight, annoying pain. He could allay it with some food.
“Do you ever see them?”
“No, and they don’t shop here in town, either, they have servants who buy further up. My grandpa says that years ago they used to have parties and he’d see the cars, but no one stayed here. The patrón used to come around, before. He’d have some drinks, or buy fishing supplies. That was a long time ago. The patrón likes his drink.”
The patrón, thought Gaspar. My grandfather, the boss.
He had to go to the end of the main street and turn down the unpaved road. He decided to walk a bit first. Red sidewalks, curbs painted an even deeper red, shops selling ice, girls using umbrellas as parasols, the sky perpetually threatening a storm, white houses. Had his mother walked through that town? Had she bought something in its markets? Would anyone remember her if he asked? Once, Marita had told him, after sex—she said the most intense things after sex—that if he wanted to live he had to give up his dead, let them go. A lot of motorcycles, red earth. The soles of his sneakers were already totally red. The municipal farmers and artisans market was closed, like almost all the businesses. The hallowed siesta. There wasn’t much to see. He went back to the car and opened a fresh bottle of water before driving down the main avenue and reaching the dirt road to the house. On either side, dense jungle, full of green depths. No animals. He had to go to the house because they had summoned him. He had been repeating that to himself ever since he left, and he kept on repeating it to fight off sleep, hunger, emptiness.
They sought me out, here I am. I don’t know how to let go of the dead.
He’d expected abandonment, madmen and women sequestered in the jungle, moldy tapestries, overgrown plants, underbrush he’d have to hack through to reach the house. He passed a security cabin that was empty, but not abandoned—there was a steaming mate on the reception table and the radio was on—and then he stopped the car and took in the view of the house. He got out and walked in: the giant iron gates were open.
A wide expanse of freshly cut grass lay before a house whose mustard-colored fa?ade was covered with climbing vines—not a sign of neglect, but well-tended decoration. Roofs that were red like the Misiones earth, palms and other trees surrounding its hexagonal shape, which at the front and back gave way to separate buildings; he could glimpse, along a side path, at least two more houses, one small and the other, in the distance, also enormous. The grass was uninterrupted: if there were fountains, they were at the back. And he could hear the river. That’s where the catwalks are, thought Gaspar, near the river, and he looked up because suddenly the landscape had darkened. A threatening storm cloud, low and swollen and heavy with hail, hung over the afternoon. When he looked at it, his headache exploded along with the black flowers that opened with carnivorous ferocity. He had the horrible certainty—déjà vu again, but very powerful this time—that his parents were going to come out of the house. The ghost house with palm trees and ghost parents; he even expected to see his uncle emerge, ash-colored, ashes in his hair, the rotting arm in his hand, the rotting arm he would use to attack Gaspar, to beat him on the head and body. He leaned against the car and saw someone come out of the house, a man. He approached Gaspar and straightened him up by taking hold of his shoulders, making him meet his eyes. The elegant gray hair, the sunken dark blue eyes, a forehead that Pablo would have called “Teutonic” when he was doing his taxonomy of men: Teutons, fairies, breeders, bears, otters, daddies. The memory of Pablo almost made him smile. He knew this man. Esteban. He wasn’t expecting to find him here.