Sometimes his grandfather visited him. He was in a wheelchair, though Gaspar had noticed he could move his legs. He had a cup with a straw, and he drank something that looked like iced tea, but was whiskey. His skin had the yellow hue of terminal alcoholics. His grandmother came often, and sometimes he had trouble understanding what she said. Her tongue was white with tartar. The girl had been touched, she said. Your father took her away from us too, through you. Your father must pay. We sacrificed our own children because of him. We saved his life. The ungrateful wretch.
Every night, they took him to a clearing behind the house, far enough away that the trees hid it from view. They went through a garden that he remembered, far from the catwalks they still hadn’t allowed him to see—they didn’t have high railings—into full-fledged jungle. A clearing, that’s what it was, like in books: “in the clearing in the woods.” They took off his clothes at a certain spot and the English-speaking man urged him to repeat the exercises he’d taught him, and to concentrate. He gave Gaspar instructions about what to say and what movements to repeat. Gaspar obeyed. It was ridiculous. He saw the expectation in their faces, then the frustration. There was another redheaded woman, smaller and very old. Esteban hid his face in the shadows of the trees. There was a fluctuating number of younger men and women who didn’t live in the main house; at night they withdrew to the guesthouse at the back: they were in charge of maintenance of the gardens and of the cleaning and upkeep of the house. He wasn’t ashamed for people to see him naked. He was losing a lot of weight: they tried to force him to eat, but he fought back, and starving himself was bringing results. At night he felt feverish and couldn’t sleep. In any case, he knew he would live for many days on a hunger strike, though his thirst defeated him more than his fear, the beatings, or the desperation. Plus, if he didn’t drink liquid, he’d been assured they would connect an IV.
The guards took eight-hour shifts. They didn’t let him read or watch TV or listen to the radio. He could explore the house if he wanted. And he did, every day. He was looking for Esteban. He hadn’t seen him again except at the nighttime ceremonies, and not at all of them.
The lookout tower was a good idea. They would follow him there if he wanted to go up. He didn’t have any restrictions on the property, but he had permanent company. The tower was reached by a path lined by hydrangeas and forget-me-nots. He could see it from the ground-floor window of his room. The ones on the first floor had also been barred. This was his house, though. His. The lookout tower: in the nighttime storm, it looked like a lighthouse without a light. It didn’t have bars, as far as he could see. Maybe the guards would be fast enough to stop him, but he had to try to be even faster. One movement, a jump, and the end.
He didn’t have to talk to them, he simply led them to the tower. The men followed, and when he reached the stairs one of them went ahead, so that Gaspar trailed him through the structure’s interior, illuminated by a lot of small windows. Fast, fast. Get there and run straight to the railing and jump without thinking, he had no one, he had nothing, life before the room in Puerto Reyes didn’t matter. Plus, the nights in the clearing in the woods were furious now, with his lipless grandmother screeching like an animal, Florence giving him orders and slaps, the young people spitting. Nothing from before, no one had come to find him, and if they had come, they were surely dead, these people can kill, I ordered your uncle’s death, I ordered your mother’s, that traitorous slut, that’s what Mercedes had said, and he had asked why my uncle, we used to believe in treating those like you well, but now we know they are instruments, mere instruments.
Florence listened to her and smiled, this time we won’t make mistakes. I know who you are. We all know who you are. We have ways of getting what we want.
But the truth is they didn’t have ways of getting what they wanted, thought Gaspar as he climbed the stairs. They didn’t. Otherwise, they could have already gotten anything from him, because all he wanted was to die. He didn’t even have the consolation of the epileptic images anymore. They were gone. The house had cured him. He didn’t feel anything in that house, not in any of its corners. It was dead, it was a ruin, it was the place he was going to die: it was his tomb.
They reached the top of the lookout tower, the terrace. The man in front of him looked away for a second and Gaspar ran, put a foot on the railing, and suddenly his other foot was in the air, above the trees, he could smell the river, a bird cawed, and the sun, implacable, and he closed his eyes.
Idiots, Gaspar heard from the floor, while he tried to understand what was happening. Two arms had stopped his jump, but not the arms of the guards, whom he had dodged with precision and elegance. There was someone else on the lookout tower, someone who, in his focus on escaping, he hadn’t seen.
It was Esteban. His back was to the guards, and Gaspar saw him mouthing the words, “please, Gaspar.” And then:
“Go and get the doctor right away, he hit his head. Later you’ll have to explain yourselves to my mother.”
One of the guards went running downstairs, and Gaspar leaned against the wall and thought about the freedom of that instant in the air, the stormy sky, the beauty of the fall. He didn’t dare try again right now.
“Your father had a trick,” said Esteban, and Gaspar perceived a change in his voice that forced him to pay attention. I’m trying to do it now. You and I can speak and that idiot over there will hear a different conversation. I don’t know if it’ll work, he promised to leave it to me before he died, look, he gave me this mark on my head, but you can’t try with just anyone and it’s been a long time since I’ve had someone to practice with, Tali won’t let me anymore.
What are you saying?
You don’t want to die. Or maybe you do, but you can also get away from here.
Gaspar looked at the guard and then at Esteban, who was sweating as if he were lifting something heavy. His father used to do this, the thing Esteban was trying to do now. He used to get into his head. Gaspar had always thought it was an exclusive communication between the two of them, and its oddness hadn’t been apparent to him until many years later.
He can’t hear us, who knows what he hears. But come on, I don’t have much time. It’s painful for me to keep this up. Ask, go on.
Why are you with them?
I’m not on their side, if that’s what you’re asking. They’re my family. They’re yours, too. There are plans for them, and you have to carry them out.
I don’t believe you.
Well, you don’t have many options left, Gaspar, you should really trust me.
Why did they kill my uncle? Why did they take Adela?
Luis’s death was out of my control. I didn’t even know about it. Adela was going to go no matter what, and plus, you took her there, much as it pains you. I can’t summarize decades of history in the ten minutes until the doctor comes and my strength runs out. Your father decided Adela would disappear: he gave her up to save you from your family, and he used you as an instrument. I think that when he did it, he released unknown forces.
Gaspar smiled almost involuntarily.
I don’t think the salvation is really working.