You’re mocking me. At least that’s a change from how resigned you’ve been since you got here. I remembered you as a brilliant child, one with character. Our family is brutal, Gaspar. You can’t allow yourself to be weak. You never used to be weak.
That was a long time ago. I remembered you as a friend.
Enough with the sentimentality. Wake up, Gaspar. You can’t do anything out there in the jungle where they take you, but you can do other things. You haven’t sensed any doors?
Gaspar looked at this sweating man, his damp gray hair, and he observed the guard, who seemed nervous but wasn’t paying them any attention. The guard was watching the path. It was clear that Esteban was right: either he didn’t hear the conversation or he didn’t understand it.
I don’t sense anything in this house.
You haven’t seen all of it. There are two other buildings. You can ask them to take you.
Gaspar felt a shaking in his legs and then in his hands, and suddenly he was shaking on the floor. Four feet were climbing the lookout tower’s steps.
It’s normal for you to shake, it’s the adrenaline, don’t worry. Look, I’m going to stop talking to you in secret, okay? Whatever I do from here on doesn’t mean anything. I’m going back to the role of my mother’s son.
Your mother?
Florence. She’s my mother.
When Esteban disconnected, Gaspar felt it. It was as if a hot wind stopped blowing in his face, or as if, after being inside with a heater, he had gone out into fresh air. The two guards carried him down, an unnecessary show: his head didn’t hurt, Esteban had used his own arm to soften the blow. He let himself be carried. He heard running steps and phrases in English. You were friends and lovers. You cannot be trusted. I just saved him, but of course that’s not enough for you, and he looked at the sky, where the flowers were growing along with his migraine, which had been caused not by hitting his head, but by the double adrenaline burst from the failed jump and what Esteban had done, that secret conversation spoken aloud that seemed as impossible as it did familiar. They checked him over, and he obeyed every order: it all reminded him step-by-step of the false accident months before his father’s death, a farce that, he now knew, they’d put on in order to hide the repugnant Rite by which they’d tried to steal his body. The sensation was so vivid, so obvious, that he had no more doubts. It was a matter of remembering. That’s what he had to focus on. Remembering, even things he hadn’t witnessed. Maybe start eating again. You don’t want to die, Esteban had told him, and you can escape.
He had to find the door.
It was hard to find moments alone with Gaspar. They tolerated his nearness because he was of blood and they had already lost too many blood members, but Stephen didn’t want to make any suspicious moves. The encounter at the lookout tower had been an intuition. Stephen lived in the guesthouse. He could see the park from his window, and he’d caught sight of Gaspar and his guardians heading toward the most obvious place on the grounds from which to jump. The fact that the kid wanted to kill himself was so clear that only people who had gone mad from lack of human contact could fail to recognize it. Gaspar was so different from the child he remembered. It had been a real blow to see him in ruins: at twenty-five years old his beauty was simply extraordinary, healthy but so heavy with death. Hearing his thick voice at the lookout tower, so like Juan’s, had been a shock, such unexpected virility coming from that faun-like face with its cheekbones protruding from the hunger strike; powerful, too, were his rough hands with their long, broad fingers.
When he saw Gaspar enter the guesthouse, Stephen was getting ready to meet with Tali the next day. The members of the Order believed Adolfo’s daughter had committed suicide by drowning in the river after Juan’s death. Her own father had identified the body. It belonged to a different woman, but in his drunkenness he couldn’t have distinguished a woman from a deer. Tali had managed the confusion in part thanks to the Hand of Glory she inherited from Rosario. Eddie’s hand, my brother’s, thought Stephen. Well, if it lets Tali live “clandestinely,” as she calls it, then it’s a good thing. It had been hard for her to leave the house and temple behind, but she had trusted people who took care of them, and she’d taken all the valuable relics with her. She lived nearby, but in a more conventional place. Mercedes, who doubted that death because distrust was her nature, would never look for Tali. About time that Indian fucked off, she’d say.
Stephen went ahead with his plan. He crossed the park and entered Mercedes’ office, where she had prepared the accounts and the errands he would have to take care of. Sometimes some other member of the Order went with him, or even Adolfo Reyes himself, who got terribly bored and wanted to spend some time in Buenos Aires on occasion. Mercedes was wearing her mask and sunglasses: she looked like a murderous insect. She was also pretty easy to fool, because she was lazy. Stephen had started the transfer of property to Gaspar years ago. He didn’t need Mercedes’ signature, Adolfo’s would suffice. And Adolfo, who was always drunk, would sign anything. The house was no longer hers alone. All her money was in Uruguayan and British banks, safe from Argentina’s financial disaster, but that wasn’t under his purview. There were accountants and lawyers everywhere. But he’d made it so that changing the ownership of the companies, the yerbatal, and the real estate would be much easier when the time came. They didn’t even need to die first. They had bequeathed everything in life—they were elderly, so it was logical to pass things on to the young grandson. No one had seen them for a long time, and when Stephen went to meetings, he was clear about Adolfo Reyes’ alcoholism and Mercedes’ insanity. Gaspar’s absence was a relief for the lawyers and accountants and managers, who imagined a young playboy capable of ruining everything. The decision to entrust Stephen to manage part of the fortune stemmed from Mercedes’ enormous distrust of the living members of her family, who weren’t many. She preferred to put someone from the Order in charge. Florence didn’t share that paranoia, but neither did she meddle in other people’s affairs. She didn’t care about Mercedes’ empire. Florence thought they were indestructible in earthly matters, that the families’ power and influence were impossible to take down for reasons that had nothing to do with putting on a suit and spending hours in banks and offices. In short, she thought Steven’s work was useless and she didn’t interfere.
“My grandson is a disaster, a failure,” said Mercedes. “He doesn’t even try to escape anymore.”
In Mercedes’ language, that meant they were missing out on a magnificent dog chase through the jungle in which she would get to employ a little sadism. Stephen still hadn’t said anything to Gaspar about exactly what Mercedes kept in the tunnel.
“No matter. He will eventually manage the Invocation. But I don’t like to wait. I’ve always been impatient!”
“I’ll leave tonight. If you need anything else, let me know. I’ll be around.”
Mercedes waved him away and caressed her sparse hair. Stephen remembered her from forty years before, in this very house. Back then, when he was still almost a child, he had found her repulsive. Juan had always said: Mercedes is a priestess of repulsive gods, and we always take after the gods we worship.