Mercedes grunted. With her bare gums and dark glasses, she looked ridiculous, grotesque. Juan had nothing else to say to her. He left and closed the door behind him: he locked it using another sign that some members of the Order, certainly Florence, would be able to recognize and reverse. But not immediately. Mercedes would be locked in for a long time, listening to her pets die as she wandered that ghoulish tunnel, choking on the stench of shit and decomposing children. It didn’t matter. They had won and he didn’t have much time, but now he knew what he wanted to know. They couldn’t deceive him anymore.
Juan packed his bag calmly and told Stephen he was ready to go to the airport. He couldn’t drive on his own this time: the bodyguards were already on top of him and he couldn’t escape them. He was having trouble breathing, and a constant, annoying cough was growing worse as the hours passed.
Mercedes still hadn’t asked to be rescued from the tunnel. She was proud. Juan wanted to go before Florence found out about his little meeting with his mother-in-law. Gaspar was awake and dressed and sitting on the bed, waiting. Since he’d found out they were flying back he’d been excited but quiet, nervous. You’re scared, ha ha, Gaspar is afraid the plane will crash, Juan had teased him, and his son had hit him with his fists, pretending to be mad.
Juan crossed the inner yard and the veranda to Marcelina’s house. He thanked her for taking care of Gaspar and rummaged in his leather bag to find a necklace that he’d bought on a whim for Tali in the ostentatious hotel casino in Corrientes, but that he’d ultimately decided she wouldn’t like much. They were hard stones from the Wanda mines, near Iguazú. The gems—blue, white, pink, green, purple—were strung together, and the necklace could be worn by looping it several times or simply letting it hang long. Marcelina was moved and tried halfheartedly to refuse the gift, but Juan put the necklace carefully around her neck, trying not to tangle the stones in her hair. It looks lovely on you, he told her. I hope you enjoy it. Marcelina fingered the stones, then reached into her front apron pocket and pulled out a caburé feather.
“For the little one,” she said.
Juan accepted the talisman on behalf of Gaspar. Then he asked Marcelina for her permission to take the things Rosario had left in her care. Marcelina ushered him into the room where she stored old junk. Juan searched until he found the box with the symbol discreetly drawn on one end. He opened it and found a plastic bag inside, an innocent grocery bag. He smiled when he saw what it contained. How smart to leave the relic with Marcelina. It was safer, even, than hiding it in Tali’s temple. The Order would never have searched the belongings of a servant, not even one in Rosario’s confidence.
Tali was waiting for him outside Puerto Reyes, leaning against his car. He kissed her, taking her face in his hands. On tiptoe, she sank her fingers into his hair.
“Damn, you’re kissing me like it was the last time. You still have to come by the house to pick up the relic of Rosario’s you left with me.”
Juan shook his head.
“It’s yours. Use it. She could give you a sign.”
Tali’s dark eyes studied him.
“I don’t want you to come back to this house again, not even for the Ceremonial,” said Juan.
“You don’t get to give me orders, okay?”
“It’s a request, not an order. A favor. Every year, when I see that you and Stephen haven’t gone into the Darkness, I can breathe again. I can’t ask Stephen to stop coming because this is his family and his world. I can ask you though.”
Juan hugged her again, felt her body; he let her put a hand into his pants to caress him.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t feel like it now.”
They looked at each other in the heat, under the sun, both of them excited and a little crazed and sad. They could hear the swollen river, a nervous bird. The house, distant and silent, seemed dead. When would the guests leave? The parking area was still full. Juan considered telling Tali about Mercedes, but it wasn’t the right time. He hadn’t told Stephen yet either. He would do it on the plane.
“Where’s your car? I have things to give you, but I don’t want them to see us.”
Tali led him by the hand to her Renault 6, which was completely coated in a layer of red dust. She unlocked the door and Juan settled into the backseat. He took from his bag the Hand of Glory that had been stored among Marcelina’s clutter. It was perfectly preserved. Tali admired it, took it carefully.
“Why are you giving me this?”
“Your sister wanted it to be yours. They don’t know we have a Hand of Glory, they don’t even know it exists. Rosario always kept it well hidden. We both hid it.”
“You’re crazy! My sister would never have given that to me.”
“Well, I’m giving it to you. You know how to use it? It will help you keep Gaspar blocked. The Hand isn’t enough on its own, but it will help a lot.”
“I know how to use it. Rosario didn’t lend it out, but she was always good at explaining. She was generous that way, wasn’t she?”
Juan smiled at her. She was halfway generous, yes. He motioned for Tali to put the hand away, and she stowed it in her wicker bag. A car horn interrupted them. Stephen already had Gaspar and the bags in the car. “We have tickets!” he shouted. “We need to be at the airport in an hour.”
“So why don’t you use it yourself?” she asked him.
“I can’t, it reminds me of what I did, I can’t stand it. Don’t fail my son, Tali,” said Juan. “They’re never going to stop watching him.”
“Don’t you worry. We’re going to find the way, between the three of us. And you’re going to get the final sign. Be patient. The saint is going to help you with patience.”
“Gaspar will grow and change. You’ll have to keep covering him to keep them from getting close.”
Tali kissed his forehead to silence him, to instill trust. Juan thought about telling her that in another life she would have been his, but he kept his mouth shut. There was no other life. He didn’t want to lie.
II
The Left Hand: Dr. Bradford Enters the Darkness
Misiones, Argentina, January 1983
I want to drain your entrails with kisses
Exist inside you with all my senses
For I am a pitch-black toad with two wings.
BALDOMERO FERN?NDEZ MORENO, “Sonnet of Your Entrails”
While he waits on his knees because he knows it will happen tonight, Bradford thinks how it’s like all those stupid stories about the minutes before death that his patients, the more and the less ignorant ones—for they all become brutish faced with death—had told him: my life is passing before my eyes, I see my whole life before me. Though it’s not exactly my life, thinks Bradford, it’s my life with him, because everything that happened before him, though not without meaning, no longer matters. He knows it will be tonight, he feels it in the place where his missing fingers once were. The absent fingers that the Darkness consumed long ago, they’re calling to the present fingers, and tonight the Darkness shines—how to explain it to someone who never saw this shining darkness emanating from that boy who is now a man and who is spreading out his arms, pale and enormous, his head bowed?—if only he’ll raise his head before the final moment, Bradford wants to see his yellow eyes before entering the Darkness, and now the scars on his belly are burning, the scars the boy gave him, he believed, when he’d touched him with those claws, nails, talons, it’s never easy to remember afterward, sharp, black fingers, there is nothing like them in the world, human or animal—maybe some mechanical instrument, a prosthesis, a disguise—the hands, in sum, had ripped at his belly and he expected to see gray entrails scattered over the grass in the hot night, but no, the wounds throbbed but didn’t burst and didn’t open and they never opened and when the boy who was a man cauterized them he did it with pure cold, and now even though he’s naked Bradford can’t see his scars but he feels them, cold and burning, ice that burns, everything is calling him toward the Darkness, it will be tonight, please show me your eyes, Juan, one last time.