Juan smiled and sat up straighter. Gaspar realized that it was too hard for him to breathe lying down, especially if they were going to talk.
“She wasn’t lying. It’s very common with an amputation. I think the brain still has an area for that missing member, and it produces sensations that it considers logical. We don’t feel with our skin, son, we feel with our brains. Pain is in the head.”
“Really?”
“Let’s try something. Bring me, let’s see . . . one of those gloves they use in medical exams, do we have any? Didn’t the nurse leave some?”
“Yeah, they’re in the bathroom.”
“Good. A glove and two toothbrushes, and a knife and a spoon. And I need a piece of wood.”
“Your drawing board?
“Not so big.”
“The other day the cover of the shutter in the living room fell off. It’s leaning against the wall.”
“I didn’t even notice.”
“I’ll fix it later; when the maid comes or the people who bring money, they can hold the chair for me.”
“That cover will work well, it’s tall. Bring some dictionaries from the library to hold it. Hurry, I want to show this to you.”
Gaspar ran out of the room trying to hide his eagerness. If his father realized how happy he was to play with him, to spend some time together, he could very well leave without an explanation. Gaspar had lived with those sudden mood changes for a while now, and he no longer tried to find a reason for them: quite simply, if his father wanted to have some fun now, he had to make the most of it, that’s just how it was.
He gathered the things his father had asked for and placed them on the mattress. Juan knelt down on one side of the bed and positioned Gaspar across from him. Then he told his son to put on his hoodie and inflate the glove like a balloon.
“Let’s see if we can tie it off so it stays inflated and looks like a hand.”
Gaspar managed it after a couple of tries. The glove was small, and once inflated it was a hand with a short palm, all fingers.
“Now take your arm out of the sweatshirt sleeve. Your right arm. Let the sleeve hang empty, and lay the empty sleeve on the bed.”
Juan put the inflated glove where Gaspar’s hand should be, at the end of the sleeve. Then he placed the wood vertically on the bed, like a divider, propped it up with four stacked dictionaries, and asked Gaspar to put his real arm on the other side.
“They call this the rubber hand illusion,” he said, and he placed Gaspar’s real hand, on the other side of the wood, in the same position as the rubber hand, with the fingers up like a spider on its back, and parallel to it.
“Don’t look at your real hand. Look at the rubber glove and look at your other hand, the one that’s not behind the wood. And put that one on the bed too, as though you had three arms.”
Then Juan picked up the toothbrush and softly ran it over the middle finger of Gaspar’s hand behind the wood, and also over the middle finger of the rubber hand.
“If we’re lucky,” he went on, “this is going to make you feel like the rubber hand is yours.”
Juan repeated the movement with both toothbrushes at the same time, and said nothing. Gaspar held his breath. The toothbrushes ran simultaneously over the two middle fingers, then over the index fingers and thumbs.
“Don’t take your eyes off the rubber hand,” said Juan. The movement of the toothbrushes continued; outside, the rain had lessened, and now they heard only a slight wind along with the occasional car.
“When I run the brush over the glove, do you feel like I’m touching your hand?”
“Do it again,” said Gaspar. Yes, that was what he felt, even though he saw, very clearly, the yellow glove inside the sleeve of his blue hoodie. “I feel it, yeah, like it’s my hand.”
“Good. Keep looking,” said Juan, and very quickly he picked up the knife. With a precise, well-aimed movement, he stabbed it into the middle of the glove. Gaspar saw the knife coming and thought, No, no, he’s going to stab me!, and stifled a scream, because even as he recoiled from the knife he had already realized the trick. He’d felt the blade pierce his hand, when really it had only burst the latex glove.
“Holy shit,” he said. Juan smiled at him. “You should do this at birthdays and stuff! It’s better than a magician!”
“You do it, now that you’ve learned how. With a plastic hand, like a mannequin’s, for example, it’s better. You see? We feel with our brains.”
“It’s so cool. Want me to do it to you?”
“No.”
“Where’d you learn it?”
Juan suddenly turned serious.
“In the hospital. Once, when I was sick, a doctor taught me. He was trying to entertain me.”
He wrapped the blanket around himself again and climbed into bed. Gaspar moved the books and the wood to a corner of the room. His father didn’t mind if the house was messy or if he left things where they didn’t belong.
“So, what Adela told me is true.”
“Not only is it true, it’s very common. I’m surprised you didn’t already know, or that she hadn’t mentioned it before.”
“What should I do?”
“You’ll have to apologize.”
Gaspar rolled his eyes.
“You were wrong, and it’s what you have to do. She’ll have the right to make fun of you for a while.
Gaspar stuck out his tongue. Then he settled into bed beside his father, who gave him part of the blanket.
“Dad, you can find out where Diana is, if you want.”
Juan ran a hand over Gaspar’s hair, so fine and very clean, and scratched the back of his neck.
“I don’t like to use clairvoyance for such a small thing, and I really shouldn’t.”
“But you could.”
“I could. Did you love the dog?”
Gaspar thought for a second.
“Yes. Plus, I love Vicky and I love Electra, the other dog. She’s upset. She was crying all afternoon. Diana is like her mother because she’s older, even though she’s not her real mom. She misses her.”
“She misses her because she already knows she’s dead. Animals have a perception that we humans have lost.
Juan got up from the bed and covered Gaspar fully with the blanket. He picked up the knife and the burst glove and said: “Go to sleep now.”
If it were possible to see that part of the neighborhood from above, flying over the blocks as if in a dream or a helicopter, you would see houses with balconies, most of them with back patios, some, very few, with swimming pools. You would see many trees along the sidewalks, a rarity in the city, and a few small factories that are either shuttered or only operate for a few hours a day. An avenue divides the neighborhood into two equal halves, and though it is a narrow avenue, people usually stay on the side they live on; they shop on their side, have friends on their side. It’s not that they distrust those on the other side or believe themselves fundamentally different, it’s just that the avenue acts as a river, a kind of natural border.
Victoria, Gaspar, Pablo, and Adela live on the left side of the avenue. Adela’s house is on Calle Villarreal, twenty meters from the avenue. To the right of her house is the Turi grocery, to the left is Do?a María and Don Ramón’s yard, which has fruit trees and a chicken coop that’s now boarded up.