He washed his hand resignedly and used a towel to clean the blood from the floor. He no longer got angry when the ritual didn’t work. After his first failed attempts he had cursed Rosario, he’d smashed furniture and nearly broken his fingers from punching the floor so much. Now, he just calmly cleaned up afterward and placed the lock of hair back in its box. “For the dead travel fast,” he thought again. It was true, in general. He, however, was denied that habitual speed.
Gaspar was still asleep, though a long time had passed: the ritual of the sign of midnight seemed short for whoever performed it, but in reality it took several unnoticed hours. Juan tended to his slashed hand. Dawn was breaking when he poured a little alcohol over the wound that never healed because he had to keep cutting and cutting in the same place, feeding blood to the ashes that brought him nothing but a stillness so suspicious that it made him imagine his wife silenced, her lips sewn shut by someone who wanted to keep them definitively apart.
The hotel breakfast was served in a dining hall with white walls and tables spread with checkered tablecloths. The décor was piscine: fish paintings, preserved fish mounted behind glass, and another fish tank, larger than the one at reception. Esquina was a sort of fishing capital. Juan had never fished a day in his life. And, if the hotel’s recurring theme was of aquatic fauna, he didn’t understand why it was called Panambí, which means “butterfly” in Guaraní. There were no butterflies anywhere, not even in the hotel’s logo. He drank weak tea and spread dulce de leche on slices of toast for Gaspar, who was very quiet.
“What’s wrong?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No, son, I’m just in a bad mood. When you finish eating, we’ll go swimming.”
Gaspar had cried all morning, until they came down to breakfast. Ever since his mother died, he had cried every day when he woke up. Sometimes he cried just because, sometimes he got angry over some silly thing, sometimes he said his head hurt or he was tired or hot. He dreamed about her, Juan knew; usually, he dreamed that her death had been a dream. Sometimes Juan let him cry alone, sometimes he sat silently beside him, sometimes he splashed cold water on his face, but he never really knew what to do. That morning, when Gaspar had calmed down after a fit of wailing and sobbing, pulling his own hair and even punching his pillow, Juan had suggested that they go to the beach. Gaspar had asked if the water was cold like at Mar del Plata. Juan explained that no, this was a river and rivers were different, more like swimming pools. It was a lie, but it worked. Juan was the one who needed to swim, and it was high time he improved on the very basic technique he’d taught his son. He himself had learned at eight years old, and then only thanks to his brother’s irresponsibility; Luis hadn’t known how to keep his little brother entertained when he took him on outings, and one day he’d brought him to a public pool. Juan knew swimming was forbidden—his doctor, Jorge Bradford, had told him he couldn’t do any intense exercise. Bradford had never found out about the afternoons at the pool, or if he had, he’d played dumb: the doctor always had contradictory attitudes, gestures of extreme generosity alternating with stinginess, and he was often unpredictable.
Bradford had taught Juan how to close himself off when he was six years old and in recovery from a cardiac crisis: many of the most important things in his life had happened in a hospital bed, amid pain, anesthesia, and fear. Doctor Bradford used the same method Juan had taught Gaspar the night before. Doctor Bradford, who had operated on him after he’d been declared a lost cause, who had visited him every day, and who would later adopt him under the pretext of giving him the care he needed. An elegant abduction. A purchase: he had paid money for Juan. It’s a miracle, Bradford had told Juan’s parents, a miracle he’s still alive, and he needs treatments and care that you, unfortunately, in your economic situation, cannot offer him. Juan’s parents had agreed.
That night, lying in the hospital bed, Juan hadn’t been able to turn down the volume of the voices; he felt hands touching him all over his body, inside and out, and he saw people around his bed even if he closed his eyes. And Bradford had sat him up, wet his hair with cool water, and told him more or less the same thing Juan had told Gaspar in the hotel room: use the voice between your spine and your stomach, tell them to go and they’ll leave. He clearly remembered how he’d tried several times, guided by that man’s dark, greedy eyes, until the silence came and the intensive therapy room was once again a place full of the wounded and dying. Bradford had stayed with him until he fell asleep. When he woke up in the morning the voices and images came back, and Bradford was still there. Again he told him what to do, and this time Juan managed it on the first try. Then Bradford wanted to know what he saw. And Juan described it all: how he would wake up and see, at breakfast, a cadaver at the table or in bed; the mouths that laughed at him, and the hand that covered his face and wouldn’t let him breathe at night; the birds and insects that attacked him, flying straight at his head when he went out to the patio; the two little faces that peered at him from under the rock his mother used to prop open the door of the back shed. He’d told his parents, but they didn’t seem to understand. Bradford did.
His parents were afraid of him: they tried to soothe him and then changed the subject. His brother Luis was different. He got scared, too, but he tried to help. He told Juan to think about other things. He’d taught him to swim.
Now Juan had to teach his son, too, but first he wanted to swim in the river alone for a while. He drove to the city’s beachfront, which was lovely and clean and practically empty, and he sat Gaspar on the grass under a tree with the cooler beside him. He poured some soda into a plastic cup and told him, Dad’s going to swim now, but if anyone comes near you I’ll know, don’t worry. And don’t go anywhere, because I’ll find you, and you know what happens then.
As he was getting into the water, a couple were making their way out. The woman, pretty in a blue one-piece suit, greeted him; the man shot him an aggressive look and took the woman by the waist. Neither of them could help but stare openly at the scar on Juan’s chest. He didn’t care. He swam for fifteen minutes, not enough to get agitated. He could swim for much longer, but he didn’t want to be tired later when he had to drive. The river looked silvery under the sun but the water was a bit murky. He floated for a while before getting out: he sensed nothing but calm from his son. When the water came up to his knees, he waved at Gaspar and shouted, Come on, you have to learn, take off your shirt and shoes. He lay Gaspar on the water and crouched a little. I’ve got you, he said when he saw the boy struggling, afraid of sinking. Kick, he said, splash me, make noise.
There was something in that hot morning and the boy’s slippery skin in his hands that made him feel Rosario beside him. He remembered her shivering from the cold in the English countryside, remembered her singing him a song that said tonight will be fine, dancing to a Bowie song and complaining that they never played good music on the radio; he remembered her neck, and her breasts, which were large though she never wore a bra, not even after Gaspar was born, and the mornings when he woke her up and she protested, Let me sleep, but after a while she returned his embrace, and he lifted up her legs, put them over his shoulders, and caressed her with his tongue and fingers until she was wet.