“Come here, son.”
Gaspar approached and saw that his father had a cardboard box beside him, fairly tall, the kind a small appliance would come in.
“Esteban left?”
“This morning. Look what I have, Gaspar, check it out.”
Gaspar looked first at his father’s face. He was smiling with one eyebrow arched, and he was drunk. That was a terrible sign. Every time he took a breath, his chest made a noise. Oh, this is bad, thought Gaspar. It’s one of those times: Esteban took off and left my dad all crazed. He was going to have to obey if he wanted to avoid the beatings, the shouting, or some worse punishment.
“Put your hand in.”
Gaspar did, apprehensively: he knew that box could hold nothing good. He felt a painful throbbing in his temple. Inside the box, his fingers touched what at first he thought were dried bugs: they had a fragile texture and made that pearly sound; hundreds of small things that had once been alive. When he picked up one of the bugs to see what it was—less afraid now, the thing seemed inoffensive, maybe kind of gross—he saw it was much more compact than an insect. They were all the same size, and he put three in the palm of his hand and crouched down to see them better in the light from the TV. Then he realized that what at first touch he’d thought were legs were actually hairs. It couldn’t be. He looked more closely at what he had in his hand. They were hairs, yes. Eyelashes. In the palm of his hand, he was holding three dried eyelids with their corresponding eyelashes.
The whole box was filled with eyelids. Gaspar threw the severed lids to the floor and threw up in front of the TV; a little vomit spattered on to his father’s legs. He’s crazy, he thought. I have to get away. I also have to know. And I also have to take another aspirin before it hurts so much I can’t walk.
“Where did you get them? Where did you get the eyes?”
“They’re not eyes and they’re not mine, they’re a gift.”
“Who gave them to you?”
His father sank one of his enormous hands into the box of eyelids and toyed with the almost translucent scraps of skin as if they were coins.
“Did you cut them off? Are they from dead people?”
“Some of them. People can live a lot of ways. Your friend can live without an arm, for example. I live practically without a heart. Some people can live without eyes. Or without eyelids. Some let them be cut off.”
His father stood up with the box in his hands. For a moment Gaspar thought he was going to dump the eyelids on to him, a rain of dead lashes, and then he would scream and scream until he went crazy too. But no: his father was going upstairs, to his room, probably.
“Clean that up.”
“You clean it up.”
“I’m leaving for a few days.”
Gaspar took in that information with relief, even joy. When his father started up the stairs, he ran to the kitchen and took two aspirins with a lot of water, straight from the tap. He thought he was going to vomit again, but he held it back until his eyes started watering. And once the tears came he let himself go, lay down on the kitchen floor and cried until his headache became unbearable and he felt like his head was burning on the inside, as if someone had hidden a knife within his brain and it was stabbing him.
If you could travel the streets of the neighborhood at night or in the early morning, you would hear the radios of people who can’t sleep without music or voices, and some fans, plus the nightmare cries and footsteps of insomniacs. In general, though, the neighborhood is very silent, and the sounds begin mainly in the morning, when those who work far away leave their houses in cars, or else on foot to wait for the bus on the corner.
The wee small hours are the most silent time.
And on some early mornings you might see Juan Peterson emerge from his house, close the door without locking it, and walk two blocks, all alone, to the bricked-up house on Calle Villarreal. The cool night breeze ruffles his hair and reveals a wound on his scalp, a fresh wound that drips blood down his neck to his shoulder. The door of the house has a padlock and the lock is filled with cement, but when Juan steps on to the burned grass of the abandoned front yard, when he advances down the yellow-tiled path, kneels down, touches his wound and smears his blood on the door, just a little blood, the door vibrates and opens for him. The house is expecting him.
Juan enters without looking behind him; from inside—if someone could see, though no one does, as no one is following him—a tenuous light shines. The door closes behind him, and if anyone were to try to push it open, the attempt would be futile. It’s not the padlock or cement that keeps the door sealed.
It’s impossible to see inside the house. The windows are bricked up. Even if the bricks could be knocked out, there would be only darkness.
It is possible to hear, just a little, from outside. First, it’s a vibration. The house is trembling: it’s like an insect trapped inside a room, and the buzzing grows as it gets closer to the listening ear, fades when it pauses in a corner or flies more slowly or lands on the wall. Juan emerges before first light and staggers back to his house; if anyone saw him, they would think he was drunk, but no one sees him, the house protects him, at least until he reaches his own, and usually he collapses as soon as he opens the door. But he doesn’t always return destroyed, panting, from the abandoned house. Sometimes he walks home easily, undisturbed, and locks himself in his room.
Once, Gaspar had tried to follow him. He’d heard his father coming in and out at night and was curious to find out where he was going. He was around eight years old then, and the night was cool. He’d gone out to the sidewalk, looked both ways, and was surprised not to see his father, who had just left the house. He thought maybe a car had been waiting for him—sometimes a driver came to pick him up—but when he looked closer, he saw that Juan was simply leaning in the doorway of the house next door, hiding, waiting to catch him. Gaspar didn’t hesitate and ran back inside. Before he could start up the stairs, he felt his father grab him by the ankles and in the same movement slam the door so hard that, Gaspar thought, it could have woken the neighbors. Juan knocked him down with a single motion, and when Gaspar tried to get up, he pinned his arms against the floor. It was like being held by metal handcuffs. He still remembered his father’s face so close-up, his pale lips and furious eyes: the hands that pressed him to the floor were trembling with rage, and Gaspar was mute with terror. He didn’t understand why it had been so wrong to follow him, but lying on the ground with his father on top of him like a savage animal, sniffing him—he remembered thinking he was a wolf about to bite his throat—he understood it was worse than he’d imagined, that it might just be unforgivable.
His father spoke to him. What are you thinking, following me like that? And then he wrapped his hands around Gaspar’s neck and squeezed. Not hard, but Gaspar was so scared he couldn’t breathe. Sometimes even now, years later, he woke up feeling like he was being choked, and he had to get out of bed and take deep breaths while he paced around his room. The strangling hadn’t lasted long. His father let go of his neck, picked him up—Gaspar tried to kick him and received a slap that made his nose bleed: he couldn’t fight his father—and carried him up the stairs, holding his legs to keep him from struggling. When they got upstairs, Juan opened one of the rooms that were closed off, the walls stained with dampness and the wooden floor burned in parts. A completely empty room with broken, fallen blinds. You’re staying here, he said. Gaspar looked up at him from the wooden floor. He’d hit his head, but he was so scared it didn’t even hurt.