“You already knew!” Adela said triumphantly. “Let’s go see if it’s coming from there.” And she grabbed Vicky by the arm. Vicky thought: I don’t know her. I don’t know who this girl is.
“No. I’m afraid of it. Let go!”
She didn’t have to fight. Adela let go of her immediately. Vicky saw sweat beading on her forehead. Nothing strange about that, with the heat.
“See?” said Adela. “That house is scary. You know the things they say, right? If you go in and sleep there, you start to think there are a bunch of pictures around you. Portraits. Weird, you think, but since it’s dark and there’s no light, you can’t see them well. Plus, the house makes you sleepy. Once, my mom took me to a healer, and she also made me sleepy.”
“She took you to a healer? Why?”
“I don’t really remember, but I think I couldn’t sleep at night, so that lady made me sleep. Anyway, so you sleep in the house and when you wake up, in the daylight, you see that there are no portraits around you.”
“So?”
“So, if they weren’t portraits, the faces were people, dummy. People who watch you while you sleep!”
Vicky felt like crying and Adela seemed to realize, but didn’t stop. As if she were angry, as if she were punishing Vicky.
“Didn’t you ever see, when you walk past, the old woman with her mouth open in the window?”
“No one lives in that house,” said Vicky in a quiet voice. “And the windows are all bricked up.”
“Maybe the old lady sneaks in, right? And how do you know no one lives there? Sometimes people live in abandoned houses. Bums. There are people living in the refrigerator cemetery, too. Gaspar doesn’t want to go with me. You think he’d take me to the house on Villarreal? It’s what I want more than anything in the world.”
“I don’t know,” replied Vicky, and she told Adela that now she had to go eat. As she ran to her house, she felt like her throat was closing off, and yet also like the idea of that abandoned house was growing in some part of her head, the idea of following that buzzing sound and confirming that it came from there, a colony of insects, an ant hill, flies rubbing their legs together as though planning an attack before assailing a piece of rotten meat.
It was two days after New Year’s, most shops in the neighborhood and on the avenue were closed for the holidays, and Gaspar knew that he wasn’t going on vacation with Vicky that summer. The Peiranos would be leaving in ten days, going by van to stay in a cabin on the outskirts of Esquel until early February. The unusual thing was that Betty and Adela were going with them, and weren’t spending the summer at Adela’s grandparents’ country house as they usually did. They had rented the van so they could all ride together. Vicky and Adela had talked to him about Patagonia, the forests, the desert, the lakes, and Gaspar felt a stab of envy, but his father had asked him—hadn’t ordered or forced him: it was a request—to stay home with him. Gaspar understood immediately. His father hardly slept and barely ate and had trouble getting to the bathroom: he had to stop several times to catch his breath when he walked there. Then he’d spend a long time in the bathtub, and he let Gaspar talk to him while he lay back in the warm water with the door half-open. During those days of heat and illness, they got along very badly and very well. On one of the doctor’s visits Gaspar had overheard her tell his dad he needed to be hospitalized, that it was madness to stay at home, and his father had sensed he was listening because next came the slammed door and later, when the doctor was gone, a slap that made his lips bleed, and the warning to never, ever eavesdrop on me. He slept with oxygen every night and let his beard grow out, and he almost never put down his notebook, where he sketched symbols that Gaspar didn’t dare try to get a look at. One morning, he had found his father in the bathroom trying to shave, his hands trembling and a cut on his cheek that was bleeding, and Gaspar felt with blunt certainty that these were his final days. Instead of getting scared and crying—that’s what he wanted to do, beg him to get better, wail that he didn’t know how to be alone—he went into the bathroom, took the razor from his hand, and cleaned his chin first with a towel, then with alcohol.
“You’re half-finished,” he said. “I don’t know how to shave, but I’ll try if you want.”
His dad said it didn’t matter, but Gaspar insisted: you have half a beard, it’s a mess. And he helped him stand up and get to his bed.
Lying on the pillows, Juan told him:
“Your uncle Luis is coming back sometime in the next few months.”
Gaspar had talked to his uncle over the phone on his birthday and also at New Year’s: just recently he’d received his yearly gifts, always two: this time it was a box with four toy cars from the Chevrolet Bel Air 1957 collection and a robot watch; but no gift was ever going to beat the Scalextric from two years ago that was in the garage. The news surprised him.
“He didn’t say anything to me.”
“He just decided. He and his wife are separating. He was always planning to come back when the dictatorship ended.”
“He’s a little late.”
Juan smiled.
“He wanted to come back with his wife, but he couldn’t convince her. Now he’s coming alone.”
“Is he going to visit us?”
“He’s going to stay here. We have to start the process for him to adopt you when I die.”
“I don’t want him to adopt me, you’re not going to die.”
“Son, don’t talk nonsense. Wise up a little.”
Gaspar crossed his arms, a bit offended, but decided not to respond. I’m going to make something to eat, he said. His father answered by closing his eyes. Gaspar glanced over to be sure he had oxygen and went to the kitchen. Minutes later, when he opened the refrigerator, he felt his father calling him in his whole body. He would never be able to explain how it felt; it was something like the moment you realize you’ve lost your wallet or that the teacher has found your cheat sheet, an alarm under your skin and in your throat. He went running back upstairs and found his dad sitting on the bed, pale and shining with sweat. He was struggling to take in air, but Gaspar could hear the rattle in his lungs, a whistling noise of suffocation. He knew what was happening, it had happened before and he had to act fast, with the full emergency plan that he, his father, and the doctor had designed, a series of steps he had to follow in order and without losing his calm. First, though, he went over to his dad and took his face in his hands.
“Take it easy,” he told him as he brought the oxygen closer. Had he not been able to get up to reach it? That was very worrying. Juan obeyed and put on the mask. Gaspar ran to the bathroom to get a towel and dry his sweat a little, especially on his chest and forehead. Only then did he follow the plan. First, call Dr. Biedma. She always answered right away, as if she knew who was calling, and she would arrive, if needed, in minutes. She lived close by, but Gaspar had never seen her around the neighborhood. Maybe she worked all day. Next, call the lawyers: he had to let them know his father was having a crisis. Then, call Esteban. Gaspar had much more trouble with this call because one time, his dad had told him: He’s the only one who knows what to do with you and with me if I die. Esteban took a little longer to answer than the others.