“No. I don’t know why.”
“That’s good to know.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me. Or would you?”
Esteban smiled at him.
“Gaspar, of course I would lie to you if it were necessary, but there’s no reason to lie. What do you think happened?”
Gaspar drenched the seat when he got into the car. The sky was growing dark again and a peal of thunder crashed above them; they drove blind back to the house, very slowly, deafened, too, by the downpour. Esteban carried him inside, and Gaspar felt physically relieved when he didn’t hear or see his father anywhere; he was there, Gaspar could sense him, but for now he preferred to stay far away.
Esteban sat Gaspar down on one of the sofas in that living room with colored glass windows, then said he was going to change clothes. From the hallway emerged a tall woman with long dark hair. She was wearing jeans and a sleeveless top, and for a moment Gaspar forgot his confusion, his fear of his father, and the void of those two days he couldn’t remember; he forgot his suspicions. The woman, though older, was beautiful; she wore no makeup—Gaspar didn’t like how makeup looked, especially lipstick—and she was barefoot.
Do you remember me? she asked him. And Gaspar talked to her about a party beside a river, a tree, a cat and her house. Also, you came to visit not long ago, but you were leaving when I was getting home from school, we just said hi. You’re Tali. Yep, that’s me, said the woman. Let’s see if we can get some ice on that foot.
Tali went to the fridge and took ice cubes from the freezer, put them into a plastic bag, and used a small hammer she found in a drawer to crush them—to make them curubica, as she said, and Gaspar smiled because he didn’t know that word, but it sounded strange and silly. It was the first time he’d smiled all day. He propped up his foot himself: his ankle was swollen and violet. She encircled it very gently with the bag and tied its ends together. Then she turned on the TV and handed him the remote control. There aren’t many channels, she said apologetically, but there’s soccer.
“I don’t want to see my dad,” said Gaspar.
Tali didn’t answer right away. She adjusted the ice on his foot and then said: Your dad is in bed now. You’ll see each other when you want to, the house is big. She smiled at him and Gaspar felt his head throb along with his foot, and he had to lick his lips. She had very white teeth, and her eyes were as dark as her hair.
They sat side by side, in silence. Gaspar couldn’t hear anything that was happening in the house. Its walls were thick. Outside, the rain formed small rivers of mud. Esteban appeared, dry now, and poured a beer. Tali changed the ice when it melted—and it melted fast—and then left. She’s with Dad, thought Gaspar, and although he was still sick with dread and would have left again if not for his foot and the rain, he felt a little jealous.
The days they spent on the estate were boring and strange. The swelling in his foot went down gradually; incredibly, he could sleep at night, maybe because there was a sedative among the medications Dr. Biedma gave him. His father was a shadow who wrote in the park under a tree, and Gaspar hardly ever ran into him in the house because he spent most of his time inside in bed. The strange thing was that the bodyguards were at the estate, and when Gaspar asked why, Esteban told him they thought maybe the accident had been a kidnapping attempt. You have a lot of money. Your father, though he rebels, is the widower of a very rich woman, and her heir. Don’t you know that in this country, rich people are kidnapped? Gaspar did know, his father had explained it to him, but were they really that kind of millionaires? The kidnappings he’d heard of were of bankers or businesspeople. “Well yes,” said Esteban, “you don’t live like a pijo because your father has ethical ideas.”
“What’s a pijo?”
“I guess in Argentina you’d say cheto, posh, Richie-rich. But it’s more than posh. A rich kid from a rich family. You get it.”
Dr. Biedma took him to the hospital one more time: they told him that after the blow to his head he would need checkups, and his foot would need physical therapy. He could either start at the local hospital or in Buenos Aires. He decided to start right away, but they didn’t do much. Just wrapped his foot in plastic ice packs and stuck it into a cylinder that gave off ultrasonic waves. After that, the physical therapist moved an apparatus spread with gel over the swelling. To endure those long and boring sessions, Gaspar brought books he’d found in one of the rooms at the house. He suspected they were his father’s, because they were mostly poetry and a few novels. But he couldn’t read. He just stared up at the ceiling and tried to remember the accident. And what came to him then, as he focused in on a stain on the therapy room ceiling until it turned blurry, or nodded off in restless morning dreams, was something other than a crash. He remembered his father, but his hands were enormous and they had long fingernails. He remembered lying faceup, like now, dozing while hands groped him. He remembered more people, farther away. If it was true that his father had yanked him roughly from the car, he knew it was possible that in all the confusion from the impact and the accident, he might remember an animal’s hands. Faceup and dozing: just like being in the hospital. The hands groping him, too: he had never stayed in a hospital, but thanks to his father he knew the procedures by heart, the nurses drawing blood, the bandages, people coming in to take blood pressure and hang and remove IV bags, administer drugs, even bathe him; it was normal for him to remember being handled not only on his skin, but also under it, which was much more revolting. And the distant people could be doctors in surgical masks, or else the people who always gathered around an accident.
After that, the physiotherapist, he ate whatever Tali made. Esteban sometimes cooked, too. He taught Gaspar how to make scrambled eggs, which were much tastier than fried ones, and to fry bacon until it was stiff, like caramel. A black inner tube had appeared in the pool for Gaspar to float on. Some afternoons, Esteban swam for a while. The first time he did, Gaspar saw his back marked by two long, parallel scars. What happened? he wanted to know. I fell from some rocks, Esteban told him. I was jumping, about to dive into the ocean. I used to spend summer afternoons doing that when I was young. The rocks can get very slippery.
“They look like they’re from an operation, like my dad’s.”
“They’re not, but the rocks can cut like scalpels. I spent the rest of that summer lying facedown. It was more boring than this summer of yours.”
“How old are you?”
Esteban dried off with a towel before answering. Gaspar would later realize he always did that, he never let the sun dry his skin. As soon as he left the water, he toweled off and then put on a shirt.
“Thirty-nine.”
“That’s it? But all your hair is white.”
“Lots of people go prematurely gray.”
“Not anyone I know.”
“Maybe you don’t know that many people.”
Gaspar used his hands to paddle over to the edge of the pool. Esteban was lighting a cigarette and Gaspar wanted to smoke. He asked for a drag, and Esteban surprised him by offering him the pack. They both smoked in silence, flicking ash into the pool.