His father went back to the shore and used his hands to dig, more animal than ever. He’d left his shirt floating in the water and Gaspar went to get it. It was soaked. Was he planning to wear it like that? He helped dig; his dad was sweating and his breathing whistled, but he managed a hole deep enough for the box. The two of them covered it with earth, and Juan drew something over the grave of the empty ash coffin, something Gaspar couldn’t distinguish, or maybe it was just a final goodbye, the caress of a finger. They sat on either side of the mound of dirt and they both laughed when, simultaneously, they said they felt like a smoke. Finally, said Juan. He seemed happy. Gaspar tried not to think about what his father had done with the ashes, or what he himself had done. They were cannibals under the moon, mud-caked and smelling of river.
The return was like a dream, slower this time but with fewer breaks. When they reached another gate, also locked, his father looked at him: his eyes had turned nearly yellow as they did sometimes, and he hadn’t put on the wet shirt, so the dirty cuts looked like a bizarre painting on his chest, a clumsy drawing. Gaspar obeyed the look: when he put his hands on the barred gate to push it, he felt the blood flow through his body at a frightening speed, pounding in his head, in his stomach, his wrists, and once the gates were open he was calm but streaming sweat, as if he’d just crossed the finish line of a race, or like after soccer matches in summer.
In moderation, his father said. Gaspar got up the nerve to ask him, emboldened by the ashes and the moon, if those things had made him sick. That kind of effort. Opening doors like that. No, his father said. No, it’s more that my illness held me back. I have to thank it for that. I’m your father because I’m sick. If I’d been healthy, I don’t know what would have happened.
When the driver saw them, wet, muddy, and blood-smeared, he said nothing. He wasn’t even surprised. He’s used to it, thought Gaspar, and when the car pulled away, the gates and the moon and the river and the ashes were left far behind, and there, enclosed in the car with his father half-naked and spattered by blood and ash, he had to fight the trembling of his legs, the feeling that he’d just woken up, that the time they’d just spent in that place was very far away and long ago, and it was beautiful like a secret garden behind a cement wall, full of purple flowers and plants that eat flies.
Gaspar came out of the pool at a run, and as he was wrapping a towel around himself, the swim coach called, not barefoot! If you slip, you’re dead. He obeyed and put on his flip-flops. His eyes were burning: too much chlorine in the water. Swimming had relaxed him. The effort of his arms, the sound of the splashing, and the singular stillness under the water distracted him. Thinking about the World Cup also distracted him. It was about to start, and everything reeked of soccer. Hugo Peirano said they didn’t have a chance with such a bush league team, but Gaspar believed in them pretty blindly.
Yes, focusing on the World Cup was the best distraction. Because there were other concerns. His uncle. When he was going to come. His dad just wouldn’t call him, and if he didn’t arrive in time Gaspar would end up in an orphanage or a reform school or something like that. Or could he stay with the Peiranos in the meantime? Thinking was torture. He needed to call his uncle’s ex-wife in Brazil, ask her where he was now and if he had a phone in Argentina. He’d said as much to his father, begged him please during a sleepless night, his father doubled up from the pain in his chest and sweating so much they had to flip the mattress. In a brief lull in the pain, his dad had given an unbearable answer: it won’t be long, and for now you and I need to be alone. What the hell are you talking about? Gaspar asked, but he kept helping as best he could until Juan fell asleep at dawn, his breathing strange and ragged. Gaspar had been afraid his father would die that morning, but hours later he was awake and even accepted a glass of orange juice. You’re really not going to call in a nurse? Gaspar wanted to know. Soon, Juan had replied. Don’t even think about calling your uncle, he’d said then, and Gaspar left the house with a slam of the door. At the magazine kiosk he’d bought El Gráfico and two newspapers. He saved the sports supplements and studied every article, every interview with Bilardo and the players. It was good to be able to think so intensely about something, sink down into conversations about whether Argentina had played well against Napoli and hear over and over that the team isn’t there yet, it’s not there, the way Hugo Peirano lamented as he sipped mate in desperation. They move back, it drives me crazy when they play deep like that.
In Gaspar’s house they lived according to a different time. His father came and went from the clinic, and when he was hospitalized, Gaspar didn’t go to visit. He couldn’t, and he didn’t want to. The World Cup helped him forget, but at night, as he paged through his magazines and sometimes waited for the car that would bring his father back, he felt his stomach churn. Who would he stay with if his dad died? Would his grandparents turn up? Why wasn’t he allowed to call his uncle? He was going to do it, even if it cost him a brutal beating or some worse punishment. He could take it, much better than he could take that uncertainty. After the World Cup, he told himself, after it’s over, I’ll call.
Shouldn’t you really stay in the hospital longer? Gaspar had asked his father while Dr. Biedma was drawing his blood. Yes, he’d said. I’ll go back soon. I have to finish something here first. Dr. Biedma put the blood into a test tube and gave Gaspar a look he couldn’t decipher. She obeys him, he thought later, at the pool, while he was under a hot shower. She knows he shouldn’t be at home but she lets him. But why? And what did he have to finish? Something to do with the drawings. Gaspar turned off the shower and wrapped himself in the towel he’d brought from home, which was old and scratchy and dried him well.
They were still in the running for the World Cup after a win against England that had made grown men faint and others wrap themselves in flags and sob on the floor. Now the few remaining games were important. Everyone was happy because Argentina was playing Belgium and not Spain in the semifinal. The semifinal wasn’t as tense as the match with England and you could sense the final victory, the inevitable, the 2–0 with Maradona enlightened, so elegant Hugo Peirano would say things like that son of a bitch is gonna make my cry. It wasn’t good news when France lost to West Germany, everyone knew West Germany was a real threat, and the days before the final were a kind of dream. To kill time, Gaspar decided to learn how to make a Spanish tortilla, following the steps in a cookbook. When he finished and managed to turn it over without burning it or mangling it too much, he found that it was so delicious it was a shame to eat alone. That day he hadn’t checked where his father was in the house, and he was surprised to find him awake in the downstairs bedroom, his bed littered with books and notebooks full of drawings and annotations.
“You want to eat, Dad?”
“Did you make it all by yourself? I can’t get up, son, you’re going to have to bring it to me.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
Gaspar went over to his father’s bed, and when he was close—he hadn’t looked at him closely in days—he saw he’d lost even more weight. And he still hasn’t called Luis, he thought. After the World Cup, after it’s over, I’ll call him myself. They ate together in silence while they watched TV, yet another show with soccer commentary. Gaspar could tell his dad wasn’t interested, but that was to be expected. He ate slowly and left half on his plate, but he said, it’s just that I don’t feel good, the tortilla is delicious. Gaspar asked if he needed oxygen and helped him put on the cable with the new system. He no longer used a mask at home, but rather a tube that went above his mouth like a mustache, with two smaller tubes that went into his nose.