His uncle sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and asked for a glass of something cool. Gaspar poured some apple juice over ice. Maybe he wanted wine? No, he would have said so.
“You want to come to the clinic with me? You haven’t visited your dad since he’s been there.”
“What for? Did something change?”
“Why so angry, son?” Luis shook the ice in his glass like it was whiskey on the rocks, then said: “Something’s changed, yes. Your dad is no longer conscious. He had an embolism this morning. You know what that is?”
“No.”
“They explained it more or less, I don’t understand it much either. In the end, what it means is that they don’t know if he’s going to wake up.”
Gaspar felt his knees start shaking, and at the same time he felt such an immense relief that he didn’t know how to react.
“It’s time for you to say goodbye, I think. They don’t know if he can hear or not. They say your old man is unpredictable.”
“Why should I say goodbye if he’s not even going to know? You’re lying,” said Gaspar, and he didn’t want to hear anymore. He went to his room and locked the door so his uncle wouldn’t bother him. In case he came knocking on the door, Gaspar lay faceup on the bed and put on his headphones and an album by The Cure—the one that was on his stereo, on repeat—and he cried in the dark, trying not to make any noise, until he fell asleep with the music in his head. He dreamed his father was talking to him while he held a giant knife, like a hunter’s, in his hands. He sat there on his deathbed and talked to Gaspar, and he had cut off his eyelids, with the knife, maybe, though Gaspar didn’t see any blood in the dream, only his father’s yellow eyes wide open, and on the sheets, blond eyelashes stuck to bits of dried skin.
He couldn’t understand what his father was saying, and that was what disturbed him the most in the dream, because it seemed important.
That Saturday was the day. They had agreed to meet there, in the barren front yard of the house on Villarreal, after dinner. Gaspar said he would rather go in when it was light out, and by 6 P.M. it would be dark, but his friends ignored him and he didn’t insist. His father hadn’t woken up now for two days. In the end he had gone to the clinic; his uncle stopped insisting but he decided on his own. Juan had a special room in intensive care all to himself. Gaspar sat on the bed. His dad’s eyes were closed. Gaspar opened them. The pupil on the right was fixed and black, like a beetle. The other one was normal. Touching his body was like touching clay. He couldn’t believe his father had been extinguished like that. He wasn’t dead but neither was he fully alive, and although Gaspar was still angry, he would have liked to talk to him some, maybe for the last time, tell him that he didn’t forgive him but that he loved him. Was his dad going to die without ever speaking to him again? Had it really ended so suddenly? When his dad moved slightly Gaspar leaned closer, relieved—he wasn’t dead yet. But it had only seemed he was moving because of the strange way he was breathing: he would go nearly a minute without breathing at all and then gasp suddenly, as if just remembering he needed to, quickly, frantically, and then stop breathing again. He didn’t open his eyes, but could he hear? Gaspar leaned down close to his ear and said: Wake up, Dad. He took his father’s hand, but there was no reply. When he left the room his uncle was waiting for him, and Gaspar asked if he’d noticed how he was breathing. His uncle said yes and put an arm around his shoulders, but Gaspar pushed him away. He didn’t want to be touched. And where were Esteban and Tali, if they were such good friends? Why had they left him alone? On Friday morning, before going to school, Gaspar stopped by the bedroom and thought he saw his father lying dead in his bed, so motionless, the sun filtering in through the metal shutter, and he stood in the doorway until the image vanished. Yes, he was going to move in with his uncle, whom he liked, who was so different, so similar to his friends’ parents, but he felt expelled from his real house—a house he didn’t fully know and where he’d only been allowed to enter some rooms, yes, but a secret house that was completely his. He felt like a door had been slammed in his face, like he’d been sent to a different world to be raised by a stranger, like in Star Wars.
He had arrived too early at the house on Villarreal. On the way there he’d seen some boys playing soccer in the street and a group of girls jumping rope. It was Saturday evening, the weather was already starting to turn a little warm, and the sky seemed painted, not a cloud in it, darkening toward the blue that came before the black of night. Gaspar had a large crowbar in his backpack to use as a lever; he’d borrowed it from the tire repair shop. Pablo was in charge of bringing the flashlight, Adela would be bringing keys to try in the lock, and Vicky wasn’t bringing anything because all of a sudden she was against going into the house. She’d told him very clearly: I’m scared, there’s something in the house and I don’t know if it has to do with Adela’s dad or not, but I don’t care. Don’t come in if you don’t want to, Gaspar had told her. I’m not going to leave you guys alone, she’d replied, but I sure hope the door doesn’t open.
The door would open, Gaspar was sure of it.
He sat down on the sidewalk to wait for the others and lit a cigarette. From his position he couldn’t see either the house or the door, but he could picture them clearly.
He remembered how, when they were scattering his mother’s ashes at the Costanera, his dad had told him to open the iron gate leading down to the beach. What had he done then? Just obeyed. He thought he could do it again on his own. His father was going to be cremated, too. No one ever got cremated. Why did his parents? He had asked his uncle, who, clearly uncomfortable, had said he thought it seemed like a healthy habit, though he preferred the earth, a grave. Cremation was expensive, too, though that wasn’t a problem. Gaspar asked if they would get the ashes, and his uncle replied that it would be up to them. He added that Juan had told him: If you scatter them, do it in the river. But as long as they’re in the same house as Gaspar, let him decide when. Again, the box of ashes on a shelf. That’s what it meant to be an orphan: to have boxes of ashes and not know what to do with them.
Adela arrived first, as he figured she would. She had the keys. She sat down beside Gaspar on the sidewalk: she was wearing a pair of jeans a little too big for her and an old pink sweatshirt with wide sleeves. Pablo arrived next, with Vicky. Gaspar could tell she was scared, more scared than the rest of them. Of course, she was the only one who’d heard that buzzing from the house; Gaspar had tried to hear it too, but for him the house was silent.
“Let’s not go in. Please,” said Vicky.
“Don’t come if you don’t want.” Adela was getting mad, and she went up to the front door with a padlock key in her hand. Gaspar let her try to open it, let her fumble with the key in the lock for a while, though he knew that even if it was possible to open it, she wouldn’t be able to with only one hand. He let it go on until he started to feel sorry for her. He thought about his father, pictured him as he lay dying alone in the hospital bed, breathing intermittently, and he said to himself, come on then, let’s get into this house, what can really happen to us? If Adela thinks there’s some clue in here, let’s see if she’s right; let’s find out what the buzzing is, why people are so afraid of this shitty little house, what’s hiding in here. I can open it. I can enter what is hidden, he thought, and he repeated it to himself: I can enter hidden places, I always could, but I don’t know if I want to live like that. Did my dad live like that?