William Bradford’s sons emigrated to the Americas in search of better business opportunities. The one who settled in the United States had a press, like his father, and died young. The one who came to Argentina participated in the Conquest of the Desert and received government land in payment for his military action. The most fertile land in the world. That man, in addition to being a very efficient murderer of natives, was also a researcher of the occult, and he never tired of searching for the Darkness in the pampa. He didn’t find it, never learned to summon it, though he was capable of trying out the cruellest methods without remorse. He died screaming his failure at the Chascomús house, the same one where today we go to rest and ride horses.
I became an anthropologist because of these stories. My notebook, all my notes, my recordings, everything, it all goes back to my childhood. I started to collect stories and myths before I even knew I could study them. I know how to listen, how to ask questions, how to follow the fingers pointed toward the healer’s house or the grave that grants favors; I recognize the fear in the eyes of those who make the sign of the cross, and I like to wait for night to see will-o’-the-wisps over the graves. I’m grateful to have been born into this family, but I don’t idealize it, or at least I try not to. All fortunes are built on the suffering of others, and ours, though it has unique and astonishing characteristics, is no exception.
I have my father’s dark hair and brown eyes, but I lack his elegance, his slender body, and his beauty. When I was very little, he told me that if I wanted to be a pretty woman I would have to make an effort. He made me cry, but I was grateful to him. Being rich can replace being beautiful, but not entirely. And I am not like my mother, who finds authority in her repulsive appearance. I learned, effortlessly, which colors make my skin glow, which stockings look good on my legs, and why I should always wear accessories: the long necklace to make my neck look slender; emerald earrings to contrast with my brown hair; rings on several fingers, to let others know that I have character. My cousin Beatriz isn’t pretty either. She inherited the feline features of our English family, the narrow nose, the thin lips. She always had a hard face with a cruel expression. A little bit leopard and a little bit bird. I remember her in the stairway of our building, the one that was only used by maids, drivers, and the rest of the service personnel. Our parents and Uncle Jorge only used the elevator. Buenos Aires had a lot of blackouts, but they never affected us: we had a generator. The first legend I wrote in my notebook is from the urban folklore of our neighborhood. The family at one of the nearby properties went to Europe on vacation, and the electricity went out just as the last of them got into the car. They didn’t realize that the maid, who was going to stay and take care of the house, was in the elevator. No one heard her screaming and she died in there, from hunger; it was a cage-style elevator, so she had oxygen, which only prolonged her agony.
For a while, Beatriz and I didn’t use the elevator and we met up on the stairs instead, our secret place. One night before dinner we were in the stairwell, and she asked me if I really believed in our grandfather’s stories and the Order. I remember her, with her small teeth and big nose, in possession of a truth she was about to throw in my face. It’s all rubbish. My dad told me so, and he doesn’t want me to listen to those stories anymore. The tears burned my eyes and I wanted to hit her, but instead I asked, why they would lie to us? The Englishwoman has them under her control, she replied. I don’t remember what she said after that, but it had to do with the business the two families shared. That was the night Beatriz announced they were moving to her father’s house in San Isidro. We don’t want to participate in this farce anymore, she insisted, a sentence she had taken word for word from her father, because she didn’t talk like that. Are they going to let you go? I asked. Why wouldn’t they? she replied, defiant. That was when I learned that it’s customary in the Order to let members leave without trying to retain them. My mother says they must be allowed to go because they always come back, they come crying back, all beaten down, because the Darkness is a god with claws that sniffs you out, the Darkness catches up with you, the Darkness will let you play, the way a cat lets go of its prey just to see how far it can get.
I still saw Beatriz, but only at school, which she lived close to now. Living in downtown Buenos Aires, I had to be driven there and back by the chauffeur. The same year Beatriz moved away from the building with her family, Uncle Jorge brought Juan to live with him. They didn’t have to tell me anything, but I was so curious and asked so many questions about the boy that they told me part of the truth. He’s your uncle’s patient, Jorge operated on him. He has a very serious cardiac deformation and his parents, who are very poor, can’t care for him. He’s going to live with Jorge. I was little, but I already knew that my family, especially my uncle, were incapable of such generosity. My grandfather added: It’s a case that could change Jorge’s career, because no one in the whole world has successfully carried out the surgeries that this child needs.
I wonder sometimes whether Jorge might have wanted to have a child, after all. I never knew him to have a woman, but he wasn’t homosexual, either; it’s clear he couldn’t reproduce. Families in the Order don’t have many children: it’s a punishment, I think, or a mark. What to do with the Order’s young people is a difficult question to answer precisely because of their scarcity. Training the young should be a priority, but since it’s also dangerous, why risk the future?
I asked if I could see the boy, and after a few days they let me. They gave him one of the main bedrooms, which surprised me, because I figured he would be put in the service room. I went in on tiptoe, I remember. They had told me I should be careful, because if he was startled it could kill him. But as soon as I saw him, I knew this boy wasn’t going to die easily. He had a hardness in his gaze that reminded me a little of the kids who worked the fields, but there was also a certain haughtiness. I said hi to him, I remember, and he didn’t answer. He speaks when he wants, Jorge told me, nothing is easy with him. His lips were dark, bluish, as were the fingertips resting atop the white sheets. The circles under his eyes were like stains on his pale skin, and his hair was cut too short, so blond it looked white. You’re like a ghost, I told him, and his gaze pierced me and I giggled a little. That same night I went to visit him again; the nurse had orders not to let anyone in, but she wasn’t about to stop the daughter of Mercedes Bradford. My mother inspired an incomparable terror.
“Don’t laugh at me,” Juan said as soon as he saw me come in. “I’m not a ghost. Ghosts exist. I see them if I want, and if I don’t want to, I don’t see them.”
Thus began our habit of talking every night. Juan not only filled the void left by Betty’s departure, he became my brother and my confidant. There were things he didn’t understand, like when I came back fuming over something at school or upset by some insult from Mercedes or a classmate, but even when he was so little, he wanted to help me. Sometimes I stayed and slept with him: the bed was big and he had to sleep in a seated position, propped up by pillows, because he couldn’t breathe when he lay down. I adored him from the start. I always wanted to take care of him, but I also respected him, and in some way I feared him, and also honored the distance he imposed. He didn’t go to school, and I loved to reinforce the lessons from his private tutors by reading him poetry, which he liked from a young age, or myths, and even taught him to listen to music, something he never really learned. We weren’t allowed to run or play any rough games, but he showed me his scars, in bed at night, lit by the moon. You’re like Frankenstein’s monster, I told him, and I remember how he didn’t understand and I promised to read him the novel. And we read it, for months.