Only the mediums can summon this Darkness that speaks and that will help us live forever, help us walk like the gods. Mortals are the past, Florence once said to me. It took a long time for the method of survival to be revealed, and it is, of course, repugnant. I should also add that, so far, it’s not only repugnant but also a resounding failure. There is no arguing with faith, though. And it’s impossible to disbelieve when the Darkness comes. So, we trust, and we go on. At least, that’s what many of us do. Others are sick with doubt.
Before 1962, I spent two years living in my uncle’s apartment, with Juan. I spent half the day at school, where I’d see Betty, as if our families had not decided on a separation that at the time seemed definitive or at least unusually long. I never again set foot in the Chascomús house, although I missed it: the underbrush of spiny hackberry, the acacias, the Jerusalem thorns, and especially the dogs. I understand and have always understood that the Order must go to extremes to obtain knowledge, and that in many cases this entails forgoing affection or embracing madness; it entails cruelties that are hard to comprehend, even for Initiates. But when I had to feed the caged ones, I found out what my limit was, or one of my limits.
My grandfather taught me to draw chalk circles; he said they were magnificent. I wasn’t allowed to invoke yet: at that time, the youngest in the Order were preserved until adolescence. （Florence broke that rule with her youngest son, but no one knew until the damage became impossible to hide.） My grandfather, however, allowed me to learn things that he considered minor. Tarot. The circles. Some local rites that both delighted and disgusted Tali and me, like crucifying frogs in a circle of salt to ward off storms. He also let me help Juan, who, when he felt very bad, lost the defenses that kept presences and incarnates at bay. So, I’d leave a sign beside his door or a talisman under his pillow. He always needed those small assistances at certain moments in his life, though most of the time he could deflect any intrusion on his own. He once explained to me that after he had mastered the method my uncle taught him, it felt absolutely normal, like not wetting the bed.
Those two were the most pleasant of my formative years, away from my mother, whom I never again called Mother, only Mercedes. Away from her and close to the men of my family, failures and alcoholics, hunters and collectors, who reminded me of the Order’s founders and of George Mathers, my first love.
In Puerto Reyes I started making lists. I always liked writing everything down: recipes and instructions, catalogues and advice, dictionaries and indices. When Juan revealed himself as a medium, I was working on a basic dictionary of all the beings who lived in the area around Puerto Reyes. I talked to people, collected testimonies, kept notebooks. My grandfather told me I could study religion and culture if I wanted to; I could major in anthropology at Oxford or Cambridge or whatever university I chose. The Order always kept up its profile in research and study: the Darkness had to be interpreted, not merely worshipped blindly. It was a difficult balance to maintain, but it was done by incorporating other esoteric traditions and magical systems; so there were specialists in the Kabbalah and the mystical doctrine of Judaism, and in Sufism, spiritualism, necromancy, alchemy. The Order gathered together the most distinguished students of the Graeco-Roman mysteries, and they even brought in doctors, especially neurologists, because epilepsy, schizophrenia, neuronal hypersynchronization or hyperia, mystical ecstasy, it was all thought about and investigated. I wanted to be part of that tradition, which, of course, also involved practices. “Study, know, then dare; dare to will, dare to act and be silent!”—the definition given by Eliphas Lévi. A charlatan, as my grandfather said, but a charlatan who wrote very well.
I remember the day and night of the revelation perfectly: plus, over the years, I’ve had to tell the story to various Initiates. I was tired from swimming and from the sun; I was also a little dizzy from the boat. Tali had gotten sunstroke a few days before and she was with Marcelina, the woman who took care of us and of the house. That was the only reason she wasn’t there that night. I hid the revelation from her until my father decided it was time to initiate her. Tali isn’t of blood, and the timeline was different for her. She never reproached me for it.
That winter, my uncle had agreed to let Juan travel north for the first time. He brought him by plane himself. Juan and I had spent the day together, and I went with him to his room that night: he wasn’t all that tired after a full day of boating, or maybe he was so excited by the novelty of it all that he wasn’t sleepy. I told him quit fooling around and shut your eyes, if they catch us awake and talking, they’ll kill us.
I went up to my room, turned on the fan, and lay down with my blue notebook. I remember I was wearing the silk nightgown my grandfather had brought me from Paris, lovely, cool, with delicate details on the straps. I remember I wrote with a Parker pen that had a gold-plated lid, another gift from my grandfather, which I’ve since lost. My father also gave me beautiful gifts: every year, for example, a piece of jewelry with a different stone. That year he’d given me a Lalique ring. The girls in my class were all pining after Vend?me rings, but I preferred the ones my father gave me, much stranger and more expensive—museum pieces.
I opened the notebook and added two new beings. Guachu Ja Eté. I wrote: they call him “the ruler of the deer,” and he whistles. He also changes people who steal into deer. That’s what Marcelina told me, but she didn’t say what shape this particular whistler has. There are many whistlers and screamers. The scariest screamer is the Mbogua, which is identical to the Irish banshee. It screams to announce a tragedy, but only the person the tragedy will befall can hear the scream. I traced the correspondence with an arrow: banshee, and “keening,” the name of its howl. Marcelina was teaching me a little Guaraní. I dreamed of writing books about the local mythology, like the ones I read in English about the beings from the British Isles.
Since I wasn’t tired, I put the notebook away and left the room to get a glass of water. The house was silent. My grandfather and my father had withdrawn early and were already asleep. My uncle was asleep, too. I had to go past the door of Juan’s room on the ground floor to get to the bathroom, and I remember how I tiptoed so I wouldn’t wake him. At night, Reyes is a beautiful house. Mercedes never went there, and for that reason, too, it was a sanctuary for me. At Reyes I was far away from her rage. She still hit me often, though I no longer lived with her. She would ask me to come up for dinner, and afterward she would let fly if I said something inappropriate—and I always said something she didn’t like. The beatings from Mercedes never made me cry, and if at some point my eyes watered, more from fury than from pain, I didn’t let anyone see. Only Juan.
Descending the steps without making any noise was easy because they were carpeted, but the hallways had wooden floors and they creaked. My father would say they should have been made from marble or tile, that it was crazy to use wood in that heat, but they were definitely prettier. I tugged at the hem of my nightgown, which wasn’t short, but I didn’t want to meet anyone at night, any man, who might look at my legs. They weren’t very long but they were nice, at least back then they were—my body changed a lot with the pregnancy. When they dried in the sun, on the shore of the river, they took on a very soft color, like varnish.