When I tiptoed up to Juan’s door, I found it open. That wasn’t strange: my uncle wouldn’t let him close it. I had a premonition, though, and I peeked in. He wasn’t in his bed. I figured he had gone to the bathroom and I waited. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, until I got worried. What if he was feeling bad? I went to the bathroom to look for him. It was empty. Then I went out to the garden and called his name. The only response was from some nocturnal birds, which fell silent, and from the house dogs, who came running up to me. It was a lot of silence, which alarmed me, because the jungle roils with sound. When it is quiet, that means it’s on the alert. I petted Osman, the youngest dog, a black puppy who was very sweet and who had to be constantly told to heel or he went on the defensive.
I remember I didn’t want Juan’s disappearance to be my responsibility. I went back into the house, still barefoot, and knocked on the door of my uncle’s room. He got up very quickly, his shirt unbuttoned but already on over some loose pants.
Juan left, I announced. I wasn’t sure he had left, of course, but that’s what I blurted out, stammering. The knocking at the door woke my father. Son of a monkey! What the hell’s going on here? he asked, and I explained the situation. My uncle was wringing his hands, and I felt a wave of disgust.
Soon, the three men had laid out a plan for the search party. They ordered me to stay put, but I didn’t listen, I couldn’t care less about their drunken instructions. The three of them went out half-dressed, my grandfather carrying a kerosene lantern, the other two with flashlights. The dogs went with them, barking. They yelled Juan’s name. I went out behind them in my nightgown and boots.
I don’t know why we were so sure Juan wasn’t hiding in the house, but no one questioned the intuition. Osman left the men and came back to be with me. I patted his head and raised the flashlight to the height of my head. I imagined Juan drowned in the river. I imagined Juan fallen into some pit, out of reach. I imagined Juan attacked by an animal. Then I saw the clothes on the ground, or rather I stepped on them. I shone my light down and realized it was what he’d been wearing to sleep in, a long sleeveless nightshirt with blue and white stripes. Was he naked in the jungle? I screamed his name, I shouted, It’s me, Rosario, where are you? and I ran through the trees, the tall grasses scratching at my legs. Then I copied something I’d seen in a movie: I had Osman smell Juan’s clothes. The dog didn’t understand, and whined.
I ran deeper into the jungle and stopped in a clearing among the trees. The flashlight wavered a little, but I shook it and the beam steadied. I could no longer make out the house from where I was standing, and I thought I couldn’t go any farther without getting lost in the brush. I shone my light on the trees, and that was when I saw Juan. Beside me, Osman whimpered as if he were being tortured. I didn’t shush him because I was speechless from shock. Juan was totally naked and walking through the trees like a sleepwalker; he didn’t notice us or the light from the flashlight, and he was stumbling. His eyes were covered with a yellow film, like an animal’s second eyelid, and he was exhausted: he tripped over a stump in his path, and though he didn’t fall, he stopped, agitated and sweating. I shone the flashlight on his hands. They were no longer a little boy’s hands. They were very big and had long, golden nails, like a bronze animal’s. I hesitated; I thought, that boy is not Juan, but I could see the scar from the surgery on his chest. He started going in circles again, now on all fours, his giant hands scratching the earth, the trees, his own skin. He was searching for something, desperately, and he didn’t respond when I called his name. I realized what was happening. I waited for the black light. I remember how the pride made my legs tremble, but I was afraid, too. My god, I said, and for the first time in my life I said it not as a saying or an exclamation, but as a recognition.
He stood up. Juan’s body, thin and tall, was surrounded by what looked like insects, lots of beetles or black butterflies, buzzing, darker than the darkness of the jungle. He did something very simple when the blackness started to surround him: he reached out his arms and brought his hands together, palm against palm at the height of his chest, as if he were about to dive into the water. The silence was absolute: Osman was still, and there wasn’t an insect, not a leaf or the wind or the distant river, nothing, just the silence and that dark blur that silhouetted Juan, a line of shadow around him, and it all let me know that something was changing and the change was terrible and wonderful.
His body was alone and floating in the blackness, and then I stepped backward, because I knew the Darkness could leap, cut, wound.
Just then the men arrived with the heat of their breath and the flare of their lights. My grandfather raised his kerosene lamp and we saw that the Darkness covered the trees like a heavy, impenetrable curtain. He fell to his knees and backed up, like a Christian pilgrim. The silence was broken by the noise of the Darkness, which was marine and voracious, the sound of water. It didn’t have an odor. I never did smell it. Some people smell decomposition; others, freshness. It’s different for everyone. My father’s mouth hung open like an idiot’s, but my uncle was crying and he rushed toward Juan, he lunged at him with his arms extended, he cried out, I don’t remember what he said or I didn’t understand it; my grandfather tried to stop him and he did, but not before Jorge’s left hand touched the open Darkness. Then he fell to the ground, his hand bloody: several fingers were gone. He was screaming, but we ignored him. We were looking at Juan, whose head was hanging down, his hair over his face, and he looked dead. He hung suspended for a few more seconds until the Darkness seemed to reenter his body. （I still believe that’s what happens: he takes out the Darkness and then recovers it.） When he raised his head, I didn’t recognize his eyes. They still weren’t his. He walked upright and sure out of the clearing in the trees, and the shadow followed him, surrounding him like smoke, and he knelt down beside my uncle, who stopped howling when he saw him. Juan touched the wound with his enormous hands and it was cauterized. But first, blood spattered his naked body.
Then my grandfather’s kerosene lantern went out and the men went to tend to my uncle. They stopped paying attention to Juan, who crawled away from them on all fours, naked. I don’t know why they didn’t see him or follow him; maybe the Darkness wanted the two of us to be alone. Juan couldn’t get far, he didn’t have the strength, he was pouring sweat and touching his chest, which hurt, with one hand. He looked like an overgrown newborn, wet and drowned. I sat on the grass and called to him like a dog, because he wasn’t going to understand anything else. He dragged himself over to me and I embraced him, I took him in my arms, and he was so wet he was slippery but he looked up at me, and I told him it was okay, he was with me. Then I kissed him. A very childish kiss, with my mouth closed, but long and inappropriate. Why did I do that? I still wonder. I was crazed. He put his arms around my neck and I started to cry, and the only thing I felt was his body getting my clothes wet, his hot hands, his breathing that burned my cheeks, the irregular beating of his heart.
The men came to get him and I resisted, I didn’t want to hand him over, but of course I couldn’t fight with them. I started to menstruate at that moment; the blood stained my nightgown, and I felt the grass beneath me grow wet. They carried him at a run back to the house, to tend to him. As I followed them, my legs bloody, I was thinking the whole time that I found him, he’s mine, they’re not going to take him away from me.