Wasn’t my house around here?” I ask Pedro.
“Which one? Fernanda’s?”
“Mine, the one we lived in with Libardo, the house from before.”
“Yes,” Julieth says animatedly, “it’s around here, I remember.”
“Can we go see it?” I ask.
“Make up your mind,” Pedro says. “First you want to go to your grandma’s house, then to the old house—why don’t you go to Fernanda’s place and stop running around in circles?”
“First to the house and then to my grandma’s place,” I say. Maybe returning to the house will reconnect me to this land. Returning to the good memories, to my boyhood days, days of backyard and swimming pool.
“What if somebody’s living there?” Julieth asks.
“No,” Pedro says. “It’s empty. The government confiscated it.”
“See that?” I say to Julieth. “That’s somebody who knows more about my family than I do.”
“Are you done yet?” Pedro asks me.
Two more blocks, and there’s the bunker. The rush of memories clamps my heart. The time I lived in that house as well as my years of absence. The happy years, the uneventful ones, the lazy afternoons, the tumultuous mornings, the anxious nights, the tenderness and violence. Everything squeezes me, pains me, and frees me. The headlights illuminate the façade, which is painted with clumsy graffiti and fractured by the roots and branches that have seized possession of the house.
“I want to go in,” I say.
“How?” Julieth asks.
“Through the door, obviously.”
“Do you think there’s any booze left inside?” Pedro asks.
I get out and walk toward the booth that always used to have a heavily armed guard. I try to open the gate, but it’s locked. So I do what anyone would do when arriving at a house: I knock. I hear footsteps on the other side of the wall and the soft singing of a song that seems familiar. The fear of living is the lord and master of many other fears, sings a voice that’s familiar too.
“Who is it?” somebody asks from the other side.
“Me,” I reply.
The voice keeps singing, insatiable and trifling, in a dull anguish that rises unbidden. I hear a key fighting with the rusty lock. The door opens, and he appears, smiling, his face aglow, the way everybody must look when they’ve been resurrected.
“Pa,” I say.
“Give me a hug, son.”
I hug him with the strength I’ve been storing up for this moment for twelve years. He smells the same as always: a little bit like liquor, a little like cigarettes, like his cologne, like fireworks, a little like horses, like soil, like money—all in all, he smells like Libardo.
“Come in,” he says.
“It’s dark, I can barely see.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take you.”
He takes me by the hand and leads me through the front yard, which is overgrown.
“Can you believe they’re trying to sell the house?” he says. “They’ve been trying to do it for years, and they’re going to waste another thousand years at it because this house will never be sold, not as long as I’m looking after it.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I never left, son. They haven’t been able to get rid of me, even dead.” His laugh echoes through the empty rooms. A bit of light from the other buildings finds its way in. I start shaking—I don’t know whether it’s out of excitement or fear. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Just this morning we went to get you, to get your . . .”
“Remains,” he says, since I can’t. “Reason doesn’t need remains, Larry. The heart doesn’t need proof, and that’s why you and I are here.” He squeezes my cold hands and says, “Wait for me. I’ll be right back.”
I go over to the glass door that leads out to the backyard and see that it’s getting lighter. A new day is dawning, yet another day where I haven’t slept. The living room fills with a glow; it’s him, returning with a lit candle. He’s singing the song he greeted me with, the fear of living is an act of bravery, trying to take on each new day.
“You always were afraid of the dark,” he says, and places the candle in the middle of the living room.
Outside I can hear Pedro and Julieth laughing loudly; they’ve gone into the backyard and are horsing around like little kids.
The candle reveals more clearly the man I’ve seen only in my memory for twelve years, the man who’s been fading day by day and whose photos I started studying to keep him from disappearing altogether. He seems tired, but he’s still smiling at me. He looks out at the backyard and says, “That Pedro. He’s still running around, just like when he was a kid. He’s a good friend.”
“No,” I say. “Pedro betrayed me.”
“Don’t judge him,” he says, “especially not for that.”
“You knew?”
He makes a gesture that says, that’s life.
Pedro calls for me to join them. He’s shirtless, and Julieth is doubled over with laughter on the grass. Pedro starts removing his pants and yells, “Larry, come here, let’s go swimming.”
He tries to take off Julieth’s shirt, and she stops him despite her laughing fit.
“No,” Libardo says. “Tell him not to do it.”
“What?”
Pedro calls to me again: “Like we used to, Larry. Last one in’s a rotten egg!”
“No,” Libardo says.
Pedro, in his underwear, runs toward the pool, shouting wildly like when he used to compete with me to see who’d be first to leap into the cold water. Julieth shrieks excitedly but is too chicken to follow him.
“Tell him to stop,” Libardo says.
“Why, Pa?”
Pedro keeps yelling all the way to the edge of the pool; it’s a shout of triumph, of winning the race. He leaps, momentum carrying him forward, but instead of the splash of him hitting the water I hear a dull thud against the cement floor.
The wind blows out the candle. Libardo vanishes with a sigh. Julieth keeps laughing until the silence compels her to call to Pedro, Pedro, Pedro, who doesn’t answer. The only sound is the occasional firework in the distance. I go out into the backyard and tell Julieth to come with me. She wraps her arms around herself, trembling with fear or foreboding. We look over the edge and see Pedro in the bottom of the empty pool, swimming in the gush of blood that’s spilling from his head.