Our Share of Night

by Mariana Enriquez

Don’t take all her dignity, he pleaded. She gave us so much. His father permitted the grave. Years later, however, it would be desecrated. Few people know this, but Olanna’s skull, embellished with jewels, is used by the women of the Order in secret meetings, in dances and invocations.

The world seems like the Order, Stephen would say, and of course he wasn’t referring to the world as a whole but to ours, the world of young bohemian heirs, libertine and powerful, who had invented the London scene in the sixties. Radical political positions, hedonism, sexual promiscuity, weird clothes, kids with too much money: that stuff was similar to the Order. But the spirit of the age, the hippie canon, now that was identical.

It has never been easier to blend in, said Florence, and that was partly why she allowed the young Initiates to participate in the ambient esotericism. People talked about thought police, William Blake, and Hölderlin at parties, they read Castaneda and Blavatsky, they looked at Escher pictures to stimulate their trips, they discussed UFOs and countryside fairies. It was common to smoke hash, and, while the pipe went around, page through Le mystère des cathédrales or argue over whether the best Tarot was Crowley’s or Rider–Waite’s (or, as Laura and I insisted on calling them, Frieda Harris’s or Pamela Colman Smith’s).

The I Ching was consulted, the Ouija board used, trips taken to Primrose Hill, where the ley lines started, demarcating a map with megaliths aligned across the magical territory of the islands; we sought the spiritual sun Blake had glimpsed. One morning, Sandy thought she saw a black light, the god Brân and his crows, on Tower Hill. We went on the alert, but nothing happened. Tara, with her enormous fortune, br...

A cult that doesn’t offer everlasting benefits, or ones that last an unusually long time, does not construct a faith. And belief is nonnegotiable. Florence believed. She had to, not just to preserve her own power, but because she had destroyed her son in the process. Hermes is the god of writing, but he is also the god of falsehoods, I thought, but I didn’t say that to Laura:

That time, he started talking about mirrors, his fear of mirrors. I told him Borges’s story about the war of the mirror, how one day the silver was going to rebel and stop reflecting us, it would disobey and stop replicating our movements while we looked on, astonished and scared to death. And how the first thing that would appear, in the depths of the mirror, would be an unknown color, then the rumble of weapons and conquest.

Secretly, I called him my Persephone. How can I get you out of hell? I can’t, I am one of the mistresses of hell, but hell has its corners, and we can rule there, rule and disobey.

He was so thin he looked sick with TB, and so beautiful he looked like a girl from Carnaby Street. In fact, it took me a minute to decide whether he was male or female. Unable to hold back, I told him all about the theory of androgynous magic: solve et coagula and why Baphomet has the torso of a man and the breasts of a woman. I explained about the number 11, the number of homoerotic magic, which represents the double phallus. I taught him that all magical instruments must be doubles, two swords, two wands, two cups, two pentacles, and why occultists should all be homosexual. He thought it was funny.

Lines on maps that were an underground text capable of divination and prophecy. You had to traverse those alternative paths without thinking, draw the seals standing up, and finally the way would be revealed. Like in alchemy, I told her: they seem like regular walks, but they’re a process. The meaning lies in the time spent on that process, not in the result: the discipline of repetition.

Despite his paleness and his heavy eyelids, he looked powerful against the pillows. He was only fragile because he was sick. Fragile like relics, ancient ruins, sacred bones that had to be cared for and protected because they were incalculably valuable, because their destruction would be irreparable.

I, on the other hand, have had so little love that it seems to me like a delicate jewel, and I’m terrified of losing it. My fear is not just that I’ll misplace it, like an earring on a night of sex or sweaty dancing, it’s that it will evaporate and vanish like alcohol.

The circularity of the process seduced me. It was closure. I had seen the medium summon the Darkness for the first time, in the jungle: I had found him. We had fallen in love. That was inevitable. I had given him a son in the same place he revealed himself to me. Finally, I would offer him that body as a means to remain alive. The Darkness had guided me by the hand every step of the way. I was the real priestess. Not those three crones.

such was my fear when I was confronted with the certainty of my child’s death. I understood. That was love. After the death of one’s child, there was only more death. A blackness with no future.

but I felt I was traversing kilometers, because I was heading into an endless fight and I was my own main enemy. I had fantasized with pride, with arrogance and joy, about giving a child to cruel gods, because Gaspar was of blood, and Gaspar deserved the possibility of a princedom. And I had thought I deserved all the dominion that a powerful son could give me. I, who had never had abilities, who envied Olanna, Laura, even Tali, had imagined myself crowned in shadows.

And I would imagine it again. I was always capable of betrayal. But whenever I doubted, I clung to the memory of that night when I’d believed my son dead. And the unmitigated joy when I heard him cry.

It was never just that he found it unthinkable to take his son’s body. Juan identified with Eddie and with Encarnación, with the Scottish youth, with Olanna: that was his lineage, the line of mediums used against their will. His lineage was not the Order and its exploiters.

“How can you even think of giving them our son?” he asked me. “They trained me to obey,” I said. “That convenience is over. Do I have to save Gaspar alone? Maybe I shouldn’t tell you my plans. Can’t I make you change?” “Yes,” I replied. “I can change. Yes.”

Gaspar didn’t seem to notice that Adela was missing an arm. Of course, Gaspar didn’t know that Juan had cut it off, certainly against the baby’s will and her mother’s. Not Juan, of course. The Darkness. The girl had been chosen. Betty had ignored my order not to leave the house during the days of the Ceremonial, and the Darkness had seen baby Adela, so tiny, younger and slighter than Gaspar. The mutilation on such a little body was shocking.

She had no idea what she had seen, she didn’t understand it. She was in shock for weeks, raving about a black light that had taken her daughter—though that wasn’t what happened, it only cut off her arm—and then the man, she screamed, the man had healed the wound with his hands! With his hands! she repeated. The black light and the hands.

And how pleased Mercedes, Florence, and Anne had been with what they considered a gift, a black miracle. That’s what they called it: the youngest child ever touched by the Darkness—and she was in the family! Adela was a gift to the Order.

From England, he had mailed Luis a beautiful book on the architect who had designed Big Ben; I couldn’t remember his name, but I did remember that he’d gone mad and died at the age of forty. His life had seemed so brutal, and so had those monuments, those churches imagined by the feverish insistence of a young man who wanted to be close to God and found only dementia. And wasn’t that always the way?

We were all going to survive. I could sense it. My son, Juan, Luis, Betty, Adela. For a while, at least. The Darkness was open and the night was clear.

They’ll answer technical questions, which are the least important, though they can inspire morbid fascination. There is a pit full of bones just meters away from a clandestine detention center. There are no arrests and there never will be any, because this country’s laws command amnesty for the armed forces. The victims will be identified, but they will never have justice.

I’m alive because they hate him and because I want to bury Eduardo and tell his bones that I took care of our daughter but I couldn’t get her away from my family. You are not your last name, he told me. You are not doomed to be an exploiter. Maybe not to be that, but I was certainly doomed. He didn’t know. He had love, too.”

I ruin everything I touch. I didn’t know how to take care of her. But Eduardo has to know that I wanted to save her and I couldn’t, I couldn’t, but it’s their fault and the fault of the black god who guides them. The black god, Olga. They call him the golden god, but he is dark.

The god lives in the shadows. Be careful, it sleeps, but it lives.”

One said: “ ‘When we call upon the devil with the required ceremonies, the devil comes and we see him. In order not to die, struck down by this vision, in order not to become cataleptic or insane, one must already be crazy.’ Lévi.”

They saw it at the same time. It was a bit larger than all the others. Pablo took a little longer to realize than Gaspar, because of the surprise, the shocking coincidence. Gaspar had raised a hand to his mouth but said nothing. It was him in the photo, as a child, five or six years old.

Pablo embraced him, and when he heard someone banging on the door he shouted “occupied.” He could stay in that bathroom forever, holding Gaspar’s waist, his taut belly. I love him so much, he thought. I don’t care about the others, Andrés, this gallery. If only you’d stay with me. I’d set up house for you. I’d cook for you, I’m not afraid of anything. Just talk into my ear on the motorcycle. The sun and the wind in our faces, and then we’ll fuck all night long. Forever or as long as it lasts.

The day she’d seen him for the first time outside the Princesa, shy, just out of high school, beautiful, with his dark hair combed back, she’d thought he had a tragic face that reminded her of all those dangerous and delicate boys she fell for, James Dean looking at the stars, Motorcycle Boy playing pool. That first sensation had diluted over time, and in their last months together, all that had remained was his melancholy, and also his anger: if he got mad, he could destroy something valuable (she remembered how he’d once thrown a camera against the wall just because it was the closest thing in reach), or even hurt himself if he was too furious. That tension was still telling her it was better not to get back together with him. At the same time, though, it was as impossible to ignore Gaspar as it was a house fire.

It was called “The Zañartú Pit,” and it wasn’t very old: Gallardo had killed herself soon after it was published. It was a suicide note. Marita felt a little apprehensive as she sat down to read the text, pen in hand. It meant reading the words of a woman who was possibly crazy, the words she had left as a testimony before killing herself. And it had been a horrible death, from rat poison—that was also part of the legend, her painful last gasps in a hotel, because she had left her house to die. Herrera had his back to her as he talked into the phone, twisting the cord. Marita settled into her chair and entered the jungle, a pit of bones, the heat.

Pack your bags, I can’t take care of you, Marita, I seriously cannot take care of you, you have no idea what this is. I don’t either, but I sense, I know, I always knew, that the end is coming and they sought you out. But I can’t let them, not you: if anything happens to you I won’t be able to forgive myself. And something’s going to happen. Get out. You’re crazy, Marita sobbed, we have to call your shrink, and while she cried, Gaspar started to empty out her drawers and pull her clothes from the closet, and to fill the suitcases they had so recently unpacked when they’d moved into that apartment that still smelled of paint.

The sternum was split, and not by a surgeon’s saw. The cuts, splintered and irregular, looked like they were from a giant pair of scissors. They could have been made with something similar. Hedge clippers, for example. And the bone was open, no one had made any attempt to close it: only the skin was sewn up. In the space between the bones of the split sternum, pressuring the lungs, there was an arm. A very small arm, not an adult’s. A child’s arm.

She realized, with utter clarity, that Luis was going to die. It was a human arm. It had bones. It was in the space between his heart and lungs. All of his organs could already be damaged from the infection. The arm was surely in a state of decomposition. That had caused the sepsis.

They left an arm like the one Adela was missing, she thought. They left it in his chest. Like the imbunche. Where had that memory come from? Chiloé, the sect of witches. Adela in the forest. The river, Betty, furious and drunk, that summer in the south. He’s identical to his brother and that’s not a coincidence. This is an attack. An attack and a message. For Gaspar, first of all, but also for all of us.

He, too, was aware how macabre the situation was. This is black magic, thought Vicky, it’s macumba, it’s demonic. “It’s a human arm, Doctor, and the sepsis is very advanced. If you know the family, you’d better call them. The wounds on the body are superficial. We’re going to report it: this man was tortured.”

The only thing she could do was call Pablo, but when he answered, her phone was shaking so much she had to hold on to it with both hands to tell him: “Bring Gaspar to the hospital. Kick his door down, because he won’t answer. Luis is here and he’s dying.”

He had been at the birth of his two children and he hadn’t gotten drunk afterward and he hated it when people congratulated him, I didn’t do anything, it’s just a joy. A joy, Luis was a joy, and he would have had a peaceful, sweet future.

“The only thing written on his body is ‘let him come.’ That’s what the cuts say.” “What do you mean, let him come?” “That’s it, Gaspar: ‘let him come.’ ”

So, Dad screamed, all of a sudden, he screamed: ‘No one hears the bones sing.’ That phrase, like a reproach. It really scared Luis. My grandparents were afraid of my dad. My dad saw ghosts. Luis didn’t, because Luis wasn’t marked. I don’t want to see him. He’s going to scream the same thing. Now they’ve marked him too, but they can’t make it last. The truth is, I should have stayed in the house with Adela. It would have ended there. All this, all this time, it doesn’t matter, Vicky. It’s not time. Marita knows it should have been in a different life, don’t tell her this isn’t life and it isn’t time.”

They were going to miss out on having him always accept them even when they messed up, even if they had ridiculous mental emotional psychiatric problems, they’d miss out on knowing there was someone who would never abandon them, would never back down, they could beat their heads against the wall until they broke their heads and the wall, and he would be right behind them, arms crossed, saying, Well then, shall we start by fixing your skull, your anger, or the bricks? You choose.

Once, Marita had told him, after sex—she said the most intense things after sex—that if he wanted to live he had to give up his dead, let them go.

At one point when we were trying to stop you, to get you to quit hurting yourself—because that’s one of the unfortunate collateral effects of the Rite, the recipients get desperate and will damage themselves in order to get the Occupant out—we threw you to the floor and you hit your head.”

Stephen left the beach, walking slowly. He was destined to be a servant, he thought. His family’s servant and Juan’s and now Gaspar’s. A servant and a traitor. But now he was about to light the fire, days away from seeing flames on the horizon.

Esteban had told him that he was a servant, too. But no, Gaspar had told him. It’s one thing to be the black sheep. You’re the black sheep, the prodigal son, the family’s shame. You could conform. All I can do is rebel. My dad could only rebel. Nonconformity is only possible for those who are not slaves. Everyone else has to fight.

The people the hands grabbed and pulled underwater wore smiles of ecstasy as they were dragged away. They didn’t scream. They disappeared in seconds. Your father said they are only food, but they don’t know that. And if they do know, they don’t care, they want to feed their god.

Mercedes was the only alert one. Her beastlike face sniffed at the air. She had noticed the change that the others were unable to perceive, bewildered as they were by that field of hanged bodies, and above all by the reappearance of Eddie, the vanished heir. The place behind the door had never had a smell on the previous expeditions Gaspar had led. Now, however, there was a swelter in the air, a stench of old meat and sun-warmed crypt, of rotten milk, of menstrual blood and hungry breath, of dirty teeth. The breathing of a filthy mouth.

We need to leave, Mercedes said, but they didn’t hear her. They ignored her. But she had realized. The place was a mouth.

They couldn’t run, no one had any air except for Gaspar, who had time to turn around to watch the useless efforts, to raise his head toward the moonless night and wonder, if there was no moon, no stars, what was the source of that lowering light, so like a cloudy sunrise?

After the explosion, Stephen left for several days. To meet up with Tali, he said. Maybe he also had a lover. A week of absence. No more than that. In the house he ate little and drank a lot. Maybe Gaspar would find his body on the beach one morning, washed up by the river. Or maybe they were going to be two solitary men sharing a secret in that still house, year after year, who would run into each other in the early-morning hours, unable to sleep, incapable of forgetting how the hanged man swaying in the wind had no shadow.