Our Share of Night

by Mariana Enriquez

True magic is not done by offering the blood of others, he’d been told. It is done by offering one’s own, and abandoning all hope of recovering it.

She had never seen such a man before or after him, and now, seeing him again, he seemed so extraordinarily beautiful that her eyes went hazy. The sight of him was like a surprising sunset, when nature puts its danger and its beauty on vivid display.

But when Juan stood up from his wicker chair and kissed both her cheeks, all those men and women seemed like the practice sketches of a clumsy painter, tentative versions made by a hand that was learning, until finally it drew Juan and gave him life and said, This is it, this is what I was looking for, the perfect finish.

Adolfo used to say that Mercedes wasn’t pretty and definitely was not charming, but she had a kind of madness approaching evil that attracted him: it excited him that she was capable of killing him, or at least of trying.

He was ready for the crown of shadows. Soon he would enter that dark zone where he was present yet existed no more. He was capable of reemerging from it easily, though it hadn’t always been so. Now he was like an invited guest who is given the key so he can come and go as he pleases.

“I know how to use it. Rosario didn’t lend it out, but she was always good at explaining. She was generous that way, wasn’t she?” Juan smiled. She was halfway generous, yes.

“So what Adela told me is true.” “Not only is it true, it’s very common. I’m surprised you didn’t already know, or that she hasn’t mentioned it before.” “What should I do?” “You’ll have to apologize.” Gaspar rolled his eyes. “You were wrong, and it’s what you have to do. She’ll have the right to make fun of you for a while.”

Though he was hungry, it was hard to choke down the croissant. I hope he dies, he thought. I hope Dad dies once and for all and puts an end to all this and I can live with my uncle or with Vicky or alone in the house and I don’t ever have to think again about locked rooms, voices in my head, dreams of hallways and dead people, ghost families, boxes full of eyelids, blood on the floor, where he goes when he leaves, where he’s coming from when he returns, I wish I could stop loving him, forget him, I wish he’d die. The croissant hurt going down.

His father had moved on from the moment of warmth they’d shared on the day of his headache, and he was treating everyone badly. Gaspar was used to it, but he preferred to keep his distance. How he hated those movies and TV shows with heroic patients who bore their suffering in silence and inspired others. He’d been around hospitals and illness enough to know that most sick people were bossy and mean and tried to make the people around them feel just as bad as they did.

Argentina were the champions and it felt like flying, as if nothing else existed but that moment, a moment that was forever and joyful and so sad because it couldn’t last. They had to go outside, no one could stay in. The streets were full of honking horns and curly-haired dolls wearing number 10 jerseys and flags and confetti. People were chanting, Mire mire qué locura, mire mire qué emoción, and what madness, what excitement, some neighbors brought their phones outside so family members living in other countries could hear the shouts, the drunkenness, and could cry from there, from Canada and the United States and Brazil and Mexico and Spain and France, exiled by dictatorship, working far away because there was never any work in Argentina, and some had watched the game in bars, others had listened on the radio, they all wanted to come back and be there, even in those provinces where it was raining and people were celebrating drenched, their jerseys stuck to their skin. In the park people brought speakers outside and there was dancing and grilled chorizos and wine, the empanada shop cooked for the people and everyone ended up lying in the grass come nightfall, having cried and eaten their fill and shouted themselves hoarse, dressed in blue-and-white from head to toe. Gaspar would remember that day, and that night, as the last happy ones in many, too many years.

Gaspar asked if they would get the ashes, and his uncle replied that it would be up to them. He added that Juan had told him: If you scatter them, do it in the river. But as long as they’re in the same house as Gaspar, let him decide when. Again, the box of ashes on a shelf. That’s what it meant to be an orphan: to have boxes of ashes and not know what to do with them.

Once, when Grandfather was telling us the story—he repeated it regularly, so we wouldn’t forget: he would even question us about the details—I asked him what the boy’s name was. I must have been eight years old. Grandfather had to admit they hadn’t recorded his name. The diaries just called him “the Scottish youth.” That is also what it is to be rich: that contempt for beauty and the refusal to offer even the dignity of a name.

He told her about London, about his wife, Lily, who was waiting for him though he had been gone for over a year. He told her about the cold sea and the snow. Olanna listened seriously: George noticed how she learned, but at the same time did not consider anything he said to be wondrous. It was simply different from what she knew. She spoke too, and when she couldn’t make herself understood, she drew in the air with her hands. She told George about a forest where thousands of demons lived, but there was one that reigned; it would hang from the trees and its feet were on backward, so its footprints never gave away where it was going. She told him about the wood carvings her uncle made and about her father’s riches and honor. She missed her jewels. She told him about forests of bones, about skulls that rolled between the trees. One night, while the ship swayed gently, she told him that certain beings were content with wine and flowers, but real gods demanded blood.

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 strike, 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 Greco-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 practice. “Study, know, then dare; dare to will, dare to act and be silent!” This is the definition given by Eliphas Lévi. A charlatan, as my grandfather said, but a charlatan who wrote very well.

Once, the day after a Ceremonial, Dad came in with his whiskey to see me and I asked him: how can we go on after this, how do you all do it, the world is stupid, the people who know nothing are contemptible. And he gave an answer that was so true I sometimes repeat it out loud. The thing is, nothing happens after this, dear. The next day, we get hungry and we eat, we want to feel the sun and we go swimming, we have to shave, we need to meet with the accountants and visit the fields because we want to keep having money. What happens is real, but so is life.

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.

I had to tell Florence the whole truth and propose a simple plan. Juan and I were together, and in love. She knew that, and disapproved. To her, love was impure. 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.

Stephen added a lot of sugar to his tea so that, as he always said, he could forget it was tea. Why don’t they make coffee in this country? I will die with that question on my lips, he said.

“Well, in short, they achieved that state of hyperia in my brother, and that’s why he’s crazy. The state of clairvoyance, when it’s permanent, is madness.”

I asked her if she knew that before the Chinese figured out what gunpowder was for, they’d thought it could be used in an immortality elixir. How did they find out they were wrong? she asked me. The most logical way possible: it blew up in their faces, and ever since then they’ve used it in fireworks. And the truth is that when I see particularly beautiful fireworks, I really do feel immortal.

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.

I was a little annoyed by his bad mood, but I knew him well enough to recognize his way of showing affection—behaving like the world was a porcupine and he couldn’t find anywhere to sit.

And it turned into a party, glasses would break, men would sweat, women would lose shoes and earrings and their makeup would run—the ones who wore makeup, not many—and they’d hug, proclaim their love for each other, just like that, I love you, fucking Negro, and Gaspar felt he couldn’t ascend to that level with them. He’d said as much to Isabel. It’s like we’re all going up a flight of stairs together and at a certain point I say “this is as far as I go.” And on that step, higher up, they’re all happy and I watch them from below. Had he always been like that? It wasn’t shyness or reserve or adolescence, as other people thought. He wasn’t going to get over it. He could dance when he was alone, he could get emotional in his room with a book, but when the party started he disconnected, the others turned into a movie that he could watch but not participate in.

Once, as he was retreating, he’d bumped into Negro. “You feeling bad, champ?” he asked. Gaspar said no. Later he heard Negro say to his uncle, “He’s a sad kid.” And he waited for his uncle’s agreement, his yes, his disappointment. But Luis surprised him. No, he told Negro. He’s not sad. It’s his temperament. And even if he was sad, so what? He is the way he is. Getting plastered and shouting to high heaven isn’t for everyone. We make noise to fill the hole we have inside.

“What the fuck is going on?” she shouted. “Nothing, we’re working it out,” said Luis in a calm voice. “Control that brat, you hear me?” Julieta slammed the door and Luis sighed deeply. “What?” said Gaspar. “You afraid to argue with her? You’re chickenshit. That’s why you ran away from this country, isn’t it?” Luis pushed Gaspar into a chair and then sat down facing him across the table. “You’re not going to piss me off, Gaspar. You’re not even going to get a rise out of me. You don’t know what I went through and what I didn’t, and your opinion about my decisions doesn’t matter to me. Not in the slightest. If you’re trying to get me to lay a hand on you, know this: I will never, ever hit you. You can call me a coward for hours if it floats your boat.”

Pablo was planning a show at Andrés’s gallery. Sure, it was in La Plata, but it was every bit as prestigious as a Buenos Aires gallery, partly because it was Andrés’s, partly because the periphery held a kind of suburban glamour, like some kind of discovery. Andrés knew it and that’s why, though he had a lot of money, he didn’t open a second site in Buenos Aires. That would have been the obvious thing, but then he’d lose all that snobby charm, which in the art world is worth more than anything.

The faces of the guests, who had been drinking but were not drunk, held mockery and a trivial kind of cruelty; they were the faces of people who were thinking up their next ingenious phrase, the next biting criticism, the most efficient way to offend someone with impunity, because no one could afford the luxury of causing an affront in that place, with a glass of champagne in hand and a request on the tip of the tongue.

The twins were going to forget him, they would miss out: the permission to do their homework on the patio, the races down the dirt road, the grilled fish at the beach, the What you wrote is really good, that teacher must be kind of dumb, she doesn’t have to understand everything but it’s a shame she didn’t understand this, because it’s so well written, and long! And the words you use! 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.