We went by car to the house in St. John’s Wood. Juan would wait there for the operation, and there he would recover once he was discharged. The doctors checked him over in the bedroom, while I waited outside. My uncle came out wringing his hands, clearly displeased.

“The surgeon who is supposed to operate has a cold, and we have to postpone until he’s better. This is very bad news.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. Juan will have to go to the institute every morning this week, for tests. I’m not going to hospitalize him; I don’t want him to be stressed. He had a difficult flight and he needs to sleep, but he wants to see you. Go on, before the tranquillizer kicks in. Then we need to talk about your behavior in the airport. You went there to mark your territory, like a cat. Like a whore.”

I felt my eyes fill up with tears at the insult and the contempt behind it, but I said nothing. There was a simmering feud between us. Outside, the rain had started to pour, so hard it didn’t seem like just past noon, with the gray sky so dark and a tree lashing the window. There was a green blanket covering Juan’s legs. The room was heated, and now he was wearing only a white cotton T-shirt. 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.

His recovery from the surgery was very slow. I was allowed to visit him in the hospital, but my presence did him no good. He was unconscious, on a ventilator, unrecognizable. He was losing weight, and no more tubes could fit in his arms. Once he could leave the hospital he would finish recuperating at Florence’s house, with me. Stephen had fought with his mother because he thought it was wrong for Juan to have to spend his convalescence under the same roof as Eddie, Stephen’s brother. Eddie hated Juan because he thought he had usurped him, Stephen told her, and he’s capable of anything. And he has a gift for escaping. Don’t you remember when he was little and he could get into any house, at night, and he’d move things around, smear dirt in the beds, wake up sleeping people by biting their legs? Anne found him slithering around like an eel not long ago. He can get into Juan’s room if he wants.