Gaspar gave a general summary of his father’s wishes as he tried not to scratch the scar on his arm, which was burning as if someone were dripping hot wax on to it. Don’t worry, Dad, he thought, I’m not going to give away any inconvenient details. So you don’t have any contact with them, then? They sure are a strange family. No one knows anything about them, they’re rich but discreet. Not like my family. Still, there’s no comparing the two fortunes. They’re the owners of this country, seriously. You are! I’m not anything, said Gaspar. I tried to photograph it years ago, Andrés went on; the house, I mean. There’s a town nearby, but people there don’t see much movement in or out. I didn’t even make it a hundred meters down the private road, which is long. To me, the mystery is why they keep using that isolated house, which can’t be all that comfortable. Rich people who are that rich go for other kinds of summer places. They go to Punta del Este or places like that. People wonder what they do in there. They have other houses, said Gaspar, I guess they must spend a while at each one. They must have a lot, I’m sure, Andrés replied. Puerto Reyes is near Puerto Iguazú. Your dad sent me to Posadas. He didn’t want me to follow him, clearly.

Gaspar wondered what had happened between Andrés and his father, because the photographer’s story held a certain nostalgia. Plus, he remembered the details too well. But Gaspar wasn’t going to ask. Let Pablo ask for him.

Using a map, he located the Chapel of the Devil and, farther north, Puerto Reyes. Ever since he’d seen the photograph in the gallery, or maybe after he’d locked the door in the economics building, his epileptic hallucinations had become so vivid he’d started taking notes on what he saw. Near Plaza Rocha, the white-painted iron door of an abandoned house had opened on to a nocturnal swamp. He’d thought it was a garden with its tall reeds, but beyond the door it was night, though he could see clearly thanks to a light that didn’t come from the moon—there was no moon. He was able to walk up to the edge of the swamp—more like a lagoon, a recognizable landscape—before it went back to being a door and the headache destroyed his eyes. At the edge of the swamp, he saw a man’s body hanging from a branch, stiff and old and dry, brown from mummification, naked. He never thought it could be a mannequin. It wasn’t swaying.