Gaspar tried to stand up, but a dizzy spell stopped him short. He was eating little to nothing, wasn’t taking his medication, and his knees shook weakly. But that wasn’t it, he realized, or at least that wasn’t the only reason. The dizziness knocked him off balance and he toppled from the chair. He heard his grandmother say: “He’s having convulsions, looks like, maybe it really is just epilepsy,” but no one touched him. He tried to tell her he had never had fits before, and then the memory flooded him, and he recalled that Rite they were talking about in full detail. He had sat up and opened his eyes and seen all those people around him, most of them naked, some wearing sheets or tunics, it was dark, and he had to expel something, a parasite inside him, and then he got up and ran because he’d seen the door, and they grabbed him by the legs and arms, why do they want to keep me who are they what’s wrong with them I have to get out of here, help me! I can’t help you now, but fight them, said his father’s voice, tired and thick, that voice he missed so badly. He started to cry as he lay on the floor but the memory kept going, implacable. There are a lot of them, where are we? Fight. There’s an awful old lady, what are they? Get up. Run. The others were trying to keep him where he was, they couldn’t, and in the struggle, in the attempt to get him back and lay him down, they dug in their nails, squeezed his ribs, and when he screamed, the shared body had a voice that was both of theirs, his and his father’s. They got him back on the board, the altar, his grandmother had called it, and when they did, they hit his head violently, a dull sound, and then a moment of silence. Gaspar thought the memory would end there, that his body, now, in the freezing room in Misiones, was going to stop shaking, but it kept going. It’s a monster grabbing my feet, kick its face, make another effort and kick its face, I’ll help you, and Mercedes received the precise kick in the neck, she had to retreat, choking, but she came right back and twisted his ankle until the ligament nearly snapped, she was smiling, winning, you brought me here, why? The blood from Esteban’s neck when he tried to escape again, I’d better get out, and then the sudden ending when his father withdrew. My father could have stayed inside me, he left because he wanted to, he told me to fight, Dad, you should have told me everything, it all would have been different, maybe I never would have come here, maybe your brother would still be alive. Gaspar felt Esteban’s hands as he gently helped him sit up and offered him a glass of water, but the memory granted him one more image: other hands that rocked him, his father’s hands, but enormous, with golden nails like misshapen claws. He looked at Esteban, who didn’t insist with the glass of water.