He didn’t have to talk to them, he simply led them to the tower. The men followed, and when he reached the stairs one of them went ahead, so that Gaspar trailed him through the structure’s interior, illuminated by a lot of small windows. Fast, fast. Get there and run straight to the railing and jump without thinking, he had no one, he had nothing, life before the room in Puerto Reyes didn’t matter. Plus, the nights in the clearing in the woods were furious now, with his lipless grandmother screeching like an animal, Florence giving him orders and slaps, the young people spitting. Nothing from before, no one had come to find him, and if they had come, they were surely dead, these people can kill, I ordered your uncle’s death, I ordered your mother’s, that traitorous slut, that’s what Mercedes had said, and he had asked why my uncle, we used to believe in treating those like you well, but now we know they are instruments, mere instruments.

Florence listened to her and smiled, this time we won’t make mistakes. I know who you are. We all know who you are. We have ways of getting what we want.

But the truth is they didn’t have ways of getting what they wanted, thought Gaspar as he climbed the stairs. They didn’t. Otherwise, they could have already gotten anything from him, because all he wanted was to die. He didn’t even have the consolation of the epileptic images anymore. They were gone. The house had cured him. He didn’t feel anything in that house, not in any of its corners. It was dead, it was a ruin, it was the place he was going to die: it was his tomb.

They reached the top of the lookout tower, the terrace. The man in front of him looked away for a second and Gaspar ran, put a foot on the railing, and suddenly his other foot was in the air, above the trees, he could smell the river, a bird cawed, and the sun, implacable, and he closed his eyes.

Idiots, Gaspar heard from the floor, while he tried to understand what was happening. Two arms had stopped his jump, but not the arms of the guards, whom he had dodged with precision and elegance. There was someone else on the lookout tower, someone who, in his focus on escaping, he hadn’t seen.

It was Esteban. His back was to the guards, and Gaspar saw him mouthing the words, “please, Gaspar.” And then:

“Go and get the doctor right away, he hit his head. Later you’ll have to explain yourselves to my mother.”

One of the guards went running downstairs, and Gaspar leaned against the wall and thought about the freedom of that instant in the air, the stormy sky, the beauty of the fall. He didn’t dare try again right now.