My brother didn’t seem to be in any hurry to marry either. “I bet he’s a fag,” said Julián, who could hardly stand José Antonio, since he was my source of income and my first line of protection against my partner’s overbearing authority. His earnings as a pilot were so unpredictable that they seemed more like gambling profits. I, on the other hand, had a steady salary from Rustic Homes, which had grown like an octopus, with tentacles reaching across several provinces. Years prior I’d convinced José Antonio and Marko Kusanovic that, given our country’s climate of stormy winters and dry summers, we should invest in insulated panels, like they used in other countries. I went to the United States, studied the prefab construction industry, and we applied the principles to Rustic Homes: a sandwich of fiberglass insulation between two MDF panels. What had started as basic wooden structures used for rural workers, communities of laborers, and beach vacations became the preferred prefabricated homes for young middle-class couples. They all bore our brand: white walls with bright blue doors, window frames, shutters, and a thatched roof.

  * * *

  —

  In the late fifties, Julián regularly went to Argentina on mysterious flights that he registered in the alternate account book under a code that only he understood, because they were classified military operations, he explained. This trick of the second set of books, which had been my father’s ruin, would cause me great anxiety throughout my relationship with Julián. Juan Perón was moving from one country to another in exile from Argentina, and had been replaced by new rulers dedicated to erasing his legacy and putting an end to any form of opposition. I didn’t need to crack the code to know that Julián’s trips were related to corrupt money and secret government plots.

  He also began piloting flights to Cuba and Miami, as frequent as the ones to Argentina, but these he discussed openly with me. His well-earned reputation as a daring pilot led to his employment by the Mafia. The criminal empire that had been operating in Cuba since the twenties now flourished under the auspices of Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship, controlling casinos, cabarets, brothels, hotels, and drug trafficking, and contributing significantly to government corruption. Julián ran liquor, drugs, and girls, and provided other highly compensated services. From time to time, however, he transported weapons that ended up, by clandestine means, in the hands of the rebels led by Fidel Castro, who were fighting to overthrow Batista.

  “So, you’re working for both sides. I don’t even want to think what they’ll do to you if they find out,” I warned him.

  But he assured me that he wasn’t at risk, that he knew full well what he was doing.

  I went with him on one of his trips, where we were received like royalty in the newly inaugurated Hotel Riviera, hosted by a group of arrogant but welcoming men, who gave me piles of chips with which to entertain myself while Julián did his duties. I didn’t know they were Mafia until several years later, when I recognized a photo of the famous gangster Lucky Luciano published on the day of his grandiose funeral in New York.

  I spent those days in Havana losing at games of roulette, serenaded by the voice of Frank Sinatra in person, sunbathing by the hotel pool where pretty, flirtatious women paraded around in tiny bathing suits. I drank pink cocktails at the famous Tropicana Club and danced at the various nightclubs to the irresistible Afro-Cubano rhythms that had become popular everywhere, and I was regaled with the stories told by my new, short-lived friends. One of our hosts, who must’ve been high up in the criminal world, invited me to a party at the presidential palace, where Batista greeted me with a kiss on the hand, while military vehicles patrolled the streets outside. No one imagined that the island’s perpetual orgy would soon come to an end.

  * * *

  —

  Seeing the rolls of bills that Julián placed in the safe, since he couldn’t deposit them in the bank without raising a red flag, I suggested that he buy another plane, reserved only for tourists and businessmen, and that he hire trustworthy pilots—a legitimate business, clean and profitable. I offered to finance half of the investment with my savings, as long as we registered the fifty-fifty partnership with a notary. He was furious that I didn’t trust his word, but in the end agreed because the idea tempted him. Commercial aviation had to rely on existing airports, which you could count on the fingers of one hand, but seaplanes could land anywhere there was enough water.

  That’s how Seagull Air was born, and, in time, once we had several planes, the company connected the better part of the country. And I unwittingly fulfilled the dream my father had held since before my birth, of investing in aviation. I traveled often to the capital, where we’d opened an office, because in this country everything is centralized and anything that doesn’t happen in the city doesn’t exist. But Julián got bored with the company as soon as it was up and running, because it lacked excitement and offered little danger; routine flights were for other pilots, he was chasing more impressive exploits. The company’s income went into the official books, and half of it was mine.

  Over the years, Julián didn’t lose any of his astonishing energy, which allowed him to drink like a pirate, fly forty hours without sleeping, compete in equestrian competitions, and play several games of squash in a single morning. His bad moods did not improve either, as he exploded like a powder keg at the tiniest spark, but he did stop hitting me. I knew all his secrets and could do a lot of damage to his name.

  “You’d better think twice, Violeta. If you leave me, I’ll have to kill you,” he once shouted at me.

  “You’d better think twice too, Julián, because you’re going to need more than threats to keep me,” I shouted back at him.

  We’d reached a vague truce, and I survived on anxiety medication and sleeping pills.

  What was I afraid of? I was afraid of Julián’s violent outbursts, our battles to the death, which the kids witnessed and caused Juan Martín to have asthma attacks and migraines. I was afraid of the way I fell time and again into his traps, accepting his messy apologies and forgiving him. I was afraid that his “missions” would lead him to prison or death; I was afraid that the authorities would discover our second set of books; I was afraid that his earnings came at the cost of blood; I was afraid of the suspicious men who called him at all hours of the night; and I was afraid that so much fraternizing with criminals had infected him with cruelty. Julián, on the other hand, was not afraid of anyone or anything. He’d been born under a lucky star, and he’d enjoyed impunity through all the many years of living on the edge. He was invincible.

  * * *

  —

  On New Year’s Eve 1958, Fulgencio Batista escaped with his closest collaborators on two planes carrying the hundred million dollars that would guarantee his golden exile. In the last days of the dictatorship, when it was clear that nothing would stop the revolutionaries, Julián Bravo made multiple trips to and from Miami transporting fugitives, money, and more than one member of the Mafia with their girlfriends. The revolutionaries quickly occupied the entire island of Cuba and set up a firing squad to execute political enemies as well as those who had gotten rich illegally during the dictatorship, determined to sweep away corruption. Sexual tourism came to an end and the Mafia abandoned their brothels and casinos; Cuba was no longer profitable.

  Julián moved his home base to Miami, but I refused to abandon my job with Rustic Homes and Seagull Air, my brother, my friends, my house, and my lifestyle in Sacramento, to go live in a hotel like a tourist in a city where I didn’t know anyone. If we’d gone, the kids and I would’ve been all alone, since Julián spent more time in the air than on land. We visited him regularly, and during those trips he lavished us with attention and gifts, until another mission forced him to once again say goodbye or we had one of our legendary fights, followed by an indecent reconciliation. On one occasion, when I asked Juan Martín what he wanted for his birthday, he whispered in my ear, “For you to leave Dad for good.” He’d have to ask me several more times.

  The 1960 earthquake caught me off guard. I was with both of my children at Santa Clara—the Rivas farm was still my refuge, my favorite place for summer vacation and relaxation, far from Julián, who never joined us on those trips. Of the old inhabitants the only ones left were Aunt Pilar, Torito, and Facunda. The Rivases had died a few years prior and we missed them terribly. On their own initiative, the inhabitants of Nahuel installed a bronze plaque in their honor at the train station. You should go see it, Camilo, it must still be there, although there are no more trains; everyone travels by bus now.

  The farm belonged to Teresa, the only heir because her brother, Roberto, ceded his inheritance, but since she couldn’t maintain it, I covered the expenses. We rented both of the fields to the Moreau family, who had planted vineyards; there was only one cow left, the horses and mules had been replaced by bicycles and a truck, and the pigsty was reduced to a single pig, which Torito cared for like a daughter, since her piglets were his only source of income. We still had chickens, dogs, and cats. Facunda had a modern gas stove and two brick ovens to make her cakes and empanadas, which she sold in Nahuel and other nearby towns.

  I never met the husband Facunda claimed to have. In fact, since no one had ever seen him, we thought she’d made him up. Her two daughters lived with their grandparents while she worked until they were old enough to go off on their own. One of them, Narcisa, had three babies in five years, each so different that it was obvious they didn’t share the same father. “That girl turned out with loose legs,” Facunda sighed as she described the parade of men who filed through the girl’s life.

  When Uncle Bruno died and the house was left mostly empty, Facunda brought Narcisa and the babies to live there, so she could raise her daughter’s kids just as her parents had raised hers. Torito stood in for the fathers that those children didn’t have, even though he was old enough to be their grandfather. He must’ve been around fifty-five, but his age was only noticeable in the teeth he’d lost and his hunched way of walking. He continued taking his long trips to “get acquainted” and by that point I think he must’ve had a detailed map of the province and beyond etched in his memory.

  Facunda mourned the loss of Uncle Bruno as if she were his mother, and I grieved for him like a daughter. The man had adopted me in heart and soul as soon as I arrived at the farm in the time of our Exile, and he showed me unconditional love, just as Torito had. Every Saturday, Facunda took flowers to his grave beside Aunt Pía’s, and that’s where I’d like you to bury me, Camilo. I don’t want to be burned up and have my ashes thrown around everywhere. I’d prefer to let my bones fertilize the soil. Did you know that these days you can bury a body in a biodegradable coffin or wrapped in a blanket? I like that idea; I bet it’s cheap.

  Aunt Pilar was broken by Uncle Bruno’s death. She said they’d become like twin brother and sister, but I prefer to think they were lovers. When I tried to get the full story out of Facunda and Torito, they responded with evasive comments that confirmed my suspicions. Cheers to them. Aunt Pilar seemed older than her seventy-seven years, she walked with a cane because her knees hurt, and she was no longer interested in people, animals, or the land. That woman, who had once been so vivacious and optimistic, turned inward. She spent hours in silence, with her hands idle, staring off into space. More than once I caught her talking to Uncle Bruno. When I suggested that we install a phone at Santa Clara, she responded, with great conviction, that if the apparatus couldn’t communicate with the dead, it was of no damn use to her.

  That summer Teresa and Miss Taylor arrived with several trunks and a caged parrot to stay for a while and get some fresh air, they said. The truth was that Teresa had been placed in solitary confinement for her actions in support of the Communist Party, and eighteen months locked in a cell had wrecked her health. She was skinny and gray, with a consumptive cough and dizzy spells that left her disoriented. We went to meet them at the station and Torito had to carry her off the train because the long trip had completely drained her. They’d refused to let me fly them down on one of Seagull Air’s seaplanes, as I’d offered.

  That night, after the welcome feast Facunda prepared for them, Miss Taylor confessed through tears that Teresa was slowly dying. She had advanced lung cancer.

  * * *

  —

  For my son, the weeks we spent each year at Santa Clara were paradise. He seemed miraculously cured of his allergies and asthma and spent his days outside with Torito, who taught him how to drive the truck and take care of the piglets. We’d lose him for hours to his books, lying on the floor of the Birdcage, which was still standing with its sign on the door prohibiting entrance to persons of both sexes. “Leave me here at Santa Clara, Mom,” Juan Martín begged me every year, and I silently filled in the rest of the sentence, “far away from my dad.” In adolescence Juan Martín gave up trying to please Julián, and the uneasy admiration he’d had for him in childhood transformed into dread. He was scared of his father.

  Nieves, on the other hand, hated the farm. On one occasion she complained to Julián that Aunt Pilar was a mean old lady and Torito was a big retard, which elicited a guffaw from her father. I tried to send her to her room for being so disrespectful, but her father stopped me, saying the girl was right: Pilar was a witch and Torito was an idiot. But despite her impertinence and cynicism, my daughter had many admirable qualities. When I think of her now, I see a bird with colorful feathers and a raspy voice, happy, graceful, ready to take flight and leave everything behind, untethered.

  Her mettle was proven the day of the earthquake, the strongest that had ever been registered. It lasted ten minutes, destroyed two provinces, caused tsunamis that reached all the way to Hawaii, stranded a fishing boat in the main square of Sacramento, and left thousands of victims. It was a tragedy, even in this country, where we’re used to shaking ground and raging seas. The old house at Santa Clara wobbled for a good while before it collapsed, allowing enough time to escape with the parrot’s cage through a dense cloud of dust, as beams and chunks of wall thundered down all around us and the guts of the planet let out a tremendous roar.

  A huge crack opened up in the ground, swallowing several chickens, as the dogs howled. We couldn’t stand, everything was spinning, the world was turned upside down. The quake continued for what seemed like an eternity, and just when we thought it was finally over a strong aftershock followed. And then we heard the boom and saw the flames. The gas stove had exploded and the house was on fire.

  In the midst of that chaos, smoke, and terror, Nieves realized that Teresa wasn’t with us. We didn’t notice the girl running toward the flaming house; if we had seen her we would have stopped her. I don’t know exactly how things happened, just that a few minutes later we heard her calling for Torito. We couldn’t figure out where her cries were coming from; no one imagined she could’ve gone into the burning house. Suddenly we saw my daughter emerge from the smoke and dust, struggling to drag Teresa along by her clothes. Torito was the first to reach them. He lifted Teresa’s inert body with one arm and Nieves with the other, and he used his gigantic force, multiplied by adrenaline, to move them safely away from the fire. Nieves was ten years old.

  That day and night, which we spent outside, shivering with cold and fear, I got the true measure of my daughter’s character. She’d inherited it from her father; she had his same heroic nature. She didn’t remember exactly how she’d done it and answered our questions with a shrug of her shoulders, not giving it much importance. All we could determine was that she’d crawled through the ruins, dodging flaming obstacles, crossed what remained of the living room to the wicker chair where she’d seen Teresa moments before the earthquake. Teresa had been asphyxiated by smoke, unconscious. Nieves managed to crawl back through that hellscape dragging a weight much greater than her own, on hands and knees because, as she said, she could breathe better along the floor. Teresa’s lungs, weakened by the cancer, could not survive the smoke inhalation and she died a few hours later in the arms of her life partner, Miss Taylor.

  Nieves had second-degree burns on her back and legs and her hair was singed, but her face was unharmed and she had no emotional trauma. The earthquake that made history was to her just a curious incident she could tell her father about. The highway was blocked and the railroads were twisted, making it impossible to reach the nearest hospital, so we took her to see Yaima that very day.

  The thatched huts had been razed to the ground as if a terrible wind had blown through and the air was thick with straw and dust, but no one in the indigenous community had been injured; the people were calmly gathering their scant belongings and herding the terrified sheep and horses. Mother Earth and the Great Serpent who inhabits the volcanoes had become angry with the men and women, but the Primordial Spirit would restore order. It had to be invoked. Yaima put off her preparations for the ceremony to treat Nieves with a brief ritual and some miraculous unguents.

  * * *

  —

  After Teresa’s death, Miss Taylor bid us farewell and returned to Ireland, where she hadn’t set foot in nearly four decades. She hoped to find her brothers and sisters who had been dispersed in childhood, but she gave up after only one week. That country was no longer her home, and we were the only family she had left, as she told José Antonio via telegram. My brother responded with a single sentence: “Wait there, I’m coming to get you.”

  He brought her back on a transatlantic ship that took twenty-nine days from port to port, enough time to convince her that she’d made a mistake in systematically rejecting him, but that there was still time to remedy the situation, and he presented her with the garnet-and-diamond ring he’d saved since forever. She told him she was too old and sad to marry, but she accepted the ring and put it in her purse.