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can,” I remember answering.
    â€œThat’s not enough,” he said in a calm voice that was nonetheless so steely it immobilized me as surely as his wife had been immobilized by her heels anchored in the soil. I didn’t know what to say. El Tano advanced as though pushing the point of his sword towards a rival who had already fallen to the ground and was ready to relinquish the fight.
    â€œI want this land.”
    I hesitated for no more than a moment then, to my own amazement, I heard myself say: “Consider it done. This land will be yours.”
    And this was neither a pat phrase, nor a declaration of intent. Nor did it have anything to do with my concrete ability to achieve such a thing. Quite the opposite. It was an expression of my absolute conviction that this man standing in front of me and whom I had only just met, El Tano Scaglia, was sure always to obtain everything that he wanted from life.
    From death, too.

6
    The car stopped in front of the barrier. Ernesto wound down his window, swiped his electronic card for the first time and the barrier was raised. The guard on duty acknowledged them with a smile. The girl watched him from her seat. The guard waved to her, but she did not respond. Mariana also wound down her window and took an exaggeratedly deep breath, as though this air were better than any other. It was not as sweet as she had noted it two years ago, when she first came to The Cascade. On that occasion she had come through the visitors’ entrance. And it had been spring, not autumn, as it was now. They had asked for everything, even her ID number, before letting her in. They had made her wait fifteen minutes because no one could be found to authorize her visit. That time she had been going to a barbecue at the home of one of Ernesto’s clients. It was someone who owed her husband a favour because he had made it possible for this man to enter into some business for which he would not have qualified without Ernesto’s help. Those sorts of favours also count as debts, thought Ernesto, especially when they allow the debtor to make a lot of money. That day, the day of the barbecue, they decided that Cascade Heights was where they would like to live when they had children. And now they had two of them. They would have preferred one, but it was either that or keep waiting. And Mariana could not wait any longer. Before the judge had given them the children a month ago, she had reached her wit’s end. They had even been on the point of buying a child in El Chaco: someone had mentioned a surrogate mother to them. Then by chance it turned out that
another client of Ernesto’s knew this particular judge who was able to get the ball rolling.
    The Andrades’ car advanced slowly along the tree-lined road that skirted the golf course. The streets of The Cascade competed in displays of red-and-white foliage. Not even the world’s greatest artist could produce a painting to compare with their view from the window, thought Mariana. Red balsam, yellow ginkgo biloba, reddish-brown oaks. Pedro was sleeping in his car seat, beside his sister. The girl thought it a little cold with the window open, and tucked the baby’s blanket round him. Then she crossed her legs and arranged her new skirt over them. Looking out of the window, she saw a sign that said “Children Playing. Maximum Speed 10 mph”, but she made no sense of it because she did not know how to read.
    Mariana turned away from the scenery and glanced in the rear-view mirror at the children, pretending to smooth down a lock of hair; she wondered how the fraternal bond was going to develop between these two children she scarcely knew. She had thought of the baby’s name years ago, when she and Ernesto were still engaged. The girl had come with a name already given: Ramona. Mariana could not imagine how anyone, in this day and age, would give such a name to a girl. Ramona was a name for something else –