A Distant Father (3 page)

Just about all the items I see are beyond my means, except for an album bound in blue velvet with an inscription in gold letters:
Diary of My Life
. I ask the shopkeeper to gift-wrap it and buy two packs of Richmond cigarettes with the change. I find a shady spot on the corner, lean against a fire hydrant, and have a smoke.

I open Raymond Queneau’s book and use a red pencil to mark the words I’ll have to look up later in my
Larousse français–espagnol
.

In the course of an hour, I notice that the little town I’m in moves about as slowly as a watch, and I try to think up some possible conversational gambits to use on the girls. Nothing particularly witty comes to mind; it even occurs to me that Gutiérrez would handle the situation better than I could. I’ve been with girls before, but never in a bed. Classmates, girls from the neighborhood.

There’s nothing less conducive to wit than being a schoolteacher in the provinces. I walk over to the movie theater, a few steps away. At seven this afternoon, they’re showing
Rio Bravo
, starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson. The coming attraction for next week is
Wild Is the Wind
, with Anna Magnani. In a still photograph, John Wayne, wearing a sheriff’s badge on his lapel, is looking at Angie Dickinson’s bare shoulder; Angie’s got on a short petticoat with black lace insets, and the seams of her stockings go all the way up to her buttocks.

“
Rio Bravo
is a film about becoming a man,” the advertisement says. Maybe that’s why I keep staring at the photograph for so long, and at the one beside it, too: Ricky Nelson, in a crouch, holding a pistol whose barrel disgorges a tremendous amount of smoke.

A few passersby pause briefly in front of the posters and then continue on their way, except for a man with a black wool cap. He pushes a baby carriage, stops to light a cigarette, and glances without interest at the publicity stills. At first I can’t see his face, but he stands there smoking for so long that I end up recognizing him just as he throws away his cigarette end, turns, and crushes it under one shoe.

On the point of losing my balance, I clutch desperately at the baby carriage.

“Dad?” I say.

The man peers confusedly into the little carriage and only then looks up at me. Those are his thick brows, his slightly hooked nose, his bottomless, moist, hidden eyes, and most of all, that’s his cheek, marked with his old bar-fight scar.

“
Jacques? C’est vraiment toi?
”

“Of course it’s me, Dad.”

He looks in all directions, like a cornered thief. He seems to want to make sure he’s not dreaming.

“What are you doing here, buddy?”

“I came to buy a gift for a student.”

I feel an immense urge to throw my arms around him and inhale the scent of his skin, which smells like a leather saddle.

“Are you with your mother?”

“No, Dad, I’m not.”

He pretends to dab at a smudge on his forehead, but in reality he deftly wipes away the troublesome liquid flowing from his eyes. Then he pulls me close and squeezes me in a hard embrace. I don’t know why, but I want that embrace to never stop.

When we let each other go, we simultaneously take out cigarettes, but my father is quicker with his lighter and lights us both. He removes a speck from his cheek and looks at John Wayne’s picture again.

“
Rio Bravo
. For the past two months, we’ve been running it as the Saturday matinee.”

“What do you mean,
‘we’ve
been running it,’ Dad?”

“I work here.
Rio Bravo
’s a very popular movie. A lot of drinking goes on in this town, and people enjoy watching a lush like Dean Martin find redemption and become a good shot again to boot.”

“How many times have you seen it?”

“Twelve, fifteen. Depends on this little character here.”

He indicates the baby in the carriage. I look at the
child, and Dad takes off its pint-sized canvas cap, meant to protect it from the no-show sun. The baby looks horribly familiar.

“I think I know that face, Pierre.”

Dad swallows saliva for a while, as if oppressed by my silence. He looks extraordinarily young. He’s my father, but he could also be a friend. Like the miller.

“He’s your brother.”

“This baby?”

“Emilio.”

“Like Zola.

“Voilà. Comme Émile Zola.”

“But he’s … he’s not a real
brother
brother.”

“Listen, Jacques, I came here and settled into the darkest corner of Angol. In a dump, in a cave. I have no more life, I wander in the shadows. I never imagined anyone would find me here. I never thought I’d run into my son in this miserable goddamned hellhole.”

“What are you doing here, Dad?”

“Going down the drain.”

He puts the little cap back on the baby’s head and scratches his own scarred cheek. The scar’s inflamed again, as though reacting to some kind of allergy.

“Who’s the mother?” I ask, quite naturally, but on the verge of fainting, weeping, or dying.

I don’t know how to go into certain details.

Pierre gives a deep sigh and uses the butt of his cigarette, which he’s never stopped sucking on, to light another one. He forgets to offer me the pack. He also forgets that I’m talking to him. He looks at the sky over Angol; nothing new there. Robust, inconstant clouds. The downpour could start this very moment or an hour from now.

“Daddy?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“All right, Pierre.”

“The word you used is infinitely treacherous.”

“I always called you Daddy before you betrayed us.”

“I’m the traitor? Me?”

On a foolish impulse, he snatches up the baby from its carriage, squeezes the little bundle very tightly in his arms, and presses his unshaven cheek to the child’s lips. He sticks his cigarette in my mouth and pauses to look at a still shot of Dean Martin. I breathe the smoke in deeply and blow it out far from the baby.

“So you never went to France, Pierre?”

“Jamais.”

“You’ve been in Angol the whole time?”

“Yes. Angol,
le petit Paris.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“Because I wanted to be near you. And your mother.”

“You never wrote.”

“I declared myself officially dead.”

“The miller knew about you. Just last night he told me you were still alive.”

“He must have been drunk.”

“We were both drunk.”

The clock in the square strikes six. My father checks his watch, and a kind of peace settles over him.

“I love this kid.”

“As much as me?”

“As much as you, Jacques.”

“Then one day you’re going to betray him.”

“It wasn’t betrayal.”

“Then what was it, Daddy?”

He spreads his arms in a small gesture, almost as if to defend himself.

“Bewilderment.”

“At your age?”

“At my age. I’m not giving you an explanation. I never thought I’d run into you again one day, or into anybody else I’d have to give an explanation to.”

“The miller.”

“Cristián’s a mirror. I stand in front of him, and he’s me. You stand in front of him, and he’s you. He offers no resistance. But you—you’re hard, Jacques.”

“It’s too late for me, Father. I’m talking about my brother.”

He rocks the child in his arms and places his lips on its left ear, warming it with his breath.

“I cover him up too much. The thing is, he spends a lot of time in the projection room, and it’s terribly damp in there. If you heard him breathe, you’d say he had bronchitis.”

“The projection room?”

“Like I said, I work in this movie theater.”

I hand him what’s left of the cigarette and press my fingers against my eyelids to calm the conjunctivitis that’s devouring my eyes.

“You’re the projectionist?”

“It’s a dark, solitary place. No one would have ever found me there. I never thought my own son would come spying on me one day.”

He grabs his nose and squeezes it until it turns red.

“Even though I once went to Contulmo and spied on you.”

“When?”

“I don’t remember. Sometimes I dream about traveling to Contulmo and spying on you and your mother. I don’t know when I really went or when I just dreamed about going.”

He puts Emilio back in the baby carriage and takes two pieces of cardboard out of his peacoat.

“Here are two free passes to the movie theater. You
can use them for today’s matinee,
Rio Bravo
, or for the one with Anthony Quinn next Saturday.”

I take the tickets and put them in my jacket. “That’s nice, Dad.”

“Will you bring a girlfriend?”

“Of course, Pierre.”

“I’ll be on the lookout for you.”

He bites his wrist, but I still manage to hear his groan.

“Mama?”

“She’s doing well.”

“
Well
well?”

“Tolerably well. Like me, Dad. More or less well. We’re both more or less tolerably well.”

“Do you like teaching?”

“Literature and history, yes. The other subjects bore me.”

I’d forgotten his habit of rubbing his hands together and then horribly cracking his knuckles.

“This meeting of ours, Jacques …”

“… is a private matter.”

“You’re a smart boy. I’m asking you to keep this secret for your own sake, for me, for your mother.”

“For Emilio’s mother.”

Pierre raises his eyes skyward as if he’d like to ascertain precisely which cloud will discharge the first drop
of the coming storm. With positively maternal ferocity, he deploys the hood of the carriage over its passenger. I hear the baby’s breathing, a sort of clipped snort, for the first time.

“So how’s your French these days?”

“Fine, Dad. At the moment I’m translating
Zazie dans le métro
.”

“Don’t know it.”

“Raymond Queneau.”

“Never heard of him. Well, look, now you know where to find me.”

“Right.”

“If you have the time, come and see
Rio Bravo
. Bring a girlfriend.”

“Au revoir
, Dad.
”

“
Au revoir, mon fils
.”

The first shades of evening are just falling when Cristián and I enter the whorehouse. Most of the girls are drinking tea or listening to a radio game show where the contestants can win money if they guess the exact price of certain products. One of the girls comes up to me and plants a kiss on each of my cheeks. She asks my name and occupation. “Jacques,” I say, and “teacher.” Embarrassed, I ask her what she does.

“I’m a whore,” she says with a smile.

We go up to her room. She has Indian features, like most of the girls in this part of the country. In Frutillar, they say, there’s a whorehouse with girls from German families. This girl has markedly aboriginal bangs, prominent cheekbones, and a carefree smile. She’s young and strong. Maybe in a few years she’ll be fat, but not now. A teakettle’s boiling on the portable cooker in her room, and beside it are two cups containing little bags of Lipton’s. The Chilote blanket on her bed is as tough as an animal skin.

“A cup of tea?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

While she stirs the bags in the boiling water, she looks at my shoes and then my tie.

“You could start taking off your things.”

She comes over to me, loosens my tie, and when my neck appears, kisses me on it, leaving a damp trace behind. Without bending over, I slip out of my shoes and push them under the bed. I always do that, because they’re Dad’s moccasins. He passed them on to me when I went off to the teachers’ college, and they’re a little too big.

“It’s cold,” I say.

“No it’s not, baby. It’s your nerves.”

“I’m nervous?”

“Drink that.”

I sip at the cup, just about certain that the liquid’s going to burn my tongue. The girl, on the other hand, takes a teaspoonful and blows on the tea before drinking it.

“So what do you teach, Professor?”

“A little of everything. But I prefer literature and history.”

“Not geography?”

“Geography too.”

“I’m crazy about geography,” she declares, blowing
on her tea and sipping it noisily. “I know countries and capitals. I say their names and imagine what they’re like.”

“Bolivia?”

“That’s easy. La Paz.”

“Spain?”

“Piece of cake. Madrid.”

“Czechoslovakia.”

The girl chews a fingernail. She looks at the ceiling and the rug. Then she goes to the curtain, presses her forehead against the windowpane, and gazes out at the street for a while.

“I don’t know.”

With a professional movement, she throws off her robe, comes up to me naked, and touches me. Now she’s deadly serious. She pushes me onto the bed and takes off my clothes. Then she straddles me, bucks her hips three or four times, and I’m off.

“You still have to pay for the whole hour, you know that?”

“No problem.”

“Was it good?”

“Sure.”

She lifts the bedspread and drapes it over her head like a hood. Suddenly an immense smile spreads over her face.

“Ask me another question.”

“Hard or easy?”

“Easy.”

“France.”

“Paris.”

“Très bien,”
I say, feeling some of my semen ooze out of her and spread over my stomach.

“Do you speak French?”

“Pretty well. My father’s from Paris.”

“Do you ever see him?”

“No, right now he’s in France.”

I take her by the shoulders, pull her close to my face, and kiss her on the mouth. I feel like I’m participating in a dialogue for the first time. Until this moment, I’ve done nothing but obey her orders.

“Say something in French.”

“Hard or easy?”

“Hard and long. You have to pay for the whole hour anyway.”

“All right. A few lines of poetry?”

“Let’s hear them.”

I remain quiet a moment to be sure I’ve got the verses complete in my memory before sending them out over my tongue. There’s a fish-shaped spot on the ceiling.