A Distant Father (5 page)

“Friday night will be yours, Professor Jacques, and Saturday night will belong to your disciple and servant Augusto Gutiérrez.”

He asks me to feel the wad he’s got in his pants pocket.

“That’s the twenty thousand Uncle Mateo sent me—I carry it around so I won’t lose it. The train for Angol leaves at four.” Then, anticipating his moment of glory, he repeats himself. “Four o’clock Saturday,” he says.

On the day of the party, as if obeying a decree, almost all the men in the village put pomade in their hair. The weather’s hazy, the temperature suddenly warm. Indian summer, as they say.

Gutiérrez is standing beside the phonograph, and after handing him his present I check out the labels on the 45s waiting to be loaded onto the cylinder: “Sincerely,” by Lucho Gatica; Johnny Ray’s “Walkin’ in the Rain”; Paul Anka’s “Diana”; Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”; “Blue Tango,” by Hugo Winterhalter and His Orchestra.

He pats me conspiratorially on the shoulder, and while he’s opening the package I see Elena Gutiérrez, in her new embroidered blouse, refusing to let the hardware store owner light the cigarette she’s holding in her lips. When the man insists, she blows out his match and wets the burned tip of the cigarette with saliva, all the while looking at me very meaningfully.

But then Teresa Gutiérrez comes up, she looks at me in her turn, and the two of them turn away laughing.

Augusto makes no effort to hide his disappointment in my offering. “A notebook with a padlock,” he mumbles without enthusiasm.

“You can write personal things in it.”

“What things?”

“The things that happen to you.”

“Nothing happens to me, Prof.”

“But something may start happening to you very soon, and it would be a shame not to record it.”

“For example?”

“The trip to Angol. I’d like to know everything you do, in detail.”

He offers me the palm of his hand with his raised fingers spread so we can exchange a knowing high five. Elena Gutiérrez appears, carrying a glass. She plants it in my right hand and remains cheekily at my side. Frankie Laine is singing “Jezebel” on the record player.

“Cuba libre,” she tells me. “With Jamaican rum.”

“It’s better than Mitjans.”

“Do you want to dance?”

I glimpse her sister Teresa, whose eyes are fixed on me as she sips Coca-Cola through a straw.

“Actually, I thought I’d dance the slow songs with Teresa.”

“ ‘Jezebel’ isn’t all that slow. It’s half foxtrot and half tango. Let’s dance.”

I leave the glass on the table next to the phonograph and put my hand on her waist, on her highly polished belt. She reacts to my fingers and my steps with impeccable docility. Holding her straw wedged between her upper incisors and drumming her fingers on the empty bottle, Teresa watches us dance.

Gutiérrez turns off the ceiling light, leaving two dim bulbs burning in the corners of the living room. We’re about a dozen people in all, and except for Gutiérrez, everyone’s dancing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him go over to the buffet and add one more candle to the fifteen his father has already stuck into the frosting of the birthday cake.

Elena raises my hand, which she’s holding at shoulder level, and places it over her heart. “I’ve had my eye on you for some time, Jacques,” she says.

“To laugh at me.”

“I laughed to hide myself.”

“What does that mean?”

“You and I have something in common. A secret.”

“I have no idea what secret that could be.”

“If I say a name to you, do you promise to keep quiet?”

I notice that her hand is making mine sweat profusely. I try to pull away from her so I can wipe it on my lapel, but she doesn’t let me go. On the contrary, she presses my hand against her with great urgency.

“You can trust me,” I say.

“Good.”

She raises her solemn eyes, and although she says the name in the tone of a secret, she can’t help thrusting out her chin with a hint of pride: “Emilio.”

She waits precisely three seconds before thrusting the blade in all the way: “Emilio,” she repeats. “Like Émile Zola.”

The phonograph needle falls on “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” by the Four Aces. I dig my fingers into the embroidery on the hem of her blouse.

The ice in my glass has melted already, and I can’t bring myself to pick it up. I don’t swallow the saliva pooling in my throat. I look at the other couples’ feet. The girls are wearing high heels; the boys have slathered polish on their shoes. The Gutiérrez siblings’ father is standing on the threshold, stretching his suspenders with his thumbs out past the front of his open jacket.

I move away from Elena, open a door, and step out into the rear patio. The house dog barks at me, but I ignore it. Elena has followed me outside.

“You and I had to talk, Jacques. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“It’s all right.”

“This is a very small village, and the secret we’ve kept for two years is very big. Letting it out wouldn’t be in anybody’s interest. That was why I left the village for a year.”

“Who else knows?”

“The miller.”

“Why did he let me go off on my own in Angol? Didn’t it occur to him that I might run into my father?”

“He’s a drunk, as you know. But he’s also a wise man.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He took you to the whorehouse so you’d forget about my sister.”

“What does one of those things have to do with the other?”

The girl goes over to a faucet, turns it on, and lets the water run over her forehead. Then she pats her neck with her wet hands. It’s dark, and the only light is coming from the dog’s little house.

“There are two kegs of dynamite in this village, Jacques. If someone accidentally drops a lighted match, the whole place could explode.”

“And?”

“I don’t want what happened to me with your father to happen to my sister.”

“Why didn’t you keep Emilio?”

“This is Augusto’s birthday party. It’s not the place to discuss such things.”

“I’m not the one who started it.”

“Of course you started it! You started it with your stupid trip to Angol! I want to be the star of my own life, not a slave to a child.”

“You don’t love him, then.”

“Your father loved you, and nevertheless he left you. You’re a schoolteacher, Jacques! You ought to know that many things in life are very complex.”

“They’re simpler than you imagine. My father loved me and left me. My father loves Emilio and doesn’t leave him. I’m an abandoned dog, Elena.”

“All you have to do is bark,” she says with a smile.

She pulls the thin chain out of her cleavage and places the little golden cross between her teeth.

“Do you see him sometimes?”

“No.”

“I mean my father.”

“Him neither. Nothing ever happened here, Jacques. And then, all of a sudden, something was growing between us. It was nice to have a secret in the village. You didn’t know it, my dad didn’t know
it, your mother didn’t know it. But reality destroyed everything. I was the heroine of a great movie, and your father was my leading man. A movie for just the two of us. We were the actors and the audience at the same time.”

“The leading man in your movie is now projecting films in the Angol cinema. He’s in the projection booth for the matinees, the double features, the evening showings. He’s not going to win an Oscar like that.”

“Don’t think I don’t have feelings. Sometimes I think sad thoughts about Emilio.”

“And who knows, maybe sometimes my father thinks sad thoughts about me,” I say, swallowing at last.

The lights go out.

“They’re going to light the candles and sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ ” she says.

“Augusto put sixteen candles on his cake. Someone ought to help him blow them out.”

The girl removes the little cross from her mouth and lays it across my lips. She says, “Swear you’ll keep quiet.”

In the living room, Augusto Gutiérrez has opened the present from his father and is now wearing it as he glides around the room, dancing to “Blue Tango” with an imaginary partner and flicking a flashlight on and off to illuminate his new jacket. He’s going for the dance hall effect. The jacket’s a Windbreaker, the same color and style as the one James Dean wears in
Rebel Without a Cause
.

We gather around the table, and the father does me the honor of handing me the knife and indicating that I should cut the cake as soon as the candles are blown out. As he’s doing this, he spots the additional candle, plucks it out of the cake, and throws it on a plate.

He’s a heavyset, dark-complexioned man whose corpulence has softened his Indian cheekbones. His enormous basketball player’s hands give us the sign to begin the song.

The elder Gutiérrez’s eyes shine with intense happiness: he’s been a good widower, his daughters are
lovely, and some day distinguished suitors from the outside world will come courting and marry them. Furthermore, the youngest of his children is friends with the schoolteacher, which guarantees him good grades and an academic future. Maybe he’ll become a teacher, too.

Instead of cramming my mouth with the creamy piece of cake Augusto offers me, I put more ice in my Cuba libre and head for the bathroom, forcefully sipping the drink as I walk along.

In the hall, just as I’m about to open the door of the bathroom, I run into Teresa.

“Do you want to go first?” she asks me.

“I’m not in a hurry. Go ahead.”

I notice that she’s short of breath and unsteady on her feet.

“I just want to throw some water on my face. It’s hot in here.”

“This Cuba libre’s ice-cold. Want some?”

She accepts but doesn’t drink. Instead she raises the glass and rolls it over her burning cheeks.

“What relief!” she exclaims, closing her eyes and abandoning herself to the coolness of the glass.

I move closer to her to recover my drink, and when I see her damp cheeks so close, I feel as though my lips were pressed against that skin.

Then she says, “Excuse me.”

She goes into the bathroom and closes the door. I hear her slide the bolt.

I remain right outside, like someone waiting his turn.

Her father appears in the hall and greets me merrily.

I raise one thumb. Everything’s OK.

Since I’m standing so close to the door, I can clearly hear Teresa open the latch. I step back so she’ll have room to pass.

But the girl doesn’t come out.

Audacity accelerates the throbbing of that vein in my neck. Absurdly enough, I touch the knot in my tie and make sure it’s properly centered.

I open the door. At first, I can make out only shapes. We’re practically in the dark. I close the door behind me, and this time I’m the one who slides the bolt. Teresa’s leaning on the washbasin and breathing hard. Perry Como’s singing “Magic Moments” on the record player outside. I move toward her, seize one of the buttons on her blouse like a professional, and deliberately take a minute to undo it.

I remember the image Elena used: “Here in this village, there are two kegs of dynamite.” The fuse is in my hands, at the end of my tongue.

I pucker her lips with my fingers and elect to kiss her for the first time like that. When I move away, she’s undone the second button of her blouse, and now I can make out her brassiere hanging from the washbasin. She exposes her breasts demurely and without emphasis. She’s trying to act natural, but she’s trembling.

“I wrote you a letter, Jacques.”

“I never got it.”

“That’s because I never sent it.”

“Why not?”

“A letter leaves a trail. And what I told you was very serious.”

I put one hand low on her stomach, and while she caresses my hair, I softly bite her chin.

“Tell me.”

“I want to be with you, but not here.”

“It’s the only place where we can lock ourselves in.”

“But it’s my house, Jacques. I don’t want to do it with you in this jail.”

“Cristián could let us use his room.”

“The mill’s full of rats and cockroaches.”

She’s so wet that it comes through her skirt. When I move my hand away, in spite of the darkness we can both see the stain.

“I have to go and change,” she says.

She throws the brassiere in the bathtub, buttons her
top button, opens the bolt, and quickly steps out into the hall.

The light from outside allows me to get a good look at myself in the mirror. I move closer to it, drawn by something strange in my expression.

“J’ai vieilli!”

The French of my childhood has returned, clouding the glass with my breath. I remember the character in
Zazie dans le métro
and what she says at the end of the novel when asked what she did in Paris.

“J’ai vieilli,”
she says.

“I got old,” I repeat.

As I say those words, I make some decisions.

Decisions.

Like a feverish architect, I sketch out what I’m going to do this Saturday while the dawn rain washes away the accumulated dirt on the windows.

The day’s agenda goes like this:

In the mill I find Cristián, perfectly shaven, wearing a tall, immaculate chef’s hat and a fashionable linen
jacket that nearly makes him look like a yacht skipper. Today he’s not using his regular apron, the one that’s dusty with flour and decorated with red wine stains.

“I didn’t bake any bread last Saturday, and my customers are furious. They’re afraid I’m not going to deliver the goods, so they’re coming here to get it in person. I bought this outfit in Angol. You like it?”

“Did you find it in the same store as the Degas postcard with the ballerinas?”

Cristián reddens and slips six
marraquetas
, hot from the oven, into my jute tote bag. The loaves are wrapped in a sky-blue cloth with red Chilean bellflowers embroidered in its corners.