Father and Son (11 page)

It's 2005 that's the fateful year.

In 2004 I'm living three hundred miles from Madrid, in a town in the province of Valencia, where, after sitting for her examinations, my wife has gotten a job teaching philosophy. Though both of us try to look on the bright side, it isn't easy: we face several years in limbo until she can enter a transfer lottery. My wife feels guilty, and I'm not always able to hide my frustration.

In 2004 I get angry with my father for the last time, about the painting he offered to sell after visiting me in Berlin. I find a buyer, and he keeps his word and gives me half the money, but it bothers me that he needs to justify it to the friend he met in Brazil by telling her that it's the wedding present he didn't give me when I got married a year ago.

Between 2004 and 2005, I make many calls to the contractor, the architect, and the town hall to finalize the preparations for the rebuilding of the house my mother and I have bought in Galicia as a place for her to live when she retires.

Between 2004 and 2005, I have the feeling that I'm facing changes that will upend my life, and I'm not always optimistic about them. It unsettles me to have left Madrid when my mother is preparing to move away; it unsettles me not to know how long my wife and I will have to live in furnished rental apartments; it unsettles me that my bond with my mother, crucial until now, will become less tight; and it unsettles me that the huge effort I put into my books, the outflow of time and mental energy, isn't be properly rewarded. For the first time, everything seems about to fall into place (my mother's fate is almost resolved, my wife's and mine is taking shape), but I feel tired, and I'm afraid I won't be well-fortified enough for the fast-approaching future.

In February my new novel comes out, and over the next few months I travel frequently to Madrid from my Valencian exile. I make myself available for the few publicity activities; I visit my mother's younger brother, who has cancer; I go out at night; and I travel to Galicia to deal with the contractor.

In April my uncle dies and my father attends the burial with my mother and me. He's affected by my uncle's death, but I also notice his impatience. He isn't at ease, he can't remove himself from the picture, he views any misfortune as a threat.

In May we don't see each other, and at the beginning of June he calls to say that he's already left the city for the summer and he invites my wife and me to visit. The ritual of past years is repeated. I don't turn him down flat, but both of us know that I won't go. It bothers me that he hasn't let me know in time to give us the chance to meet in Madrid. My summer, shorter than his, is spent in Galicia, in the town where we'll at last begin work on my mother's house in September.

Upon our return everything begins to happen quickly. My wife is back at her school on September 1, and I follow her a month later. Various matters—and a bit of foot-dragging—keep me in Madrid. The novel hasn't done as well as expected, and after the quiet of summer, my hopes give way to discouragement. Except for work assignments, which I complete with more haste than diligence, over the course of the month all I do is flail about, losing myself in the chaos of anxiety, the labyrinth of possibilities. I go out too much at night, and I'm in no mood to shut myself up with another book, something that I inevitably associate with the place where my wife is waiting for me. My wake-up call comes in the form of a stumble at six in the morning in a bar that passes for underground; whether it is or not, what it most resembles is a black hole that you reach already defeated by the responsibilities of the approaching day and from which you emerge hours later with the certainty that once again you've behaved like an idiot. That night I sit down on a sofa near the door to talk to a Russian who says something to me, and as I'm getting up to join the friends I'm with, I trip and split open my chin. To judge by the scar, the cut probably needed stitches. But all I do is cover it with a napkin, and when I leave the place an hour later, I head not to a clinic, but home.

I say that this is my wake-up call because from now on I get hold of myself, and though I'm still in low spirits, I begin preparations for my departure. Among other things, I say goodbye to my father and invite him again to come and visit us. He doesn't reject the offer, but he's so vague about when he might be able to come, without offering any convincing reason, that it's as if he had. Still, we're in a good place. Not just any good place, but one that I expect to be permanent, ever since three years ago in Berlin when I made the decision to wall off the problem between us, remove it from our interactions. Tired of mistrust, I've decided to try giving up my eternal touchiness, which I believe is justified but which dooms us to a difficult relationship, subject to shifts in mood, silences, and mutual trepidation. It's taken me three years to prove to him that our lunches are no longer minefields; with some incredulity he's gotten used to the fact that my hitherto rare visits to his house have become rather more frequent; and just this fall, when he has less than two years left to live but we don't know it yet, I have the feeling that he's finally let down his guard. Since his return to Madrid I've visited him twice, and I've even gone so far as to inform him of my unsettled state. I tell him about staying out too late, and he responds, surprised that I'm confiding in him but scrupulously playing the role that he believes I want him to play. He invokes his own example and assures me that he regrets the time he's wasted in his life. He tells me that he hasn't worked as much as he should have and that the things we pursue in periods of confusion are worthless: vain distractions that sooner or later fade. He tells me that I have talent, a promising career, a wife who supports me, and that it's absurd to lose any more time. All of this he says in a low voice, not so much to prevent the friend he met in Brazil from hearing us as to stress the importance of what he's saying and leave no room for doubt. It's a curious situation, something completely new. My father—whom I've never allowed into my private life, as punishment for all the times he failed me—is giving me advice and for the first time unabashedly donning the mantle of father. Even better, leery of the authority I've granted him, he's acting more like an occasional confidant than a father. It's the only way. I'm thirty-seven and he's sixty-five, and though his presence in my life may have been constant, it's been so at a comfortable distance, on a very secondary level: he hasn't shared the tribulations my mother has had to endure on my account; he hasn't known the daily uncertainty that children bring; he hasn't seen me suffer or cry; he's had little to do with my hopes or my joys; he doesn't know my friends; he doesn't know me.

It's on my last visit that September—once my late-night drifting has come to an end and neither his advice nor my expressions of regret are necessary any longer, since I've decided to leave, break away, go back to my wife in search of a new routine—when he informs me of the first sign of his illness. He does it so unobtrusively that I hardly notice. I've said that it wasn't like him to clamor for the spotlight, to voice his worries. If this time he does, I can't rule out the possibility that it's his contribution to the new climate of trust, that he's repaying my revelations of the last few days with an equivalent disclosure. Whatever the case, the matter barely occupies the time it takes to be expressed, and it isn't until after I've left Madrid, in our phone conversations at the beginning of October, that it acquires substance in the face of his growing apprehension. His general practitioner has ordered a test, but he has to wait too long for it, the symptoms aren't letting up, and since in the meantime his alarm has grown, he decides to consult a private doctor. By then my involvement is complete. I encourage him to go as soon as possible, and on the day of the appointment, when we talk on the phone, he tells me with ill-disguised distress that they've found a cyst and that, though they've assured him that it's not necessarily malignant, an operation has to be scheduled immediately. I try to calm him with impromptu arguments, but he doesn't listen. He tells me that when it was time to pay the bill, the doctor refused to take any money, claiming that it was because he had no private insurance. That settles it. Each of us is seized by the same dark foreboding; each of us senses it in the other, just as so many times over the course of our lives each has felt what the other felt or thought without having to say a word. We are completely connected, as always, but for the first time, we fear the same thing, hope for the same thing.

Then comes the anxiety, the frenzy of getting the operation to happen quickly, locating the best surgeon, trying to find evidence in the experiences of others to counter our premonitions of doom.

My father is nervous. The friend he met in Brazil is nervous. I'm nervous. Though we don't say so to one another, we know that the worst is here. We're like performers overplaying our roles. My father, the friend he met in Brazil, and me. My father lets down his final defenses and for the first time accepts my help without reservations, even demands it. He's grateful, vulnerable. The friend he met in Brazil gets an inkling that I might be useful in the days to come, and for the first time, she invites me to visit whenever I like. With an attempt at a girlish smile she tells me that the only thing that makes my father forget the wait is my company. I'm presented with the opportunity to prove that my readiness for sacrifice is as great as my past demands, and for the first time, I don't hold back. I don't stop to consider the consequences presented by the future into which we're advancing. I think, of course, and on occasion my thoughts are egotistical, but immediately I rebel and make an effort to cancel out any petty calculation with my actions. I suppose I've speculated so often about this moment that I proceed like someone who's been programmed, like a zombie obeying the commands of his master. I call him every day, and if I'm in Madrid, I visit him in the evenings; I try to entertain him.

The time for the operation arrives, and my father prepares for it with his usual resignation. Earlier, he'd begun gradually to involve me in the doctor appointments leading up to the operation. For some reason, he trusts me more than the friend he met in Brazil. It must be that I retain more information, I explain the things he hasn't understood, I look for solutions, I answer his questions promptly, I'm ready with the most innocuous interpretation. I'm not a caretaker who requires care myself, and he puts his trust in me, responds in kind. The night before the operation, at the hospital, he gives me his bag to keep, invites me to withdraw money from his account if necessary, explains his financial situation, and puts up only a token resistance when I offer to sleep there. Later that same night, as I try to fall asleep in a chair next to his bed, I want to make some pledge in exchange for everything coming out all right, but I can't. I'm afraid to make a promise that I know I won't keep. It's strange. I'm someone who spends his life thinking, trying to keep one step ahead, and I can't allow myself to speculate. Out of fear, but also because I'm still setting my priorities against his. It's my final moment of resistance. A testament to times past.

From now on, without realizing it, I become his father. In the morning I help him shower. He's in good spirits, he wants to do everything right, and my help reinforces his determination. It brings us closer to success. If all is right between us, everything else will be right too. The friend he met in Brazil appears shortly before they come to get him, and I note his impatience with the intrusion of a reality separate from the hospital routine that we've become a part of after our night of initiation.

I think this is the key to everything that happens next. I don't linger on the periphery; I accompany him to the very center of his suffering.

I am his father and he is my son. No one knows what the future holds, but it seems that as long as he's weak and sick, he'll seek my protection. Is he following my lead or am I following his? Is he setting the pace or am I paving the way for his surrender with my own?

He holds my hand until he enters the operating room, and I can't help taking comfort in his deference. While he's inside, my aunt comes, my wife comes, a friend of his comes. My mother doesn't come, so as not to upset the friend my father met in Brazil, but she waits at home for news from us. All the promises I didn't make the night before I make now, walking the hallways, counting the tiles, stepping on only some of them according to a predetermined order.

When the surgeon emerges, I'm the first to spot him. He leads the friend my father met in Brazil and me into his office, and there's no need for him to speak the words he's already speaking. The friend my father met in Brazil is sobbing, and I try to contain myself, but in the end I'm overcome when I ask the practical questions, the questions about time that make doctors most uncomfortable. I feel wrenched apart, outside myself. The person speaking, acting, isn't me. I don't know what goes through my mind. Everything and nothing. When I leave the office, I hug the friend my father met in Brazil and we promise to forget our differences, to pull together from now on. She asks me to keep after her, to constantly be telling her what she should do, and in the first place we agree not to tell my father how little time the doctor says he has left. It's clear that this is all too much for her. “What will become of me?” she asks insistently. She can't hide what for now is her main concern: loneliness.

The worst moment comes that afternoon in the ICU. We enter wearing surgical masks, and my father smiles, flashing a
V
for victory. He doesn't seem to consider that the news might be anything other than good. But before the end of the time we've been allotted, he asks the friend he met in Brazil to leave us alone. I don't know why. He doesn't say anything to me, doesn't ask me anything. I try to act cheerful, like him, but I'm not sure whether I succeed. I start training myself to dole out information in bits. I explain that they've removed the tumor but there are still some nodes that will have to be treated with chemotherapy.