Father and Son (17 page)

Compared to this, any mistakes I may have made when he was sick pale in the light of my extreme devotion.

I don't regret having left him alone, because I never did.

I don't regret never telling him the truth about his illness. I believed that if he kept hoping, some chance still existed that he would be cured.

But it wasn't to be.

Despite my efforts, he found out in the end, and hope vanished and any notion of beating the odds was an illusion.

There was no room anymore for magical thinking, and still we refused to relinquish our respective roles, his of clinging to life and mine of persuading him that anything was possible.

Why did we do it when there was no longer any hope?

To close the circle, I suppose.

Because to accept defeat by mutual accord, knowing that the end was so foreseeably near, would have diminished the magnitude of our mutual devotion.

He didn't hold back. His sense of guilt probably led him to believe that if he did right by me, he would be rewarded, but when it became clear that not even then would there be hope, he continued to give me his utmost.

In this unvarnished account, there are things I can't ignore, much as I might like: the friend he met in Brazil. It would have been best for all of us if she had passed the test, but she didn't. That I refer to her in such a roundabout way is merely confirmation of the fact.

*   *   *

September comes. The final September.

In September we finally manage to secure my wife a place at a school in Madrid for the start of the year. My migratory life ends, and my multifaceted life begins. In September, after our return from Kenya, my father continues to run a fever and has various intestinal complaints. In September, as in January, the doctors delay the beginning of the new treatment until he feels better. In September, afraid that it might be tumor fever, I'm once again treading the halls of the hospital that I know so well. In September, though my nudging is successful and they start the chemotherapy again, he doesn't tolerate it as well as he did before. In September he no longer feels euphoria, but rather a new weariness often accompanied by nausea and fever. The good days that follow the bad aren't very good at all. He gets tired, doesn't go up to his studio. In September, as we're returning from the hospital one afternoon, he breaks down for the first time and, amid tears of despair, tells me things I once used to fantasize about hearing, though said now and said for the reason that they're said, they break my heart. In September the sale of the house is confirmed. The closing will be in December, at the buyers' request. In September the friend he met in Brazil rejects my final attempt to keep my father from having to take such a psychologically difficult step and warns him that if he wants her to take care of him, he'll have to put his share of the money from the sale at her disposal. In September my father says no. In September, taken aback, incredulous, the friend my father met in Brazil asks me in his presence whom he'll live with when they give up the house, and with barely contained rage, my father breaks in to say that it won't be with her. In September, then, we draw up plans for our future together: he'll live with my wife and me in the apartment that my mother will turn over to us when she leaves for Galicia in October, which means that work will need to be done, since the apartment has only one bathroom and my father wants one for his own use. In September the friend he met in Brazil begins to spirit away fixtures and objects, taking the most valuable furniture, too, and in response, each time I come to visit, my father entrusts me with some of his belongings for safekeeping. In September, after being woken one night by a loud noise and discovering that it's her rummaging in his studio, my father entrusts me with the task of finding a place to keep his paintings. We take the most recent ones and his painting tools to a friend's studio and we hire a storage company for the bulk of his work. The day before they pick it up, I help him go through his files, and he dumps most of his papers—personal letters, diaries, photographs—into two big plastic bags that little by little, dividing the contents into smaller bags, he takes out to the trash himself before I can go through with my plans to purge them. In September the keys to his car disappear. In September, upon returning from a chemotherapy session, he finds the house completely empty. The friend he met in Brazil has gone, leaving behind two mattresses, a dilapidated sofa, his ergonomic chair, and little else. In September my father doesn't fall apart. Instead, when his sister, alarmed, comes to visit, he puts on an old Charles Trenet album and for a brief moment, smiling, takes a few turns to the music with one arm folded on his chest and the other outstretched as if he's leading an invisible dance partner. In September he doesn't want to leave the house until the sale is concluded, so my wife and I move in with him. In September the friend he met in Brazil frequently appears unannounced, lets herself in with her own key, and inquires about his health or proposes some plan as if nothing had happened. In September, knowing how painful these irruptions are for him, I suggest that he change the lock, but he refuses, saying that it will only cause more trouble. In September he gives the go-ahead for the purchase of a studio. In September we draw up plans for the renovation of my mother's apartment, where we intend to live, and I start to look for an apartment to rent while the work is being done. In September, while my mother is going through her things in anticipation of her impending move, I embark on an initial cull of my own. I get rid of books, albums, pictures, letters. Practically everything seems superfluous in the certain knowledge that before long I'll have to let go of something infinitely more important. I'm ruthless, the opposite of what I used to be. The more tied I feel to something, the more pleasure it gives me to be able to get rid of it.

At the end of September I'm awarded a residency in Brittany, and again, my father insists that I accept at least a month out of the three I've been offered. I need it. The neglect of my writing weighs on me, I've reached my limit, and a break will help me be better prepared for what's to come. My wife will continue to live with him, and my mother, putting off her departure for Galicia, will relieve her when necessary. Before I leave, he asks me to instruct them not to smother him by trying to make conversation. In my absence, which lasts for almost the entire month of October, he takes walks some mornings, goes out for drinks one Tuesday with his painter friends, attends the opening of a Sargent and Sorolla show at the Thyssen and a Picasso exhibition at the Prado. Most of the time, though, he's at home, watching television from his ergonomic chair. He has closed down his studio, but even if he hadn't, he wouldn't have the strength to paint. His diaries speak of sleepless nights. Encouraged by a friend, he accepts psychiatric help. Meanwhile, in an apartment in the port city of Saint-Nazaire, I try to write a story based on the life I've been living for nearly a year, but I can't get past the first few pages. It feels like the worst kind of betrayal to employ the feelings inspired by his certain death in the service of fiction.

In November, a whirl of activity awaits me upon my return. I travel with my mother to Galicia to help her get settled, and when I get back, I finish clearing out what she hasn't taken with her. I haul junk and household items to Dumpsters; I sort through, tear up, and throw away papers; I sell books for cheap; I bring suitcases of clothes to a church; and I rid myself of keepsakes, at the same time piling up everything to which I still attach some value and covering the piles with plastic tarps. Next, I resume the search for an apartment where we can live temporarily once the sale of my father's house goes through. One morning we return to the notary to have him sign a document giving me power of attorney for my father. He doesn't want to see the friend he met in Brazil again, and he thinks that having me sign the papers as his representative will deal a blow to her pride. Once again I'm his constant companion, his helper in all things, and though sometimes he asks too much of me, he's so grateful that he bridles if he thinks someone else is taking advantage of me or treating me unfairly. Whenever I have a difference of opinion with my mother or my wife, he immediately and uncritically takes my side. But there's also time for entertainment, which I'm always urging on him without doing a very good job of gauging his strength: we frequently go out for lunch; one night we go to see the movie
Capote
, and days later,
The Departed
, with my wife; we visit the studios of a couple of painter friends who want to show him their latest work; we go to the Rastro one Sunday; and one evening, when an actress friend invites us to the theater, we find time for a visit to a nearby cultural center where there's an exhibition of contemporary African painting. Sometimes we talk about the work being done on my mother's apartment, where it's presumed that we'll live, going over the details. More and more often he asks me whether he'll see it finished. At first this seems simply a ploy to furtively probe me about his condition, but in time it becomes an urgent plea, almost a litany. Like the way he tacks the adjective
poor
onto my name to let others know how appreciative he is of my tireless efforts. Most urgent, however, is the search for an apartment where we can live after the sale of the house. It isn't an easy task, since we'll need it for scarcely three months and conventional rentals can't be had for less than a year. I know that he'll consider an apartment hotel an extravagance, and indulging in it will alert him that this is an emergency situation, robbing him of a little more hope. At last, a friend of my wife's rescues us from our fix by renting us two studios, one above the other, near the Plaza Mayor. In the one that can be reached by elevator, we'll set up my father's bedroom and the common areas, and my wife and I will sleep upstairs in the other. I feel as if I've passed a test, just as—ever since he's been sick—I've felt when I overcome some obstacle. To consolidate my top marks
,
I buy a baby monitor, and before I confirm the rental with my wife's friend, I check that the signal is strong enough to allow us to hear any sound coming from what will be his bedroom. I also decide that when the sale of his house has gone through, it's best if he goes to Galicia to stay with my mother and doesn't return until it's all over, so that the leave-taking isn't as traumatic and he doesn't have to endure the upheaval of the move.

*   *   *

Sometimes those who are about to die rehearse or perform final acts that aren't so much the epitaph that sums up a life as a way of making amends or settling a score that they believe is still pending.

This was my greatest fear for a long time. In some sense—it's clear to me now—I may have begun writing to exorcise it. I was afraid that much of what my father did once he knew he was sick—first with hope and later with the growing conviction, whether articulated or not, that he was going to die—was part of a performance that had me in a privileged seat in the audience. I worried that not all his decisions had been arrived at naturally, as the expression of his desires, and that instead they were shaped by how he wanted to appear before others, especially me. It worried me that, as suggested by events previously discussed, he spent much of his time calculating how to rewrite a part of his life—in other words, that the urge to shape the coming months was fed by the need to correct the past, to strive for a death that would bring to a harmonious close everything in his life that was lacking in harmony; that in all he did, in the decisions he made, there was an element of overacting determined by a past that tormented him. Specifically, the part of his past with which I took issue.

On the other hand, the possibility that there was no overacting or pretense, that he behaved the way he did out of conviction, which would suggest that he really did feel some remorse, was no less frightening. He hinted as much in a thousand ways toward the end. He regretted two things, he said. He didn't rank them: having been inconstant in his career as a painter, allowing himself to be distracted by fleeting romantic conquests; and having neglected his family, for similar reasons.

There's a third possibility, complementary to the latter, which is that his sole intent was to surreptitiously indoctrinate me about my future, as if to say: what I did is what you shouldn't do.

Ultimately, my father faced death the way he had lived: close-lipped, in silence, entirely committed to the idea of himself that he always wanted to project, an idea that wasn't sentimental in the least (though he himself was), that rejected any hint of self-importance, that was allergic to the notion of arousing compassion. Just as, in life, he was terrified of words, terrified of their capacity to reveal his inner self, in his illness, aside from brief laments or the occasional plea for consolation, he didn't allow himself to speak of death. He fell apart only a few times: twice that I know of, and both times when he was alone with me. In public he never complained. Even when what was happening became too calamitous to ignore, he tried to assume an attitude of resignation. His only preparations, shortly after he was operated on—when the progression of the illness hadn't yet made him give up hope of a cure—were to apostatize and make a living will. After those two procedures were completed, he retreated into silence and delegated to me everything that might be necessary from then on: doctors to see, places to live, life itself. He wanted nothing to do with anything. He made just one request of me: that when the moment came, instead of a funeral there would be a party at which his friends could raise a glass.

Once he had accepted death, or at least the possibility of it, the only thing that seemed to trouble him was the image of himself that would linger in the minds of those who knew him. Beyond calling attention to his views on religion by making the symbolic gesture of apostatizing, beyond controlling his own demise to make certain—by means of the living will and my cooperation—that he wouldn't continue to exist past the moment when his mind failed him, beyond orchestrating his own farewell ceremony, his wish was to seem strong in the face of adversity, and in fact he was strong. Strong and brave: I don't think there's anyone who dealt with him who thinks otherwise. Not even the doctors or the nurses. With all of them, even in the worst moments when he was a shadow of his former self, he stood firm. He always had a joke ready to fill the silence left by words that remain unspoken when there's no need to state what's already plain. He sought strength in this, in his need to rise to the idea he wanted to convey of himself, and though the inner self he concealed was much darker and his nights and reflections were doubtless long and desolate, he found what he sought.