Talking to Ourselves: A Novel (18 page)

When he pronounced the boy’s name I had to stop myself from bursting into tears. I knew the kid. He is timid. A squirt. One of the smallest boys in his class. I once spoke to his mother, who lives in constant fear of him getting hurt. The poor kid has trouble scraping through physical education. This was the boy Lito had hit until it made him feel better.

So explain to me. You. The father. The man. How the hell does one deal with this sort of thing? What stories did your son bring home to you from school? How did you respond? Did you
preach to him about pacifism? Did you lie to him? Did you teach him how to throw a punch? Did you tell him how much you liked fighting when you were a kid? How come you just stay there, dead?

I have started two books by Christian Bobin. I alternate, like headphones playing different music for each ear. I read in stereo.

I am depressed as I underline in the first book:

“The event is what is alive, and what is alive does not protect itself from loss.” So, the true event is loss?

I laugh as I underline in the second book:

“Young mothers have affairs with the invisible. And, because they have affairs with the invisible, young mothers end up becoming invisible. Men are unaware that such things happen. This may even be man’s function: not to see the invisible.” So, the invisible man is the true man?

Let’s be honest. All honesty is a little posthumous. To you, your son’s day-to-day life was like a favourite TV series. You followed it with interest, but because you always missed half the episodes, you couldn’t understand the whole plot. But you had the father you had. And that was excuse enough for you to emerge unscathed.

I remember once, I was with your mother in the kitchen. We were chopping vegetables to make soup. Your mother was incredible with a knife: I’ve never seen transparent slices like those since. You were smoking in the living room with your father and
brothers. All of a sudden the lights went out. Your mother lit a candle, and we went out into the hallway. That narrow hallway in your parents’ house. She opened the fuse box, held the candle up, and pointed to the fuse that had just blown. She quickly closed it, without touching anything. And we went back into the kitchen. From there, we heard your father’s booming voice, his footsteps with yours, the sound of the fuse box opening. Sometimes, your mother whispered to me in the candlelight, you have to let them believe they are the ones with the solution.

I had the phone in my hand, lying on the bed, sending my messages, I saw his name in my contact list and, suddenly, without thinking, I pressed Ezequiel’s number.

His voicemail came on. I hung up.

He didn’t even return the call.

When I see a couple kissing, believing they love one another, believing they will endure, whispering into each other’s ear in the name of an instinct to which they give lofty names, when I see them caressing one another with that embarrassing avidness, that expectation of discovering something crucial in the other’s skin, when I see their mouths becoming entangled, the exchange of tongues, their freshly showered hair, their unruly hands, fabric rubbing and lifting up like the most sordid of curtains, the anxious tic of knees bouncing like springs, cheap beds in
one-night
hotels they will later remember as palaces, when I see two fools expressing their desire with impunity in broad daylight, as
though I weren’t watching them, it’s not merely envy I feel. I also pity them. I pity their rotten future. And I get up and ask for the bill and I smile at them askance, as though I had returned from a war which the two of them have no idea is about to commence.

I confess to you that I have sometimes felt jealous. Not of other women you perhaps knew. Jealous of our son. I know it is ugly. I am ugly.

When Lito talks about you, when he half-remembers,
half-invents
you, I realize he is an orphan with two fathers. The father he had, made of flesh and doubts. And this other phantom father who watches over his adventures, and, however foolish they are, applauds them. Apparently, this second version of you understands our son better than anyone. The less he knows you, the more he admires you.

Occasionally, a touch of fear underlying his curiosity, Lito asks me about the accident, because we always refer to it as
The Accident
, like the name of a movie by someone we don’t know, and when our son says
The Accident
, I am seduced into believing this is what dying is, a misfortune that befell you and will never affect us, that can never affect him, he is my son, he is immortal.

We are brought up being told that sons maintain an umbilical tie with their mothers. I want to earn my son’s admiration, not to take it for granted because I gave birth to him. That’s the difference between a mother and a mammal. Love of the father is only attained over time. It is won. That is what I envy about you. Just imagine how it is now that, on top of everything else, you are a Phantom Dad.

You find it funny, my love? Go to hell.

Do you need money? my sister asked in that responsible tone my Dad admires so much. No, I pretended, why do you ask? No reason, she replied, how much do you need? When I said the amount I felt odd, grateful, younger.

In his autobiography, Richard Gwyn describes how a liver transplant saved his life. The liver Roberto Bolaño was waiting for, the one his specialist was unable to find for Bolaño while he dedicated his final lecture to him, the liver Gwyn restores to Bolaño.

“The thought occurs to me that I spent ten years studying and writing about the subjectivity of the patient, that I have a PhD in the narrative construction of illness experience, have published in learned journals and even written a couple of books on the subject,” I know the feeling: being sick from sickness. “None of this can help me now. I am in a post-discursive zone. I have reached The End of Theory,” an end which, of course, doesn’t cure us of anything either, except perhaps of the hope of ever finding The Remedy, The Idea, The Understanding of the Phenomenon, culturally contagious diseases.

Gwyn speaks of two kingdoms which believe they are opposed, that of sickness and that of health. He has lived in both, like you, and he is no longer sure which is his. “It is as if I hold two passports from countries that are mutually suspicious of each other.” We subjects of the kingdom of the healthy mistrust our future kingdom. We take careful note of it. We pretend to accept it by objectifying it. We examine it in search of some diplomatic passport that will spare us the sordid formalities.