A Distant Father Read online

  “The younger Gutiérrez girl’s a good choice. The older one …”

  “What about her, Cristián? What about the older one?”

  “She’s very mature. She could cause you problems.”

  “What sort of problems?”

  “I’m gonna get another bottle.”

  “Answer my question first.”

  “Strange things go on in that girl’s life. Do you remember when she went away on vacation in January and didn’t come back until August?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. I just find it strange, that’s all.”

  “I left the village, too. I went to college in Santiago.”

  “Right, you were gone two years. She was gone nine months.”

  “And during that time the younger one used to go walking around the square with a fireman, hanging on his arm.”

  “And then, all at once, both sisters took to wearing less clothing. It was as if they weren’t from here anymore. Didn’t you ever notice?”

  “That girl drives me crazy. If I go to the party on Friday and dance with her, I’ll probably tell her I love her.”

  Cristián takes two cigarettes from my pack and puts one in my mouth. We light them from the same match.

  “Our trip to Angol will help you avoid doing that.”

  “Anyway, I don’t have much money. I can barely afford cigarettes.”

  “I’ll pay for the girls. You can reimburse me later.”

  “All right, Cristián. I’ll buy the train tickets.”

  I gaze up at the moon. I feel like rolling on the ground.

  NINE

  The following day, we’re in the train station. The station clock is stopped at ten minutes after three. According to my watch, it’s almost noon.

  Cristián appears, carrying a small, coffee-colored case, like the kind people who sell aspirin use. He’s wearing a beige jacket, and he’s so closely shaven no one would ever take him for the miller. His red-veined eyes reveal the only evidence of last night’s heavy drinking.

  I’ve put on one of Dad’s jackets. It used to be a bit too big for me, but the years seem to have shrunk it. The little silk label sewn into the lining reads GATH Y CHAVES, SANTIAGO.

  Precisely because my destination is the whorehouse in Angol, I want to look as though I’m going to the city for “work-related reasons.”

  And so I’ve brought along a book by Raymond Queneau that the editor of the newspaper wants to publish in installments. Prose is easier than poetry, but I do get all caught up in the fates of the characters. Maybe that’s because so little happens here. We’re secondary figures, not protagonists.

  As the train comes rolling in, whistling and huffing smoke, Augusto Gutiérrez appears on the platform. A toothbrush and a tube of Kolynos toothpaste are sticking out of the lapel pocket of his school jacket.

  “Are you going to Angol?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I reply, blushing hot and red all of a sudden.

  “What for?”

  “The movie theater’s showing a film about Paris. I want to see it because I’m translating this book.”

  I show him Zazie dans le métro.

  “What’s the name of the movie?”

  “Quai des Brumes,” I say, inventive but disciplined.

  “You’re lying.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Will you be back for my party?”

  “Of course. I plan to buy your present this very afternoon.”

  The train stops in the station. The stationmaster looks up at the Roman numerals of the clock, whose hands always point to ten after three, and passes a cheese sandwich to the engineer. As usual, nobody gets either on or off.

  But the painful images come back: I’m returning home, I get off the train, Dad gets on the train, the train leaves.

  “I’m afraid they might close down this line,” the stationmaster tells us. “Railroad’s streamlining, and this stretch isn’t profitable. I hate to think about being out of a job at my age.”

  “What time’s the train leave?”

  “In a couple of minutes. My wife’s fixing a thermos of coffee for the engineer. We make a little extra income with things like that. Incidentally, I’ve also got fresh homemade Chilean éclairs, a hundred pesos each. You interested?”

  “When we come back.”

  Augusto Gutiérrez pulls at my sleeve and makes me lean toward him; my forehead bangs against the hard frames of his spectacles.

  “Please take me with you to Angol.”

  “We can’t do that, kid.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  “You’re going to the whorehouse.”

  “No we’re not. I’m going to buy you a present. I don’t want you to see it before Friday.”

  “As long as it’s not a globe. You already gave me a globe last year.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “What can I say? All those countries, right there in front of me, and I’m stuck in this pit.”

  He gestures toward the cow that’s crossing the tracks.

  “How am I any different from her?”

  “You’re different because you know what you want and you have self-awareness. The cow’s always just a cow. She’s not even aware she’s a cow. She’s all cow, all the time. But you, on the other hand—your awareness makes you free.”

  Gutiérrez takes off his glasses and reveals his eyes, the soft, sad, watery eyes of the myopic. He says, “I’m going to be fifteen years old, Prof. I don’t want to feel humiliated next Friday because I’m not a real man yet.”

  “You’re a child, Gutiérrez. We’ll talk about it when you turn sixteen.”

  “I’m going to be dead by the time I’m sixteen. You’ll recognize my grave because a mound will rise up over it. The same mound that forms under my sheets every night.”

  The miller grabs the boy by one ear and pulls him several meters in the direction of the street. “Go on home, you annoying little brat!”

  While he’s trying to get out of Cristián’s grip, the boy shouts to me, “Professor, sir, take me with you to the whores!”

  I climb into the car so I won’t have to see him anymore. But he breaks away from the miller and comes to my window. “I’ll fix you up with my sister,” he says, panting. “She’s crazy about you.”

  “The younger one or the older one?”

  “The younger one. She wrote you a letter.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She keeps it in her dresser. With her bras and panties.”

  “What does the letter say?”

  “You have a distinguished air.”

  “What else?”

  “You’re a cultured man.”

  “Me?”

  “She looks at my globe and says she’d like to be lying on the beach at Acapulco with you.”

  “Acapulco? How did she come up with that?”

  “She listens to that song on the radio, ‘Remember Acalpulco, María Bonita.’ She’s out of her mind for sappy boleros.”

  “What else does the letter say?”

  “Other things.”

  “Tell me.”

  “If you take me to the whorehouse.”

  I give him a tap on the forehead. “I can’t, Gutiérrez. I’m your teacher, not your pimp.”

  The train starts to move. Before climbing aboard, the miller aims a blow at the kid, but he dodges it with catlike agility.

  A pair of boxing gloves is a good idea, I think with a sigh.

  Just as the train leaves Contulmo, I see my pupil on the platform cup his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. “Do one for me, Jacques!” he shouts.

  He means I should climb on top of one of the girls and dedicate the ensuing bonk to him.

  TEN

  In the little fishing harbor near Angol, we lunch on fried hake and Chilean salad. I remove the onions from my tomatoes, picky eater that I am.

  Cristián drinks half a liter of white wine
and then accepts the fisherman’s offer of a siesta on his boat. The miller covers himself with sacks and a net and asks me to wake him up before it gets dark.

  When the girls are open for business.

  We have to show up early, because demand is very high on weekends.

  I go into town and start looking in shop windows. I see articles of clothing made by local artisans, things like scarves, caps, heavy woolen socks. A chess set whose pieces are Japanese samurai, advancing sword in hand. A professional-quality soccer ball autographed by Leonel Sánchez. A Mexican parrot made of thin silver sheets. A Bavarian clock with two dancing boys in leather pants. A photograph of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, sitting on a motorcycle with an unlit cigar between his lips. A deck of cards whose backs are all reproductions of Playboy centerfolds.

  And I also see some splendid red leather boxing gloves.

  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.

  ELEVEN

  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 expla
nation. 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.”