A Distant Father Read online

  I’d forgotten his habit of rubbing his hands together and then horribly cracking his knuckles.

  “This meeting of ours, Jacques …”

  “… is a private matter.”

  “You’re a smart boy. I’m asking you to keep this secret for your own sake, for me, for your mother.”

  “For Emilio’s mother.”

  Pierre raises his eyes skyward as if he’d like to ascertain precisely which cloud will discharge the first drop of the coming storm. With positively maternal ferocity, he deploys the hood of the carriage over its passenger. I hear the baby’s breathing, a sort of clipped snort, for the first time.

  “So how’s your French these days?”

  “Fine, Dad. At the moment I’m translating Zazie dans le métro.”

  “Don’t know it.”

  “Raymond Queneau.”

  “Never heard of him. Well, look, now you know where to find me.”

  “Right.”

  “If you have the time, come and see Rio Bravo. Bring a girlfriend.”

  “Au revoir, Dad.”

  “Au revoir, mon fils.”

  TWELVE

  The first shades of evening are just falling when Cristián and I enter the whorehouse. Most of the girls are drinking tea or listening to a radio game show where the contestants can win money if they guess the exact price of certain products. One of the girls comes up to me and plants a kiss on each of my cheeks. She asks my name and occupation. “Jacques,” I say, and “teacher.” Embarrassed, I ask her what she does.

  “I’m a whore,” she says with a smile.

  We go up to her room. She has Indian features, like most of the girls in this part of the country. In Frutillar, they say, there’s a whorehouse with girls from German families. This girl has markedly aboriginal bangs, prominent cheekbones, and a carefree smile. She’s young and strong. Maybe in a few years she’ll be fat, but not now. A teakettle’s boiling on the portable cooker in her room, and beside it are two cups containing little bags of Lipton’s. The Chilote blanket on her bed is as tough as an animal skin.

  “A cup of tea?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  While she stirs the bags in the boiling water, she looks at my shoes and then my tie.

  “You could start taking off your things.”

  She comes over to me, loosens my tie, and when my neck appears, kisses me on it, leaving a damp trace behind. Without bending over, I slip out of my shoes and push them under the bed. I always do that, because they’re Dad’s moccasins. He passed them on to me when I went off to the teachers’ college, and they’re a little too big.

  “It’s cold,” I say.

  “No it’s not, baby. It’s your nerves.”

  “I’m nervous?”

  “Drink that.”

  I sip at the cup, just about certain that the liquid’s going to burn my tongue. The girl, on the other hand, takes a teaspoonful and blows on the tea before drinking it.

  “So what do you teach, Professor?”

  “A little of everything. But I prefer literature and history.”

  “Not geography?”

  “Geography too.”

  “I’m crazy about geography,” she declares, blowing on her tea and sipping it noisily. “I know countries and capitals. I say their names and imagine what they’re like.”

  “Bolivia?”

  “That’s easy. La Paz.”

  “Spain?”

  “Piece of cake. Madrid.”

  “Czechoslovakia.”

  The girl chews a fingernail. She looks at the ceiling and the rug. Then she goes to the curtain, presses her forehead against the windowpane, and gazes out at the street for a while.

  “I don’t know.”

  With a professional movement, she throws off her robe, comes up to me naked, and touches me. Now she’s deadly serious. She pushes me onto the bed and takes off my clothes. Then she straddles me, bucks her hips three or four times, and I’m off.

  “You still have to pay for the whole hour, you know that?”

  “No problem.”

  “Was it good?”

  “Sure.”

  She lifts the bedspread and drapes it over her head like a hood. Suddenly an immense smile spreads over her face.

  “Ask me another question.”

  “Hard or easy?”

  “Easy.”

  “France.”

  “Paris.”

  “Très bien,” I say, feeling some of my semen ooze out of her and spread over my stomach.

  “Do you speak French?”

  “Pretty well. My father’s from Paris.”

  “Do you ever see him?”

  “No, right now he’s in France.”

  I take her by the shoulders, pull her close to my face, and kiss her on the mouth. I feel like I’m participating in a dialogue for the first time. Until this moment, I’ve done nothing but obey her orders.

  “Say something in French.”

  “Hard or easy?”

  “Hard and long. You have to pay for the whole hour anyway.”

  “All right. A few lines of poetry?”

  “Let’s hear them.”

  I remain quiet a moment to be sure I’ve got the verses complete in my memory before sending them out over my tongue. There’s a fish-shaped spot on the ceiling.

  Ah! pauvre père! aurais-tu jamais deviné quel amour tu as mis en moi?

  Et combien j’aime à travers toi toutes les choses de la terre?

  Quel étonnement serait le tien si tu pouvais me voir maintenant

  À genoux dans le lit boueux de la journée

  Raclant le sol de mes deux mains

  Comme les chercheurs de beauté!

  The girl gets off me and walks over to the washstand. She uses a damp cloth to clean her belly and her thighs.

  “I didn’t understand a thing,” she says. “I don’t understand anything when I go to the movies, either. The problem is I never manage to read the subtitles. They go by very fast.”

  “It’s a poem dedicated to the poet’s father.”

  “Did you write it?”

  “No, but I translated it. You can find it in the Diario de Angol’s weekend supplement.”

  “What does it say?”

  “ ‘Ah, my poor father, have you ever guessed how much love you planted in me and how I love, through you, all the things of the earth?’ It was written by René Guy Cadou.”

  “Do you wish you wrote it?”

  “I couldn’t write a poem like that. I’m a simple country schoolteacher.”

  “It’s five thousand pesos for the hour.”

  I pull on my trousers and place the damp banknotes the miller loaned me on the night table. She takes some water, wets the bangs on her forehead, and pats them smooth.

  “I’m going back to Contulmo tonight. The train leaves in an hour.”

  “If you’re in these parts again, I’ll be here for you. My name’s Rayén, but they call me Luna.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m moony, because I always look at the moon, because I have a moon-shaped face. I don’t know why. Everybody calls me Luna. What do they call you?”

  “Prof.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Prof.”

  “Do you give good grades?”

  “I’ve never flunked anybody.”

  “What grade would you give me in geography?”

  She smiles and her teeth look as though they’re about to jump out of her wide mouth.

  “Russia?” I ask her.

  “Moscow,” she says, smiling even more broadly. “What grade?”

  “An A.”

  “Are you serious? You’d give me an A in geography?”

  “Absolutely. The highest grade.”

  “I can’t wait to tell the other girls.”

  “All right.”

  She gives me her hand, quite formally. I grasp it, shake it, and slowly leave the whorehouse.

  THIRTEEN

 
Outside the door they’ve still got a hitching post so cowboys can tie up their horses. The miller’s standing there, yawning.

  “So how was it?”

  “Great.”

  “Good-looking chick?”

  “Yes, Cristián, she was hot.”

  “What did you two talk about?”

  “Foolishness. Ourselves. How about you?”

  “We couldn’t find a common theme. I mean, she wasn’t a very communicative girl.”

  We take the dirt road to the train station. A slice of moon rises up amid black clouds. No rain, however. It’s cold.

  “So you and her didn’t talk at all.”

  “Two or three words. Believe it or not, she asked me for a bread recipe.”

  “An interesting subject, Cristián. What’s the recipe for baking a baguette?”

  “The one your father used.”

  “What recipe did my father use?”

  “You’re putting me on. You want me to give you the recipe right now?”

  “At this moment, there’s nothing in the world I desire more than to know how to bake a baguette.”

  “Two kilos of flour, a cup and a half of warm water, one hundred grams of yeast, two and a half tablespoons of butter, three cups of water, a tablespoon of salt. All right?”

  For a while I follow the moon’s comings and goings in the ragged sky, and then I trip on a rock. I drop the little satchel I’m carrying, pick it up, and slap it against my thigh to knock off the dirt.

  “If a person climbed up to the sails of the mill and jumped off, do you think he’d kill himself?”

  “If anybody was crazy enough to do that, he’d probably break his neck.”

  FOURTEEN

  The engineer’s in his locomotive, resisting the cold with the aid of the brazier at his feet. An Araucan poncho covers his body. He holds out his thermos bottle to us and we drink coffee from the cap. He tells us we have a long wait, departure isn’t until five o’clock. We’ll arrive in Contulmo at seven.

  He’s got his day all planned. Breakfast at eight, Mass at nine, soccer at ten (Peleco versus Contulmo on Viera Gallo Field), lunch at one, the weekend soap opera on the radio at two, siesta at three, and then at four he has to drive the locomotive back to Angol.

  He’s afraid that Chilean State Railroads will close down this branch line because it has so few riders. And he’s only three years from retirement. Except for the time when a heifer tried to cross the tracks, there’s no major accident on his service record. On that occasion, he informed the owner of the ill-fated animal, who willingly turned it over to him for a big barbecue that was held the following day in Purén.

  When the train finally leaves the station, there are eight passengers in our car. I’m shivering from my hair to my soles. The moon’s gliding freely and swiftly through the sky. At least that’s the illusion you have when you’re traveling fast.

  My teeth are all bashing one another. Zazie dans le métro falls off my lap. Cristián puts a hand on my forehead, and I can barely hear him when he says, “You’re burning up with fever.”

  FIFTEEN

  On Sunday I drink liters of warm lemonade and swallow aspirins every four hours, and Mama changes my sweaty sheets three times. Some boys from school stand under my window and call up to me that Contulmo won, one to nothing. We’re leading the Malleco League. I want to read a bit of my novel, because I have the suspicion I’m going to need money very soon, and the only way for me to get some is to finish my translation. There are words I don’t know, but when I look them up in my Larousse, my vision blurs.

  My fever reveals something I may forget later. I write it down on a leaf of penmanship paper I find with the Diary of My Life I’m going to give Augusto Gutiérrez: “It’s not the case that words circle uncertainly around subjects. It’s the world itself that’s uncertain; words are precise.”

  What will Gutiérrez’s first journal entry be? I open the little window in my room and look out at the quiet sails of the mill. Cristián’s asleep. The bread recipe. French baguette.

  SIXTEEN

  Monday goes past. According to my mother, I groaned like a woman giving birth and suddenly sat up wild-eyed on the bed. She gave me aspirin and lemonade, and at night a little chicken soup.

  There are two pieces of correspondence for me. One, from Cristián, arrives in a yellowish envelope. Inside there’s a note and a postcard.

  The note reads,

  In regard to your father, I received the enclosed postcard from him today, sent from Paris. Also today, I was looking down at the ground from the top of the mill, and now I can give you a definite answer to your question. Anyone who jumped from up there would be smashed to pieces. It’s not worth the trouble, especially if God has longer journeys in mind for us. The best conclusion is to live to be a great-grandfather and pass away in your bed, surrounded by your numerous family, after receiving extreme unction from the priest. Take the word of a lonely bachelor.

  The postcard shows a painting of ballerinas doing bar exercises. On the back, the painter’s name: Degas. Otherwise, emptiness and silence.

  The second note comes from Gutiérrez:

  Dear Prof,

  Teresa’s letter is in my hands. She seems to have copied the things she writes you from a book. She finds you quite distinguished, she’s intoxicated by your gaze. She says that when you look at her, “Troy burns.” I’m not sure what she means, but I gather that Tere will be very happy if you come to my party on Friday. The Chilean postal system is stupendous. As a birthday present, my uncle Mateo in Antofagasta sent me a cable transfer in the amount of 20,000 pesos. Next Saturday, rain or shine, I’m going to Angol. You’re invited, Prof.

  By six o’clock Tuesday morning, my fever has disappeared. I’m clearheaded, and I can distinguish every one of the birds and chickens that are warbling or clucking in the garden. I occupy my day off with Zazie dans le métro. I touch my growing bristles and decide not to peer into the mirror or shave. I’ll show up at school tomorrow looking like a bandit. The kids will feel anxious, and they won’t throw pieces of chalk at the blackboard when I turn my back on them.

  For dinner, Mama brings me another dose of chicken broth, this time accompanied by two rolls.

  “Cristián’s gotten over his hangover,” she remarks.

  When she turns to go away, I take hold of her wrist and force her to sit on the edge of the bed. She looks at me with fright and curiosity but immediately starts feeling my sheets to make sure they’ve been properly dried and starched. She adheres in her own house to the norms of the hotel business.

  “What do you know about Dad that I don’t know, Mama?”

  “He’s in France.”

  “Why did he go away?”

  “All men have a little sailor in them. Curiosity about other places. Besides, it’s his native country, no?”

  “What about me? What about you?”

  She strokes her chin, and for an instant she looks like a ballerina. She’s a shallow, distracted woman whose beauty is marked by melancholy. She says, “We’re here, no?”

  I spoon the soup with one hand and hold her wrist tight with the other so she won’t go away. Then I start voraciously gobbling up the miller’s bread. I’m as hungry as a wolf. The stubble on my chin lends me an unexpected audacity.

  “Where’s Pierre, Mama?”

  “In Paris.”

  “And why?”

  “He’s from there. It’s only natural.”

  “And when he left … didn’t he love you anymore?”

  “Why wouldn’t he love me anymore? Of course he loved me. He loved you, too. But Paris …”

  “Do you like movies, Mama?”

  “I used to go to the theaters in Santiago a lot. In a few years, supposedly, television is going to come to Chile. Maybe by then we’ll have enough money to buy a set.”

  I look at her as I’ve never done before. Without touching her, I strip the years from her, the effects of the daily grind. I see how lovely she is, ho
w vulnerable. Youthful in the way older women are youthful.

  Devastatingly attractive.

  “Before you were born, your father would compare me with French and Italian actresses. There was one year when he called me Mylène Demongeot, another when I was Pier Angeli. Then I got old and he stopped giving me nicknames.”

  “You were prettier than those actresses.”

  “Are you going to hold classes tomorrow?”

  “Of course, Mama. My fever’s gone.”

  “You almost left with it, Jacques. I’ll never let you go to Angol with Cristián again.”

  “I got sick because I didn’t bring an overcoat.”

  “Acting like the young male lead in some movie.”

  “Yes, Mama. Never again.”

  I keep hold of her wrist. The exact words are there, but unfortunately they don’t do their duty.

  “What will you teach your young pupils tomorrow?”

  “A little history. A bit of geography.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll talk to them about the tunnel on the road to Lonquimay.”

  “ ‘Las Raíces?’ ”

  “They’ve surely been through it several times, but they don’t know it’s 4,537 meters long. They don’t know its construction required the removal of 184,000 cubic meters of rock with the help of 175,000 kilos of dynamite; they don’t know that 240,000 bags of cement went into building the concrete tunnel lining.”

  Her eyes wide and unblinking, Mama hums a little tune to dissimulate the pride produced in her by the depth of my professional knowledge. I recognize Yves Montand’s song “Je ferai le tour du monde.”

  “What time shall I serve you your breakfast?”

  “Seven o’clock.”

  “In bed or at the table?”

  “At the table.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Throughout the rest of the week, my pupils behave like storybook children. They bring me apples, and before I eat them I rub them on the lapel of my jacket until they’re shiny. To prevent Gutiérrez from asking me about Angol on my very first day back, I decide to give long dictations, which keep the pupils at their desks. I set them difficult words. For example, “disciplinary,” “accession,” “wallop.”