Laura Restrepo - Delirium

MY FATHER TOLD ME to be back by midnight, says Agustina, and I don’t want to be even a single minute late; I must obey orders, especially because they come directly from my father. It was out of the goodness of his heart that he let me go to the movies with the boy in the Volkswagen on the condition that I be home before midnight, and as I turned my key in the lock at the agreed-upon time, there was my father, wide awake and waiting for me in an armchair in the living room. Is that you, Father? and in the dark came his deep voice and the puff of his pipe, glowing like a watchful eye. Who were you with in that car? It was just me and the boy who brought me home, Never again, thundered my father, You’ll never ride alone in a car with a boy again because I forbid it.

She is surprised that he sounds so impassioned, so upset, nothing I’d done before had ever shaken him, in the past few years I’d been disobedient and rude and a bad student, and my father had severely reprimanded me for all of that, but never like this, up until that night my father had always been distant with me, and even when he scolded me it was in a blank kind of way, but suddenly this was all I had to do to attract my father’s attention and scrutiny, to make him quake, to wipe everything from his mind but my date that night and my strict obedience of his orders, When you come home late it shows a lack of respect for me, I do respect you, Father, and if that’s your rule, I’ll always obey it, I was here by midnight, Father, as you ordered, But you were alone in that car with a boy, make sure it’s the last time it happens.

Then Agustina went to bed and she couldn’t stop wondering whether her father might possibly have guessed what had happened, that the boy in the Volkswagen had invited me to the movies but didn’t take me there; we stayed in the car and talked, eating hot dogs at the Icy Cream, until he pulled his Great White Candle out of his pants. Agustina couldn’t see it in the dark of the deserted street; she didn’t see it with her eyes, which refused to look, but she saw it with her hand and she discovered that it was enormous and felt like wax, then she had to let go of it so that she would be home by midnight just as she and her father had agreed, and there I found him waiting restlessly for me in the dark living room, his pipe smoldering.

Her father had never waited up for her before, nor had he spoken to her in a voice so charged with emotion, almost deranged, Agustina thinks, Why were you alone with that boy when I told you to go out in a group, He just gave me a ride home, Father, she replied, not wanting to confess what she’d discovered, and wondering whether her father had one, too, and whether it was the Great Staff with which he ruled, And then, in bed, I couldn’t sleep, says Agustina, and what kept me awake wasn’t the car or the night or the first date on my own, not even the thing that came out of the boy’s pants and felt like wax, but knowing that my father hadn’t gone to bed because he was worried about me, it had never happened before, says Agustina, never.

When I was invited to the movies again I said yes because I knew that it would bother my father and keep him up, and this time Agustina didn’t come home at exactly midnight but a little later in order to push her father a few inches further, she would bait him, but just a little, not so much that he’d hit her, just a little, to see whether what she thought she’d noticed that first time was true, that if she went out at night with a boy her father couldn’t ignore her, at last Agustina had learned to do something that would get her father’s attention, and this second time that she went out with a boy, a different boy, who did take her to the movies, Agustina asked him to let her touch the Great Candle, And he let me and this time it burned, it didn’t feel like wax but instead it burned and stung my palm, and Agustina went home knowing that her father, who maybe could guess what she had done, would be there waiting for her seething with rage but in the end there would be no explosion because he had no evidence, he could only brood over what he suspected she might have done in that car, unable to prove it, but it would hurt, it would hurt him, it would have to hurt her father whether she’d done anything or not, and he himself, with the palpable pulsing of his fears, had been the one to reveal the secret to her, grant her this power over him, give her room for maneuvering that she would know how to take advantage of from now on, while the question of who profited from this agony and who endured it, father or daughter, was something that chased in circles and couldn’t be decided.

Then comes the third time in her life that her father pays attention to her, But this time his suppressed fury has grown, says Agustina, although just by a few more degrees, not enough for him to hit me — he never hit me, only Bichi — but enough so that his voice quivers when he scolds me for having come home fifteen minutes late, my father forbids me to go out again with the new boy and this serves me as proof of his affection, of his intent, vigilant affection, I forbid it, Agustina, do you understand me? you’re never to go out with that boy again, and it was then that Agustina swore to God that she’d never go out with him again, If you don’t like him I won’t, You’re right, Agustina, I don’t like him, there’s something strange about that boy, the way he looks at you, I have no idea who his parents are and I don’t want you hanging around with strangers, Yes, Father, yes, Father, yes, Father.

Once in bed, Agustina burned with fever and pride at being the object of her father’s disapproval and in a little solitary ceremony, secret and in the dark, she promised him never to go out with that boy again, This is my offering to you, Father, she prayed to herself, I’ll never go out with him again because you asked me not to, and I won’t go out with anyone who looks at me that way either, or anyone whose parents you don’t know, or anyone who you for any reason don’t trust, which in the end is everyone, And I kept my promise, I kept it every time, says Agustina, I was true to my word, I never went out with that boy or any other boy more than once, I always found new ones. As a gift to my father, who demanded their heads, I shunned the ones he shunned and offered their heads up to him in exchange for his presence in his armchair, waiting for me with his pipe, checking his watch over and over again to monitor when I returned.

Minute by minute, my father kept watch over my nights, and I went out with a different boy each time and I asked each of them to let me touch the Great Candle, and that was how I learned that there were many different varieties and sizes, some burning hot and some cold, some swift and some slow; only with my hand, only my hand, never letting them get close to other parts of my body, never between my legs, or at least that’s how it was for the first few months, doing it with my hand was enough to make Father guess it from the shadows on my face, though he couldn’t say anything to me because he didn’t have proof, shadows and expressions are almost the same as nothing, and just by putting my hand on the Great Candle of every boy who took me to the movies or the Icy Cream on 100th Street, I could be sure that my father’s attention would be fixed on me until midnight, the trick of arriving fifteen or twenty minutes late worked well and it thrilled me to know that he would be suffering agonies.

Never before, says Agustina, had I held the keys to my father’s love, and to think that I only discovered them when boys started asking me out to the movies; never before and never again would my father pay so much attention to me. This is the last time you go out with that boy, he would demand, which was his way of punishing me, and especially of punishing himself because I had arrived twenty-five minutes late, You’re not letting him take you out again, because he’s from Pereira or Bucaramanga or Cali, my father only likes boys from established Bogotá families, and when it comes down to it, he doesn’t even like them if they chew gum or handle their silverware clumsily, Father always finds something wrong with them, and I know that the possibility of pleasing him is in my hands, I just have to make a small sacrifice, says Agustina, I have to sacrifice the boys, who aren’t worth much anyway, in return for the great reward of my father’s attention, his unwavering concentration on me until midnight, Yes, Father, I’ll give them up; for you, I’ll give up those who came before and those who have yet to come, one by one and all at once, so long as you stay up waiting for me and so long as when I come in you look at me with that terrible question mark in your eyes, eyes that want to be sure I didn’t do anything in the car, and I swear to my father that I didn’t but I know how to say it so that I sow poisonous seeds of doubt in him, and the truth is that I did it at the movies but only a little bit, and I did it for you, Father, to keep you alert and on guard, because at last I’d learned how to wield my powers over you, but I don’t know whether it was your love I won in the cars of my thousand and one boyfriends, Father, whether it was your love or only your punishment.