Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“I don’t speak Spanish,” I said.

“But you understand a lot,” my father said. “And you’re at the perfect age to learn. At this age your brain is like a sponge. In two weeks you’ll be talking like a Castilian.”

“No lo hablas?” Carmelita stroked my face lovingly. “Qué lindo,” she said, another compliment that I took as a way of praising Francisco. Not that I minded. I liked her a lot. Of course I was an easy mark: she was a woman and a woman’s presence reassured me. A loving glance, a kind word, and any woman owned my soul.

My father, who had still made no reference to my mother or her death, didn’t explain Carmelita either except to say, “Carmelita is Cuban. She knows some English, but refuses to speak it.” The language of the enemy, I assumed, and felt ashamed that it was all I spoke. So there were Negro Cubans. [In case my ignorance surprises readers who may assume that my Tampa relatives were of mixed race and had dark complexions, I should explain that although a branch of my family is of mixed race, the relatives I had met — and whom I mistakenly thought of as wholly representative of the Cuban population — were of Mediterranean origin. One particular branch, the Pardos, are especially fair, with red hair and freckled skin. Of course to a true believer in Aryanism my white skin wouldn’t truly distinguish me or my people from an African-American. Years ago, at the suggestion of my training analyst, I did as complete a trace as I could of both lines of my ancestors — Latin and Jewish — and discovered relatives of all races within four generations. I have an African great-great-uncle and a great-great-grandmother who was Chinese. Nevertheless, to my white-skinned American eyes Carmelita was distinctly a Negro, just as to my own eyes I was distinctly a Jewish-Spanish boy. I should also point out, although it is a tiresome cliché no one believes in anymore, that ultimately we all have the same parents. Race is one of the mind’s most convincing and deadly illusions. As Freud might have written: racism is frequently the excuse for our savage behavior, but rarely its cause.]

We took a cab through the surprisingly New York-like Madrid streets. My father chattered to Carmelita in Spanish, telling the story — I could gather from the occasional word I understood — of our surreptitious departure from the United States. I watched my new world out the cab’s window. The gray modern buildings whose coldness disgusted my father (“fascist architecture,” he called it) reassured me. However, the sight of one of the Guardia Civil patrolmen was unsettling. I interrupted my father’s account to Carmelita to ask about him, expecting to be told he was an elite soldier, a unique man, perhaps an executioner. Before he answered, my father pointedly glanced at the cabbie to remind me of his presence. The driver did seem interested in us, for obvious reasons — not only the racial mixture but now the mixture of tongues. Francisco explained with studied indifference, “He’s one of the Guardia Civil. They’re a kind of police. In fact, they are the police.”

That fearsome man was merely a policeman! I suppressed my amazement, and my fear, because of the driver. I wanted to suggest we leave this country immediately. I would have much preferred to be in Cuba, fearing the arrival of hostile forces, than to scurry between the legs of the Guardia Civil. And my father, as I observed while we were driven to the hotel, was apparently right. The Guardia Civil were not only the regular cops, they were plentiful. I saw more than twenty on our drive. We’d have to be constantly on the alert. And they were scary, the scariest sight on the streets, in fact the only scary sight on those peaceful Madrid streets. Their tailored uniforms and patent leather boots were set off by a dramatic cape and a strange three-cornered hat: a combination of streamlined Nazi terror and the romance of medieval chivalry.

Carmelita had rented two rooms in a modest pension. She left us to get some food. We took the tiny, manually operated lift to the third floor. Francisco let me hold the lever with him; I was thrilled that we stopped the car almost flush with the landing on our first try. My father led the way to a single room with a washbasin and no toilet. It was charming but had the narrowness of a closet, hardly relieved by its one window. Next door was a room only a bit larger, sufficient to squeeze in a double bed. He said that was for him and Carmelita. “You get your very own room. You can pretend you’re a grown-up, staying on your own in Madrid, Spain’s capital, one of the world’s great capitals. Of course I’m right on the other side of that wall, but you can pretend that tomorrow morning you’ll get up, buy a ticket to the bullfights—”

“Can we go to a bullfight?” I asked.

“Well, it’s winter. They don’t fight in Madrid in the winter.”

“Oh shit.”

“Rafael!” Francisco scolded my language, but with a tolerant smile. “We’ll have to go south to Cádiz to see a bullfight. You really want to see a bullfight?”

“Yes!” I insisted, more with annoyance than enthusiasm.

“Aren’t you scared of—?”

“No! When can we go to Cá—” I hesitated.

“Cádiz. If you want to sound like a true madrileño, say it like this — KA-DEE-T.” He pronounced it with the aristocratic Castilian lisp.

“KA-DEE-TH,” I said, so well that my father applauded. “When can we go there? Is it warm there?” It was cold in Madrid, a much bitterer cold than New York’s.

“I don’t know. I have no idea where we will go tomorrow. First I have to have dinner tonight with my Spanish publisher. I should say, the man who I hope will be my Spanish publisher.”

“Tonight?” It was past eight in the evening. Carmelita had gone to buy sandwiches. I assumed they were for all of us and we would then go to bed.

“Oh, Spaniards think eating dinner at ten o’clock is early. In fact, we’re not supposed to meet until eleven. You’ll be asleep—”

“I’m not tired!” I probably shrieked this. Certainly my father reacted as if I were in the grip of a panic. He hugged me, awkwardly pushing my head into his chest and thumping me on the back. That made a hollow sound. No surprise there — I felt as if there was nothing inside me. Being in a foreign country with Carmelita and a father I had known only as a mythic figure for over a year, seemed to have taken the me out of me. Everything flowed out. I couldn’t properly process the new sights. I stared at the bed, the sink, the window — banal and familiar objects — as if in this setting, with these people, they were fundamentally altered. Everything was strange, including me.

I did enjoy my father’s comfort and was encouraged to make an effort. “Where’s the toilet?” I asked after a while in his arms. I knew I couldn’t stop him from leaving me; my worry was that he wouldn’t come back. I believed I had to master my fear so that returning to me would be a pleasant prospect. I certainly didn’t take for granted that the mere fact of my existence was a sufficient incentive.

“In the hall!” he said as if that were the most brilliant fact he had yet encountered in life.

“In the hall?” I said with as heavy and dubious tone as a nine-year-old can muster.

He took me into the corridor where, at the end farthest from our rooms, there was a bathroom for the floor. This facility was no larger than what we had in Washington Heights, yet my father presented the rather ordinary fixtures as if they were spectacular. Did he really think they were special or was that for my benefit? I believe, in his enthusiasm, in his mania (he had triumphed over Bernie and international borders; he was about to make a book deal), he actually thought that the normal-sized porcelain tub was “big enough to be a swimming pool,” that the chain flush box toilet was “elegant,” that the scented soap not only cleaned but “deodorized,” and that the dulled mirror over the sink was “made out of a special glass to give ladies a more youthful look.” My father wasn’t a fool; but out of hope, he was often foolish.