Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

I guess I closed the curtains, I guess I took a sip of tea, left the mug on the table. What I’m sure about is that my delight at the prospect of seeing Dad again was curdled by the fear that all those little secrets were advance warning of some devastating news: that he was going to stop taking care of Mother, that she and her pills and her cigarettes would from then on be my responsibility (those cold fingers moving over my hand were Helen’s, and they belonged to the time frame in which a taxi driven by a raving lunatic was taking us from the apartment on Bonanova back to our Turret).

I bought an Australian wine made from grapes grown in the twisted vineyards of Adelaide, fed by a field so old the sun was already beating down on it when the rest of today’s dry land was ocean floor, a wine rich in tannins and licorice overtones. Believe it or not, I was also uncomfortable at the thought he might have invited me over so he could apologize and return home to live. I chose a beige suit with very fine green stripes that I thought would please him. Of course, I suspected that all the fuss about the bottle of wine and looking sharp was to soften the blow of the news that he was going to get married, give me a sibling, introduce me to another mother, all of which provoked a disgust I couldn’t choke down just by tightening the knot of my tie. My aversion wasn’t based on anything rational: I felt the same way about pepper, or cauliflower’s smell of rotting vegetation. I got the creeps at the mere thought of our bloodlines branching out: the glut of a species in all its excess, and the haughty disdain toward individual specimens. It’s like when you kick over a rock and see the hundreds of rasping insects that never mange to join forces to work together coherently. What a waste.

I was already dressed when I looked for the address among the onionskin pages of a city street guide. It was an odd street that cut behind Lesseps. This is back when the plaza was still a giant planning disaster that separated Gràcia from Vallcarca, as if the Mississippi River were flowing between the two sidewalks. I drew myself a map. I’d said good-bye to Mother (who from the back looked like a doll abandoned on a chair, streaks of white winding through her chestnut hair), but then I went back to the kitchen for the marble-handled letter opener, unsure whether my plan was to keep it or return it to Dad. Google Maps didn’t exist yet to check the address, and I got worried when the taxi headed into an area of low houses and kitchen gardens (I thought I saw the phantasmagorical shapes of some chickens). Then I discovered that my father had moved (or at least summoned me) to a single- family home with a garage.

I was twenty minutes early, so I went into a bar crammed with patrons whose faces were round and dry. I ordered a strong coffee; I lifted my hand to check my watch and found a naked wrist. I felt underdressed, informal, and the odd thing is that since that day I’ve never worn one again, as if a moment of time has refused to pass. The rest of the scene: revolving fan blades, the slot machine, the posters of Extremaduran football teams, family photos, a laminated cardboard menu dominated by fried food, the formaldehyde smell of cheap booze. But these could all be the kind of details we add to the texture of deep memories, the ones that have been keeping us company for years.

I went outside, and an ambiguous feeling descended on me. I only had to cross the street and say hello to my father, one half of the familial mass that had conspired to bring me into the world. I rang the doorbell for ten minutes until it occurred to me to try the door; it opened. I went in fearlessly, which I put down to my sense of smell reacting faster than my eyes, capturing the notes of firewood, cinnamon, and rancid wine that mingled to make up my father’s trademark scent.

An opaline light filtered through the fibers of the drawn curtains, gradually overcoming the darkness until I could make out the outline of the furniture. And then I saw two chairs covered in old leather, and on a table of American pine sat the same lamp with the damask shade; there was the very same Australian clotheshorse. Dad had reconstructed his corner of the bedroom down to the last detail. I found his glasses right where they should be, with their thick lenses and golden arms, and the same almanac with the results of the last fifty runnings of the Ascot Derby that he consulted like a prayer book. The space was different, and that was the only reason it took me a few moments to understand that the room was arranged like an altar to his old life.

There was a doorway that led to a room dominated by a large four-person sofa, and that’s where I found him, swinging from the ceiling like any dead thing swings. His feet, bare and calloused, hung at the height of my throat.

You’ve heard of time-lapse photography? When they take photos at intervals from a single point of view, then project the images sped up, so processes that might take hours pass in just a few seconds. I’m sure you’ve seen how a few wispy clouds suddenly gather to form a storm; well, that’s the only way I can remember that taxi ride with Helen, as a succession of images played in an accelerated filmstrip.

“I like your mother.”

“You poor thing, poor little John.”

“I’m just what your family needs.”

“You look handsome. Let’s not go home. I want to watch you drink, dance, shine.”

The Eixample, Raval, Paral-lel, all lit up with fluorescent signs, those narrow streets that lead up toward Montjuïc with names that everyone learns, the statue of Columbus, the little plaza of sand at Medinaceli, the Moll del Rellotge, the Estació de França before they restored it, the fence of the Ciutadella surrounding masses of dark vegetation….Patches of urban geography that already existed for the people who were breathing when that new conscription of children appeared, in a formation that I (so protected, such a splendid future ahead of me) confused with a permanent state of affairs. We crossed Barceloneta, the facades of those buildings that look transplanted from the Eixample, the smell of stir-fry and the juice of grilled shrimp, the garlic that no longer bothered Helen now that we were in Barcelona. We ordered another drink at a beachside stall where we watched the sea’s edge lick itself. A fresh breeze seemed to fall from heavens infested by stars hidden from us by sheets of gases, all knitted together to protect us: our speed, our fearless lives. I entertained myself taking sips of gin and tonic — sips like sweet knives — that were cold at first and then burned my stomach. A stray beach dog came up to us and Helen bent down to pet its nape with a familiarity that startled me, and when she turned around to look at me I noticed that the luminous blue of her eyes was formed by strata and filaments of different shades, and I felt responsible for her happiness, her serenity, as if the contact between Helen and my mother had widened the circle of my affections, the territory of the familiar. A nut was dancing about on the plate before me and I lifted it to my mouth. I suppose there was a bit of me that had never taken the marriage seriously, and up until that moment I’d had myself convinced we were only joking, and I could turn back anytime.

He hadn’t turned yellow, he didn’t stink, it was just his insistence on spinning around like a pendulum of human meat. The mass of muscle and liquids possessed a dark gravity, and I, its son, began to orbit around it in obsessive parabolas, captive, biting my nails, raising my hands to cover my eyes every time he faced me, avoiding contact with features swollen as if a pulp of chopped hamburger meat were straining against the transparent skin of his forehead and cheeks. I could recognize him from behind, too: the organism was broken, inside him the blood was rotting, his pulmonary membranes were drying up, I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t stop it. I must have circled him twenty times, clapping like a madman; primitive emotions tore at my head and derailed my thoughts before they could reach any practical conclusion. I could only interrupt my obsessive circling by taking off my clothes, piece by piece, not stopping until I was naked (except for my underwear, which I left on out of respect for Mother — my whole family was watching me, a disaster of that magnitude couldn’t be ignored).