Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

I suppose the sensible thing would have been to catch my breath, take a look at what was in the green accordion file with the corners of several folders peeking out, on which Dad had stuck a label with my name: Juan . A dead man’s handwriting, the last word with all its magical echoes. But instead I searched my coat for the letter opener; giving it to him was no longer an option, nor could I return it to Mother, sullied as it was by that atmosphere of death. I could, however, still drive it into the wine bottle and destroy the cork; I didn’t give up until the liquid flowed freely, and then I took a swig straight from the bottle. I lay down on the sofa in a fetal position and started spitting out cork fragments. I must have spent two hours like that; I don’t think I ever fell asleep. The light was suffocated as the alcohol (the flavor of red kangaroo herds crossing the desert, of blooming hibiscus and capricious coral reefs overflowing with creatures that don’t ever miss mature consciousness and its complicated games) gradually polished my raw emotions into a smooth self-indulgence. I caressed its hide, like that of an ugly animal with yellow fangs, companion to our worst moments. I suppose I knew they would take him away and incinerate him, they would take him from me and I would never see him again. How short it all is. At times I raised a sentimental gaze to take in his remains. The web of character that I associated with Dad was gone, but those were his arms, his hands, his cartilage; that skin was the material remnant that death doesn’t know how to strip away, the only thing that could resist its mild, lifeless touch. I was his only son. Why is it so hard to understand that I wanted some time alone with him?

I must have dozed off after all, because I eventually opened my eyes to overwhelming darkness. The sofa was giving off the same unmistakable leathery odor as his jacket, and as I drifted into a peaceful drowse, I heard the whisper of traffic passing outside, a soothing rhythm from which I was jolted awake by the thunder of a motor that faded without dying away completely, like it was driving down a never-ending street. I lifted my head, and the spongy calluses on his feet reminded me that Dad was still hanging from the ceiling.

I got up, fumbled around on the wall to find the little wheel that controlled the recessed lights; a luminous dust began to fall. I don’t know what was going through my mind or what time I thought it was, but when I opened the curtains it was already dark outside, and I was blinded by a white burst, like a flashbulb. When I recovered, I shuddered to think what any insomniac neighbors and the last drinker in the bar would see from across the street: a man standing in his underwear, and a hanged man in silhouette against the violet shadow.

I drew the curtains, but I kept looking out through a gap I held open with my fingers. I’d never noticed how light falling from the streetlamps scatters a layer of golden scales over the pavement. The traffic was easing off; when a car passed slowly by, I tried to narrow my eyes at just the right moment to make its headlights leave an electric filament suspended in the air. Dad liked to collect old telephones, postcards, hookahs, cast-iron junk. All that stuff must have been there but I didn’t look for it; instead, there was that shining pavement spread with a greasy layer of damp. It was warm. I knew he drank cherry brandy but I never found out if those people, the cherry brandy drinkers, keep a bottle in the house to fall back on some Sunday, or on a long weekend when the shops are closed, or if for some reason they can’t leave the house. I turned to ask him, but then I heard the chugging of a car’s engine. I ran to the window, and got there only in time to see the lights moving away. Instead, a motorcycle went by so slowly that its wheels left a trail of water on the pavement. He’d liked flannel and dark green shirts, and when I started looking around I found, beside his bed, some flannel pajamas. I also realized that when the cars got to the end of the street, they started driving more calmly, as if beyond that road’s aura the city were dozing; I took it as a sign of respect. The room was permeated with the smell of reheated resin instead of his Chypre cologne: an affectation, like the pure tobacco he smoked, exhaling rings as impeccable as the silk scarf knotted around the open neck of his shirt. The wide range of his tastes, always so elegant except when something upset him and turned his skin pig-red. I was already fairly uneasy at the way the recessed lights beat against the plaster, but when I saw that SEAT car approaching with its headlights off, there was nothing to do but throw myself at Dad’s body: I emptied the pockets of his trousers, his shirt and his jacket (standing on a stool), and I found two handkerchiefs, some old cards, and a handful of greasy coins. I gathered it all into a little pile, and then I separated the things and returned them one by one to the welcoming recesses of cloth. Not that he was going to miss them, but I had the impression that my father was still adapting to peace, that there was no reason to deprive him of the objects he had chosen to take with him as he crossed.

I turned on all the lights to look for the telephone. I dialed the number in Boston, and while I listened to the full range of whistles as it connected, I picked up the green file to distract myself from the beloved weight growing stiff in the middle of the room. I couldn’t even think of calling my mother.

“Dad?”

It troubled me that my sister recognized the number of this place I’d known nothing about, but the circumstances won out. I had to tell her; I was surprised at how easily my private pain flowed out of me, forming itself into ordinary words to circulate in shared space.

I had to contain my sister over the phone. Or rather, I lent my ear to her emotional dam-burst until (fifteen minutes later) she was finally empty. Her gurgling tirades weren’t for listening to; it was enough that someone endure them, so I kept myself entertained imagining the creamy blotches on her cheeks dancing as her offended doll’s face contorted. Having invoked Dad’s selfishness, I was shaken when she immediately started bemoaning how he had done “this” to her, that he’d turned against her long ago, that he’d never gotten over his distaste at having spawned a daughter with a mind of her own. It was exactly what she would have screeched as a preteen if a twisted ankle kept Dad from driving us to the summerhouse. It’s amazing to think about how she managed to go through life without learning a thing, how she could just let it all pass her by the second she became an adult. Mentally, my sister was still a wily fifteen-year-old.

Still, I could have been more of a help when she started to shriek that Dad’s suicide covered the Miró-Puigs in opprobrium (my word, but it more or less summarizes her feelings). It was such an outdated attitude; Michael Jackson still hadn’t been declared Man of the Year for staying home and dying, but all signs were pointing in that direction. I didn’t calm her down, I brushed her off, I’d had enough. It took me two months to realize that Dad’s inheritance was a dying star, a situation that may or may not have been linked to his decision to do himself in, to deprive us of his presence, to withdraw his counsel from our lives. It was almost a year before I suspected that those negative balances had accumulated enough dark energy to implode in a black hole. And don’t forget in the middle of the whole mess I read my name on that label; the knowledge that Dad had chosen me to heat up the family’s financial oven again acted as my anchor, it stabilized me. I didn’t even think about the fact that the poor guy had no alternative. They say that when a parent dies, you open a previously undiscovered eyelid that had always protected you from seeing the dark face of the void. But I didn’t have time for such disgusting conjectures: my father’s blood was staining his remains as his capillaries burst, transforming the man who’d just pushed me onto the stage of adult life into a sinister clown.