Augusto Monterroso - Complete Works and Other Stories

It was during a vacation — longed for all year and soon unbearable — that I became fully aware that things were not going very well in my house.

My father was away. I remembered, then I confirmed the fact, he went away frequently. And I had the feeling that although she seemed calmer when he wasn’t there, my mother — impossible, impossible! — was lying when she assured me he was working in one city or another in the interior, working so he could bring home lots of gold coins, and — I say this not meaning any criticism — as far as I could see we really needed them. Then I would ask when that would happen, and she would stop talking or change the subject or tell me to study or (with the obvious intention of making me think about something else) scold me for something I had done or failed to do a long time before.

I’m sure I shouldn’t say this: The fact is, my father was a bum, what they call a real bum. He was proud of it and enjoyed making his bad reputation even worse; otherwise the neighbors wouldn’t try to avoid him anymore.

I don’t believe any other child (except my son) has had a father like mine. Can he even be called a father?

For a long time he tried to shake loose my idea that I was his son. I can still see, still hear clearly the same scene repeated many times over in exactly the same way: When everybody was asleep in the old apartment building, he would come home completely drunk, filling the entire apartment with his heavy, exhausted breathing and its disgusting stink of wine and vomit. I close my eyes and see him walking as quietly as he can, like a ghost, his index finger over his lips to show silence while he staggers from side to side without ever losing his balance completely.

A stranger seeing him might have thought he was, to a certain extent, a considerate drunk especially respectful of other people’s sleep. But his silence and his gestures, unfortunately, did not reflect those admirable qualities in a drinker. They hid a diabolical meaning instead. His only purpose was to surprise an imagined lover in my mother’s room.

It was his obsession at the time. Later I found out that it was not the only one. Once (one time among many) he abandoned our house completely, certain that all of us — my mother, me, the dog — were plotting to kill him in his sleep. Although I subsequently thought that my mother should have done it, his absurd suspicions were unfounded because she loved him.

When he was completely convinced (or so he thought) that once again he had been deceived, that the lover was more astute and less of a night owl than he was, he would come over to the cot where I lay sleeping and take me in his arms, shaking me in his rage, hurting me with his breath and his soft, idler’s hands. I would burst into endless screams that could have wakened the entire city. But he was not satisfied until he had hit me for a long time and shouted “You’re not my son, you’re not my son,” as if he wanted to convince the neighbors and convince me, a boy of six, that I was not the child of a mother like other children had but the son of a (I learned the word later) whore.

Mama would finally come to my rescue and take me away from that voice, that alcoholic breath, for which I thanked her from the bottom of my heart. Then I would curl up, trembling with cold, unable to sleep, nervous, frightened, seeing strange things in the darkness for a long time. Usually I sobbed for a while — sometimes without really wanting to — so my mother would feel sorry for me, sympathize with me, and cry a little too.

Because those scenes were repeated so often, I eventually came to believe that my father really wasn’t my father. The one thing I couldn’t understand was why he would always hit me that way because I was not his son, while it never occurred to him, not even once, to do the same thing to the other neighborhood kids who were surely not his children either.

Except for those times, I hardly ever saw him. He usually got up very late, when I was already in school collapsing with fatigue and not understanding the arithmetical operations that the teacher, who was probably also certain we were not his children, tried to beat into our heads with slaps and punches. Today I am amazed that I endured so much, that I can repeat the multiplication tables although I stammer and tremble uncontrollably.

I come home, my arms full of packages. I throw some of them on the bed; it looks like a huge dining room table covered with a long, smooth, white crocheted tablecloth. There are some plates on it. Big plates full of fruit. But I soon discover they are not plates but enormous flower paintings of (strange) green roses embroidered with brilliant silk thread.

I take off my hat and toss it, and it lands right on the dog’s head. He growls and shakes it off. (I look into the dog’s eyes; they have a strange glow.) Then, like someone getting ready for a surprise, with my eyes full of mischief, I look at my wife and son (who bears an extraordinary resemblance to me) and from an inside pocket of my jacket I start to remove (pretending all the while to hide it) something that slowly — very slowly — begins to take the shape of a tricycle. My son — I—has always wanted one and why shouldn’t I give it to him now that I have plenty of money? Except there must be some mistake, because instead of the necessary, correct, classic three wheels, an infinite number of wheels tumble out one after the other until they fill the room and become annoying, unbearable. I think: a manufacturing defect. Slightly embarrassed, I smile and start to put everything back into my pocket, back where it was before except in reverse. The wheels disappear with a golden metallic ringing sound, but the last ones — which had been the first — go in with great difficulty, oppressing my heart, making my breathing labored, almost suffocating me, choking me as if too large a mouthful of meat were stuck in my throat. I feel the beads of sweat break out on my forehead. I must stop at once. Any more and I’ll pass out, destroying the happiness of my wife and son. I am obsessed by the thought that if I die, no one will be able to figure out the tricycle’s mechanism, explained only on a piece of paper — or papyrus — that the salesman chewed and swallowed noisily so no one could ever reveal the secret of its construction.

In order to survive I must take out the wheels again, but there’s another problem with the mechanism and now they are as resistant to being removed as they were to being returned to their original place. Inspired — inspired — I decide to take off my jacket and throw it far away — or close by, it’s all the same. I can’t because the sleeves are tied to my shoulders with strong white straps. I don’t like the straitjacket. It’s an infernal device. I throw myself to the floor. That’s not the solution. I kick my legs wildly. I feel cold. I keep my legs still. When I can’t stand any more, when I can’t stand any less, when I’m drenched with perspiration, I cry and shout with all my might. My wife and son look at me with enormous, embarrassed eyes. My wife — my mother — comes, puts her hand on my forehead, gently wipes away the sweat, gives me a little water — very little water — and explains that it’s called a nightmare.

Toward the end he didn’t treat me so badly; he didn’t even insult me. Just every once in a while he would kick me, not very hard, just when he had the chance.

It took my mother and me several weeks to realize that a new fixed idea had taken control of his thoughts. He no longer looked for lovers under the beds, or smelled the food to see if it had been poisoned (as if he could find that out by smelling it), or smashed the dishes on the floor shouting that they had not been washed properly and he was being treated worse than a stranger. He had found a new victim: dogs.