I was pettier. The sadness I felt at seeing the expression on his face, my near-immediate repentance, my regret at his anticipated disappointment, my admiration of his painting, and my sincere belief that he was more deserving — infinitely more deserving — than me, don’t excuse the fact that deep down, even if in a muffled and hidden way that I instantly denied to myself, I took some pleasure in his distress.
How vexing for my father, whatever the case. What an uncomfortable fate to have in your own family, in the person of your only child, a disgruntled and suspicious notary who, thinking he knows you, makes an accounting of your weaknesses, your deficiencies, and your broken promises.
But he bore it with dignity, I must say. He permitted himself only the occasional dig. He celebrated my smallest triumphs, and he apparently forgot everything there was to be forgotten: the exaggerations I made, the unconscious blunders in which I discounted his influence on me, and — especially — the misjudgments of him to which some of my literary preoccupations might have given rise. For someone so private, so reserved, this must have been agonizing.
And there we were, each the mirror of the other, practitioners of similar careers, connected by the telephone line. Watching each other from afar, sometimes in anger, sometimes in hopes of reconciliation, sometimes in a precarious state of bliss. There we were, the two of us: he in his studio listening to music while he struggled with a painting, and I in my apartment struggling against myself as I listened to music.
What a trial for my father, despite an underlying current of satisfaction in my successes, to see the uncertainty that so tormented him taking shape in his son’s future. What a trial to see everything perpetuate itself, so that in addition to the consequences of having chosen a profession as insecure as painting, he should be further burdened by the consequences of my having chosen a similar profession. How much better it would have been for him if I had embarked on a stable and well-paid career in which personal advancement was based on worth and not on the marketing of a capricious thumbs-up or thumbs-down. A real profession, not the irresponsible prolongation of childhood that is the nature of artistic endeavors. A profession that would bring me swift returns so that I could overlook his failings.
It’s easy to imagine that my father, always worried about money, wouldn’t have wanted me to live with the same fear, and not just because he presumed that if I wasn’t in need, I would be less likely to blame him for anything. He knew life’s ups and downs: he had gone from being a nearly established artist in his thirties, in the pay of a successful gallery, to a period of drought in which he had to dream up other jobs to survive, and then on to an intrepid rebirth in which, while developing a mature and powerful oeuvre, among the greatest of his generation, and despite his recovered prestige, he hadn’t managed to make himself known beyond a small circle of insiders, which translated into respectful but modest reviews each time he had a show, almost no public promotion by important museums, and scanty sales compared with other artists. He knew that in professions like his, either you’re a success or you can’t pay the electric bill, and he knew that talent, with few exceptions, isn’t what gives you an edge, that it’s other qualities, like luck or the ability — not so common among the gifted — not to rouse hatred, prejudice, or envy, which doesn’t mean being invisible, but does mean being inoffensive to the egos of those who possess only ego and a tiny bit of power; he knew all this and also how devastating it can feel to be undeservedly brushed aside, and he would have preferred that I not run the risk.
I’m not talking only about material limitations; I’m talking about obstacles to the satisfaction of the artist’s exposed vanity, about the recognition, necessary recognition, that my father came close enough to touch and that consequently needled him as late as May 2006, when, in an entry in his diary, he put it this way (I quoted part of this earlier, but I can’t resist setting it down in its entirety): “Silence since April 6, and now it’s May. I was planning to write something about my state of things but whenever I start, the why? gets to me. Now I’m listening to old Gilbert Bécaud songs after slopping paint on an 8 × 6 canvas that will go to join all the others that I don’t know what to do with […]. I have strange feelings in my stomach and my gut and the tiredness has let up a little.” He goes on for a brief paragraph talking about me, about the peace — he says — that I’ve brought him lately, and he continues: “To paint is to make something that didn’t exist before. It isn’t to erase or to forget; it’s to make and to live, so I plan to keep doing it. The paint on this canvas will turn into something that even I can’t know; everything will evolve until a certain something appears that demands my recognition and acceptance.”
It moves me to imagine my father, sick by now, writing this entry in his diary. Alone in his studio, trying to “make something that didn’t exist before,” something provocative and suggestive out of some splotches on a canvas. It moves me that he still had the strength not to “erase or to forget,” but to “make and to live.” What’s more, it makes me proud. But what do we do with the doubts? What do we do with the feeling that we’ve been denied something (or lost it ourselves because in our foolish confidence we let it pass by) that others with less talent enjoy?
Though he may have appreciated my determination and the disdain with which I faced potential failure, my father can’t have wanted that fate for me. No father wishes such things on his child: to have no rest, to be always pursuing foolish challenges, to be besieged by thoughts that we don’t know how to express any way other than by means of the skill that we’ve parlayed into a career and that, mistakenly or not, constitutes our way of being in the world.
That’s right: I’m no longer talking about recognition, the affront of comparisons, worldly triumphs; I’m talking about that image of my father in his studio on the eve of his death, determined to “keep making.” Death and life mingling, as always, but shaded by something that supplants life by merging with it and moreover aspires to triumph over death itself. Something that doesn’t allow us to be entirely in any one spot. An itch of unease and doubt and rare hope that in lonely flashes of hard-won inspiration seems to make everything worthwhile. Is it worth tying yourself to a desk, feeling the pull of the rope at your neck each time you venture away from the place where, amid jars of paint, you give your obsessions free rein? How is it possible that a disguise we put on to get through life becomes so confused with life itself that in the end it’s one of the main taxes to add or deduct from the final balance as we prepare to leave life behind? And at what point does it begin to hurt when you feel the pull of the rope and you ignore it? At what point do we begin to regret everything that we can no longer fix? Is it always this way?
* * *
The worst comes without warning but also without deception. When it comes, we try not to see it, but deep down we know that it’s come, it’s here, and in the end everything we do to try to escape it just prepares us to accept it (the constant invoking of something, if only to reject it, accustoms us to it, so that by the time it becomes irrevocable, it’s the only reality we know). We were no different. When the worst came, none of us who were close to my father wanted to acknowledge it. Friends, acquaintances, everyone abetted us. Somebody had been given the same diagnosis, or knew someone who had been, who had recovered. Even the doctors allowed us to fantasize about the exception, the best possible outcome. It’s a parallel reality: willful denial. You hear what the doctors say, you memorize all the possibilities, and what you’re left with in the end is the most desirable one. You hear hollow statements like “There are no statistics” or “There’s always room for surprise,” on the basis of which it’s impossible not to speculate, even about a complete recovery. Though you know better, though the look with which these things are said essentially rules it out. There’s room for surprise, yes, the look says, but it’s best not to expect it. And since you don’t want to take their word for it, you consult other doctors, seek out second opinions, recruit anyone who has a doctor friend who might be able to help you, and at the end of the road, you’re back where you started, with fewer days left to live intensely.