Rieff says that no one does everything that could be done, because it would mean giving up one’s own life. I did give up mine. I did do everything, and I probably did it not just for the sake of compassion or love, but to right old wrongs.
They’re the ones that linger.
I regret, as I’ve said, not having ended the tension between us sooner. I regret having made him suffer. I regret the lost time. I regret what was left unspoken. I regret having needed him to prove by deeds that he was my father and I his son. I regret having thought about his death. I regret having placed a symbolic value on material goods.
Compared to this, any mistakes I may have made when he was sick pale in the light of my extreme devotion.
I don’t regret having left him alone, because I never did.
I don’t regret never telling him the truth about his illness. I believed that if he kept hoping, some chance still existed that he would be cured.
But it wasn’t to be.
Despite my efforts, he found out in the end, and hope vanished and any notion of beating the odds was an illusion.
There was no room anymore for magical thinking, and still we refused to relinquish our respective roles, his of clinging to life and mine of persuading him that anything was possible.
Why did we do it when there was no longer any hope?
To close the circle, I suppose.
Because to accept defeat by mutual accord, knowing that the end was so foreseeably near, would have diminished the magnitude of our mutual devotion.
He didn’t hold back. His sense of guilt probably led him to believe that if he did right by me, he would be rewarded, but when it became clear that not even then would there be hope, he continued to give me his utmost.
In this unvarnished account, there are things I can’t ignore, much as I might like: the friend he met in Brazil. It would have been best for all of us if she had passed the test, but she didn’t. That I refer to her in such a roundabout way is merely confirmation of the fact.
* * *
September comes. The final September.
In September we finally manage to secure my wife a place at a school in Madrid for the start of the year. My migratory life ends, and my multifaceted life begins. In September, after our return from Kenya, my father continues to run a fever and has various intestinal complaints. In September, as in January, the doctors delay the beginning of the new treatment until he feels better. In September, afraid that it might be tumor fever, I’m once again treading the halls of the hospital that I know so well. In September, though my nudging is successful and they start the chemotherapy again, he doesn’t tolerate it as well as he did before. In September he no longer feels euphoria, but rather a new weariness often accompanied by nausea and fever. The good days that follow the bad aren’t very good at all. He gets tired, doesn’t go up to his studio. In September, as we’re returning from the hospital one afternoon, he breaks down for the first time and, amid tears of despair, tells me things I once used to fantasize about hearing, though said now and said for the reason that they’re said, they break my heart. In September the sale of the house is confirmed. The closing will be in December, at the buyers’ request. In September the friend he met in Brazil rejects my final attempt to keep my father from having to take such a psychologically difficult step and warns him that if he wants her to take care of him, he’ll have to put his share of the money from the sale at her disposal. In September my father says no. In September, taken aback, incredulous, the friend my father met in Brazil asks me in his presence whom he’ll live with when they give up the house, and with barely contained rage, my father breaks in to say that it won’t be with her. In September, then, we draw up plans for our future together: he’ll live with my wife and me in the apartment that my mother will turn over to us when she leaves for Galicia in October, which means that work will need to be done, since the apartment has only one bathroom and my father wants one for his own use. In September the friend he met in Brazil begins to spirit away fixtures and objects, taking the most valuable furniture, too, and in response, each time I come to visit, my father entrusts me with some of his belongings for safekeeping. In September, after being woken one night by a loud noise and discovering that it’s her rummaging in his studio, my father entrusts me with the task of finding a place to keep his paintings. We take the most recent ones and his painting tools to a friend’s studio and we hire a storage company for the bulk of his work. The day before they pick it up, I help him go through his files, and he dumps most of his papers — personal letters, diaries, photographs — into two big plastic bags that little by little, dividing the contents into smaller bags, he takes out to the trash himself before I can go through with my plans to purge them. In September the keys to his car disappear. In September, upon returning from a chemotherapy session, he finds the house completely empty. The friend he met in Brazil has gone, leaving behind two mattresses, a dilapidated sofa, his ergonomic chair, and little else. In September my father doesn’t fall apart. Instead, when his sister, alarmed, comes to visit, he puts on an old Charles Trenet album and for a brief moment, smiling, takes a few turns to the music with one arm folded on his chest and the other outstretched as if he’s leading an invisible dance partner. In September he doesn’t want to leave the house until the sale is concluded, so my wife and I move in with him. In September the friend he met in Brazil frequently appears unannounced, lets herself in with her own key, and inquires about his health or proposes some plan as if nothing had happened. In September, knowing how painful these irruptions are for him, I suggest that he change the lock, but he refuses, saying that it will only cause more trouble. In September he gives the go-ahead for the purchase of a studio. In September we draw up plans for the renovation of my mother’s apartment, where we intend to live, and I start to look for an apartment to rent while the work is being done. In September, while my mother is going through her things in anticipation of her impending move, I embark on an initial cull of my own. I get rid of books, albums, pictures, letters. Practically everything seems superfluous in the certain knowledge that before long I’ll have to let go of something infinitely more important. I’m ruthless, the opposite of what I used to be. The more tied I feel to something, the more pleasure it gives me to be able to get rid of it.
At the end of September I’m awarded a residency in Brittany, and again, my father insists that I accept at least a month out of the three I’ve been offered. I need it. The neglect of my writing weighs on me, I’ve reached my limit, and a break will help me be better prepared for what’s to come. My wife will continue to live with him, and my mother, putting off her departure for Galicia, will relieve her when necessary. Before I leave, he asks me to instruct them not to smother him by trying to make conversation. In my absence, which lasts for almost the entire month of October, he takes walks some mornings, goes out for drinks one Tuesday with his painter friends, attends the opening of a Sargent and Sorolla show at the Thyssen and a Picasso exhibition at the Prado. Most of the time, though, he’s at home, watching television from his ergonomic chair. He has closed down his studio, but even if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have the strength to paint. His diaries speak of sleepless nights. Encouraged by a friend, he accepts psychiatric help. Meanwhile, in an apartment in the port city of Saint-Nazaire, I try to write a story based on the life I’ve been living for nearly a year, but I can’t get past the first few pages. It feels like the worst kind of betrayal to employ the feelings inspired by his certain death in the service of fiction.