This meant that I was unaware of his shortcomings until they were the past and not the present, when they had ceased to exist; and those that survived were different ones that, again, I didn’t notice until they, in turn, had been replaced. In this way, we passed through various phases, and I only discovered what the previous phase had meant once it already was the previous phase. In a way, my mother always seemed quite assured, accepting what was going on around her. She never appeared anxious or sad, or surprised by the pace of events. She seemed to accept them, and it was only when those events had passed that I understood what displeasure they had brought her. This also explains why I was always rather slow when it came to judging her state of mind.
Something similar happened with work. My father never said a word about finding a job, and I was completely unaware that normality could not be considered to have been fully restored for my mother until he took the first step toward seeking employment.
It happened one weekend when we were coming back from Toledo. We’d gone there to see an exhibition, which we weren’t able to do, in the end, because the palace where it was being held was closed in the afternoons, and we didn’t arrive until lunchtime. I don’t recall whose idea the trip was or what we talked about while it lasted. I vaguely remember that my father was very lively and full of jokes and that my mother, although she laughed at every humorous remark, gave off a certain air of unease, as if she distrusted that perfect family scene. After our failed attempt to visit the exhibition, we spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly up and down the steep streets, and before picking up the car to go back to Madrid, by which time it was growing dark, we went into a bar right next to where we’d parked. It was a very cramped place, with a layer of sticky sawdust on the floor and, at the back, a few tables topped with faux-wood Formica. We chose to sit on the brightly colored padded stools at the bar and did so gladly, eager to rest our legs. We’d been there for some time, with the lone waiter occupied in cleaning the coffee machine, when, behind us, during a moment of silence, we heard a man’s voice addressing someone as “Professor.” We all turned around, and I was immediately conscious that while my response had been purely instinctive, there was a degree of urgency and alarm about my parents’ response. The scene that followed has remained engraved on my memory because it was the first time I’d actually seen anyone from my father’s secret world. There before us stood a man of about sixty, looking expectantly at my father, while my father scrutinized his face and gave absolutely no sign of recognition. After a few seconds, during which the stranger grew noticeably nervous, my father suddenly got down from his stool and shook the other man’s hand while the latter loudly clapped him on the back. Then, avoiding looking at us, although my mother and I were observing both men minutely, my father began to talk animatedly, undoing his initial silence and hesitation and the long moments it had taken him to react. I’ve forgotten how my father addressed the other man — in fact, I’m not even sure he used a name — but I do remember noticing a marked difference in attitude. They spoke warmly, like old friends, but the stranger seemed far less at ease, as if the title by which he had addressed my father embodied a spontaneous degree of respect. He wasn’t tense and was obviously enjoying the encounter, but equally obvious was the tenuous wall that interposed itself between them, a veil tinged with a sense of admiration or respect that my father did not share. The strangest thing, though, was that this submissive attitude in no way affected their evident intimacy. They joked, and asked about people I didn’t know, of whom I’d never heard him speak, and they did so using harsh-sounding nicknames. Apart from that and a few other banal remarks, I could understand almost nothing of what they said, with my father behaving as if my mother and I weren’t there at all. I understood the intention behind what they said, and certain general ideas, but nothing specific. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand their voices or that they spoke too quickly, it was like listening to a language I knew only imperfectly and whose meaning I had to extrapolate from individual words and tone of voice. In this case, they were speaking the same language as us, but their conversation was so sprinkled with strange terminology and odd turns of phrase that I had the impression that these, rather than anything else, contained the real essence of each sentence. I now know that what I heard that afternoon was prison slang, but I didn’t know it then, and I remember feeling utterly perplexed. But this conversation did not last nearly as long as it has taken me to write about it. After a few moments of silent waiting, my mother said to my father that we would wait for him in the car and that he should hurry up. He turned briefly and said, “Yes, fine,” and then, making no attempt to introduce us or involve us in the conversation, he immediately turned back to his companion. Even more curious was the fact that this rudeness was not exclusive to him. I mean that the other man could at least have directed a look or a smile at us, some gesture that might indicate if not interest, then a willingness, however insincere, to keep us there. It was clear from the very start that he was aware of our presence and had not only guessed who we were but knew it for certain; however, just as he had not said a word to us or so much as glanced at us out of the corner of his eye, as we do when we meet an acquaintance accompanied by someone he or she has neglected to introduce, he made no attempt to prevent us from going, either. As if he were acting according to a code of conduct of which I knew nothing, he behaved exactly as my father did — after shooting us the very briefest of glances, he turned away and allowed us to leave.
I’ve often thought about that scene in Toledo, and in a way, I consider it a turning point, the moment when I realized how futile it would be to try and penetrate my father’s private world, not in order to try and understand his behavior, but to establish some kind of relationship between us, if not one of equality, then at least of complicity. After all, if my father behaved as he did, it wasn’t because he was trying to hide anything from us, it wasn’t that he’d foreseen that encounter and had things to discuss that he didn’t want my mother or myself to hear; in that case it would have been far easier not to take us with him to Toledo. He was merely trying to keep the two worlds that constituted his life quite separate. My father wanted money and success and to be admired, and while he was capable of committing crimes in order to achieve this, he found it hard to accept that the rest of us knew this, too, because he was the first to disapprove of his divided state. He was aware of that division, of the trap he was falling into, but to recognize it openly or simply take its existence for granted would be to admit his weakness, his tragic dependence on other people. That’s why he built a fence around himself, that’s why he never spoke about prison or the friends he had made there. He was the complete opposite of my mother, who had no problem calling a spade a spade, and the only reason she wanted my father to change was so that she could continue to live peacefully by his side without any unpleasant surprises. She suffered because this was impossible, but she didn’t condemn my father morally or feel ashamed, nor was she concerned about what people might think of him. If she said nothing and kept certain information to herself at times, this wasn’t because she found it hard to admit to others what she herself would have preferred did not exist. It was just that she believed there was a right moment for everything, a belief she clung to implacably. When that moment arrived, however, she would be sure to tell me. Just as on that morning in Burgos she had told me about my father being in prison, later on, she told me almost everything else about him, too. It was clear that this gave her no pleasure, but she made no attempt to dodge my questions. For example, I found out from her that the name “Professor,” which I’d heard in Toledo, was the nickname given to him by the other prisoners in the jails in which he’d spent time, and she was the one who explained how complicated it was to live in a prison if you had no friends, that prisoners use whatever qualities they have to establish alliances, and that my father, who was neither strong nor powerful, had learned to use his education to gain the support and respect of his fellow prisoners, teaching some of them to read and writing letters for others.