I will never know if my mother really was trying to avoid me during that time, if she needed to speak to my aunt about things she could not or did not want to talk to me about. I have no way of confirming that suspicion, but it’s highly likely that my feeling — to which I keep returning and can’t help but believe was genuine, even though there are no objective elements on which to base that belief — had some bearing on the way I reacted the afternoon my mother announced her early return and my aunt invited me (alarm bells were already ringing in my head) to go for a walk with her.
We walked to a café on the seafront, through the increasingly heavy rain, with me feeling tenser and tenser and incapable of concealing my strong sense that something was about to happen, my aunt having first stopped at a couple of clothes shops, presumably with the secret intention of putting off the evil hour when she would have to speak to me, and finally doing so only after choosing a table near the bar and ordering two hot chocolates (both of us equally slow to decide what we wanted), and then after a silence that lasted for the time it took the waiter — in a bow tie and a black jacket worn shiny with use — to return with a tray bearing two cups and a jug containing the steaming hot chocolate.
We all know what it’s like when someone close to us feels they have the right to intervene in our life and advise us about some matter on which we don’t want any advice, but when we look back after some time has passed, we can never recall how exactly they began, what words they used. We can remember whole swathes of the ensuing conversation as well as the atmosphere and the surrounding noises, but it’s almost impossible to recall exactly how our would-be advisor launched into their speech. This difficulty is really only the reflection of the still greater difficulty felt by the person struggling to find a way to tell us something they feel we need to know but find it very hard to because they can see that it will upset us. It was no different for my aunt that afternoon, sitting with me at a black-glass-topped table, and no different for me now sitting at this rectangular, wooden table where I’m writing these words. Once the waiter had left us, she paused before speaking, the time it took for her hot chocolate to cool, after much stirring and cautious sipping of spoonfuls so as not to burn her lips, and of the words she spoke when she could put the moment off no longer, I can summon up only what she said after a certain point, but not her very first words. I can see my aunt put her spoon down on the saucer, see her pick up the cup with both hands and raise it to her lips, I can see her take a first sip and begin to speak while she puts the cup down on its saucer again, but her words do not appear, there is no room for them in that particular part of my memory. I see my aunt repeat the process, I see her fall silent for a few seconds, again raise the cup to her lips and put it down on the table, I see her wipe her mouth on the napkin and say something else, but still I cannot hear her words. I’m feeling more uncomfortable now, I’ve finished my hot chocolate and have started playing with the paper napkin lying unused on the table, repeatedly rolling and unrolling it to form an ever tighter spiral, and keeping my eyes lowered so as to avoid my aunt’s gaze, which is becoming too fixed and inquisitorial. At one point, she falls silent and looks at me, and I see that she still has some hot chocolate in her cup. She doesn’t speak again until she has picked up her cup and drunk down its contents in long, confident gulps. It is then, when she returns the empty cup to its saucer, that her words become clear in my memory. She says, “We’ve been living together for eight months now, time enough for me to know you much better than I did before. You know me better, too, and know how much I love you and your mother. I love you both in different ways, of course, but I can assure you that I love you both equally.” As if to reinforce her statement with something more than words, or perhaps simply to interrupt an activity that was distracting her, my aunt moves her right hand from the arm of her chair and places it on my hands, each of which is busily twirling the ends of my napkin. She says, “You will never again be the little boy who came here every year to stay for a couple of weeks in the summer, but whom I didn’t actually watch growing up day by day. I know now that you’ll be able to understand everything I say to you. We only have a few more days without your mother. I know how excited you are to be seeing her again, and I am, too. It’s been far too long.” Here my aunt pauses involuntarily, lending greater emphasis to that last statement. She keeps her hand on the two of mine, although she has relaxed the pressure, and this allows me to continue playing with the napkin. She says, “And yet despite that, we’ve had almost no time to talk. We know each other, but we’ve never talked about something that is as important to you as it is to me, we haven’t spoken about your life or your mother’s life.” She pauses for a moment as if to catch her breath and continues plunging deeper into that as yet unnamed territory. She says, “It’s a hard thing to say, but the fact is that your life has not been normal. In the last few years, you’ve had to put up with some pretty unusual situations. I needn’t say what they are, we both know what I’m referring to. They’ve made you different, more mature, more knowledgeable about life. But it might not have been like that. What you have experienced could easily have damaged you. A lot of people wouldn’t cope well with such situations, indeed, many people never get over their childhood experiences. I’m sure you know how important your mother has been in helping you to cope so well.” Up until then, my hands have been moving around beneath hers relatively calmly, gently twisting and turning the napkin; now, however, they grow more agitated, and my aunt again presses down on them. I still have my head lowered so as to avoid her eyes. She says, “And obviously you’ve done your part, too, because you’re a bright boy. But that doesn’t mean that another mother would have done such a good job. Your mother is quite extraordinary. She’s sacrificed everything for you. Ever since you were born, you have been her main concern, and that’s why we can talk about all this now. Your mother has always tried to make sure that everything seemed quite normal to you, that you would gradually come to understand things as they are. She’s found a way of helping you over all those obstacles without your being affected by them. She’s taken care that nothing should get in the way of your growing up.” Thinking that I’m feeling calmer than I actually am, my aunt removes her hand from mine and breathes out through her nose to emphasize a timid smile I can sense is there but that, with my head down, I cannot see. She says, “That, I can assure you, has not been easy. Often the gravest errors occur as a consequence of a desire to protect. Like your mother, I want what’s best for you, but I would often have done things very differently from her. And I recognize now that I would have been wrong, but that doesn’t matter, because your mother
didn’t get it wrong. She knows you and has always given you exactly what you needed. She hasn’t made a single mistake, but that has been the cause of a huge amount of anxiety, has cost her many sacrifices, and there were times when she only had you to turn to.” I’m aware of my aunt moving her chair so as to get closer to me without changing her posture, and, having unraveled my now unrecognizable napkin, I begin to roll it up again, even more tightly this time, with each new turn, a kind of knot intended to contain the explosion I can feel approaching, with each new turn, an invisible, unspoken refusal to hear the words I know even though no one has actually spoken them in my presence before. My aunt says, “The truth is that she’s always been alone. Your father has been no help at all — on the contrary. That may seem like a harsh thing to say, but that’s how it is, and the sooner you realize it, the better. Your mother was alone while your father was living with you, and she’s been alone for these last three years. Now don’t take that the wrong way. She’s had you with her, of course, and you have been her main compensation, but it’s still true that she’s had no one unconditionally on her side. She’s done all the work, taken all the responsibility. She’s had no one to share you with.” My aunt falls silent and reaches out her hand in my direction, her fingers form a pincer around my chin, forcing me to raise my head so that she can see what effect her words are having. I see her searching eyes, I see from the way she keeps blinking that she’s still feeling nervous, I see gentleness in her eyes, but also determination. My eyes are, presumably, completely expressionless, frozen or paralyzed, because she releases my chin without any show of surprise or concern and then, as before, places one hand on my busy, tangled hands, but this time without preventing my fingers from continuing to play with the napkin. She says, “Because of this, your mother has given up other things she might have done if you weren’t there. Naturally, she gave them up gladly. Perhaps it couldn’t have been any other way, but the fact is that she has done without a lot of things.” My aunt removes her hand from mine and puts it down close by, on the edge of the table. At that moment, as I’m forming yet another spiral with the napkin, it tears in half, and I immediately begin ripping it into tiny pieces, fingertips and fingernails furiously rubbing against each other. My aunt says, “The problem is that some of these things she did have to do without and others she didn’t. At least, that’s how it seems to me. She hasn’t looked after herself properly. She’s suffered too much, she’s gone ahead with something that was doomed to failure right from the very start, and she’s made mistakes, too. Of course, you’re not to blame for any of those mistakes, she made them alone, without asking anyone’s advice. The thing is, and this is what I want you to understand, the thing is that it’s impossible to know to what extent she made those mistakes for your sake, in order to give you something you were lacking.” My aunt breaks off to take a cigarette out of her purse, and while she does so, lights the cigarette, then takes a first puff, I think to myself for the first time — having been listening intently to her words despite the growing sense of dread they inspire — that I have no idea what she means, have no idea what mistakes she’s referring to. I also think to myself, as I have been doing for some time, that I don’t want to go on listening, that I’ve had enough, that my aunt knows nothing about my mother or me. “What does she know,” I wonder, “about what my mother wants? What does she know about what it’s like to have a child, when she has no children of her own?” But neither of those unspoken questions — which I ask myself without much conviction, keeping them in my head for as short a time as possible — has any impact on her. She doesn’t even see me, is unaware of these questions in my head. She blows out the smoke, takes another puff on her cigarette, and continues talking, saying words that grow less and less clear in my memory, more and more confused and devoid of meaning. She says, “Fortunately, I think that’s all over now. At least I hope so, I hope your mother doesn’t let me down again. But everything has its consequences. Your mother isn’t happy, she can’t be after all that wasted effort, after all those disappointments. In less than a week, she’ll be here. She’ll appear to be really pleased and will give no sign to the contrary. And her happiness will be genuine. Neither you nor I can even imagine just how much she’s looking forward to being with you, how much she will have missed you. If these months have seemed long to you, I can assure you they’ve been interminable for her. Nevertheless, she’ll pretend otherwise and try to appear strong and confident. There will be joy, but there will be sadness, too. Her going off to Paris was her final failure. You should be aware of that, and be especially careful with her. You have a responsibility toward her, you must help her and allow her to start to live a life of her own. Your mother’s life doesn’t begin and end with you. She needs other things, too. She’s young, so young that one day you’ll regret not being able to remember her as she is now.” At that point, my memory clouds over completely. My aunt has stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and is talking rapidly, apparently unconcerned about the consequences her words might have. I don’t remember precisely when or why it all becomes unbearable, if it is some particular thing she says or just the whole situation. All I remember is her voice, like a distant murmur, becoming mixed up with the other sounds in the café, and how all that suffocating noise suddenly stops, as if my aunt had stopped talking, and as if all the customers at the other tables had stopped talking, too, stopped clinking their spoons on their cups, their cups on their saucers, their saucers on the tables. I remember that not even a second passes before she again reaches out her hand to my chin and again raises my head, which is now almost resting on my hands, which, for some time now, have lain motionless on the unrecognizable jigsaw puzzle of the napkin torn into tiny pieces. I see at once her look of surprise and how she immediately reaches out her other hand to my face and places her thumb and forefinger on my closed eyelids. Only then, when, with the gentlest of movements, she slides her fingers down my cheeks, do I realize, through that contact with her skin, that my own skin is wet, that her fingers are wiping away the two tears that have run down my cheeks, tracing two shining trails that she has seen and whose mere presence is now making the whole scene even more unbearable, making her words still more humiliating and definitive, both the words I hadn’t wanted to hear and the words I hadn’t even imagined, as well as those she hasn’t even said; my tears are like notaries for posterity, the wax seal that preserves and bears witness to what has happened. It doesn’t matter what my aunt does next, it doesn’t matter that when she sees my tears, she gets up and embraces me. It doesn’t matter that she is crying, too or that she goes on to say, her words as stumbling and incoherent as this fading, guttering memory, “Forgive me. Please, forgive me. You know I would never want to hurt you. You know that, don’t you? I’m so sorry. Please, forgive me. Forget everything I said. I’m so very sorry. It was all nonsense. Don’t listen to me. .”