The years ushered in by my mother’s return are years in which my father is completely absent and we no longer expect to see him. They are years in which my image of him is the quick, broad-brush sketch of someone who has neither a future nor a present, when he is forbidden from entering our apartment, and we do not even miss him; years in which my mother does not object to talking to me about him when I ask her to, but when the only regular, constant news we get of him comes from the phone calls made by anxious, worried, bewildered people, phone calls that come in waves depending on whether he’s in Madrid or not, and with passing time, they will be our only surviving connection with him, even when we move to a new apartment and my father becomes someone forever erased and excluded from our lives. The years ushered in by my reunion with my mother are years in which my Aunt Delfina resumes her important but secondary role; years in which we still see her every summer, in which she continues to be my mother’s closest and most loyal ally, but during which she is not, as far as I know, counselor, accomplice, or confessor; years in which I overhear no behind-doors conversations or eavesdrop on dialogues in which I sense some intimate secret that I do not share, simply because there is nothing that requires any counseling, nothing to confess or to share. The years ushered in by my mother’s return are years in which nothing changes, and nothing new or unrelated to ourselves occurs. And at the same time, they are years in which time drags and becomes seemingly endless and oppressive, they are years of struggle, years in which I do battle with myself, in which I change completely and begin to judge and rebel and protest against my solitary existence, condemned never to share my feelings with or offload them onto anyone else, to suffer in solitude — myself as sole recipient, sole beneficiary — all the sacrifices and doubts, all the self-abnegation and devotion. The years ushered in by my mother’s return are years in which things linger and calcify, in which my mother withdraws further into herself and shows no sign of any anomalous behavior or perturbation of spirit; years in which only remnants of the past surface to worry me, fears that make the sacrifice still more sacrificial, the self-abnegation more self-abnegating. There is no before or after, the lines blur. During those years, life is just life, it’s just my mother and me.
XXII
It’s not easy to separate out in your memory different incidents that happened simultaneously. If your father died in the same year as some other misfortune occurred that seemed to alter the course of your life, setting it off along the tracks of despair, it’s hard not to connect the two things, not to fall into the temptation of thinking that your father’s death was a determining factor in that other event, in your failing your final exams, losing your job, or messing up your last opportunity to save a relationship. According to that same deductive process, it would be equally legitimate to infer the opposite: that your father died because you were about to drop out of college or undertake some venture doomed to failure. If we reject that possibility, we do so only out of prudence and not because it’s just as false or unlikely as the first hypothesis.
In the same way, I find it hard to separate out those first stirrings of rebellion and my feelings of detachment from my mother from the shadow of doubt that hung over me all those years. The two emotions have become confused in my memory, and I don’t know which caused which, or if they were entirely independent from each other.
But in order to speak about the uncertainties haunting my mind, first timidly and later ever more forcefully and urgently, I must first describe a curious incident that happened before that, when, to me, the city of Paris meant nothing more than the months I had spent away from my mother. It happened suddenly, without warning, at a time I can’t pin down exactly, but about one or two years after my mother came back to get me in La Coruña. It was winter, one afternoon when I’d already been home from school for some time. My mother was out, and I was sitting in my bedroom, waiting for her, when the apartment’s buzzer sounded. This did not surprise me, even though I knew we weren’t expecting anyone and that the street door downstairs was open, what with the doorman carrying out his usual duties as inquisitor and filter. While I slouched off reluctantly toward the kitchen, I thought it would probably be my mother calling up, as she often did, to tell me that she’d be slightly delayed because she had to go to the store or had stopped to talk to a neighbor. A few seconds later, however, the voice I heard on the other end was not hers but the weary, servile voice of the doorman. “Two men asking after your mother are coming up. I told them she wasn’t in, but they insisted.” I didn’t even have time to thank him before the doorbell rang. I hung up and went to open the door, which I did — as usual, disobeying all my mother’s instructions — without first looking through the peephole or putting on the security chain. I don’t know who I thought I would find there. The fact is that all my confidence vanished when I was confronted by a man wearing boots and a black leather jacket; he had curly hair, a defiant look on his face, and he stood on the landing, smiling at me, but making no attempt to say anything during the time it took me to look him up and down. He was probably in his late thirties, and his impeccable appearance struck me as somehow artificial and showy. I didn’t feel afraid, because he was standing very stiffly and some way away from the door, as if in order to ring the bell he’d had to reach out his arm as far as he could. I was, nevertheless, so disconcerted that I was completely unable to speak, until, after a few seconds, the stranger took one short step forward, while still remaining some distance away, and asked to speak to my mother, using her full name.
“She’s not here,” I said. “But if you’d like to leave a message, or if I can help you at all. .”
“Are you her son?” His smile had grown still broader, and he took advantage of the softening effect this might have on me by taking another step forward, thus placing himself in the normal position for ringing a doorbell. “May I come in?” he added, without waiting for me to respond. “I’m a friend of your parents. I haven’t heard from them for some time, and since I’m in Madrid for a few days, I thought I’d look them up.”
At that moment, while still filling the doorway, he stood slightly to one side, and the space created was immediately occupied by a man who emerged from behind the right-hand side of the doorframe. He was a man of about sixty, bald and very short. His clothes, although conventional, were shabbier. He was wearing a gray, striped overcoat and brown sneakers. Like his companion, his face wore a smile, but there was, I thought, something timid and embarrassed about that smile, as if he were there against his will. He somehow inspired confidence, though, and seemed to me capable of keeping the other man in order.
“He’s with me,” said the man in the black leather jacket. “He’s a friend of your father’s, too.”
Perhaps what tempted me was that unexpected reference to my father, combined with the more reassuring appearance of the older man. Whatever the truth of the matter, after a brief moment during which I hesitated as to whether or not to let them in, I stood involuntarily to one side, a gesture that the younger man immediately interpreted as the invitation I had not intended. It was of little use for me to repeat in a firm voice that my mother was not at home. The younger man had already come in through the door and was walking down the hallway toward the living room. Meanwhile, the older man remained where he was, waiting for me to give him the permission his friend had not felt he needed. I must have taken a while to react, because, with one long stride, he, too, entered the apartment, and pausing by my side only long enough to whisper “Don’t worry, it’s all right,” he followed the younger man down the hallway. I closed the door and walked after them; the first man was already much farther ahead, about to turn the corner into the living room, while the second man was slower, trying unsuccessfully to let me pass. It seemed to me that they knew where they were going, and while I was wondering whether to call the doorman and ask him to come to my aid, I thought for a moment that they must know the apartment. As soon as the younger man went into the living room, however, it was clear that he did not. He was standing in the middle of the room, looking around him, pretending to study everything with great interest.