So I stayed where I was, and after a few minutes, when I saw my father exit onto the narrow, drenched street, I followed him unthinkingly. Getting up and heading off on his trail, tracing the steps of his route, which, as I would soon find out, was completely anarchic, must have seemed to me a way of prolonging the state I was in, a way of keeping a cool head without neglecting my overriding need to think, of remaining in touch with what had just been revealed to me but without having to give myself away or risk my own freedom — so necessary now that I had only myself to confide in — a way of moving in the shadows, of seeing and hearing without being seen or heard. I had watched him leave the table and pay with one of the bills taken from my mother’s purse; I had watched him go over to the door, open it, turn up his jacket collar, and, still without opening the black umbrella he was carrying, set off at a brisk pace in the opposite direction as my mother. I didn’t wait until he’d turned a corner or reached the next block. I crossed the street and, leaving a margin between us of about fifteen yards, allowed myself to be guided by him. This was a risky enterprise, but because he was walking along looking straight ahead, with the tense, absorbed appearance of someone deep in thought, I was able to remain hidden. I may be wrong, of course, and this could be an entirely erroneous impression, influenced by the memory of the scene I had just witnessed through the café window and by the very different attitudes I had noticed in him and my mother, by his pathetically triumphant smile when he returned the purse to its place on the table, having first removed the money, completely unaware that she had paused and turned on her way to the restroom and witnessed what he was doing — this was, after all, the first time I’d seen him alone in the street — but watching him as he walked ahead of me, it occurred to me that he had lost some of the aplomb and distinction I’d attributed to him in the past. He still had that same peculiar elegance and walked with his back very erect, but he had about him an air of defeat. Beneath the still-falling rain, he seemed faltering and fragile, vulnerable in comparison with the other passers-by.
For the first five minutes, I was troubled, because I didn’t know quite where we were going. We were walking aimlessly. We were as likely to go down one street, then head off along another, only to return in a circular fashion to the first street, as we were to walk whole blocks in a completely straight line. Even the pace was not constant, and more frequently than I would have liked, my father would slow down to peer in through the windows of the bars we passed. On empty stretches devoid of cafés or shops or even people, he would almost break into a run. Not bothering to protect himself from the rain, which, though bothersome, was too fine to really drench us, he walked down the middle of the sidewalk, head up, never seeking the shelter of the buildings, but concentrating exclusively on what lay before him. After a certain point, the initially broad and open streets became narrower, with no nooks or doorways to hide in. This meant that I had to keep a greater distance between us, and there were times when I nearly lost him. Nevertheless, I noticed him look at his watch on a couple of occasions, and whenever he did this, he would suddenly put on a spurt, as if he only had a certain amount of time in which to complete this route and had to recoup lost seconds. Were it not for the chaotic, entirely illogical path he took, you might easily have thought he was looking for someone. I couldn’t understand what mysterious law governed all those to-ings and fro-ings, all those swerves and loops, all that peering into the windows of shops and bars only to shoot off afterward as if he were late for an appointment. There was no sense in it, unless whoever he was looking for was subject to the same lack of logic. It didn’t have to be a particular person. It could be people who weren’t even expecting him but whom he had reason to believe would be in specific places at specific times. He might have been hoping to surprise them by making minor detours from an otherwise carefully planned route.
This situation, full of sudden retreats and alarms on my part, lasted about thirty minutes, until, turning a corner and going down some steep steps, we reached the Calle Princesa. After another glance at his watch and a few seconds during which he seemed unsure as to which direction to take and I feared he might hail a cab, we instead headed off toward the Plaza de España. His trajectory became slightly more linear, and his pace, like my fear of being discovered, diminished. I wasn’t thinking about anything, I simply followed behind, my hands in the pockets of my red parka and my folder firmly clasped beneath one arm. We reached the Plaza de España, walked across it on the park side, went up the Gran Vía, and reached Callao with no further detours or abrupt changes, stopping only at the traffic lights. At this point, my father followed the traffic circle toward the right and took the Calle Preciados at a slightly slower pace. Halfway down, he stopped next to the three-wheeled vehicle of a crippled man selling lottery tickets and cigarettes. I didn’t manage to see what he bought, but when he received his change, instead of putting it in his pocket and continuing on his way, he stood to one side and stayed where he was. I was at the top of the street, ready to duck around the corner as soon as he gave the slightest indication that he was about to walk back up, and was reassured to see that he was pondering whether to enter a bar on his left. He again looked at his watch and only then decided to go in. I realized that this was not a place he often frequented, because he stopped by the door and did not go in until he’d scrutinized the interior, like someone gauging the quality of an establishment merely from its appearance. I looked around me, but couldn’t see a single hiding place from which I could, without risk of being discovered, observe what he was doing inside. Since I couldn’t follow him, I had to content myself with glancing in as I passed, but all I could see was him standing with his back to me, staring at the flickering images on a TV sitting on a shelf affixed high up on one wall by two large, metal brackets. Only just managing to resist the temptation to stop and wait outside the bar, I continued on down the street and, when I reached the next corner, took refuge behind a roll-off container overflowing with rubble and junk metal. I waited ten or fifteen minutes, ten or fifteen minutes during which the rain grew heavier and I had to stand with my back pressed to the wall so that the water would not transform my hair into something resembling a sodden, dripping piece of cloth. After that very brief, or very long, period of time, which I allowed to pass with my mind almost a blank, my father reemerged from the bar, this time opening his black umbrella while still standing in the doorway, before setting off toward the very place where I was waiting. I saw him pass by the container, behind which I had hurriedly concealed myself, and continue on toward the Puerta del Sol. It was beginning to grow dark, and when I felt it was safe, I rushed after him, fearful that I might lose him if the distance between us grew too great. We rapidly covered the last stretch of street, and, just before it ended, I stopped to see which part of the square he would head for. I had given up trying to make any sense of his itinerary, my clothes were starting to grow damp, and I had a vague presentiment that I was about to cross a definitive line. I knew that I was now nearly an hour late getting home and knew, too, that my mother would be worrying, and yet still I could not stop, and this obsession of mine was all the stranger given that I was clearly not expecting to gain anything from this pursuit of my father. Approaching my father in search of an answer to my questions was quite unthinkable, and trying, on the other hand, to find out through him what had happened to make my mother lose all patience was utterly crazy. My determination to carry on made no sense. It could have been simple curiosity, but the truth is that seeing my father wandering the streets like a vagabond left me completely cold and revealed nothing to me that I did not already know. I felt no sorrow, no tenderness, nor even an absence of both those feelings. It was something more complex, something I can only identify now that the years have passed and nothing matters any more. It was my mother I was looking for, it was my mother I was pursuing through the city, it was her image I was trying to capture through my father, it was those months I had never previously felt or imagined as they really were and that now appeared clearly before me, months I now wanted to make my own, it was my need for some reference point that would help me judge precisely what that time had meant to her, what kind of life she had led, what she had done and possibly suffered, what she’d had to endure, and the nature of the thing or person for which she had swapped me or momentarily given me up. Seeing my father walking ahead of me, observing his absurd wanderings through the city, what I was really seeing was my mother, or, rather, my mother in the company of my father, as I walked the unknown streets of Paris, all the while thinking I was walking the streets of Madrid.