A Distant Father Read Free Page A

brother.”
    “This baby?”
    “Emilio.”
    “Like Zola.
    “Voilà. Comme Émile Zola.”
    “But he’s … he’s not a real
brother
brother.”
    “Listen, Jacques, I came here and settled into the darkest corner of Angol. In a dump, in a cave. I have no more life, I wander in the shadows. I never imagined anyone would find me here. I never thought I’d run into my son in this miserable goddamned hellhole.”
    “What are you doing here, Dad?”
    “Going down the drain.”
    He puts the little cap back on the baby’s head and scratches his own scarred cheek. The scar’s inflamed again, as though reacting to some kind of allergy.
    “Who’s the mother?” I ask, quite naturally, but on the verge of fainting, weeping, or dying.
    I don’t know how to go into certain details.
    Pierre gives a deep sigh and uses the butt of his cigarette, which he’s never stopped sucking on, to light another one. He forgets to offer me the pack. He also forgets that I’m talking to him. He looks at the sky over Angol; nothing new there. Robust, inconstant clouds. The downpour could start this very moment or an hour from now.
    “Daddy?”
    “Don’t call me that.”
    “All right, Pierre.”
    “The word you used is infinitely treacherous.”
    “I always called you Daddy before you betrayed us.”
    “I’m the traitor? Me?”
    On a foolish impulse, he snatches up the baby from its carriage, squeezes the little bundle very tightly in his arms, and presses his unshaven cheek to the child’s lips. He sticks his cigarette in my mouth and pauses to look at a still shot of Dean Martin. I breathe the smoke in deeply and blow it out far from the baby.
    “So you never went to France, Pierre?”
    “Jamais.”
    “You’ve been in Angol the whole time?”
    “Yes. Angol,
le petit Paris.”
    “Why didn’t you go?”
    “Because I wanted to be near you. And your mother.”
    “You never wrote.”
    “I declared myself officially dead.”
    “The miller knew about you. Just last night he told me you were still alive.”
    “He must have been drunk.”
    “We were both drunk.”
    The clock in the square strikes six. My father checks his watch, and a kind of peace settles over him.
    “I love this kid.”
    “As much as me?”
    “As much as you, Jacques.”
    “Then one day you’re going to betray him.”
    “It wasn’t betrayal.”
    “Then what was it, Daddy?”
    He spreads his arms in a small gesture, almost as if to defend himself.
    “Bewilderment.”
    “At your age?”
    “At my age. I’m not giving you an explanation. I never thought I’d run into you again one day, or into anybody else I’d have to give an explanation to.”
    “The miller.”
    “Cristián’s a mirror. I stand in front of him, and he’s me. You stand in front of him, and he’s you. He offers no resistance. But you—you’re hard, Jacques.”
    “It’s too late for me, Father. I’m talking about my brother.”
    He rocks the child in his arms and places his lips on its left ear, warming it with his breath.
    “I cover him up too much. The thing is, he spends a lot of time in the projection room, and it’s terribly damp in there. If you heard him breathe, you’d say he had bronchitis.”
    “The projection room?”
    “Like I said, I work in this movie theater.”
    I hand him what’s left of the cigarette and press my fingers against my eyelids to calm the conjunctivitis that’s devouring my eyes.
    “You’re the projectionist?”
    “It’s a dark, solitary place. No one would have ever found me there. I never thought my own son would come spying on me one day.”
    He grabs his nose and squeezes it until it turns red.
    “Even though I once went to Contulmo and spied on you.”
    “When?”
    “I don’t remember. Sometimes I dream about traveling to Contulmo and spying on you and your mother. I don’t know when I really went or when I just dreamed about going.”
    He puts Emilio back in the baby carriage and takes two pieces of cardboard out of