There’s nothing less conducive to wit than being a schoolteacher in the provinces. I walk over to the movie theater, a few steps away. At seven this afternoon, they’re showing Rio Bravo, starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson. The coming attraction for next week is Wild Is the Wind, with Anna Magnani. In a still photograph, John Wayne, wearing a sheriff’s badge on his lapel, is looking at Angie Dickinson’s bare shoulder; Angie’s got on a short petticoat with black lace insets, and the seams of her stockings go all the way up to her buttocks.
“Rio Bravo is a film about becoming a man,” the advertisement says. Maybe that’s why I keep staring at the photograph for so long, and at the one beside it, too: Ricky Nelson, in a crouch, holding a pistol whose barrel disgorges a tremendous amount of smoke.
A few passersby pause briefly in front of the posters and then continue on their way, except for a man with a black wool cap. He pushes a baby carriage, stops to light a cigarette, and glances without interest at the publicity stills. At first I can’t see his face, but he stands there smoking for so long that I end up recognizing him just as he throws away his cigarette end, turns, and crushes it under one shoe.
On the point of losing my balance, I clutch desperately at the baby carriage.
“Dad?” I say.
The man peers confusedly into the little carriage and only then looks up at me. Those are his thick brows, his slightly hooked nose, his bottomless, moist, hidden eyes, and most of all, that’s his cheek, marked with his old bar-fight scar.
“Jacques? C’est vraiment toi?”
“Of course it’s me, Dad.”
He looks in all directions, like a cornered thief. He seems to want to make sure he’s not dreaming.
“What are you doing here, buddy?”
“I came to buy a gift for a student.”
I feel an immense urge to throw my arms around him and inhale the scent of his skin, which smells like a leather saddle.
“Are you with your mother?”
“No, Dad, I’m not.”
He pretends to dab at a smudge on his forehead, but in reality he deftly wipes away the troublesome liquid flowing from his eyes. Then he pulls me close and squeezes me in a hard embrace. I don’t know why, but I want that embrace to never stop.
When we let each other go, we simultaneously take out cigarettes, but my father is quicker with his lighter and lights us both. He removes a speck from his cheek and looks at John Wayne’s picture again.
“Rio Bravo. For the past two months, we’ve been running it as the Saturday matinee.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’ve been running it,’ Dad?”
“I work here. Rio Bravo’s a very popular movie. A lot of drinking goes on in this town, and people enjoy watching a lush like Dean Martin find redemption and become a good shot again to boot.”
“How many times have you seen it?”
“Twelve, fifteen. Depends on this little character here.”
He indicates the baby in the carriage. I look at the child, and Dad takes off its pint-sized canvas cap, meant to protect it from the no-show sun. The baby looks horribly familiar.
“I think I know that face, Pierre.”
Dad swallows saliva for a while, as if oppressed by my silence. He looks extraordinarily young. He’s my father, but he could also be a friend. Like the miller.
“He’s your 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.”