I don’t believe any other child (except my son) has had a father like mine. Can he even be called a father?
For a long time he tried to shake loose my idea that I was his son. I can still see, still hear clearly the same scene repeated many times over in exactly the same way: When everybody was asleep in the old apartment building, he would come home completely drunk, filling the entire apartment with his heavy, exhausted breathing and its disgusting stink of wine and vomit. I close my eyes and see him walking as quietly as he can, like a ghost, his index finger over his lips to show silence while he staggers from side to side without ever losing his balance completely.
A stranger seeing him might have thought he was, to a certain extent, a considerate drunk especially respectful of other people’s sleep. But his silence and his gestures, unfortunately, did not reflect those admirable qualities in a drinker. They hid a diabolical meaning instead. His only purpose was to surprise an imagined lover in my mother’s room.
It was his obsession at the time. Later I found out that it was not the only one. Once (one time among many) he abandoned our house completely, certain that all of us — my mother, me, the dog — were plotting to kill him in his sleep. Although I subsequently thought that my mother should have done it, his absurd suspicions were unfounded because she loved him.
When he was completely convinced (or so he thought) that once again he had been deceived, that the lover was more astute and less of a night owl than he was, he would come over to the cot where I lay sleeping and take me in his arms, shaking me in his rage, hurting me with his breath and his soft, idler’s hands. I would burst into endless screams that could have wakened the entire city. But he was not satisfied until he had hit me for a long time and shouted “You’re not my son, you’re not my son,” as if he wanted to convince the neighbors and convince me, a boy of six, that I was not the child of a mother like other children had but the son of a (I learned the word later) whore.
Mama would finally come to my rescue and take me away from that voice, that alcoholic breath, for which I thanked her from the bottom of my heart. Then I would curl up, trembling with cold, unable to sleep, nervous, frightened, seeing strange things in the darkness for a long time. Usually I sobbed for a while — sometimes without really wanting to — so my mother would feel sorry for me, sympathize with me, and cry a little too.
Because those scenes were repeated so often, I eventually came to believe that my father really wasn’t my father. The one thing I couldn’t understand was why he would always hit me that way because I was not his son, while it never occurred to him, not even once, to do the same thing to the other neighborhood kids who were surely not his children either.
Except for those times, I hardly ever saw him. He usually got up very late, when I was already in school collapsing with fatigue and not understanding the arithmetical operations that the teacher, who was probably also certain we were not his children, tried to beat into our heads with slaps and punches. Today I am amazed that I endured so much, that I can repeat the multiplication tables although I stammer and tremble uncontrollably.
I come home, my arms full of packages. I throw some of them on the bed; it looks like a huge dining room table covered with a long, smooth, white crocheted tablecloth. There are some plates on it. Big plates full of fruit. But I soon discover they are not plates but enormous flower paintings of (strange) green roses embroidered with brilliant silk thread.
I take off my hat and toss it, and it lands right on the dog’s head. He growls and shakes it off. (I look into the dog’s eyes; they have a strange glow.) Then, like someone getting ready for a surprise, with my eyes full of mischief, I look at my wife and son (who bears an extraordinary resemblance to me) and from an inside pocket of my jacket I start to remove (pretending all the while to hide it) something that slowly — very slowly — begins to take the shape of a tricycle. My son — I—has always wanted one and why shouldn’t I give it to him now that I have plenty of money? Except there must be some mistake, because instead of the necessary, correct, classic three wheels, an infinite number of wheels tumble out one after the other until they fill the room and become annoying, unbearable. I think: a manufacturing defect. Slightly embarrassed, I smile and start to put everything back into my pocket, back where it was before except in reverse. The wheels disappear with a golden metallic ringing sound, but the last ones — which had been the first — go in with great difficulty, oppressing my heart, making my breathing labored, almost suffocating me, choking me as if too large a mouthful of meat were stuck in my throat. I feel the beads of sweat break out on my forehead. I must stop at once. Any more and I’ll pass out, destroying the happiness of my wife and son. I am obsessed by the thought that if I die, no one will be able to figure out the tricycle’s mechanism, explained only on a piece of paper — or papyrus — that the salesman chewed and swallowed noisily so no one could ever reveal the secret of its construction.
In order to survive I must take out the wheels again, but there’s another problem with the mechanism and now they are as resistant to being removed as they were to being returned to their original place. Inspired — inspired — I decide to take off my jacket and throw it far away — or close by, it’s all the same. I can’t because the sleeves are tied to my shoulders with strong white straps. I don’t like the straitjacket. It’s an infernal device. I throw myself to the floor. That’s not the solution. I kick my legs wildly. I feel cold. I keep my legs still. When I can’t stand any more, when I can’t stand any less, when I’m drenched with perspiration, I cry and shout with all my might. My wife and son look at me with enormous, embarrassed eyes. My wife — my mother — comes, puts her hand on my forehead, gently wipes away the sweat, gives me a little water — very little water — and explains that it’s called a nightmare.
Toward the end he didn’t treat me so badly; he didn’t even insult me. Just every once in a while he would kick me, not very hard, just when he had the chance.
It took my mother and me several weeks to realize that a new fixed idea had taken control of his thoughts. He no longer looked for lovers under the beds, or smelled the food to see if it had been poisoned (as if he could find that out by smelling it), or smashed the dishes on the floor shouting that they had not been washed properly and he was being treated worse than a stranger. He had found a new victim: dogs.
In fact, day by day my soul was overwhelmed by a deep contempt for those animals. I came to despise them more than anything else in the world.
All the passions I might have nourished otherwise settled into a kind of thick, heavy sediment inside me, leaving behind on the surface, on the first layer of daily living, the disgust, the repulsion I felt toward those servile, humble animals with their teary, gentle eyes, their dripping tongues always ready to lick with pleasure the foot that does them harm.
My first victim (how many others have not yet fallen) was our own dog whose name — too degrading, too doglike1—I do not wish to state here. Come to think of it, I believe his name played a major role in the outcome. Perhaps if he had been called something else, I wouldn’t have noticed him. A dog’s name is as important as the dog himself. A man or woman can, if they choose, and for whatever strange, eccentric reasons, find another name for themselves. It’s a question of taste, and with three announcements by the Bureau of Public Records in the newspapers with the smallest circulation, the matter is taken care of. But a dog has to endure his name for his whole life unless he decides to take to the streets and become a bony, nameless stray, but that is a hard, sad life, and few are willing to settle for being thrown out of restaurants and the urinals of bars with a generic “Beat it, mutt!” much less an evil kick to the stomach. I remembered that the ancient philosopher had chosen can as the lowest, most despicable thing one could find. And I was happy to admire him for imitating dogs so that men would despise him as much as he despised men. I happened to read in a book: “Once, at a dinner, there were some who threw him bones as if he were a dog and he, approaching them, pissed on them as if he were a dog.” I also hated the old cynic — so forthright!