He was always observing himself from a distance, always watching himself. He wanted to direct things, guide the plot of his illness and future death, and had it been within his reach, I’m sure he would have kept it up until the end. In addition to the legal proceedings he undertook at the beginning of his ordeal and the instructions he gave for after his death, this is illustrated by two revealing anecdotes.
The first is from the time I took him to see my mother’s house in Galicia, when he was still able to lead a more or less normal life, though in a limited way. We were in the train compartment the morning after our departure. We had woken up, he in the lower berth and I in the upper, and after saying good morning, he confessed with a yawn that before he fell asleep he’d thought that he wouldn’t mind dying there, safe with his son.
The second is from a few months later, from the trip to Kenya. After our exhausting bus ride, once we had arrived at my aunt’s house, I kept watch over him for three nights, his hand in mine, and on the worst night he said, as if to himself, that after all it wouldn’t be so bad to die in Africa.
These were the only two times in a year and a half when he referred to his death so explicitly, and both times a kind of manipulative impulse can be glimpsed, as if now that he had gotten used to the idea, what worried him more than death itself was the impression he would make with it. An impression that included the moment and circumstances of its occurrence as well as everything that it brought to a close: his own life, the relationship between us. Ultimately, though different, the two imagined deaths aren’t so dissimilar; both feature me as companion and confidant. The first is purely sentimentaclass="underline" the idea of dying with your son while the two of you are happy together; the other is more romantic, with all the exotic associations of a place like Africa. But it isn’t only the content that’s theatrical here; theatrical too is his reason for making these seemingly inappropriate remarks to me, inappropriate for someone who’s near death and who’d be better off not speculating about it. By saying what he said when he did, he was indirectly providing me with an image of himself, helping to define a little better how he wanted me to think of him: as someone strong and with a touch of sarcasm that persisted even in the face of death, and as someone for whom the proper finish meant dying in the company of his son.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting something like that; the end he sought and surely achieved isn’t trivialized by his deliberate pursuit of it. As I’ve said, he drew strength from the image that he wanted to convey, and his behavior wasn’t any less genuine as a result.
It’s true: sometimes those who are about to die rehearse or perform final acts that aren’t so much the epitaph that sums up a life as a way of making amends or settling a score that they believe is still pending.
But don’t the dreams into which we project ourselves reveal as much or more about us as our real selves?
You don’t lie flagrantly in an epitaph unless you’re crazy. You sum up your life, offer your regrets, or project what you once wanted to be.
No one draws strength from emptiness.
Any further speculation would be unjust.
* * *
I say goodbye to my father at the airport on November 29, and over the next ten days I visit the notary to sign the contract for the sale of the house, I deposit the check in a joint account, I rent a safe-deposit box for the payment in cash, I pack his clothes; I select — from the scant furnishings that survived the depredations of the friend he met in Brazil — what to bring to the pseudo-duplex that will be our home for the next three months; I perform the move … Meanwhile, my father takes walks with my mother, partially recovers his lost appetite, and, most of all, delights in the house in Galicia, which he can’t praise enough. I feel as if his approval is my final exam, passed with flying colors. I feel, just as I did when he saw it for the first time, that nothing my mother and I have ever done redeems us so thoroughly, that only our years of relentless saving make us deserving of the trust we were previously denied. I feel that if the house didn’t exist, he might not have put himself in my hands as he’s done. Later, my mother tells me that the days he spends at the house are an occasion for confidences, too. Apparently, he’s more open with her than he’s been with me, and he tells her that the only thing that consoles him is the thought that he has something to leave me. Apparently, at some point when my mother was telling him that she still hadn’t forgiven her own father for having favored his second wife and her children in his will, my father defended my grandfather’s memory, explaining that he probably acted as he did out of weakness and that he himself would have left everything to the friend he met in Brazil if she had taken care of him as she ought. I’m touched by this noble gesture, my father dragging himself through the mud to heal my mother’s wound with his own.
But around this time, December by now, I know from his diary that my father is conscious that the end is nearing. His body doesn’t respond the way it used to. He’s permanently tired. Everything scares him. Everything is a great effort, and the only thing that makes it worthwhile is the affection he feels surrounding him. Just a few weeks ago, difficulties were surmountable because of his will to live. Now, having lost the will, or having come around to the idea that sooner or later his will won’t be enough, the only thing that seems to keep him going is his desire not to let others down. Not to let me down, especially. And also, perhaps, his wish to make the most of his time with me, to repay me with this final burst of devotion for everything that we didn’t give each other in the past.
He’s exhausted when he gets back from Galicia. He won’t let anyone meet him at the airport. He takes a taxi to the unfamiliar place where my wife and I are waiting for him and where, though it’s only a temporary destination, I’ve tried to arrange some objects that have always accompanied him: the dresser from his bedroom, a carriage from an electric train he had when he was a boy.
The following days, December days, I lead an exhausting double life. On the one hand, I have to care for him with renewed vigor; on the other, I have to handle matters that could wait but that I need to proceed with to give him the impression that life is going on. I have to supervise the renovation of my mother’s old apartment where we’re supposedly going to live; I have to start work on the studio where I keep telling him that he’ll be able to paint; I have to find a lawyer to set in motion his divorce from the friend he met in Brazil, as he’s asked me to do. While I crisscross the city, he scarcely leaves the house, and when he does, I’m almost always at his side. Few are the days when this isn’t the case. One afternoon he goes with friends of his, a couple, to a Howard Hodgkin show, and he’s so pleased when he gets back that I’m sorry to have missed the chance to once again share the satisfaction he gets from looking at art.
It’s rare for him to forget, to come out of himself.
And not because he doesn’t try, because he does. He tries to be attentive, he tries to please; he’s immediately sorry if his perpetual tenseness (his feet hooked around the extendable footrest of the recliner) makes him snap at someone.
And he makes jokes.
But the day is long and full of hours, and it’s hard to turn his waning attention from the television screen. He keeps doing the crossword puzzle from the newspaper, and each day he writes a sentence or two in his diary, but he hardly reads, he can’t concentrate. It isn’t easy to engage him in conversation, unless it has to do with the progress of the renovation work, about which he’s always inquiring. When I’m alone with him, if I ask him about something concrete, he makes an effort not to disappoint me, but he rarely takes the initiative. When he has visitors, his gratitude and happiness gradually fade, and if several people are talking, he eventually falls silent. He has to be asked a question, addressed directly, to be prevented from drawing into himself.