It was enough to listen to them.
“He never told us ‘Don’t leave, come live with me. .’ ”
“We were all grown up, Julia, we had no reason to continue at his side.”
“Despicable, despicable, that’s what he called us.”
“Well, now you see, he ground us down, he left us free.”
“To do what? To die?”
“No, to go on living.”
“Despicable.”
“What freedom? Let me tell you. The freedom to come here every year to obey him as if he were alive.”
“But if we didn’t—”
“Say it, Julia, but if we didn’t—”
“We’d be left without the inheritance.”
“What an injustice! Isn’t it?”
“But I thought when he was gone. .”
“That we’d do what we wanted?”
“Why can’t we see him?”
“He died.”
“Do you think so? Maybe he just can’t be seen, that’s all.”
“No. He died. This is just a ceremony. An empty ritual. Wake up. Realize what’s happening.”
“How hard you can be behind that cherub’s face.”
Augusta heard them without saying a word. She told herself she accepted fears because by now she was used to them. Now what would she have to accustom herself to when the custom of the annual ceremony around their father’s coffin was ended? What would become of their lives? Would they change? Or was custom now too strong?
She imagined, with a mixture of revulsion and humor, that the three of them, Genara and Julia and, why not, she herself, Augusta, would continue returning year after year to the garage in the sunken park, celebrating this action that none of the three could classify as commitment, ceremony, duty, habit, caprice, because by dint of repetition, it had become a part of their lives. Would they dare to end the custom? Or would it become the customary obligation in a hollow formula, an empty ritual? How to maintain the sensation of menace in the duty their father had awarded them? Was that feeling his real inheritance: keep me alive, daughters, live on the alert, questioning, dissatisfied? Why do you think I’ve imposed these time periods on you? Out of love, my pretty babies, out of love and nothing but! To avoid your falling into the softness of girls with good inheritances pursued by a legion of lecherous upstarts, starving good-for-nothings who don’t love you, cannot adore you as I do.
4. “Do you remember that we put on shifts and blindfolds when we bathed?”
“To avoid sin.”
“That’s what he said.”
“Do you realize, Julia, that we ourselves never saw him naked, in the bathroom, shaving?”
“Didn’t he let us see him?”
“Or didn’t he let us see ourselves?”
As the hours passed, Augusta thought their father had told her that he didn’t want his daughters to see him age. That he wanted to be forever young for them. An attractive father, in short.
“Do you know Papa’s age when he died?” Augusta asked them.
Genara and Julia looked at each other. “I don’t know. . seventy, eighty? A hundred?”
“Do you remember him as an old man?”
“What?”
“Yes, old.”
“No, young, always young. He ate the years.”
Genara laughed a great deal. “It isn’t the only thing he ate.”
“We remember him young.”
“But we never saw him young.”
“Because we only have photographs of the young Papa.”
“Isn’t there a single photo of the old Papa?”
“What’s the difference between what used to be and what was?”
“The difference between conscience and memory,” Augusta pronounced, and the sisters laughed because they didn’t understand.
Instead, they asked themselves: Why wasn’t an obituary published in the papers? Wasn’t that your obligation, Augusta? No, you said you’d do it, Genara. Don’t look at me, said Julia.
5. Later, Augusta wondered if there was a difference between conscience and memory. She thought there was. Memory happens today. We remember today. Conscience is always repentance buried in the past. We prefer to forget.
She didn’t say this because then she feels guilty for saying what she shouldn’t only because her words dictate themselves and demand to be spoken even though Augusta does not know how to and cannot measure the reach of speaking. At times she felt that someone was speaking through her, someone who did understand the difference between conscience and memory, not her, the simple vehicle of a mysterious voice that demanded to be heard.
Whose voice was it?
Was it she herself at another stage of her life, a past or future time when Augusta could understand why her recollections of the past all occurred today but her conscious present always happened in another time, never in the present?
“His demands were excessive,” murmured Genara. “He made the three of us face all the temptations and asked us to beg him for the power to resist them.”
“Speak clearly,” said Julia. “Who was going to resist the temptation, he or us?”
“Who knows? He was very capricious.” Genara shook her head.
“He was a tyrant,” Julia said abruptly, and Genara looked at her in astonishment, Augusta with anticipatory resignation.
Julia had been the pampered little girl and then the defender of their father’s image. This abrupt change was inexplicable unless, Augusta thought, Julia is trying to tell us that her devotion to Papa wasn’t foolishness but an act of conscious will that still led to faith. Augusta took advantage of the moment.
“Did you ever see Papa naked?”
Julia became embarrassed. Then she assented. “And you?” she said to Augusta.
“I don’t know if I saw him.” The older sister smiled maliciously. “I have the impression that I smelled him. He smelled of dirt, of crusted shit, of sweaty armpits, of crotch, of—”
“That’s not true.” Julia covered her sister’s mouth with her hand. “His body smelled of Yardley cologne, his hair of Barry’s Tricopherous—”
“He smelled of urine,” Augusta said with a smile, pleased by Julia’s reaction, her instantaneous fall into the cult to their father, her weakness. “He was a disgusting, miserly, tyrannical old man.”
“Generous, sweet, loving.” Julia sobbed with a fictitious air of repentance.
“A miser,” Augusta continued with repressed ferocity. “He was buried with his gold. He forbade us the comfort that was our right. He was like a wicked king. He would have liked to be buried with his servants and his cattle. And look how he achieved it. He saw our faces. He buried the three of us in his pyramid, like vile concubines. You’re right, Julia, he was a tyrant.”
“A good tyrant, a humane tyrant.” Julia lowered her eyes.
“An authoritarian father,” added Genara. “Isn’t that what we wanted? A strong man who would tell us ‘Do this, don’t do that. .’ Without him, we would have been lost in the world.”
“And he knew it.” Augusta’s response was biting. “That’s why he abused his authority. What did he imagine? That if we were independent, we would steal his power? Why didn’t he understand that our being free would make him stronger?” She looked at Julia scornfully. “He knew that you, Julia, had a vocation for slavery.”
“And you didn’t?” Julia moaned. “You did, too. That’s why you’re here, that’s why the three of us are still here. . because we’re slaves.”