He had been struck by relentless hunger pangs and he wanted to jump into the first diner they passed, but Lorenza convinced him to wait until they reached La Biela, a bar in the heart of the Recoleta neighborhood, next to a splendid park that she knew well from family outings in Buenos Aires when she was a teenager.
They chose a table by the window to watch the passersby, and Mateo, who seemed to have decided to act according to the mores of a man of the world now, pulled the chair back for his mother. Then he put on his best adult voice and in a tone suitable for ordering a double whiskey at the bar, asked the waiter for two glasses of milk.
“Do you want both of them at the same time?”
“Yes, please, if it’s not a problem.”
“Wow, kiddo, sleek!” Lorenza lauded him.
On the sidewalk, a family passed by with a puppy, a Bernese mountain dog, on a leash, a spongy and irresistible ball of bouncing and nuzzling fur, with a pretty black head and white snout. Mateo, who was a dog lover, got up from the table, went out on the street, and asked the owners the name of such a handsome creature and if he could pet it, and he stayed with them for a while. He returned eager to tell his mother that the puppy was named Bear, but she jumped in first and with a big smile announced that she had ordered two plates of roasted pork loin with pineapple, which had been one of her father’s favorite dishes.
“You mean you ordered pork loin with pineapple for you,” Mateo said, emphasizing the “for you.”
“For both of us, you’re going to love it. My papa loved it. What a pleasure it will be to eat the same dish he always ordered when we used to come here.”
“But you know I hate pineapple and pork gives me a stomachache.” Mateo’s disappointment seemed unfathomable.
“No, no, you’ll like this dish, I promise. As soon as you taste it you’ll agree, just see.”
“Don’t do that, Mother. I wanted to order something else. When are you going to stop making decisions for me?” The radiant expression had completely disappeared and his confident air had evaporated. He sunk in his chair and began to anxiously twirl a loose lock, forgetting about the great care with which he had fixed his hair. Lorenza tried to apologize but immediately realized that it was too late, that no one could break through the absorbed silence that had overtaken her son. No one except the waiter, who approached the table to hand them the menus again because they had sold out of pork loin.
“Everything else is available,” he offered. “But we’re out of that.”
“Thank God,” Lorenza said, and asked for a ham and cheese sandwich, a salad, and tea. Mateo took the menu disinterestedly, but sat up in his chair. He grew more cheerful as he read through the list of pastas, and after considering all the choices, he decided on fettuccine alla panna, which he devoured as soon as they put it in front of him and which quickly restored his spirits.
“So you came here with your papa?” he said, suggesting to his mother that he was ready to consider a truce. “Did you ever come with Forcás?”
“We wouldn’t have been able to afford it. Besides, the resistance had once attacked this restaurant. They set off a bomb and it was closed for some time.”
“Stop, stop, I didn’t ask you for stories about attacks or wars. What I wanted you to tell me is how you ended up in Buenos Aires the time you met Ramón.”
“Life works in mysterious ways.”
“Ah, no, I’m falling asleep already. Can you please not start with such a cliché?”
“You know what, Mateo? I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I was wrong to order the pork, all right, but stop being so rude.”
“Oh, come on, don’t get mad.”
“Then stop being such a pain in the butt.”
“Fine, I’ll stop.”
“This is the thing, if you’ll listen, you can learn. You’ve come here searching for your father, and years ago I too came here trying to find mine.”
“But your father lived in Bogotá. And wasn’t he already dead?”
“He had just died, a few days before.”
“So?”
“So I had to go looking for him. We all do it, go searching for our dead.”
“You wouldn’t cry when he died. You’ve told me that.”
“They say that a death that truly matters to you never makes you cry, instead it defeats you,” she told him, and then asked if he wanted some of her salad. He shook his head, but she insisted. When she tried to put a few lettuce leaves on his plate, he grabbed her by the hand and glared at her, enraged.
“Again with this, Mother?”
It was their old war about food, in which they had been engaged for a long time, forever, it seemed. And what she felt at that moment was, in some ways, also rage. It unsettled her that her son refused to eat fruits and vegetables. She felt infuriated, worried, and confused, not understanding how he could feel such an aversion for any food that had more than one color or texture, that strayed too far from the primary flavors.
This predilection for white and soft food, milk, bread, vanilla ice cream, pasta, seemed to her to go against all instincts of survival, decency even, as if he feared bringing anything dark, unfamiliar, or surprising to his mouth, as if his innards only tolerated those first foods from the age before fear set in, the childish pap and puddings that he seemed to yearn for still.
“So what’s the story with that, the fact that you couldn’t cry for your own father?” he asked, his tone suddenly calm and seeking a quick cease-fire.
“It’s not a story, I’m allergic to tears. They burn my skin. They’re salty water, after all.”
“Maybe your personality is shaped a little too much by that allergy.”
“Perhaps. Those who can cry don’t flee in the face of some sorrow, they stay put and weep until they learn to tame the tears.”
“And you, on the other hand, fled instead of going to your own father’s funeral. But I’m not sure I buy this whole tears thing. Tell me why you weren’t there, if you loved him so much. Because instead of taking a return flight to Bogotá to bury him, you took another flight, one that brought you to Buenos Aires.”
“One morning in Madrid, the phone woke me with the news of Papaíto’s death, a massive coronary, his heart had burst into a thousand pieces. I hung up, got up, bathed, dressed, took the train, went into the party’s office in Virgen de los Peligros, near the Puerta del Sol, and told them I was ready to fly to Argentina.”
“You mean you didn’t even tell them your father had just died?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Think of the party as a mosque, and your feelings and all the other personal stuff as your shoes. Before you enter the mosque you take your shoes off. When Papaíto died, I didn’t tell anyone, and a few days later, I was on a plane to Buenos Aires.”
“This is bizarre, Lorenza, very very bizarre. You need to explain it to me.”
“I will, but let me finish my tea in peace first. You know how I love to drink my tea … in peace.”
There was a brief silence.
“Ready now?”
“Here goes. Every single day since I had left my parents’ home, I dreamed about returning. I was doing my duty in Madrid, basically performing supporting tasks for the Argentinean resistance from the outside. I lived my life, followed my passion, worked like crazy. It was fine. Let’s just say that I thought I was fulfilling my destiny, or that thing that we each call our destiny, and who knows what it truly is, or why we insist it’s got to be one thing and not another. We say ‘my true destiny’ with such conviction that who knows where it comes from, but it is the crazy cow that we jump on.”