When I think about it now, it seems like a completely crazy idea, and I find it hard to believe that I really thought my aunt would be so disloyal as to tell me about something that my mother had deliberately kept hidden from me. Surely I must have realized that she would probably say nothing — as was, in fact, the case — and, at the earliest opportunity, tell my mother that I had called her. After all, I only ever spoke to her when my mother was there, and I certainly never phoned her on my own account, and although my initial intention was to creep up on the subject and conceal my real reason for phoning by engaging her in a meandering and apparently banal conversation in which I would be content to interpret silences and telltale pauses rather than unearth any absolute certainties, I should have known that Delfina would only have to hear my voice to suspect that something was amiss. However, I would not go so far as to say that, simply because such a danger hung over my decision like a potential threat, phoning my aunt was an oblique way of alerting my mother to my feelings and provoking the longed-for explanation. That might have been my unconscious intention, or, more likely, I was poised between that wish and its opposite extreme — a total disregard, at once proud and troubled, for the consequences of such a gesture.
Anyway, I made the call, and although it’s true that, as I feared, my aunt signally failed to clear up the doubt that had me in its grip, talking to her proved decisive in another sense: it precipitated events and set my mother on the path toward telling me what she had perhaps thought she would never have to tell me. I chose a moment when my mother had gone out to the store, on the Saturday afternoon following the meeting in the café where my unease had first begun. Fortunately, Delfina was at home and was the one who answered the phone. For a few minutes, I could hardly get a word in. When she heard my name, she embarked on a whole litany of trivial questions about my life and school, and not until she had exhausted every topic and given me all the advice she deemed relevant did she fall silent, waiting for me to tell her the reason for my call or put my mother on the phone. Feeling suddenly unable to take the step I had planned, I responded to her silence with more silence, and after a few embarrassing seconds, she went ahead and asked about my mother. I said that she wasn’t at home, and my aunt asked in an alarmed voice, “Why? Has something happened?” I reassured her, telling her that my mother had just gone out to the store and would be back soon, and then, after a further pause, during which I rather regretted having phoned, I blurted out the news of my mother’s meeting with my father in a near-incomprehensible babble, as if by piling word upon word there was a chance she might not understand or notice that this was the real reason for my call. My exact words, spoken with my heart racing, were: “I think my father is in Madrid and that Mom has seen him.” Such was my uncertainty as to the effect my words might have on Delfina that what happened next inevitably took me completely by surprise. My aunt did not wait for this information to sink in before responding. She reacted at once, and instead of putting me off with some vague answer or saying what did it matter if my parents had seen each other, she did nothing to disguise her shock.
“What? What do you mean?” she asked with unusual urgency, with a directness and lack of caution that took me aback. I repeated what I’d said, and when I had, she launched three questions at me, in a tone of voice that sounded even more hysterical and demanding: “When? How do you know? Did you see him, too?”
“Yes,” I said, still perplexed by her spontaneous, unrestrained response, “yes, I saw them both.” And then, after a moment’s hesitation, “That’s how I know they met. But they don’t know that I know. It was pure chance. I saw them when I was coming back home after school.”
“Yes, but when?” she asked again.
“A few days ago,” I said, “in the afternoon, it was a Monday or a Tuesday.” I could have said more, I could have added that my mother had not mentioned the meeting since then, but I decided not to compromise myself and left my aunt to take the initiative.
As if she had read my mind, my aunt did not stay quiet for long. She took a deep breath, and as she exhaled, she asked me with renewed energy, “Did she tell you why she saw him? Have you spoken about it?” I replied in the negative to both questions, and she again fell silent. After a moment, she exclaimed, “This is horrible. She must be insane. I can’t believe it. What on earth is she doing meeting up with him again?” And then, almost without pausing, “That imbecile is going to end up making a fool of her again. I don’t know what your mother can be thinking. I really don’t understand her. As if she hadn’t had enough. As if—” My aunt did not finish her sentence. She left it incomplete, and I realized that, after her initial outburst, she had suddenly remembered who she was speaking to. I heard her breathe into the mouthpiece, and for a few seconds, she didn’t say another word. I sensed that this was the end of the conversation and that all I could do now was to wait for what would happen when my mother found out. I was about to come up with some excuse in order to say goodbye, when I heard her shamefacedly ask my forgiveness. Her tone was quite different and reminded me of that other plea for forgiveness two or three years before, on the eve of my mother’s return from La Coruña, on the afternoon when she had taken me to a café in order to lecture me about the future and I had burst into tears. On the other hand, unlike that other occasion, she did not withdraw her words. She apologized, and what she said was, “Look, don’t you worry. It’s probably nothing. They probably met by chance and she didn’t think it necessary to tell you.” And then, as if she found the words hard to say, “Just in case, though, don’t say anything. Don’t tell her that you’ve spoken to me. Wait until I’ve found out more.”
That was the last thing my aunt said to me. I will never know if that was, indeed, the last thing she was intending to say to me or if she would have said more. After her advice to say nothing, which, I confess, troubled me as much as would a similar piece of advice directed at my mother and in which I, not she, was the person being kept out of the loop, she lowered her voice to an almost inaudible whisper and said that her husband, my uncle, had just come in and that she could say nothing more. She hung up without so much as a goodbye, and I was left holding the phone in my hand until I heard our own front door closing and my mother’s voice calling from the hall, asking me to help her carry in the groceries. I cannot, therefore, know if that was or wasn’t the last thing my aunt was going to say to me, just as I cannot know what would have happened if I had decided not to phone her that afternoon, if my mother would ever have told me about Paris or if I would still be assailed by the same doubts, if I would have needed to put those doubts down in writing as I am doing now, or if I would have allowed it all simply to slide into oblivion. Of one thing I’m sure: it was thanks to that phone call that other, unimagined secrets finally surfaced and allowed me to understand both how very alone my mother was and the opposition she must have met with in order to do what I feared she had done but still don’t know if she did.