I suppose I’m still divided on this subject, and finding a balance is as difficult as it always was, but the truth is that in moments of despair, in the absence of external justifications, which I know to be real and undeniable, I see no compensation for and no check on my ceaseless efforts to find out the truth. If things were as I describe, that only increases my fear and remorse for having been unfair, but it doesn’t, on the other hand, free me from the suspicion that my mother was playing with marked cards from the very start and that, apart from changes she had to make because of unexpected events that were out of her control, we never encountered anything that had not been previously planned and calculated by her. I should be grateful to her for allowing me to stay on the sidelines, I should be glad of the benefits of not having had to make decisions, I should recognize that my not having slithered down into still darker holes is due in large part to her capacity for manipulating and foreseeing the future, but it’s the deliberation and sacrifice implied by that conjecture that prevents me from doing so, the idea of her self-abnegation and the very minor role allotted to me. In the end, I put up with everything, I accepted her wishes, I went forward when she allowed me to and have ended up in the place she reserved for me; I’ve never put pressure on her, never gone beyond the bounds she set, never made things awkward for her or given her cause for concern. Even the fact that I’m still thinking about all this could be considered a triumph for her. It was all planned, part of her strategy, as are my continuing state of doubt, my clinging to the unknown, and my occasional speculative forays into the possibility that there are things she didn’t tell me, things that would paint a less perfect, less cerebral portrait of her. Both extremes would have been necessary for her to keep me safe from dangers I would not have emerged unscathed from otherwise. While one extreme protects me from dangers only she could prevent, the other neutralizes the phantoms and adverse reactions springing up inside me. After all, even if it’s true that she had no alternative but to lavish all her attention and care on me at the cost of neglecting herself, rather than seeing this as a selfless sacrifice against which I must rebel, I find it more comforting and more pleasant, and more favorable to her, too, to think that she might not have been as cool and cautious as she seemed and was, on occasions, overwhelmed or defeated, that she made mistakes and deceived both herself and me.
Perhaps she did weigh up and foresee everything, even my indecision and my many contrary impulses, and that is the conclusion I tend to reach in moments of extreme despair, when I allow myself to succumb to distrust and resentment and to return to the ingenuous idea of her possible deceit, even though I know that if she did conceal things from me, no betrayal could ever outweigh her devotion. I struggle with this whenever I’m mired in pessimism, but at the same time, I’m still not sure and I immediately feel ashamed of my own exaggerated obsessiveness and drive it from my mind, blaming everything on my own lack of balance. It doesn’t matter whether things were done deliberately or not, I tell myself. She might well have weighed up and foreseen everything, even my uncertainty and the contrary impulses doing battle inside me, but even were that so, it would still not justify my disaffection, it wouldn’t make her protective shell any thicker or save her from the attacks she was armoring herself against. Underneath her apparent strength, I see how vulnerable and fragile she is — as deserving of compassion as if she had trusted entirely to providence and shown no more foresight than the amount one needs in order to survive from day to day with just a vague awareness of looming misfortune; as confused as if she had found herself forced to improvise and every act or decision relating to me had been the product of an oft-repeated, sterile debate in which any benefits from the winning side of the argument were cancelled out automatically by the losing side; no colder or more egotistical than if she’d let herself be guided solely by instinct and there had been neither despair nor planning, only a need to adapt herself to events as they happened; no less considerate, either, than if she’d limited herself to doing only what she wanted to do, ignorant of the many interpretations and consequences that her actions would have for me; no more devoted and dedicated than she would have been if I weren’t her only child and I’d had brothers and sisters with whom to share her attentions.
Time passes, and memories grow hazy, and what never dies loses intensity and inevitably, in hindsight, seems less important than it was. There are no answers to the unresolved unknowns, apart from those I myself can offer, but I shouldn’t complain. No word can change the past, and no word is the right word if you say it when what it describes is the past and not the present. In the present, there are no words. Words come later, and then we all use them in the same way, we can all describe things and give our opinions even though what we are describing and giving our opinions about is not ours, even though it never happened to us. We don’t need someone to spell out what we can only guess at, because we can never be sure that what he or she is telling us is the whole thing or only part of it, and our doubts will remain unassuaged. I’m tired of feeling that I’ve been the exact same person for far too long, tired of thinking about my Aunt Delfina, and my mother, and my father who is not my father. I’m tired of the grief and pointless complaining, of longing for what I do not have and might perhaps loathe if I did have it. I’m tired of the anger and remorse, and of the suspicion that it is merely my own egotism that drove me on then and still drives me on now.
Today I went to visit my mother in the hospital, and as usual, I went with my wife. I prefer her to come, too, because I would find it much more upsetting without her. I would feel I was being cruel keeping my mother there rather than at home, and I would be beset by all kinds of anxieties. As happens more and more often, my mother didn’t recognize me, but she hadn’t deteriorated physically since the last time I saw her, and, within limits, she seemed well. Naturally, I was glad to see this, but when I left, I felt sad to remember her life, how quickly it had passed, and I couldn’t help asking my wife, as I so often have before, if she believes that Paris ever really happened.
“What does it matter,” she said, “when nothing matters any more.”
And she’s right.
It’s a feeling of dread. It’s nostalgia. It’s fear. It’s the dreams that loom in the darkness. It’s time. It’s wanting to run to her bedside and say, “Forgive me, it’s all right, I know everything, go to sleep.”