I suppose that this kind of experience stays fixed in the subconscious, waiting for the right stimulus to reactivate it. Anyway it was a big mistake to lose my nerve just at the moment when I most needed to keep calm. As soon as I opened my eyes and saw Mama’s face I regretted my weakness. It can’t be helped, these things find a way to burst out. I think we could all have ended up going mad if Papa hadn’t made a clean break.
Papa came in just now, as I was writing his name. Or rather, he peered around the door into the room, saw me writing and went out again without saying a word. It’s incredible, the degree to which people in an extreme situation can lose consciousness of their own acts; Papa must think that what he has done is the most normal thing in the world. But I don’t want to mock him; at the end of the day he has borne the brunt of this situation. It can’t have been easy to call the hospital. Speaking for myself, I don’t know if I could have done it. Especially not in the way he did: I confess that I was amazed by his sangfroid. Last night he tried to kill his brother—I heard him clearly. I don’t know, I suppose that was the most direct way to convey the gravity of the situation but it sounded very stark all the same. I was lying in bed, and the words sent a jolt through me.
No; the worst is still to come. I mean we’ll have to talk to the doctors. They’ll want to know when we noticed the first symptoms, what his relationship with me was like, what could have led him to do what he did. And why should I be the one tasked with explaining everything? For two reasons. First: because I have to spare Papa and Mama (and also Adelaida) the trauma of talking about this. Second: because I don’t think they would be able to contribute much given that they have pretended for so long that everything Juan Luis did was normal. It’s a natural function of their neurosis. Or a survival mechanism. (They did know, however. I remember one particularly significant incident. The five of us were having dinner. A music programme had just ended on the radio. The presenter was reading Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla. At the point in the story where it starts to become clear what illness the protagonist is suffering from, Adelaida stood up and switched off the radio. A silent gesture, but charged with meaning. I waited for Mama or Papa to do or say something fitting to the parent of a girl who — without asking us — had just interrupted the broadcast of a story to which we were all listening. Nothing happened. The silence that followed was so dense that for a few seconds I feared Juan Luis might pick up the radio and hurl it at someone’s head.)
Then again, even as a boy he wasn’t normal. Brilliant, yes, but not normal. That’s what worries me, I realise now. How to explain that to the doctors. They’ll ask me: And why did you never say anything about those strange looks? I’ll say, He didn’t always look at me that way, Doctor, and when he did I thought it was because he was angry with me. They’ll ask: Why did you never tell anyone that he shouted at night? I’ll tell them: We were children, Doctor, you know how these things are. I was scared that they would beat him (then Mama will jump in protesting that she has never lifted a hand against any of her children; on second thought, I’d better be careful not to say that and spare myself the complications). They are going to ask: And why did the others notice nothing? That will be the hardest part to explain. I could say: You know how parents generally treat the youngest child, especially someone like Juan Luis, an apparently perfect boy, Doctor, the kind who always carries off the end-of-year prize. Or alternatively: You’re the psychiatrist, Doctor; I don’t need to explain to you the lengths to which a bourgeois family will go to protect itself from abnormality. No, I can’t say that. I won’t have the courage to destroy Mama’s cherished image. It might be better not to mention our childhood; I don’t want to give them reasons to find me responsible for Juan Luis’ illness. We all know what psychiatrists are like — they attribute a significance to everything. I’ll say what everyone thinks: that the first sign was at Baldi’s house. Nobody can refute that because all five of us were there that time.
We were in the garden, I’m sure of that because I remember noticing the reddish reflections on the face of Señora Baldi (which made her look even fatter than she actually is) and thinking that dusk was a particularly irksome time of day. The talk was of some homeopathic doctor or other. Everyone knows that I find these inane conversations exasperating, so I did what I always do on such occasions: I didn’t listen. It’s easy: a simple question of perspective. What I mean is, if you consider that a radio has a much greater range from the twelfth floor than it does from sea level, you can understand that it’s possible to shrink the radio of one’s own perception to the body’s compass. Except that this time, when I returned from my isolation I had the impression (to start with it was only an impression, something you could feel in the air more than anything else) that other people in the garden were annoyed. I looked around me, but I realise now that even before looking, I knew what was happening. It was Juan Luis talking, in fact it was most likely his voice that broke my absorption. It wasn’t the mere fact of his talking, though, but the way he talked. Without a break, and with a strident tone that made the skin bristle. I noticed that some people were looking at me, as though begging me to intervene. Not Mama and Papa; not Adelaida, either: they still had their eyes on Juan Luis as though nothing strange was happening. It wasn’t the last time I observed this reaction or piously contributed to it myself (every time Juan Luis embarked on one of his weird episodes I would tell an anecdote or think up some gambit to divert attention towards me). That afternoon in the garden I attempted one such loving intervention though on this occasion (I must confess) it was totally ineffective, given its ultimate consequences. First, I knocked over a jug of sangria, prompting a commotion that forced Juan Luis to be quiet. Then I contrived to make myself the centre of attention, talking about mechanics, about spiritualism, all that nonsense that people find so fascinating. I’m sure that I succeeded in neutralising my brother on that occasion.
But I don’t want any more importance to be given to my behaviour than it had in reality. The illness was already apparent and, although we avoided talking about the subject, our behaviour changed. Every day, as the time approached for Juan Luis to come home, we would start shouting at one another, taking umbrage at the slightest trifle, lashing out for no reason. Perhaps not surprisingly, Mama was the most affected. She developed a kind of hysterical defence: finding herself in the company of any other human being, she would start to talk about Juan Luis, about his paintings, his girlfriend, how handsome he was, etc. I mean, I don’t want to come across as hyper-sensitive but I sometimes got the impression that she invited people round simply in order to talk to them about my brother. I don’t think she did this consciously (my mother hasn’t a Machiavellian bone in her body) but I realised how bizarre this must seem to our guests — and there was nothing I could do about it. In the beginning, yes, I did try to rein in her panegyrics but that seemed to make her more anxious, so that finally I opted for total silence when people came to visit. (Happily that mania for having visitors seems to have stopped.)