He picked up the shotgun and aimed it at the bedroom door. His old man was on the other side, lying in bed with his eyes open, waiting for him to finally leave. The music from the television slipped out under the door. His father was slow and silent, every day he walked, shoeless, in pajamas and socks, to the bathroom, before getting dressed. If he opened the door now he’d find a barrel in his face. He would have another heart attack. Would anything really change if he were in a wheelchair? Or would it be worse?
He could play like that with his father and yet didn’t abandon him, didn’t disappear and let him die alone, peacefully. He had the feeling that he wasn’t completely in control of the extremes, that he only had a handle on what was within certain limits. Both kindness and wickedness lay outside of his jurisdiction. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there: they had ways of crossing the border on their own, they knew hidden paths, secret tunnels, they entered him illegally, saints disguised as Adolf Hitler, scorpions among the harmless silverware in the kitchen drawer, and he didn’t realize until it was too late.
His father’s story wouldn’t end well. Knowing the end, why continue? He pulled two shells out of his pocket and loaded the shotgun. The cartridge cap was dented; the gun was at least twenty years old.
You made me and raised me; you are responsible for me.
He kept aiming until his arms got tired. Then he lowered the shotgun and put it back down on the table. There was a bit of thick yellowish sludge at the bottom of his mug, a sweet paste that would have to be poured down the drain.
“Papa,” he said, without raising his voice. “I’m off. I’ll leave this for you on the table.”
He only meant the shotgun, but animals sense danger. It rains and the snails come out of their holes, to save themselves from the water, they climb up plants, little birds chirp nonstop as they fall from their nest, and even a shitty little ant will spin around like a lunatic when it senses death. His father had heard him, he was old not stupid, and the door opened.
“Mind telling me what you’re doing with that?” his father asked. “You can take it with you, alright? You can throw it into the woods, you hear me? I don’t ever want to see it again!”
I was playing with the shotgun. It went off. It would be the prosecutor’s word against mine. And who wants to kill his own father? And why? They would let him off precisely because it was his father.
What difference is there between any old guy and your father? Why should it be any less natural to want to blow your father away? Children have power over their parents, because children are the only ones who know the truth about them. They have a lot of information — not only genetic — they have knowledge, they know better than anyone what’s going on inside their parents. It’s not parents who know their children — parents know their kids through themselves, like a replica, not an original, and anyway, they’ve gotten too old, they’re muddled up, can’t keep things straight — it’s the children who know their parents: they have inherited the secret codes, the incriminating information, the definitive proof.
If he left the shotgun on the table for his father, was there any possibility that he would use it? None. His father had always known where the shotgun was. Miqui put on the safety, covered it with his jacket, and left the apartment. As he went down the stairs — there was still time to go back — an embolism started to form in his brain, the pool of blood that would have emerged from his father’s pajamas; blood that spread over the floor, so clean he could see himself in it, blood of his blood drawn in blood, father and son, each mirroring the other.
II
The truck was waiting for him at the back of the lumber warehouse. He jumped into the cab, put the shotgun down on the seat beside him, started the engine, and went out onto the street with the feeling that he was opening tunnels with the nose of his truck.