With Dad at Madame Sophie's

"I'm taking you to learn about the world," were his first words after a long silence. He turned the car's ignition with unusual enthusiasm. He looked like a teenager dressed in that wild shirt. His gestures were bold and youthful, he smiled, he joked. Now I can't keep the scenes from repeating in my mind over and over with morbid persistence. Again I take up the thread of the events. I observe his face glowing with a joy that seemed almost forced. I evoke the moments of that day when he took me to learn about the world, his secret and sordid world.

Today he is thoroughly dead and is more sincere than ever, as his stiff face proclaims beneath the funerary mask. Today I can remember him without resentment, because that was the only time he said goodbye to all decorum.

"You have to learn to live life." He repeated his prefabricated phrases every so often, so that I could reflect about the previous one and get a rough idea of the purpose of our trip. He did it in a sly manner, without looking at me. I didn't feel compelled to answer. His words were meant to produce certain precise effects and I think he was successful. Hence the sententious, categorical style meant to betray his vast experience. I let myself be taken, oblivious to his plans. The only thing that mattered then was to keep my identity, this was perhaps the best manifestation of my hidden defiance. He wasn't talking to me, he was talking to himself, with that carefree and jovial air which was the most refined aspect of his solitary nature. I wasn't happy; nor was I upset. I looked at the shooting stars passing over us in the highway and forgot that Dad existed, that he was next to me, driving me to his paradise, that I was supposed to feel grateful for his benevolence.

Co-workers and friends are arriving. Silently, they walk up to the coffin, look at Dad's stony face, maybe scrutinize the impeccable black suit, the old tie which looks as good as new, dignified, clasped to his shirt by the gold pin. Some who arrive give me great hugs, feel sorry for me (I guess this from their faces); the women, teary-eyed, kiss me. Others mouth phrases I don't catch because they are barely whispers emitted quickly, half-heartedly. My wife Laura dries her tears and looks at me embarrassed, no doubt, because she grasps the extent of the scandal. I am the center of the ceremony (Dad is a lifeless point of reference), and I can allow myself the luxury of not speaking. Of course, although I maintain the demeanor of a man who is grieving, I won't look at Dad's pale face again. I hate his rigid expression, his flattened eyes, his purple lips, the hardness of his dried-out cheeks.

When we left the city, Dad turned on the cassette player. We had heard the recording hundreds of times, but he never tired of that horrible, sugary voice (much as I try, I can't remember the name of the singer) which executed one absurd love song after another. But he loved them. He was spellbound by the magic rhythm of those ridiculous boleros; he hummed some parts and knocked the steering wheel with the ring on his left ring finger. The waves of Varón Dandy cologne which flowed from his nearby body made me sick to my stomach. There were moments when I wanted to ask him to let me out of the car, irritated by the outrageous flowers on his guayabera. I didn't dare. I never could defy him, not even on that day of adventure and humiliation. I was always afraid of his hairy hands, his cutting voice, his piercing glance, his implacable orders. That is why that day I let...