Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (27 page)

“Why not?”

“If you want to do something athletic, let Carmelita teach you how to swim.”

“I know how to swim.”

“But she can teach you to be an Olympic swimmer.” Over my protests, he walked into the kitchen to find Carmelita. She was preparing a fish soup for dinner. She stopped chopping up the vegetables when he told her his notion and answered in an irritated tone. That was when the evidence became too obvious for me to deny it. I had learned a lot of Spanish in the previous two months so I understood her reply and by now the obvious visual clue of her belly had become more pronounced—a round jutting shape that couldn’t be mistaken for fat. She complained she didn’t have a suit that would fit her with the baby. I knew I wasn’t the baby she referred to. Besides, to illustrate, she pulled her loose dress taut around the basketball in her stomach. She talked about the baby ruining her stroke so she couldn’t show me the correct moves and what my unconscious had known for weeks vaulted to the foreground. My mouth dried up. I interrupted their discussion of buying her a new bathing suit and said in parched English to my father: “She’s having a baby.”

He glanced at me and smiled. “Isn’t that great? You’re going to have a baby brother.”

I couldn’t answer. My mouth was too dry.

“Or maybe a sister,” he added. There was no wariness or self-consciousness in his voice. He was unaware that this news might trouble or displease me. If that seems astonishing, my father being a sophisticated intellectual, all I can say is that I agree; it is astonishing, but entirely consistent with his narcissistic and sentimental personality.

“I can’t swim like this,” Carmelita insisted. Tears came into her eyes. Again, I understood a lot in a flash: why she slept so much and seemed so unhappy. She was distressed by the malformation of her athlete’s body.

“You can stand on the shore and instruct him,” my father said.

“No.” She was firm. “You are his father. You teach him.” She walked out. A moment later, the door to their bedroom slammed.

Francisco turned to me. “Women,” he said in Spanish, accompanied by a look of rueful exasperation, a man-to-man look of our shared burden. “I’d better calm her down,” he added in English.

They were in the bedroom, with the door shut, long enough for me to examine thoroughly the unwieldy box of this information: all its edges were razor-sharp; I saw no way to embrace the contents without wounding myself fatally. To my mind I had one asset in my fathers eyes and that was my status as his only son. Countless times Francisco had thrown his powerful arm around my head and squeezed while saying, “You are my only son, the last of the Nerudas. Someday the world will say, Took at this man, the grandson of a Gallego peasant, who is so brilliant and handsome. How did he come so far?’ And I’ll answer, That’s my son, my only child, my heir.’” From my point of view I had so little left: no mother, no home, no friends, no family other than this man and his unique relationship to me and now even that was lost forever.

I left the apartment and went to find Gabby. He wasn’t behind the bar. But my Tennessee Williams heroine was on a stool beside a new boozy middle-age flirtation, this one an American who, surprisingly, seemed to be attracted by her garrulous self-aggrandizing style. In fact, he was so responsive, she was glad to see me. (The prospect of a successful consummation of a flirtation obviously appalled her.) She introduced me. His name was Tommy, an odd diminutive for a man who looked like a retired football player: six feet tall, thick-necked, face blotched by liquor, his crew cut almost entirely gray.

“Hey kid,” he said. “You sound like an American. Ever been there?”

I explained the apparent contradiction of my name and my fluency in English.

Her strategy worked. Tommy removed the hand he had put on her shoulder and asked me how I came to be in Spain. I answered briefly, said I was traveling with my father. I asked the Tennessee Williams heroine where Gabby was. She told me he’d gone to the kitchen.

I was welcome in there and I excused myself, ignoring Tommy’s call for me to stay. I found Gabby being chewed out by one of the waiters. The harangue stopped at my appearance. The waiter asked if I needed anything.

“I want a Coke,” I said and Gabby was released from the dressing down to attend to me.

Gabby called the waiter a cunt under his breath as we walked out the back way to
get
a case of Coke. That was why he had gone into the kitchen in the first place, he said. Once outside, on the gravel of the service entrance to the kitchen, I told him my father had given me permission to fight the baby bulls.

“Good,” he said. “We can go tomorrow. We have to leave early. Be ready by seven.”

That was good news because Carmelita and Francisco never woke before nine.

We returned to the bar. Gabby, the Tennessee Williams heroine, Tommy and I made a talkative foursome. Tommy seemed fascinated by us. He asked lots of questions and listened with enthusiasm to our life stories. He especially liked the fact that Gabby was going to teach me to be a bullfighter.

When the light faded, I said I had to go upstairs for dinner. Tommy said, “Hey, you like comics?”

Of course I did. I hadn’t been able to read any of my favorites for two months.

“Come with me to my car for a second,” he said.

“Another man’s going to leave me flat, darling,” our Tennessee Williams star said to Gabby.

“I’ll be back, babe,” Tommy said. He lurched forward and caught her unprepared to dodge a loud wet smack on the lips.

Only when, in the fading light, I was in the passenger seat of Tommy’s car, greedily holding the six brand-new comic books, did I feel odd about being with him. He put his hand on my neck and rubbed it. “You’re a good-looking kid,” he said. “How old are you?”

I was alarmed. Only vaguely, of course, and I thought I was being silly and cowardly, but his manner was sufficiently worrisome for me to toss the comic books into his lap. “I have to go home.”

Tommy shoved them back. “Hey, don’t be like that. I gave ’em to you. Take ’em. I got more in my apartment. You can come up tomorrow and take what you like.” He put a hand high up on my left thigh and squeezed. “After you fight the bulls.”

I cursed myself for having told him about my plans with Gabby. If I insulted him, he might tell on me. “Okay …”

“I’m in Three-A. Come tomorrow after lunch. Right?” He patted my thigh gently, interpolating each tap with quick strokes toward my groin.

I opened the car door, carrying the comics in my free hand. “Okay.”

“Good boy,” he slapped my behind as I got out. I raced into the building. I was overwhelmed with guilt by the time I reached the door. I was a fugitive again, a boy of secrets and rebellion. What should I do with the comic books? If I had to explain them to my father, then he might, in his infuriating gregarious way, befriend Tommy and learn about my plan. I put the comics under our doormat, intending to retrieve them after they fell asleep.

Carmelita and Francisco were in a good mood. She seemed especially affectionate toward me, stroking my hair after she served me a bowl of soup. My father told me they had decided to leave Alicante at the end of the month rather than stay for four months as originally planned. We would go to Barcelona. A really cosmopolitan city, my father added enthusiastically. “You’re not making much use of the beach, anyway, right? And we can find you an American school in Barcelona.”

“You said I didn’t have to go to school.”

“There’ll be other American kids there. God knows what they’ll be like. They’ll be the children of corporate executives. But they’re kids, after all. You’ll like them and they’ll love you.” He said to Carmelita in Spanish, “Rafael is always the most popular kid in his class.”

“No I’m not,” I said bitterly.

“Yes you are.”

“No I’m not!” Tears came with the anger.

My father shouted, “Goddamnit!” He stood up, his soup spoon still in his hand. “I can’t say anything right!” He looked at the spoon as if it were the cause. He threw it at the sink. It clattered into the well and slid up, bouncing off the wall, and landed on the stove with a bang. “I can’t satisfy everybody!” He shouted at Carmelita in Spanish, “I told you!” And he walked out. In a moment we heard the front door slam.

She hadn’t looked up from her bowl during the explosion. She calmly took anther sip. My tears and rage had scurried into a cubby in my soul and I doubt I could have found its opening with a team of searchers. What a bad boy I was! I counted my sins and my secrets and my bad feelings. No wonder I would no longer be my father’s only child—I didn’t deserve that honor.

The dreadful silence that followed my father’s exit lasted too long. I wanted to fetch my father’s spoon from the stove, but I was scared to break the tableau. Finally, Carmelita looked up at me. Her round face seemed serene. She said softly, “You shouldn’t be rude to your father. Especially when he compliments you.”

She was right, I believed, and yet I hated her for saying it. And, yes, I hated her for carrying the usurper in her belly. I didn’t deserve to be the only son, but if not for her, I would be anyway.

While Carmelita washed the dishes, I reclaimed the comics from the doormat, went to my room, locked myself in, and started to read. I was halfway through my favorite, an X-Men Special Edition introducing a new character, when my door shook so hard the floor vibrated. My father’s voice boomed, “Rafael. Open this door.”

I shoved the comics under my bed and hurried.

Francisco was so friendly and charming in his manner that you could forget at times how big he was. He filled my doorway, all six foot three of him, trim, but still two hundred pounds, his smooth tanned skin not at that moment a pleasant contrast to his white teeth, but dark and menacing. His warm light brown eyes were cold with rage. He stared down at me and said nothing.

I have tried to portray how scary he looked, yet I wasn’t intimidated. I was a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter, but in me there was a full-sized rage. “What do you want?” I asked rudely. “I’m busy.”

He slapped me with his open palm. My head jerked to the side and snapped back to confront him. My legs trembled, my heart pounded, but my face seemed to have disconnected from those cowards, and remained still: eyes fixed on him, unflinching and tearless.

“You disobeyed me,” he said.

I said nothing.

He flinched, rubbing his eyes with the hand he used to hit me. He uncovered to add, “Gabby told me what you’re planning. Do you know how humiliating it is to tell a stranger that your son is a liar?”

“No,” I said.

Francisco breathed in through his nose, snorting. His lips parted, showing teeth, and he raised his hand again.

I turned aside as if already struck. I watched the threatening hand out of the corner of my eye. It stayed aloft for a moment and then dropped to my shoulder. He pushed me. Like a frustrated kid in the schoolyard, my father shoved me as if testing whether I was willing to fight him. I was staggered but didn’t fall. I certainly didn’t shove him back.

“You’re riding for a fall, young man,” he said. His tone and manner were so unlike him that he seemed almost comical. He reached for the handle of my door. “You’re staying in this room until you’ve had a chance to think about what you’ve done.” He closed it halfway and added, “Think long and hard.” He slammed it shut.

I pretended to be asleep when he looked in on me a few hours later. I read all the comics twice. I cried for a while, not satisfyingly. Finally, after locking my door, I kicked off the sheets and allowed the ocean breeze to tickle my hairless penis as I pumped, remembering those dark embraces with my mother. This time, perhaps because of the fresh wafting air, perhaps because, although I was merely ten years old, puberty had finally begun, the familiar pleasant sensation was more intense, almost painful. I teased that new sensation, re-creating the motion that localized it and then something terrible and wonderful happened: a spasm from knees to my chest and with it, a single drop of almost totally clear liquid hit my belly. I was confused and scared until I recognized the famous seed I had read about in the book on sex my mother had given to me years ago when everything was normal and safe.

So, I thought, trying to calm down from my initial horror: I am a man, after all.

C
HAPTER
N
INE
The Murder of the Self

I
WASN
‘
T RELEASED FROM MY ROOM UNTIL NOON.
C
ARMELITA BROUGHT
my breakfast in, but she called me out for lunch. My father was at the table. His smile, his animated eyebrows, his musical voice continued to be absent. He showed no teeth, his brows were a line and he spoke in the drone of a bureaucrat. It wasn’t really frightening; the imitation of sternness was just that—inauthentic and comic.

“Rafe,” he said, “I have tried to understand why you would disobey a direct order from me. I can’t think of a single instance of your being deprived or forbidden anything you want. And the first time I say no, you disobey me. I’m afraid that’s exactly the problem—it was the first time I said no. You’re spoiled. You’re spoiled and you’re ungrateful. Do you have any conception of how many children would like to change places with you?” He let that hang for a moment and then, with atypical clumsiness, answered his own rhetorical question: “Millions. The answer is that millions of children would give their right arm to have your privileges.” (The truth of my father’s estimate seems to me a damning indictment of the condition of children. It burns in my consciousness, a constant nag. And it is still true, that for the Rafael’s of today, no matter how great their pain, in the eyes of the world it isn’t pain at all.)

I believed at that moment, as a ten-year-old, two things: my father was right to be disappointed in me; and that if he knew my true self he would despise me. I had to find a place in this world, choose between my good father and my evil uncle. I chose my uncle because it seemed inevitable that only in his dark realm would I find admiration and love.