The Day I Killed My Father (6 page)

‘Well, well. So Hegel really was left wing …'

‘Such sarcasm, Antonym. Don't you know philosophers can speak truths without arriving at the Truth? Many get lost along the way.'

‘And what about lies? Could they serve as the basis for the Truth?'

Farfarello smiled.

‘Antonym, you have yet to grasp the full extent of what you just said merely to be ironic. Let's go, I must be quick.'

A full day, this one
, thought Antonym.
I fucked a whore, chatted with a priest, and am about to go home with a piece of German philosophy tucked under my arm
.

V

Every so often, Antonym tried to digest some late-afternoon melancholy with a packet of cornstarch biscuits. He used these moments to make more or less free associations. Any old fact could spark a run. One of the sequences he'd been most chuffed with was inspired by a stumble:

I tripped and almost fell. If I'd fallen, I would have hurt myself. If I'd hurt myself, I'd be resting in bed. A doctor would come to examine me and give me medicine. Many ancient medicines were made with Eastern drugs. According to Aristotle, the winds are born in the East. Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great was lord of the world. The Greeks believed the world was held up by Atlas. Atlas was strong. Strength is symbolised by columns. Columns hold up buildings. Buildings are made by labourers. Labourers are directed by engineers. Engineers work from architects' sketches. Sketching is part of painting. Painting is an art. There are seven liberal arts. Seven is the number of sages who studied eloquence. The goddess of eloquence is Minerva.

A week after his meeting with Farfarello, Antonym was munching on cornstarch biscuits while making a series of associations that, having started with scouring powder, had already reached superconductors. But he didn't get to what might have been the end of this chain of thoughts.

‘I'm so useless. Bernadette was right to leave me.'

Antonym left the packet of biscuits in the kitchen and went to the bedroom. The text Farfarello had given him had been lying on the nightstand for a week — and he hadn't read it.

‘Would Hegel have made associations as banal as mine?'

Antonym decided to take the priest's advice to read Hegel's text. It was a compilation of phrases by Hegel that summed up the notion that all great men in history were propelled by the World Spirit, despite the fact that their actions appeared to stem, even in their own eyes, from personal ambitions alone. Such great men — who could be called heroes — were capable of perceiving what needed to be done in their era and, consequently, of revealing the Truth that inhabited all human beings, but to which the majority did not aspire. They had often been warned to proceed with caution along the way, but had pushed on regardless. And, thus, these great men had ended up being followed by those who saw them as the incarnation of their own desires and their own souls.

Of all the quotes, one stuck in Antonym's head: ‘The courage of truth, faith in the power of Spirit, are the first conditions of philosophy. Man, because he is Spirit, can and must consider himself worthy of everything that is most sublime. He can never overestimate the greatness and power of his Spirit. And if he has this faith, nothing will be so hard and unyielding as not to reveal itself to him.'

It was already after 9.00 p.m. when Antonym went to meet Hemistich.

VI

A sculpture of a white steer with golden horns loomed over the entrance of the The Bullseye. Beneath it was a marble plaque with the following inscription:

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the intelligence of the intelligent I will reject.
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar?

‘How many will be dining with you, sir?'

‘Hemistich is waiting for me.'

‘May I have your name?'

‘I'd rather keep it, if you don't mind.'

‘?'

‘Antonym.'

‘One moment, sir.'

He'd expected a steakhouse that looked like a refectory — with colonial décor or something of the sort — and had found instead a very peculiar restaurant. The first room was a bar clad in dark wood with panels of bullfighting scenes on the walls. The barmen and waiters moved around silently, and the usual sound of glasses and bottles was almost non-existent.

‘A dry martini, please.'

As Antonym sipped his martini, he took a closer look at the drawings. Men and bulls clashed with joyous expressions on their faces. In one scene, a bullfighter, about to be gored, had the transfigured look of one on the verge of orgasm.

Funny
, he thought.
It reminds me of Bernini's
Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.

‘Do you like it?' asked Hemistich.

‘It's strange in this context, like the inscription over the steakhouse door.'

‘Actually, this is more than a steakhouse.'

‘Right, it's a new concept in steakhouses, as a publicist would say.'

‘Go ahead, joke. I don't care.'

‘I'm sorry, Hemistich. I shouldn't be talking like this to the guy who's going to provide me with a free meal. I'm impressed by your steakhouse, or whatever you want to call it. Seriously. Where'd you come up with the money?'

‘Let's just say by using some relatively emotional blackmail. Come to the dining room.'

A three-by-fifteen-metre corridor led from the bar to the dining room. Three wall lamps on each side shed yellow light on the people walking through it. Over the dining room door, an enormous Minotaur grinned down at passers-by.

When he entered the dining room, Antonym gulped. On every wall there were scenes of satyrs and nymphs indulging in orgies of food and sex. On the floor were mosaics depicting food leftovers: olive pips, fruit peels, chicken bones, fish skeletons, hunks of meat.

‘Surprising? Weird? I know it's hard to choose the right adjective. But I'd say, “Appropriate.” This place was designed to celebrate the triumph of the senses over reason. See how relaxed everyone is? Let's sit in that corner. Another dry martini? Risério, two more.'

‘So she came here.'

‘Bernadette? She really liked it. But the décor was different then.'

‘You mentioned relatively emotional blackmail.'

‘That's how I got the money.'

‘Your intellectual work, of course, wouldn't have paid for all this.'

‘I burned everything I ever wrote. I also torched my library.'

‘You did what?'

‘One thing at a time. First, the blackmail. The wife of a political candidate. Quite pretty. Anyway, I had an affair with her, and I documented it.'

‘I'm speechless.'

‘I had to truly live. I had to live the truth.'

‘Hang on. What, pray tell, is the truth?'

Hemistich smiled.

‘Remember Augusto?'

‘Of course.'

‘He asked the same thing.'

‘And what was your answer?'

‘I didn't have an answer at the time. But Augusto ended up discovering his own truth — which, from a certain perspective, is everyone's truth.'

‘How is he?'

‘He killed himself.'

‘What?'

‘After slashing his wife's throat.'

‘He lost it …'

‘He left me a letter. A kind of poem, actually. I know it off by heart:

From tongue to blade, unrestrained. With a swift slash, I gash my beloved's throat. And, among such vocal cords, I seek the words that once filled my ears with tenderness, don't find them, and wonder where they are.

‘It was premeditated?'

‘He wrote it after he killed her. The paper had bloodstains on it.'

‘Is that the answer? Desperation?'

‘To act on impulse, the purest expression of the senses.'

‘Death.'

‘Death is a contingency.'

‘Not your own, you callous prick. I'm hungry.'

‘There it is!'

‘What?'

‘The key to my truth. Let's to the feast,
monsieur
.'

‘Let's.'

And that's what they did. And that's how it was to be. Blessed were those called to the supper of Hemistich.

In Antonym's memory, the orgy of rump steaks, porterhouses, t-bones, tenderloins and sirloins, accompanied by an array of perfectly cooked vegetables, seemed like an hallucination. To accompany the banquet was a wine that, from the very first glass, heightened his senses, drove away his anxiety, and made time pause. Meat, wine, meat, wine: a steady flow of waiters presented oblations with reverence, as if they were serving the lords of the world. All notion of time slipped away. Had it been three, four hours? Impossible to tell. Hemistich was transformed.

‘Such is the mystery of faith! Which has been revealed by me, only me! Music incarnate! Where is it?'

At the next table, a group of inebriated Germans stood and began to sing the national anthem — ‘Deutschland über Alles'.

Hemistich cackled with laughter.

‘Not that, no!'

The dining room was stormed by twenty musicians in colourful clothes and shiny adornments, carrying strange percussion and wind instruments. They played an oriental-sounding melody and sang in an indecipherable language. Then twelve dancers appeared — four brunettes, four blondes, and four redheads. Wearing transparent clothes that provided glimpses of perfect contours, they swayed and gyrated between the tables, occasionally making the high-pitched sound that Muslim women make on festive occasions and when they're mourning.

‘Touch the women, Antonym. Go ahead. Come here, my lovely. I want my friend to run his hands over you. Look how smooth she is, Antonym, so soft … Not silk, not satin. There's nothing nicer to the touch than skin like this.
Parlez, mes mains, pour moi
.'

The room was now spinning around Antonym. A light perfume wafted not only into his nostrils, but into his pores. It was as if there was no longer a barrier between outside and inside, between him and his companions in revelry.

‘One body, one soul!'

Hemistich was dancing on the table.

A lysergic effect rippled out in all directions, and the satyrs and nymphs peeled off the walls, and joined the dancers and musicians. In sassy voices, the satyrs sang a song with just one verse:

Queasy, I vomit
a leftover shred,
love, eternal dreaming
multiplied.

One of them (or was it Hemistich?) brought his ugly face close to Antonym's.

‘Nature, if you are neither mother nor stepmother,' he said, ‘if human adventures and misadventures matter not to you (as you have affirmed more than once), all we can do, then, is writhe in your cornucopia, in the hope of a metaphysical echo, or ignore such indifference, and enjoy the mysterious pleasures of existence …'

‘Echoes of Leopardi … I once read Leopardi … How I love Bernadette! Maybe if I wore clothes in happy colours, like these musicians … She got tired of asking. A yellow shirt, a cloud in trousers … No, I'm not sad. The nostalgia of my shipwrecked love offers so many possibilities. Everyone's fucking. I want to, too, but I don't know if I can … What did you put in this food, Hemistich? What did you put in this wine, Hemistich? Hemistich, where are you? Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Bernadette!'

Antonym cried out, and everything went black.

VII

‘Hi, remember me?'

Antonym examined the discreet crow's-feet that belied her youthful appearance.

‘I have to admit I don't.'

‘It's Kiki. We went to school together.'

‘Oh, right, Kiki. But where are we, Kiki?'

‘In Hemistich's office. You passed out last night, and we brought you here.'

‘We? Were you in the restaurant?'

‘I arrived at the end of the party. I haven't seen anyone from our class for ages … We should get everyone together every now and then, shouldn't we? I always read your articles. I don't understand much, but I generally like them. You were always good at writing …'

‘I don't write any more.'

‘You're kidding!'

‘Let him be, Kiki.'

‘Ah, come on, Hemistich. You're always giving me a hard time. I'm going to give you my card, Antonym. Give me a call, OK? You're looking hot.
Ciao
.' As he watched Kiki's arse moving away, Antonym thought how embarrassing it was to be part of certain people's pasts.

‘Do you know Kiki?'

‘Yeah. We went to school together.'

‘Top-notch pussy.'

‘A bit past her prime.'

‘But she's still a babe. And the best thing is she loves to fuck.'