Lucas says: I guess I know what you’re going to ask me, but no. He didn’t leave any explanation. We didn’t find a letter.
I presume that they looked for this letter, hoping that it would assuage their gnawing guilt at not having seen anything coming and keep them from facing the questions, from having to confront the mystery of this death alone. But the deceased did not grant them the grace of such a letter. He left without relieving them of their bad conscience. Did he want to punish them? Or did he simply hold on to this fundamental truth: that in the end, death is only a matter between you and yourself?
Obviously, the grieving child spends many sleepless nights. It’s a lot to lose a father. Even harder when the death is so premature. But we enter into the realm of the infernal when the death has been chosen. So yes, all of it will turn and turn in his head. It will tear at his stomach. He will try to remember the last time he saw his father in an attempt to form some kind of interpretation, and he will be angry at himself for not having perceived his despair (because, finally, that’s what it is, isn’t it?). But he will always stumble on this stubborn reality: he doesn’t know. His only certainty will be sorrow.
I ask him about his mother, who was inevitably affected by the tragedy. Lucas immediately lowers his head. His slumped posture is like an additional defeat.
He tells me that she was not present at the funeral. He adds, in a poor attempt at justification, or perhaps as a means of delay, that there was almost no one there anyway, that the ranks of the church were more than sparse. He says that his father ended up paying the price for his isolation.
I reply that his wife’s failure to appear could not merely be a consequence of his isolation. Something must have happened.
He raises his head; the time has come for him to tell the whole story; no doubt this is why he summoned me—so that the story could be told to a person able to hear it.
A few years ago (the exact date is not mentioned), Thomas Andrieu decided to radically change his life. This change took place overnight. There had been no warning signs, he did not give any notice, though he had organized everything in advance.
He brings his parents, his wife, and his son together in the big kitchen of the farm. He is serious, determined, not trembling or clearing his throat. The child recalls his being firmly resolved and a little soulless. What he remembers best is the quiet. The father has hardly said anything yet but it’s as if everyone is waiting for an explosion. He stands up straight, announcing to everyone that he is leaving. Imagine the stupefaction, the incomprehension, the bewilderment, the anger that arises, the uncontrolled crying, the imploring of the mother and the wife, but he will have none of it. He commands silence. He says that he has not finished, that he still has things to announce.
He specifies that he will leave the house and the farm, that it’s all finished for him, that his father will have to find someone else, an apprentice or a successor who will accept the work, and then to sell to whomever will buy it when the time for retirement comes. He adds that when he leaves the farm he is also renouncing all of his rights to the inheritance of the land, that it will no longer concern him.
He continues to speak without expression, in a monotone. He looks at the family together in front of him, but it’s as if they don’t register, as if they have disappeared—as if he were speaking to the fields, the wind, the clouds drifting through a towering sky beyond the kitchen window.
He says that he hired a lawyer for divorce proceedings, that he wants everything to be done according to the law. There will be official separation papers, so that nothing remains unresolved and so that his wife will be able to rebuild her life if she wishes, she will not be bound by anything. He declares that he is leaving her the money, the joint inheritance. He will carry nothing away with him.
The son does not see it as a gesture of generosity or disinterest but rather as a radical way of settling the accounts and letting go, of eradicating the past.
His father adds that now that his son has grown and his studies are coming to an end, he is out of the woods and can easily get a job. Opportunities are waiting for him, the world will open her arms, and he does not worry about him and wishes him the best. He is convinced that the best will happen. He says he did his part of the job. (The son has not forgotten this phrase. At the moment he tells me this he folds his arms across his body as though he’s in pain.)
His father says he’s going to move elsewhere but won’t name the place. He does not want anyone to try to contact him. He’ll disappear and that’s it. He expresses no guilt, nor does he provide any explanation. (I believe he must have acted exactly the same way when he chose to hang himself.)
An hour later, he leaves.
* * *
In the meantime his wife will have tried to hold him back, clinging to him in tears, counting on her distress and desperation to make him waver. He does not flinch. Thomas’s own father will have viciously insulted him, throwing in his face that he will no longer be his son. But he seems indifferent to this excommunication, the insult coming from a distance, as one spits bile. His mother will have tried to bring him to his senses, imploring him to be reasonable, and here he will object saying that he has been reasonable for too long—this is perhaps the only path he will open.
Lucas will not say anything. He stays in a corner as a spectator, observing this newly discovered determination in his father, a man showing him the face of someone completely unknown to him.
Already a distant stranger.
* * *
During the eight years that follow, Thomas demonstrates an exemplary rigor: There is not a word, not a call, not the slightest sign of contact. He changes his phone number, no one knows his new address. He never appears, and no one runs into him, even by chance. Sometimes they wonder if he’s dead.
The family accepts his dictum. They have no choice. Nothing can be done against the will of one man. But in this small world, they sail, day by day, between resentment and sadness, questioning and anger, confusion and hate. They speculate on what could have become of him. Perhaps he returned to Spain, or travels under an assumed name, or else he simply settled in a remote corner somewhere and lives as a hermit. Yes, everyone agrees that he inevitably returned to his natural state of solitude. He becomes a bit of a legend.
And then over time, it dissipates, and fades, dispersing like pollen in the air at the return of spring. Lucas whispers: You get used to everything, even the defection of those you thought you were bound to forever.
I say: You speak of defection?
He stares at me. He says: It’s true, you’re a writer, words are important to you. And you’re right, they are. For a long time, I tried to write down words about his disappearance. I found a lot. I even classified them in alphabetical order, if you want to know: “abandonment,” “absence,” “death,” “departure,” “dissolution,” “erasure,” “escape,” “extinction,” “flight,” “loss,” “retreat,” “vanishing,” “withdrawal,”—the other ones I forgot.
But the one that seems most appropriate to him—the one he prefers—is “defection.” Usually, it’s used in connection with spies who crossed the border, when our world was divided into two blocs during the cold war. He says: It makes me think of that Russian dancer, Nureyev, was it? You know, in the early sixties, when he crossed the barrier between the Soviet camp and the Western camp at the airport in Bourget. Lucas sees in Nureyev’s gesture something dangerous and romantic, a manifestation of insubordination, an irrepressible desire for freedom. And a certain élan. There are evenings when he is pleased and reassured to think that this same impulse was behind his father’s disappearance. In the word “defection,” too, there is another idea: that his father missed him. And this possibility is absolutely necessary to him.
* * *
At first there was simply the offense of his father’s having escaped his obligations. He left the straight path, broke the unwritten rules, upset the established order, played against his team, trampl
ed the trust placed in him, offended his family, betrayed everyone.
And then the wound was accompanied by the inevitable pain and sorrow. His father was not there when they were counting on him. He left a void with questions no one could answer, an irreducible frustration, an emotional demand that no one could possibly meet.
I ask Lucas if he ever tried to track his father down. He says: In the beginning, no. He respected his father’s decision, even if he didn’t understand it and it made him suffer. He also found it incredibly insensitive to his mother. (I think there also could have been an element of wounded pride in this refusal.) He admits that after a while he thought of looking for him, even considering hiring a detective. The need to understand became more important, also the need to talk to him, because that kind of silence can drive you crazy.
He says: Finally, I gave up. He had his adult life to lead, his future to build. He didn’t intend to be weighed down by the past and this sad family business.
Resentment took over, and time did the rest.
* * *
All the same, I wonder how one accepts having a father in this in-between place, this absence that is not death, this indefinite inaccessibility, this phantom existence. How can one resolve it for oneself and not be consumed regularly by the need to put an end to this pretense? The need to just not put up with the strangeness any longer—to alleviate this terrible, intolerable missing (we keep coming back to the word). No matter how much you want to respect someone’s freedom (even when you consider it selfish), you still have your own pain, anger, and melancholy to contend with.
But I do not pose the question to the son left behind.
* * *
And then, one day, unbelievably, sometime last year, the father comes back. He moves to a farm in the area. His family hears the rumors of his return but nobody wants to see him. Neither his parents, who consider him dead, nor his ex-wife, who has since returned to Galicia and remarried.
Only his son decides to visit him, during one of his trips to France.
* * *
He says that his father had changed, aging almost to the point of unrecognizability. Yet to his surprise, his father invites him over. He asks if he wants something to drink, as if they had only just seen each other the day before, as if life as they had known it hadn’t been obliterated in the blink of an eye followed by an eight-year blackout. The son sits at the table and contemplates this wrinkled and worn-out old man. He feels no compassion, no longer seeing a likeness, and wonders if their uncanny resemblance ever existed at all. The only thing he recognizes in his father is his unsociability.
The conversation begins but quickly dwindles into banalities and monosyllabic murmurs. Soon it is only the son who speaks, so he ends up asking the inevitable question. He asks for an explanation of the departure and of the return. The father does not respond or give any justification. He just remains silent. The son asks if, at the very least, he feels any regret. The man raises his head and looks at his son.
He says: No. I could regret it if I had had a choice. But I did not have a choice.
He does not say anything else.
I ask Lucas if he understands his father’s words.
He answers yes, and then clarifies: Now, yes. He confirmed my suspicions.
I say: Your suspicions? My voice shakes slightly. He hears the tremor and looks at me, with the obvious intention of making me understand that we are talking about the same thing, that he understands.
He says: I think it started to formulate in my mind when I met you at the hotel in Bordeaux, but not when you called after me in the lobby thinking I was my father, not when you called his name and said that I looked like him. After all, you were not the first . . . No, it happened a few moments later when you looked at me and you were unable to speak. I understood at that moment that you loved him—that you had been in love with him. At the same moment, I recognized you, I knew who you were . . . I knew that you were gay . . . you say it on television when you’re interviewed. You always answer without hesitation. When I arrived in Nantes that day, I went directly to a bookstore and looked for your books. I found His Brother, A Boy from Italy, and How to Say Goodbye. I took all three and read them immediately. These books only made me more sure. In Goodbye, you write letters to a man you loved. A man who left you and who never answers you, and you travel all the time trying to forget him.
I say: It’s not me who writes to this man, it’s a woman, my heroine.
He says: Who are you trying to convince? He continues: In His Brother, the hero is outright called Thomas Andrieu. Are you going to tell me that it’s a coincidence? I stop protesting. To deny it would be to insult his intelligence. He drives home the point: And in A Boy from Italy, you tell the story of a double life, a man who can’t choose between men and women. Your novels were like pieces of a puzzle. They were enough to assemble a picture that made sense.
He goes on: Eight days later, I went back to Lagarde to my parents’ home. I waited to be alone with my father to tell him that I had met you. I suspected that it was better for my mother not to be around. You should have seen his face at that moment: it was an admission. He didn’t say anything at first, he even pretended not to attach any importance to it, but it was too late. In that first moment, when he heard me say that I had seen you, he didn’t move, but I swear he lost his balance. At that exact moment I was certain that he had been in love with you. That such a thing had existed—my father in love with a boy. I didn’t need to ask him the question. I don’t think I could have found the courage anyway. Afterward, I said to myself: Maybe it was just a phase. Okay, yes, it existed, but it ended. He moved on to something else—to a life, a woman, a child . . . that must happen often, these things. I told myself: when he saw you on TV, it brought back the memory, but it was just nostalgia. A secret from the past . . . everyone has secrets; besides, it’s good to have things that belong only to you. It could have stayed there. It should have stayed there. Except that two days after our conversation, my father brought us together to announce he was leaving.
* * *
The revelation stuns me. It’s as if I’ve received an electric shock, with the paralysis that follows.
He asks: You don’t have anything to say?
There is no bluster, no accusation. I sense only curiosity and a desire to connect.
I answer: I don’t know what to say . . . And there is nothing more genuine than my inadequacy in this moment. He is still waiting. Waiting for me to say something.
I pull myself together and start by pointing out that the departure of his father seemed very organized: the divorce lawyer, the renunciation of his inheritance. He must have already known his destination; he did not decide it on a whim. I add that a meeting between his son and me could have stirred up memories but was not of consequence, or at least not this kind of consequence. There was no reason for it to provoke such an upheaval.
He says that he agrees with me. He thought about it a lot and what he discovered after his father’s death only reinforced what he’d imagined to be true. According to him, this news only precipitated a choice that his father had been considering for a long time. It put everything into stark relief. His father had been lying for too long, he had to come to terms with himself, and now there was an urgency to it. He adds: All the same, I often wondered if he might have gone to join you (the romance of that, the madness of that). Now I know he didn’t.
I give him a questioning look.
He says: After his death, the house had to be emptied. It was done quickly, he possessed almost nothing. He lived in great frugality, he even refused the money that I offered him. But in the drawer of a wardrobe, tidy and carefully hidden, I found letters. After reading them, I was very surprised that he kept them. Even more that he didn’t destroy them just before killing himself. I guess he wanted me to find them. I suppose they replaced the farewell letter he didn’t write, the explanation he didn’t give. First, there were the letters that were addressed to him. They
all came from the same man, dated from a short time before his return to Charente. It’s clear that the man was his lover (the son pronounces the word without wavering, without judgment) but that they did not live together. It’s also clear that their relationship was secret. The man couldn’t stand this deception. He writes that he wants to live with Thomas in broad daylight, that he does not want to go on hiding anymore, that it eats away at him like a disease, both the love and the silence. He gives Thomas an ultimatum, writing that if Thomas refuses to live with him, then he prefers to end the relationship. Lucas says the last letter was written the day before his father’s return.
Thomas did not give in to the threat; perhaps he didn’t give in to love either. He left before the breakup.
I think: In the end, he remained hidden all his life. In spite of the great departure, the ambitious effort to forge a new existence, he fell back into all the same traps: shame, the impossibility of sharing a love that endures.
I think of all the men I met in bookstores, men who confided in me about having lied for years and years, before finally resolving to leave everything to start all over again (they will recognize themselves if they read these lines). Thomas never found their courage.
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