The Day I Killed My Father

by Mario Sabino

  On my own, I contacted my aunt, whom I hadn’t seen much since I’d met my wife. Their dislike for one another had begun with their first meeting. After that, we still had dinner together — my aunt, her husband, my wife, and I — another two or three times, but this only served to exacerbate their differences. In short, my aunt thought we’d rushed into things. As for my wife, she was smart enough to realise that my aunt had reservations about her.

  The fact that my aunt didn’t like my wife irked me, but it didn’t stop me from thinking highly of her. So much so that I called her a week after my wife had left. We arranged to have dinner together the following night at an elegant bistro. When I arrived at the restaurant, my aunt and her husband were already there. They both looked quite upset — it seemed as if I’d walked in on an argument. The signs were clear: my aunt was shaking, while he was sweating so much that he had to excuse himself to go to the toilet. Before he got up, he looked daggers at her. While he was gone, I took the opportunity to ask what had happened, but all she said was that it was nothing serious; just a little quarrel, like so many others. At first, I believed that that was all it was — a little quarrel — but, because the tension didn’t ease up, no matter how I tried to lighten the atmosphere, I started thinking that something more serious had happened.

  This impression was confirmed by the odd way she said goodbye to me outside the restaurant. She was making a great effort not to cry, and gave me a more loving hug and kiss than the situation called for. When she hugged me, she whispered in my ear, as if confiding a secret, ‘No matter what happens, remember I’ll always be there for you.’ That was the last time I saw her. Two months later, she and her husband moved to Milan, where he later died.

  –20–

  I didn’t take what my aunt said too seriously. On my way home, I mulled over what had happened at dinner, and I put it all down to a simple emotional crisis. My aunt and her husband were undoubtedly dealing with the anxieties of middle age; even the happiest marriages can go through rough patches during this period. She was probably asking herself if she really wanted to spend the rest of her days with him, I thought, and vice-versa. I could even imagine her dilemma. Her husband had given her a dream life from a material point of view, and still did. He was also fairly intellectually refined, and had always supported her artistic pursuits, bankrolling exhibitions at prestigious galleries, and showing pride in her woodcuts.

  Nevertheless, from what I could tell, they didn’t enjoy true intimacy, even though they’d been together for many years. It was hard to believe they knew what was going on in each other’s heads, given the degree of formality with which they treated one another. I don’t know if this was too hasty a conclusion; nor do I know if a man and a woman, regardless of how much they love one another, can be transparent with each other. Perhaps the idea that it’s possible is no more than a romantic fantasy. Perhaps I’m too influenced by my own past, in which there was never such transparency — but the fact is that my aunt and her husband always behaved, in my eyes, like two strangers who find themselves having to share a ship’s cabin and, though they discover they are similar in many ways, seek to maintain their individual privacy at all costs, hoping for the voyage to end quickly. So much so that they never had kids, even though they both seemed to like children. When I heard that they were moving to Milan, I was sure of one thing: my aunt didn’t like the idea of having to leave Paris. The phrase, ‘No matter what happens, remember I’ll always be there for you’ was coming from someone who was about to leave and was not at all happy about it.

  Isn’t it funny how we can turn logic into a house of cards?

  After fifteen days, the solitude was starting to get to me. I didn’t yearn for my wife, but I missed her. I’ll try to explain the difference. Yearning is fuelled by affection, love, friendship. Missing, on the other hand, is pure and simple, and can be fuelled by feelings that aren’t necessarily warm. For example, a torturer can miss inflicting torture, or the opposite: the victim can miss his or her torturer. Not that my wife tortured me; far from it. But I’d grown accustomed to serving her — the voluntary servitude that La Boétie speaks of … Sorry? I didn’t catch that. Could you say it again, please … Did I, as the tortured one in my relationship with my father, miss my torturer? You’ve touched on something I’ve thought about many times, without coming to any conclusion. I gave my father a wide berth, because I couldn’t handle being around him, and he did the same with me. But maybe you could say our mutual hatred was so great that I didn’t need to be in his presence to feel tortured, and he didn’t need to have me in front of him to torture me.

  The money he gave me, for example, was a highly effective instrument of torture, even from ten thousand kilometres away, since I knew that in his mental accounting he considered it a write-off. My father and I only had to know that the other existed in order for our hatred (like everything else that emanated from him) to live on … You’re right, we fed off it … Go on, ask. I promise I won’t be angry … In my relationship with my father, were our positions ever reversed, and did I ever become the torturer? I’ve already mentioned that when I was a child I tried to humiliate him in front of my mother, playing the know-it-all — I think that’s a form of torture, don’t you? … You want to know if, afterwards, I ever tortured or tried to torture him in any other way? I killed him. Is that enough for you?

  I think we’d best end this session.

  –21–

  I can’t get your question out of my head. I knew you were astute, but not that astute. I feel cornered by you — but cornered in a nice way, because I needed this confession. I’m not sure if torture is exactly the right term for what I did to my father in my late teens. Let’s just say that I put him through a lot — and took great pleasure in it.

  Remember how I told you that my father once took me to an upmarket brothel? Well, worried that I might be homosexual (or, rather, worried about the prospect of having a homosexual son), he decided to take me to see a psychologist. This idiotic suggestion came from his girlfriend at the time, who saw it as a chance to strengthen her ties with him. It didn’t work, of course — the girlfriend’s attempt to reel him in, I mean. It wasn’t long before he gave her the boot. My visits to the psychologist, however, yielded my father a month of desperation.

  He announced that he’d made an appointment for me. When I said that I wasn’t going, he threatened to cut my allowance. So I went. The psychologist was a young woman of about twenty-five. I could tell she was inexperienced by the hesitant way she asked me questions. In fact, as I found out later, this psychologist had only just graduated and was an old schoolfriend of my father’s girlfriend. Not exactly the best resumé. Add to that the fact that I, almost ten years her junior, seemed twenty years older, perhaps because of all my reading and my continuing battle with my father. It was a perfect scenario for revenge. And revenge I got, with the help of a manual by a youth psychologist that my bookseller had recommended.

  I followed the script with thespian diligence. In the beginning, I acted withdrawn, like any troubled teenager who finds himself confronted with a psychologist. Then I started alternating between moments of silence and short sentences, in which I sketched out the story of my childhood and my mother’s death. Around the fourth week, I started peppering the things I said with crying fits. To be honest, I didn’t cry. I buried my face in my hands, and put on a shaky voice. I rubbed my eyes a lot to make them red before looking back at the psychologist. Following what she’d learned at university, she avoided asking why I was crying. This was something she had to unearth on her own, from what was, supposedly, the wreckage of my distant memory — a practice also recommended by the manual that I was following to a T in the chapter that dealt with how some patients cover up their traumas. These manuals really are very useful.

  Anyhow, after a month of sessions, the young psychologist was already sufficiently captivated by what appeared to be her first bi
g case. And what a case she had on her hands! In a particularly poignant session, in which I almost wept real tears, I started talking about a monster that used to appear in my room when I was a child, and lie down next to me. And about how, paralysed by fear, I was unable to stop it from touching and biting me. You can see where I was going with this, of course. In the next session, I put the monster to one side, even though she seemed pretty anxious for me to get back to it. Avoiding the core of the trauma, as I learned in the manual, was common among patients — and I was determined to be an exemplary patient. I only mentioned the monster again some four sessions later, throwing in a few sordid details, such as how it used to stroke me and moan in my ear as it did so. It didn’t take much — just over two months of therapy — for my psychologist to start to suspect that I’d been sexually abused as a child. And most likely by my father.

  I have to say, she was pretty limited … No, she didn’t reveal her conclusions to me. The person who did reveal them was my own father, which for me only enhanced the flavour of my revenge. It played out like this: first, she invited him down for a private interview. She started the conversation by asking him if I’d had a vivid imagination as a child. My father, of course, didn’t know what to say. Then she asked if another man had lived with us when I was young: an uncle, or an employee perhaps. My father said ‘no’, and that after my mother’s death he’d hired a driver, but only recently had he come to live in a shed behind our house. She also asked him about his feelings towards me — if, at any time, for example, he’d wished that I hadn’t been born, or things like that. My father must have really got his tongue in a twist at this point. Finally, the psychologist told him that she’d need to have him back for another interview. When he asked her why, all she said was that she couldn’t explain anything at that moment.

  The second time he went back, he found himself meeting the psychologist’s supervisor, whom I’d met two weeks earlier in a particularly difficult session. She was a woman of about sixty, with a respectable, intimidating air about her. She played the devil’s advocate, questioning everything I said; but, by this time, I was so into my ‘abused child’ role that my performance would have convinced all the members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in Freud’s day. It was in the interview with her, which lasted nearly two hours, that my father was informed that there were strong signs I’d been molested by him as a child. This explained my withdrawn, unaffectionate behaviour towards him — though the lack of affection appeared to be reciprocal, as my psychologist and her supervisor had gathered from the things he’d said about me. And this, they’d concluded, could be considered further proof that something very serious had fractured our relationship.

  My father tried to argue that it was all rubbish, and that if he was guilty of something like that he’d never have sent me for psychological counselling, which he’d done precisely because he suspected I was having problems with my sexual orientation. They were both unyielding in their conviction. His argument might have worked a month earlier — but by this stage they’d picked up too many signs of something very strange having happened between my father and me. Do you know how the supervisor answered my father? ‘The fact that you took the initiative in seeking psychological counselling for your son is indeed strange. But, just as the reasons that lead a criminal to return to the scene of a crime are apparently fathomless, the motives that led you to bring your boy to my colleague’s practice are only inexplicable on the surface. I am referring to your subconscious, sir.’

  When he told me, at the top of his lungs, what had happened at the psychologist’s practice, I had to make a great effort not to laugh. Not least because his girlfriend, who was watching the scene, had such an expression of shock on her face. The specialist in psychological torture had got a taste of his own medicine. I’d suffered because of the story that I was adopted; now it was his turn to feel desperate. I’d show him who the weak one was … What was my response? That I’d told the psychologists about my childhood feelings and fears, and that it wasn’t my fault if his girlfriend’s friend had made that assumption. I shot the girlfriend a look of contempt. ‘The funniest bit is that you sent me to see a psychologist because you thought I was a poof. And now you’re the poof — a poof who used to fuck his own son,’ I said, unable to suppress a mocking smile. When he heard that, he flew at me. I leapt back, while his girlfriend tried to hold him off. ‘Don’t — you’re only going to make things worse,’ she kept saying. I managed to escape to my room, and locked myself in, cackling with laughter. I was avenged.

  How did it all end? Weeks after this scene, my father’s girlfriend showed up at our place, alone, and asked if she could talk to me in my room. She said that since I kept remembering vile details about the monster who used to appear in my room to fondle me, her psychologist friend and the supervisor were thinking about contacting a family court judge, because the case was beyond their jurisdiction. She explained that a court order would probably be issued to strip my father of custody of me. Additionally, criminal charges would certainly be brought against him, and he might even go to jail. ‘You’re going to destroy your father. So think hard about what you’re doing. If it helps, he doesn’t know I’m here, nor did he ask me to talk to you. This was on my own initiative,’ she said.

  My father’s girlfriend was a brunette of about twenty-four, give or take a few years, and very attractive. I’d already masturbated a couple of times thinking about her — especially her breasts, with her nipples always sticking out because she never wore a bra. When I saw her there in my room, begging me to save my father’s hide, I couldn’t resist the temptation to give my revenge a grand finale. I said I’d tell the psychologists that the story about the monster wasn’t true if she agreed to have sex with me. I expected her to act as if I’d offended her honour, but she surprised me. She locked the door and took off her blouse, jeans, and high-heeled sandals. Wearing just her knickers, she lay down on the bed. ‘Come,’ she said. So I went.

  The poof, the freak, the sicko, after sullying his dad’s reputation, had lost his virginity with his dad’s girlfriend. Sweet revenge, you must agree … No, he never knew what happened with his girlfriend. He died thinking that I’d told the psychologists it wasn’t true, to ease my conscience. At least, that’s what I think.

  Sometimes, I think he did send his girlfriend to talk to me, and that he did know she’d had sex with me. Maybe if I hadn’t proposed it, she would have done so herself, as part of a plot hatched by my father. What makes me think that? She didn’t seem surprised by my gall, and shortly after I denied everything to the psychologists, saying it had all been a joke, she showed up in a flash car that my father had given her. But my father wasn’t the sort to give his girlfriends expensive presents. What do you think? You don’t think anything, I know. I forgot — you can only have opinions when they’re of direct interest to you … The crazy whore to whom I was supposed to have lost my virginity? She was real, but she was actually my second.

  –22–

  Sorry? You’re going to terminate our sessions if I don’t admit … Fine, I admit it: everything I said in the last session was made up. I didn’t go to a psychologist, much less accuse my father of molesting me. Nor did I have sex with any girlfriend of his. What made you think I was lying? You’re right: such defiance wasn’t in keeping with the weakness I always demonstrated in my relationship with my father, especially after my mother’s death … Go on … If I had confronted him as a teenager, even if contumeliously, our story — my father’s and mine — most probably wouldn’t have taken the fatal turn it did. Right …

  I’m sorry, I only wanted … Truth be told, even though the things I told you didn’t take place objectively, they did subjectively. My father only said that he was going to take me to see a psychologist, but he soon abandoned the idea. To do it would have shown some kind of concern for me. But, after he considered taking me for psychological counselling, I imagined avenging myself in th
e way I told you … The girlfriend? You want to know about the girlfriend? … Yes, she existed. I wanted her, like I wanted several of my father’s girlfriends. They were beautiful young women, provocative in the way they dressed and undressed. We had a swimming pool, as I mentioned before, and they were always parading through the back yard in bikinis.

  This brunette, in particular, drove me crazy. From time to time, she’d ask me to rub sunscreen on her back … I’d do it, then run to my room, trying to hide my erection, which continued even after I’d masturbated. When my father dumped her, I thought about going to her, to declare how I felt about her. I fantasised about consoling her in my arms, while I kissed her neck, her mouth, her breasts … You know, one of the things I remember about my adolescence was hovering outside my father’s bedroom door when he was in there with a girlfriend, trying to hear some kind of sound that would indicate they were having sex. A moan, a whisper, a muffled cry — anything. But I never heard a thing, I think, although sometimes my memory suggests I did …

  Go ahead and ask … What’s the first image that comes to mind when I think about my father having sex with a girlfriend? A scene of sodomy, perhaps … Of a man with an enormous phallus tearing a woman who dared to offer herself to him … That’s the kind of thing you wanted to hear, right? I know your lot. But enough. I’m not interested in interpretations. Indulge in them far away from me, and without my collaboration. What purpose do they serve, for God’s sake? Above all, I agreed to tell my story in order to organise it in my own mind, full stop. You’re no more than a supporting actor here; do you understand? So don’t try to become a protagonist with your interpretations.