by Carlos Alba
‘Until last year, I hadn’t seen him since university, so how am I to blame for not knowing that he’s bloody gay?’
‘Well, why hadn’t you seen him in twenty years? Did you ever wonder why that was?’
‘Oh right, so that’s my fault, is it? Now I’m being blamed for not keeping up with my friends. Well I’m sorry that I was otherwise occupied building a career so that I could provide a comfortable life for my family.’
‘That’s the problem, Antonio. Our lives would have been more comfortable if you were at home once in a while, rather than Ben and I sitting around in a big house waiting for you to return from your latest trip.’
I didn’t have any response to that, and we sat in silence for a couple of minutes not drinking our coffee. Cheryl sighed and placed her hand over mine. I couldn’t help feeling that, as far as she was concerned, I just didn’t measure up. I wasn’t like her, angry and resentful at injustice, driven by a burning desire to change the world. I was apolitical and consensual, a talker not a fighter. I wasn’t the Spanish anarchist she’d hoped for, imbued with the spirit of La Pasionaria and the International Brigades. It occurred to me that what I needed to win her over was a conviction, a cause to fight for. I needed to find my grandparents’ remains.
20
My flight touched down at Glasgow Airport late in the afternoon, and I was feeling guilty I’d have so little time to spend with Mama and Papa. I’d have to leave after lunch the following day to ensure I was back in the office first thing on Monday morning to write Uli’s articles. I hadn’t even told my parents Cheryl had left me yet, and I didn’t have the energy for that conversation now, so I resolved to blame my late arrival on flight delays.
I took a taxi to their house. As I walked in I met Papa, clinging to the doorframe of the living-room for support and looking so much frailer than before. His face was drawn and anguished, and the skin on his face hung loosely from his cheekbones and chin. His pupils were grey and vague, anchored at the foot of his eyes as though they were being drawn downwards by gravity. What was left of his hair was thin and white, lying in sad strands across his flaking scalp. A pair of blue corduroy trousers, which only weeks before had appeared little more than slightly baggy, now draped loosely around his hips and buttocks. He looked as though he was literally clinging to life.
A look of recognition flitted briefly over his face as I closed the front door, but he didn’t smile. Perhaps he didn’t have the strength, or the inclination. He reached out his free hand in my direction.
‘You help me go upstairs,’ he said in a dry, throaty voice.
I moved towards him and he put his hand on my shoulder, transferring his entire weight on to me. He felt as light as a small child. I put my arm around his waist, resting my palm gently on the surface of his clothing. I didn’t want to grab him any tighter, fearful that I might damage him.
‘How are you, Papa?’
He didn’t say anything, but shook his head as he walked slowly across the hallway, moving one foot ahead a few inches and then catching up with the other. When we reached the foot of the stairway, he paused for breath before beginning a painfully slow ascent, one step at a time.
We reached the upstairs landing and he stopped, holding on to the banister while he sought to regain his breath. I patted him gently on the shoulder and leaned my head towards his, kissing him on both cheeks. His skin was cold, and he didn’t respond.
‘Are you all right, Papa?’
He lifted his head and sighed.
‘I go sleep now,’ he said quietly, almost in a whisper, indicating his bedroom.
I wanted to tell him about my telephone conversation with Fermin, to quiz him more about his family, about the possibility that there might be some survivors, but I was shocked by his rapid deteriation. Somehow it no longer seemed urgent.
I made my way downstairs and found Mama in the living-room, dressed in her black nylon housecoat, cleaning the windows. The vacuum cleaner was parked in the middle of the floor, its flex attached to the wall socket. A strong smell of disinfectant and furniture polish permeated the air. The house was spotless.
‘Sit down and I’ll pour you a drink,’ I said.
‘I can’t stop cleaning. I’m determined the house doesn’t smell of death,’ she said with a weak smile.
‘How long has he been like this?’
She stared at me as though I’d asked her what shape the earth was.
‘He is very ill.’
I made us both a cup of tea and sat down, staring out of the window as Mama fussed around me, dusting and polishing. Eventually she stopped cleaning and sat down to drink her tea. She was flushed and tired-looking. She smiled as she grabbed hold of my knee. I’d never worried about her health or her ability to cope as I had with Papa. She was strong, and she always seemed to know what she was doing. Whatever fate threw at her she handled before moving on to the next challenge quietly and uncomplainingly. I knew she’d come to terms with Papa’s illness pretty quickly, and her priority, as with most setbacks, was to minimise its drama.
‘I’m glad you came,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I suppose I could have coped if I really had to, but it’s nice to get some support.’
‘I knew you could.’
She smiled again.
‘I’m sorry I can only stay until tomorrow, Mama.’
Her smile waned. ‘Couldn’t you change your plans and stay a little longer?’ she pleaded. ‘Your father is very ill.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got a lot on at work.’
She sank back into her seat and her shoulders dropped. Perhaps she wasn’t coping as well as I’d imagined.
‘You really need to get Pablito to pull his weight,’ I said.
She sighed. ‘It’s not just you who’s busy. He has a lot on at work as well, you know.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘And . . . he doesn’t cope,’ she said dejectedly.
From upstairs I heard the sound of Papa’s voice. It was weak and gruff, like a strained whisper, but it sounded distressed, and I shot to my feet. Mama dragged herself from her seat and moved slowly towards the door as though it was all part of her normal routine.
‘Don’t panic, he’ll be stuck on the toilet again,’ she said wearily.
I followed her upstairs and into the bathroom. Papa was lying naked on his back in the bath, and he was crying.
‘¿Qué hace?’ Mama asked. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Ayúdeme,’ he pleaded. ‘Help me.’
Mama moved towards him and put her hands under his arms. I edged in beside her and tried to take hold of his legs, but he cried out and pushed me away.
‘It’s all right, I can manage,’ Mama said.
I stepped back and watched helplessly as she lifted his emaciated frame until he was sitting upright.
‘¿Qué hacia?’ she pressed. ‘What were you doing?’
‘Estaba tratando de bañarme y me caí al suelo.’ ‘I was trying to bathe and I fell down.’
‘Why are you trying to bathe yourself?’ she asked in English.
‘Porque estoy sucio. Y huelo,’ he replied, tearfully. ‘Because I’m dirty. And I smell.’
She leaned forward and he wrapped his arms around her neck. She strained, trying to raise herself upright until he was kneeling.
The bathroom hadn’t changed since I was a child. It was cold and sparse, and the enamel coating on the cast-iron bath had become thin and abrasive to the touch. The chrome taps were dated and tarnished with limescale. A slight breeze rattled the sash windows.
Papa clasped Mama’s hands tightly in his bony grip, and slowly he lifted himself into a standing position. The sight of his sickly, wasted body was painful. His skin was dry and jaundiced, like a piece of cured meat, and the frame of his skeleton was almost entirely visible. Inflamed, weeping sores were scattered along the pressure points on his backside and the underside of his thighs. He continued to cry hard, not, I suspected, because he was in particular pain, but
because of his helpless indignity.
Mama dried his body and dressed him in a pair of thick wincey-ette pyjamas before putting him to bed, like a mother would a child. We returned downstairs and sat in silence. I didn’t know what to say, and I couldn’t trust myself to speak without my voice breaking.
‘You need to think about your priorities, Antonio,’ Mama said quietly. ‘What are you going to remember in five or ten years’ time? Whether you were at work to write on this bit of paper or that bit of paper, or whether you were there for your father when he died?’
I woke on Monday morning exhausted and with a sense of disorientated panic. I looked at my watch – it was seven o’clock, which meant Kevin would already be at his desk, and I hadn’t yet informed him I wouldn’t be in. I felt a sick, knotted sensation in my stomach – the same feeling of dread I experienced when I was late for school.
I showered and made my way downstairs, where Mama was in the kitchen frying doughnuts and making coffee for breakfast. I’d agreed to take Papa to the hospital. His appointment was at nine o’clock, but he was still in bed.
‘He’s refusing to get up. He says he doesn’t want any treatment,’ Mama said, her voice taut with anger.
‘Would it help if I tried to talk him round?’ I asked.
I was hoping that she’d say no.
‘It’s worth a try, I suppose.’
Papa’s bedroom was dark, and it had the helpless humiliating smell of a geriatric ward. He lay hunched on a small portion of the mattress with the blankets pulled tightly over his head. He was facing away from me, towards the drawn curtains, but I sensed he knew I was standing behind him.
‘Papa, you need to get up, you’ll miss your hospital appointment.’
He ignored me.
‘Papa, you have to go to hospital.’
‘I nae have tae dae nothin,’ he said groggily.
I sighed heavily, which prompted him to twitch. For a moment I thought he would turn around to face me, but he simply readjusted his pillow. I knew from experience that nothing I said would make him change his mind, but for Mama’s sake I resolved to press on.
‘Papa, you can’t just give up.’
He continued to ignore me.
‘You’ve got to keep fighting.’
He remained still and silent, and I steeled myself for one last push.
‘Papa, you’re being selfish. This isn’t just about you, it’s about the people trying to help you and the effect your stubbornness is having on us.’
He raised himself slowly and turned to face me, the pain of movement evident in his eyes.
‘Wha you know about me?’ he asked disdainfully.
I decided to go to the the hospital without him, to speak to his consultant about his prognosis. I waited for an hour in the oppressively hot corridor of a crumbling Victorian hospital before a harassed, unshaven medic approached me with an outstretched hand and a look of exhaustion. We went to a closet-sized room with a treatment table and a cracked sink. I insisted he sit down on the only chair, as he appeared to be on the point of collapse. His accent was indeterminate – I guessed it might have been Arabic, though he might just as easily have been from the Balkans.
I apologised for Papa’s absence as he skimmed through a file containing his notes. I got the impression he wasn’t listening to a word I was saying. Abruptly he closed the file, looked at me and smiled.
‘To be perfectly honest with you, Mr Noguera, I see no benefit in your father attending this clinic,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘But I thought he was booked in for chemotherapy treatment.’
‘That would be one of the options, but my judgement is that, at this stage in the development of your father’s carcinoma, the disadvantages, in terms of trauma, pain and side-effects, outweigh the possible benefits.’
‘What are the possible benefits?’ I asked.
‘Extra longevity.’
‘You mean he’s better off just waiting to die?’
He smiled benignly. ‘At this stage, quality of life is often more important than quantity.’
‘You said that’s your judgement?’
He nodded.
‘What factors do you take into account in arriving at that judgement?’
He opened the file of notes and closed it again just as quickly. He sighed and glanced at the ceiling, as if he was seeking a very precise form of words.
‘Well, I spoke to your mother and to your father’s GP, and I made my own analysis of his psychology. Your father is not the sort of person who would deal very easily with the reality that he is about to die. Your mother asked that I didn’t use the terms cancer or tumour when I dealt with him.’
‘Surely he must know he has cancer?’
‘I think that deep within himself he recognises it, but it’s not something he’s willing to admit. He has, as I understand it, had a troubled life, and it is often better to let the dying make the best of what they have left.’
‘So how long does he have? Weeks? months?’
‘I wouldn’t go very far away from him if I was you.’
I sat in the Beetle in the car park and cried. I wasn’t sure why. I wanted it to be about Papa, but it might also have been a delayed reaction to the break-up with Cheryl. I tried to be sad for Papa, but it seemed I’d forgotten how.
I drove to the petrol station on Paisley Road West, where I knew Pablito worked. I couldn’t see him, so I filled up the tank and went to the checkout to pay. The cashier looked unnerved when I asked where my brother was.
‘Eh, dunno, you’ll huv tae ask the boss,’ she said.
‘I thought he was the boss.’
She smirked.
‘Lewy husnae been in fur a couple a weeks.’
‘Lewy?’
‘Aye, ah call um that cos it gets oan his tits,’ she said with a grin.
‘Why’s he been off?’
‘Like ah said, you’ll huv tae ask the boss.’
I couldn’t imagine why Pablito would have taken more time off work. I drove down to his flat at Springfield Quay. It had been several years since I’d visited him, and so much new residential development had sprung up since then that it took a while for me to be certain I was in the right place. The new streets felt ghostly quiet and empty.
The first of the apartment blocks had been built on the site of the former shipyards a decade before, a brown-brick and brushed-oak monument to upwardly mobile, expense-account post-industrialism, each flat box-built and fully alarmed. Pablito had bought his tiny studio flat on the back of a messy divorce.
I found what I believed to be the front entrance to his apartment block. His name wasn’t listed on the entry system, although there was an unlabelled buzzer for a second-floor flat. I pressed it and waited for a few moments. There was no response. I tried it again, unsuccessfully, and walked back along the path towards the pavement. I looked up tow ards a pair of French windows – the curtains were drawn, but I was sure I saw them twitch. I returned to try the buzzer for a third time, but again there was no response, so I decided to leave.
As I put the key in the car door, I heard my name being called out, and I looked up to see Pablito’s face at the window. He beckoned me and buzzed me through into the vestibule. I walked up the stairs to find him waiting for me at the door to his apartment, dressed in a dishwater-grey bathrobe, blemished with what looked like old curry stains. Without greeting me, he turned his back on me and returned inside.
I closed the door behind me. His flat was dank and fuggy with the moist texture of a teenager’s duvet. There was a sofa bed, and a portable television set resting on the cardboard box in which it came; an open-plan kitchenette area overflowing with filthy crockery and discarded fast-food containers; and a small shower room. The walls were yellowed by nicotine, and around the edge of the French windows, which led on to a small balcony, the plaster wall was bubbled and flaked, evidence of water damage that had never been attended to. Below, the carpet was rotting and mottled, peppered with
fag-ash, crumbs and other remnants of wasted living.
Pablito sat down on the sofa bed. He stubbed out a cigarette and switched off a video game he’d been playing on the television. ‘I don’t have any coffee.’ He refused to look at me, preferring to stare out of the window as though preoccupied by something outside. ‘I thought you were in Paris or some fucking place.’
‘Berlin,’ I corrected.
‘Aye, wherever.’
‘I came back to see Papa.’
‘That was good of you.’
I didn’t respond.
‘And how is he?’ he asked, glancing at me furtively before returning his gaze outside. He reached for his cigarettes and lit another.
‘He’s not great. In fact, I’ve just been to see his consultant, who said he’s beyond help.’
Pablito took a hard drag on his cigarette and pinched the corners of his eyes at the top of his nose.
‘Bloody smoke,’ he complained.
I opened the French doors and a draught of air blew in, circulating the swirls of grey smoke that hung at head height.
‘I dropped by the petrol station on my way over,’ I said.
He looked at me, expecting me to elaborate, but I stayed quiet. I wasn’t going to do all the running.
And?’
And what?’
‘What did they say?’
‘They didn’t say anything. Just that you weren’t there.’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said, nodding.
‘So why aren’t you there? Are you ill?’
He considered the question.
‘Yeah, that’s right, I’m ill.’
‘You don’t look ill.’
I removed an empty sherry bottle from the sofa and sat down beside him. He smelled of alcohol and stale sweat.
‘Why don’t we go out for a walk? It will do you good to get some fresh air.’
He ignored me.
‘Well, get back to work then. You’re not doing yourself any favours cooped up in this shithole.’
He collected the ashtray from the floor and stubbed out his cigarette end.
‘I know why you’re doing this,’ he said.
‘You know fuck all.’