And I’m forgetting a few, I suppose. Shows that I saw accompanied by his ghost, as it were.
Many days spent without hearing a person’s voice on the phone are needed to understand his absence; many days spent resisting the impulse to call are needed to understand that he’ll no longer answer; many days spent silencing remarks meant only for him are needed to understand that this is how it will be from now on; many days spent wondering what he’d say about something that we’re well aware he knew best are needed to understand that now our own judgment will have to suffice; many days spent looking at pictures of him are needed to understand that these are pictures of a dead person; many days spent contemplating the objects we inherited are needed to understand that they’re no longer his but ours; many days spent taking stock of common experiences are needed to understand that they’ll never be repeated, that all that’s left of them is the memory. A memory, too, that won’t remain unchanged.
I’ve been down that road. I’ve caught myself thinking about calling my father when he’d been dead for months; I’ve found consolation in gazing at things that were his and then felt the desire to avoid looking at them as my eye grew accustomed to them and made them mine; I’ve saved up questions for the next time I’d see him without realizing that it would never come.
A month ago, going to see a show that I was asked to write about, I felt freed for the first time of his ghost. I was in a hurry, working on deadline, and I hardly thought of him until the next morning, when I saw the article in print and wanted his approval, as I always used to when I wrote about art.
Days later, at a Bacon retrospective, he was on my mind; I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He made the rounds with me, prodding me to reject psychological interpretations and just look at the painting, but it wasn’t enough. I felt a little lost. I needed his commentary, which, though always admiring, wouldn’t have failed to alert me to Bacon’s every slip, every mannerist flaw.
Life doesn’t stop.
Seven months ago, early in September 2008, I learned that I would be a father at the end of the following May. Just a month and a half from now.
Life doesn’t stop. Life has gradually carried me away from him, mitigating his absence. Not the pain, which—though buried deep—is surely the same as it was when I began to write. The same as it will always be. As I write this, with a Django Reinhardt album of his playing in the background, I know with cruel clarity that he is no longer painting in his studio, as I so often imagined him. His studio doesn’t exist, his paintings are in storage, and the next show of his work, if I can manage it, will be a retrospective.
Life doesn’t stop. I’m coming to the end of this book.
If I could turn back the clock and change the way I was for so many years, I would do it, but to say so now, when I already know the ending—even if I mean it—is false tender.
So I think about my unborn son, who will bear his name, and I ask myself how I’ll mold him, how I’ll fail him, what I’ll have to forgive him for, and what he’ll have to forgive me for when—if he doesn’t do it sooner—I, like my father, fade into nothingness.
What he’ll remember fondly about me.
I’d like to preseve some of the best of my father so that it passes on to him through me.
Madrid, April 16, 2009
Also by Marcos Giralt Torrente
The End of Love
A Note About the Author
Marcos Giralt Torrente was born in Madrid in 1968 and is the author of three novels, a novella, and a book of short stories. He was a writer in residence at the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome and at the University of Aberdeen, and was part of the Berlin Artists-in-Residence Program in 2002–2003. He is the recipient of several distinguished awards, including the Spanish National Book Award in 2011. His works have been translated into French, German, Greek, Italian, Korean, and Portuguese.
A Note About the Translator
Natasha Wimmer has translated Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, for which she was awarded the PEN Translation prize in 2009, and The Savage Detectives, among many other works. She lives in New York City.
Sarah Crichton Books
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2010 by Marcos Giralt Torrente
Translation copyright © 2014 by Natasha Wimmer
All rights reserved
Originally published in Spanish in 2010 by Editorial Anagrama, Spain
English translation first published in the United States by Sarah Crichton Books / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Giralt Torrente, Marcos, 1968–
[Tiempo de vida. English]
Father and son: a lifetime / Marcos Giralt Torrente; translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. — First American edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-374-27771-0 (cloth: alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-374-71000-2 (e-book)
1. Giralt Torrente, Marcos, 1968– —Family. 2. Authors, Spanish—20th century—Family relationships. 3. Fathers and sons—Spain—Biography. I. Wimmer, Natasha, translator. II. Title.
PQ6657.I68 T5413 2014
868'.6403—dc23
2014013580
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