The Death of My Father the Pope

by Obed Silva

  Cecilia stopped there, said, “This was about it. Nothing much else went on.” When I asked her if she knew when he’d be buried, she told me that he wouldn’t. “He’s going to burn. They’re going to cremate him tomorrow.”

  On Wednesday, four days after he died, my tío Mundo’s body was pushed into a furnace and reduced to ashes from which no phoenix would ever rise.

  Act 2

  THE BURIAL

  DEATH DEFINES LIFE; A DEATH DEPICTS A LIFE IN IMMUTABLE FORMS; WE DO NOT CHANGE EXCEPT TO DISAPPEAR.

  —OCTAVIO PAZ, The Labyrinth of Solitude

  15

  I awake in my father’s bedroom. I’m still in my clothes and my mouth tastes like shit; my shoes and cap are all that have been removed (had I removed them, or had someone removed them for me?). I’m also still wearing my watch. It’s 7:12 a.m.

  “Fuck,” I say, pressing my hands against my forehead. “It’s time to bury this motherfucker and it’s so fucking early! Give me a few more hours, Pops,” I say, trying to squeeze away the pain at my temples. But “¡Nel, ni madres! Bury me now! I’m tired of people crying over me. Por el favor de Dios, bury me already!” I hear my father saying in response. “Okay. Okay. If you want to be buried now, then we shall bury you now. Just let me get ready and take a shit first. Then we’ll be on our way.”

  But before I do these things, I sit up on the edge of the bed and take in the room. Sunlight’s already pouring in through the window and glass sliding door; it’s bright all over and time’s moving slowly. And though my eyes are having trouble adjusting to the brightness, I curiously look around the room. It hasn’t changed much since the last time I was in it four years earlier. The bed is still the same ripped-up shitty mattress with metal springs popping out from it. The curtains are the same ugly orange veil-like drapes that do little to keep out the sun, and a thick film of dust and dirt still covers everything from the brown tile floor to the old box-television set with missing knobs resting on the corner shelf above the white wooden desk that comes out from the wall. And the small two-drawer dressers on each side of the bed are also still covered in dirt and dust. On one of them is an old digital alarm clock that keeps blinking 12:00 AM and a pack of Faros cigarettes with a few Faritos still in them. I think about my father sitting where I am and smoking them while drinking away and staring at the clock—time passing him by. He’s thinking about nothing, worrying about nothing, or maybe—he is. Of me. Yes, of me. Of the years gone by. Of the time we never spent together, and of the time we did. He’s taking a puff, pinching the Farito with his thumb and index finger, sucking its life out. His fingernails are yellow and the skin of his hands is caked with yeso. He’s drunk. Rocking back and forth, falling sideways, struggling to sit up straight. He’s been drunk for days. Once in a while he lets out a laugh. Hypnotized by the bright red 12:00 AM that keeps blinking in front of him, he falls back onto the bed. He remembers that he once had dreams, that he hadn’t always been this way. Or had he? But there’s nothing he can do about it now. It’s too late. Too fucking late. No turning back. No way of fixing what’s already broken. “Vámonos,” he cries, “a la chingada con todo. Ya hice y deshice, ya no hay más. ¡Los quiero, hijos, a todos!”

  I notice that someone has ripped out the small air-conditioning unit from the wall above the sliding door. A big rectangular hole that allows me to see the blue sky outside is all that remains. It was my father who ripped it out, of course, and probably sold it for a few pesos the way he’d done with other appliances when he needed money. Often he’d sell stuff from the house. He’d spend months at a time paying off a TV or DVD player only to sell it for less than half of what he’d eventually end up paying for it. Once when I asked him why he’d do this, he said, “Because we don’t need all these material things. You think you need them when you buy them, and then when you have them you realize that you don’t really need them. Luxuries are for the rich, hijo, and we’re not rich. Besides, I need the money. Are you going to give me money?” Pause. “Then?”

  Then? Then how ’bout you work and stop feeling sorry about your sorry ass?

  I said nothing.

  But the worst was when my father almost sold off ten original Piña Moras for a mere one thousand dollars. Had I not arrived when I did, the paintings, which are worth thousands, would’ve been sold to a government representative—one of those people he considered crooks and so despised—and long gone. I’d always admired these paintings, which are mostly of Tarahumara people and landscapes of Chihuahua’s Sierra Madre where they reside. Each is of a different size, with the smallest being 16 by 12 inches and the largest 3 by 4 feet. This largest one has always been my favorite. No matter where it hangs it always commands attention. It’s of four Tarahumara men, who, if not for their dark skin and headwear, could easily be confused for fifth-century Roman senators, each seated and draped in a long white robe with a brightly colored sash. The one at the fore and the one right behind him each have on their head a basket with stacks of bread in it, while the two behind them don traditional Tarahumara headbands. And each bears the face of resilience, of loss and antiquity. But it’s the one at the fore who’s the most striking. Sitting majestically like a king on his throne, with his hands resting at his side, his stare is grave and unapologetic, like Geronimo’s in the famous photo of him snapped by Ben Wittick in the 1800s, where he’s kneeling and holding a rifle, looking like he’s ready to kill a white man. Certainly the two share a similar history. Currently this painting hangs on the wall at my mother’s house right above the dining room table. Around it hang other Piña Mora paintings. Most of them are of Tarahumara women and children. The others are of some of Chihuahua’s Sierra Madre’s scenic panoramas. My father’s painting of the fruits and samovars hangs there, too: the work of the student beside the work of the master.

  But this painting and all the others that today hang all over my mother’s house almost never made it there. If I hadn’t arrived in Chihuahua when I did that summer, a government lawyer would’ve made off with some of the most beautiful paintings Chihuahua has ever known for almost nothing. But if anybody was going to rob my father for these paintings, it was going to be me, and not some uppity lawyer lady with dollar signs in her eyes. So when he told me what he’d done, I told him that he had to get those paintings back by any means necessary, because if he didn’t, I would never forgive him. I also added that I would gladly pay him the thousand dollars the lawyer had paid him for them. This made my father very happy, because as it turned out he had yet to receive any payment from the lawyer; when he’d brought the paintings to her office he’d been met by a young female secretary who’d told him that the lawyer had taken an early vacation and that she’d be gone for two weeks. This meant that the paintings were leaning against a wall in a bland government office being watched over by a clueless twenty-something-year-old. But what surprised me more was that my father was ready to go retrieve the paintings almost instantly. “Vamos pues,” he said with excitement, “before they close. ¡Ándale!”

  “Really, right now?” I said, not believing him.

  “Pues sí. Don’t you want the paintings?”

  “Claro que sí.”

  “Pues vamos. ¡Anda! Let’s get there before they close, because then we’re going to have to wait until Monday when they open again.”

  Fuck that! I wanted those paintings.

  My father and I hopped into the cabin of my uncle Chuy’s truck and Aarón and Danny hopped in the back. And because only my father knew where we were headed, I let him drive. Within minutes we were parked in a yellow zone in front of a tall building right across from La Plaza Mayor, which is home to the statue of El Ángel de la Libertad, on the southeast corner of Calle Aldama and Avenida Venustiano Carranza, right in the heart of El Centro.

  “I’ll be back,” my father said as he shut the door and walked away. Aarón and Danny jumped from the bed of the truck onto the sidewalk and came to the passenger-side window, where they met me with puzzled faces, as u
ncertain as I was about whether our father was actually going to return with the paintings. Silently the three of us stared at him as he disappeared into the tall building in front of us. It was ten minutes till five and I was hoping that we hadn’t arrived too late. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day and night plus all of Saturday and Sunday wondering if I’d ever see the paintings again.

  “Do you think he’ll return with them?” I asked Aarón and Danny.

  “Pues sí,” said Danny in a quiet but certain tone. “If he says they’re here, then they must be.”

  “Yeah, but will they give them back to him?” I added.

  “Pues quien sabe,” Aarón said, shrugging.

  But before we could speculate any more, my father appeared holding the stack of paintings above his head. They were wrapped in a serape-like blanket and large black trash bags. Hunched over but steady, my father quickly made it to the truck, moving right past me to the back, where he carefully placed the works of art. I looked at them through the back window, wanting to see their condition, but all I could see were the dusty black bags and old blanket they were wrapped in. I hoped they were all there.

  “Just like I said, hijo,” my father said to me while standing over the paintings and dusting off his hands and forearms. He was happy and smiling, drips of sweat forming on his forehead.

  “Are you sure they’re all there?” I yelled to him.

  “¡Todas! When we get home, you’ll see. But first let’s go get some sodas. I’m thirsty.”

  It was hot, and cold sodas sounded good.

  In the living room of his house, my father carefully removed the blanket and trash bags. After, he carefully placed each painting against the room’s walls. They were all there, all ten of them, still in their original frames and still in good condition.

  “Eh, what did I tell you?” said my father as if showing off his own work. “You wanted them, you got them. Era chingón, Piña Mora. Do you notice the lines, his style? Look at this one here, of this Tarahumara woman. The strokes are strong, almost violent, but you can’t see them from far away. She looks all smooth from back here. You like that?”

  “Yes, of course, it’s beautiful.”

  “Now look at this big one. The style is different. The lines are straight, more defined, sharp. Look at the men’s robes, they look like they’re from a Picasso painting. Están cuadradas las líneas, ¿qué no?”

  “Sí.”

  “Nombre, hijo, if you would have seen these paintings twenty years ago, you would have seen how much more beautiful they used to be, when the colors were still fresh and vibrant. They jumped out at you. But they’re still beautiful—¡hermosas! I still love them.”

  It amazed me to hear my father talk about these paintings in this way, like a curator at a museum, like a true lover of art, and not of any art, but of this particular art that was right in front of him, of an art he was so closely connected to. It was bewildering to think that only days earlier he’d made a deal with someone to sell this art to them for a mere thousand dollars. It pained me to know that although my father loved these paintings, he could so easily sell them off. Had my father really been that desperate for money? If he had, could he have done nothing else to attain it? Where was the love for the works there, the appreciation? Where was his dignity?

  16

  A pile of my father’s clothes rests against the wall below the window, which tells me that this is where he’d been staying during the last days of his life. This room had become his sanctuary from the world outside. It’s in the back, separated from the main house, and according to my father, he built it for me after I was shot, to accommodate me in my newly crippled condition and to give me privacy when I visited. But when I wasn’t visiting, he could be alone in here and do as he pleased, including drink himself to oblivion without being judged. In here he could enjoy the company of his demons without having to put on airs for others—too much work. In here he could be Juan Silva the way Juan Silva was meant to be—no masks, no need to put on a show for anybody.

  I search everywhere for signs of his blood. I’m convinced that he bled in here and I want to see it. I want to see a part of his suffering, touch it and rub it between my fingers; I want to put my tongue to it and taste it; because I hate that my father suffered, that he died a slow and agonizing death, that he could see the dark shadow coming upon him and was unable to do anything to save himself from it. I hate the hopelessness of it all, the suffocating feeling of drowning in our own creations; I hate that one man could do this to himself; I hate that no matter what, the time was marked, and it was just a matter of how much blood was left in him. My father’s blood slowly dripping away—from here, from there—and leaving his body, is fucking with my head, and I wonder if there could’ve been a way to have put it all back. It was just blood after all—my father’s blood.

  Where’s the blood, Pops, and why’d you have to go out this way? This is no way to die.

  There’s no blood though, not on the floor or on the walls or even on the bed or sheets, and from what I can tell from where I sit, there isn’t any on his clothes either. Was it all a lie? Or did he bleed out somewhere else? Maybe in the main house or in the bathroom? Or maybe in the driveway or in the street? Or maybe, just maybe, he didn’t die? But I saw him. I saw him dead.

  I set my eyes on his shoes, which are placed carefully next to his clothes. The sunlight coming through the window splashes over them like a spotlight coming over an actor on a stage. They’re black, dirty, and covered in scuffs and splotches of yeso, proof that my father, contrary to popular belief, had in fact worked. But when I think of this I instantly hear my mother’s voice saying to me, “Yes, he worked, but only when he wanted to. Your father hated to work, he was lazy.” I know, Mother, I know. But enough of that for now. I smile as I stare at the shoes, because they’d been my father’s shoes, my father the drunk’s shoes, shoes I’d given him the last time I’d been in Chihuahua.

  “I like your shoes,” he said to me on the night of my arrival, after all the welcoming hugs and hellos. “They’d be great for work.” They were brand-new suede Stacy Adams with thick rubber soles that I wore as dress shoes. They looked fresh with blue 501s cuffed at the bottom, real cholo-like. “You like ’em, huh?” I said to him with a sense of guilt. “Well, if you want, you can have them. They’re a little too small for me anyway.” I took them off and handed them to my father, who lit up at the idea and just as instantly removed his own old and heavily worn shoes and tossed them aside. When they hit the wall and fell to the floor, I knew they would never be worn again. He shone as he put on the Stacys and walked around the living room in them. He jumped up and down a few times and even did a couple of squats. “Gracias, hijo,” he kept saying. “Están chingones.” And because I believe in living out books, in that moment, I remembered how Anton Chekhov had written this scene for my father and me long ago in his short story titled “A Father”: Was I not Borenka, the son who loved his alcoholic father unconditionally and gave him all that he asked for and more, including his new boots? Was my father not Old Musatov, the abject father who preferred the drink over the love of his children? And were these shoes not a symbol of hope, of love, as were the boots that Borenka gave to his father?

  The words came back to me like a river flowing backward. I’m in my room in my house back in California and they’re jumping out at me from a yellow and cracking page glued to the spine of a worn hardcover. They are Musatov’s words to Borenka after he realizes that the real reason Borenka offers him the boots is not because they were too small for him, but because upon seeing the condition of his father’s old and tattered shoes, Borenka is moved by love and pity to give him his own boots. “I see through you! Your boots were too small, because your heart is too big. Ah, Borenka! I understand it all and feel it!” I begin to cry as I read Musatov’s words to his son, my tears drowning the words on the page. Chekhov, how well do you tell my story! Had my father been in the room with me at this moment, I would
’ve reached out and wrapped my arms around him. I would’ve kissed Juan Silva and told him that I loved him so. And like Borenka, I would’ve said to him, “It’s okay, Papá! My heart is big for you!” But I can do no such thing. Because I’m alone and wishing that he’d never died and that I was back in California despising my still-living father from a distance, sometimes hoping, and sometimes not, for him to call me. What, you need money? Sure, it’s on its way. No, no, you don’t have to explain. Yes, I love you, too. Goodbye.

  * * *

  After what happened with Piña Mora, my father would never again come across another opportunity to master his artistic talent. Yet he never did stop drawing. The last time I’d been in Chihuahua, during one of those peaceful moments that sometimes manifest during great storms, my father, while sitting next to his wife on the couch, drew a portrait of me with a number 2 pencil on a piece of white lined paper. “Toma, para tí, hijo,” he said, holding it up for me to see. “So you can see that I can still draw.”

  I’m perfect. He’d drawn me exactly the way I was; there were no mistakes or eraser marks anywhere on the paper. Every line and shadow had purpose. El viejo still had it. And now that he’s dead I’m looking at another portrait he’d also drawn with a number 2 pencil. This one isn’t drawn on paper, nor canvas, but directly on the wall across from me in my father’s room. And because I can’t make it out completely from where I sit on the edge of the bed, I hop onto my wheelchair and roll over to it. The portrait, which is drawn within an oval shape no bigger than a football, is of a woman and two boys. All three have their eyes closed. The woman doesn’t resemble anyone in particular and neither do the two boys. Yet it tells the story of a mother and her two sons. It evokes love and pain. The woman, one can see, is suffering, and so are her sons. But they’re together and love one another. She has her sons and they have their mother. Each is a pillar that sustains the others’ ability to endure. At the bottom right my father had signed it: Dedicado a mis hijos. Juan Silva 2007.