by Maria Duenas
“Come in, don’t stand there in the doorway,” I said, trying to hide the fluster that her unexpected arrival had caused.
“No, I don’t want to come in, I’m in a rush. I just came by to give you a message.”
The situation was so tense and outlandish that I would never have believed it if I wasn’t living through it that morning. My mother and I, who had shared so much and were so alike in so many ways, seemed to have been transformed into two strangers distrustful of each other, like stray dogs sizing each other up warily from a distance.
She remained standing at the door, serious, erect, her hair in a tight bun in which the first grey strands could be seen. Tall and dignified, her angular eyebrows framing the reproach in her stare. Somehow elegant in spite of the simplicity of her attire. When at last she stopped examining me carefully, she spoke. However—and in spite of what I had feared—her words were not intended to criticize me.
“I’ve come to bring you a message. A request that isn’t mine. You can accept it or not, you’ll see. But I think you should say yes. You think about it; better late than never.”
She would not cross the threshold, and her visit lasted only one more minute: as long as it took to give me an address and a meeting time that same afternoon before turning her back without the slightest formality of a good-bye. It seemed strange to me that she hadn’t communicated anything more, but I didn’t have too long to wait for what I feared to be said: just as long as it took her to start going down the stairs.
“And wash that face, comb your hair, and put something on, you look like a whore.”
I shared my astonishment with Ramiro at lunchtime. I couldn’t make any sense of it, I didn’t know what could be behind such an unexpected request. I was suspicious and begged him to go with me. Where? To meet my father. Why? Because that was what he’d requested. What for? Even with ten years of wondering I still wouldn’t have been able to guess at even the vaguest reason.
We had settled that I should meet my mother in the midafternoon at the address she mentioned: Hermosilla 19. A very good street, a very good building; much like the ones that in another time I had visited carrying newly sewn clothes. I was painstaking in composing my appearance for the encounter: I had chosen a blue woollen dress, a matching coat, and a small hat with three feathers tipped gracefully over my left ear. It had all been paid for by Ramiro, naturally: they were the first pieces of clothing to touch my body that hadn’t been sewn by my mother or myself. I was wearing high-heeled shoes and my hair fell loosely down my back; I barely wore any makeup. This afternoon I didn’t want any criticism. I looked at myself in the mirror before going out. A full-length one. The image of Ramiro was reflected behind me, smiling, admiring me with his hands in his pockets.
“You’re amazing. He’s going to be impressed.”
I tried to smile gratefully at the comment, but I just couldn’t. I was pretty, it’s true; pretty and special looking, someone quite different from whom I’d been just a few months earlier. Pretty, special looking, and scared as a mouse, scared to death, regretting that I’d accepted that unusual request.
From my mother’s expression when we arrived, I deduced that she was displeased to see Ramiro at my side. Seeing our intention to go in together, she stopped us without a thought.
“This is family business; if you don’t mind, you’ll remain here.”
And without waiting for a response, she turned and crossed through the imposing black iron and glass door. I wanted to have him beside me, I needed his support and his strength, but I didn’t dare face her down. I merely whispered to Ramiro that it would be best if he left and I followed her inside.
“We’ve come to see Señor Alvarado. He’s expecting us,” she announced to the doorman. He nodded and without a word he turned to accompany us to the elevator.
“Thank you, there’s no need.”
We went through the wide door and began to climb the stairs, my mother ahead of me, stepping firmly, without even touching the polished wood of the banister, in a suit I didn’t recognize. Me behind her, fearful, clinging to the handrail as though to a life vest on a stormy night. The two of us silent as tombs. Thoughts gathered in my head as we went up the steps one by one. First landing. Why did my mother move around so familiarly in that unknown place? Mezzanine. What would the man we were coming to see be like, why this sudden insistence on meeting me after so many years? Main floor. The rest of my thoughts remained crowded together in the limbo of my mind. I didn’t have time for them; we’d arrived. A large door to the right, my mother’s finger on the bell pressing firmly, without any sign of intimidation. The door opened at once, a shriveled old maid in a black uniform and spotless white cap.
“Good afternoon, Servanda. We’ve come to see the master of the house. I imagine he’s in the library.”
Servanda’s mouth was left half open, the greeting hanging from it, as though she had been visited by a couple of ghosts. When she managed to react and it seemed she was at last going to be able to say something, a faceless voice could be heard over hers. A man’s voice, hoarse, strong, from the back.
“Let them come through.”
The maid stepped to one side, still caught in a nervous fluster. She didn’t need to show us the way: my mother seemed to know it all too well. We walked down a broad corridor, passing large rooms, their walls covered with hangings, tapestries, and family portraits. Arriving at a double door, open on the left-hand side, my mother turned toward it. We then noticed a large man waiting for us in the middle of the room. And the powerful voice again.
“Come in.”
A large desk covered in paper, a large bookcase filled with books, a large man looking at me, first my eyes, then down, then back up again. Discovering me. He swallowed, I swallowed. He took a few steps toward us, put his hand on my arm, and squeezed, not too hard, as though wanting to be sure that I really existed. He smiled slightly, as though with an aftertaste of melancholy.
“You’re just like your mother was twenty-five years ago.”
He kept his gaze fixed on mine as he held on to me for a second, two, three, ten. Then, still without letting me go, he looked away and fixed his gaze on my mother. The weak, bitter smile returned to his face.
“How long it’s been, Dolores.”
She didn’t answer, nor did she avoid his eyes. Then he released his hand from my arm and held it out toward her; he didn’t seem to be after a greeting, just a contact, a glancing touch, as though hoping that her fingers would come out to meet his. But she remained immobile, not answering the invitation, until he seemed to awake from the enchantment, cleared his throat, and, in a tone that was as courteous as it was determinedly neutral, offered us a seat.
Instead of heading for the big work table where the papers were gathered, he invited us toward another corner of the library. My mother settled into one armchair, and he sat opposite. And me alone on a sofa, in the middle, between the two of them. Tense, uncomfortable, all three of us. He busied himself lighting a cigar. She remained sitting erect, her knees together and her back straight. Meanwhile, I scratched with my index finger at the wine-colored damask upholstery of the sofa, my attention focused on the task, as though I were trying to make a hole in the warp of the fabric and escape through it like a little lizard. The atmosphere filled with smoke, and the throat clearing returned as though in anticipation of some intervention, but before this could be spilled into the air my mother spoke. She was addressing me, though her eyes remained on him. Her voice forced me at last to lift my gaze to the two of them.
“Well, Sira, so this is your father, you meet him at last. His name is Gonzalo Alvarado, he’s an engineer, the owner of a foundry, and he has lived in this house forever. He used to be the son and now he’s the master of the house, that’s how it goes. A long time ago I used to come here to sew for his mother. We met then, and well, anyway, you were born three years later. Don’t think it was some cheap soap opera in which the unscrupulous young master tricks the poor
little dressmaker or anything of the sort. When our relationship began, I was twenty-two years old, he was twenty-four: we both knew perfectly well who we were, where we were, and what we were up against. There was no deception on his part, nor any more than the appropriate illusions on mine. It was a relationship that ended because it couldn’t go anywhere, because it never should have begun. I was the one who decided to end it, it wasn’t him deciding to abandon you and me. And it has always been me who has insisted that you should have no contact. Your father tried not to lose us, insistently at first; then, bit by bit, he began to get used to the situation. He married and had other children, two boys. For a long time I heard nothing of him, until the day before yesterday when I received a message from him. He didn’t tell me why he wanted to meet you at this point; that we will learn now.”
As she talked, he watched her attentively, with serious appreciation. When she fell silent, he waited a few moments before speaking. He seemed to be thinking, measuring his words so that they might express precisely what he wanted to say. I made the most of those moments to observe him, and the first thing that occurred to me was that I never would have been able to imagine a father like this for myself. I was dark, my mother was dark, and in the very rare imaginary evocations I’d had of my progenitor, I’d always painted him like us, just another man, with a tanned complexion, dark hair and slim build. Also, I had always associated the image of a father with the appearance of those around me: our neighbor Norberto, the fathers of my friends, the men who filled the taverns and the streets of my neighborhood. Normal fathers of normal people: postal workers, salespeople, clerks, café waiters, or at most owners of a tobacconist’s, a grocer’s, or a vegetable stand in the Cebada market. The gentlemen I saw in my comings and goings along Madrid streets delivering orders from Doña Manuela’s workshop were to me like beings from another world, another species who in no way fit the mold I had mentally cast as paternal. And yet before me was just such a specimen. A man who was still good looking despite his somewhat excessive corpulence, with hair already greying that in its day must have been fair, and honey-colored eyes now a little red, dressed in dark grey, the owner of a grand home and patriarch of an absent family. A father unlike all the other fathers, who finally began to speak, addressing my mother and me alternately, sometimes both of us at once, sometimes neither.
“Well now, let’s see, this isn’t easy,” he said by way of beginning.
A deep breath, a drag on the cigar, smoke out. Eyes raised to meet mine at last. Then right to my mother’s. Then to mine again. And then he spoke again, and barely paused, for such a long and intense time that when I finally noticed we were almost in darkness, our bodies had been transformed into shadows, and the only light we had was the weak, distant reflection from a green tulip lamp on the desk.
“I’ve found you because I’m afraid that one of these days they’re going to kill me. Or I’ll end up killing someone and they’ll put me in prison, which would be like a death in life, it comes to the same thing. The political situation is about to explode, and when that happens only God knows what will become of all of us.”
I looked at my mother out of the corner of my eye, seeking some reaction, but her face didn’t betray the slightest sign of concern: as though instead of the warnings of an imminent death she’d heard someone announcing the time or predicting a cloudy day. He, meanwhile, went on voicing his premonitions and exuding streams of bitterness.
“And since I know that my days are numbered, I’ve set about doing an inventory of my life, and what have I found that I own among my belongings? Yes, money. Properties, too. And a company with two hundred employees for which I’ve worked myself to the bone for three decades, and where when they don’t organize a strike they humiliate me and spit in my face. And a wife who when she saw that someone had set fire to a couple of churches went with her mother and sisters to pray rosaries at San Juan de Luz. And two sons I don’t understand, a couple of wastrels who’ve turned fanatic and spend their days shooting people from the rooftops and worshipping the revered son of Primo de Rivera, who has brainwashed all the young gentlemen of Madrid with his romantic nonsense about reaffirming the national spirit. If I could, I would take them all into the foundry and get them working twelve hours a day to see if the national spirit might be restored in them by blows of the hammer and anvil.
“The world has changed so much, Dolores, don’t you see? The workers are no longer satisfied with going to the festival of San Cayetano and to the Carabanchel bulls, as the words of the zarzuela would have it. Now they’re trading their donkeys for bicycles, they’re joining unions, and the first time things go bad for them they threaten the boss with a bullet between the eyes. Probably they’re not wrong; living a life filled with deprivation and working from sunrise to sunset from your earliest years isn’t to anybody’s taste. But what’s needed here is much more than this. Raising a fist, hating those they have above them, and singing The Internationale won’t fix much; countries don’t change to the rhythm of an anthem. They naturally have more than enough reasons for rebelling, as there have been centuries of starvation here and a lot of injustice, too, but this won’t be fixed by biting the hand that feeds them. For that, to modernize this country, we’d need brave employers and qualified workers, a solid education system, and serious government leaders who remain in their posts long enough to get something done. But everything here is a disaster, everyone looks after himself, and no one bothers to work seriously to put an end to such madness. The politicians on both sides spend their days lost in their diatribes and fancy speeches in the parliament. The king is doing just fine where he is: he should have left long ago. The socialists, anarchists, and communists fight for their own interests just as they should, except that they ought to do it with good sense and order, without grudges or explosive tempers. The wealthy and the monarchists, meanwhile, flee like cowards abroad. And between one lot and the other, we’ll finally see the military take over, and then we’re going to be sorry. Or we’ll get ourselves into a civil war, unite against one another, take up arms, and end up killing one another, killing our brothers.”
He spoke emphatically, without pausing. Until suddenly he seemed to come back down to reality and understand that both my mother and I, in spite of having kept our composure, were utterly disconcerted, not knowing where he was going with the discouraging predictions he was making or what we had to do with that crude vomiting up of words.
“Sorry to be telling you all this in such an impulsive way, but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I’ve now reached the moment to act. This country is falling apart. It’s a madness, it’s senseless, and as for me, as I’ve told you, one of these days they’re going to kill me. The ways of the world are changing, and it’s not easy to adjust to them. I’ve spent more than thirty years working like a beast, losing sleep for my business and trying to do my duty. But either the times aren’t on my side or I’m very wrong about something because in the end it’s all turned its back on me, and life seems to be suddenly spitting its vengeance at me. My sons have left me, my wife has abandoned me, and the day-to-day life in my company has turned into a hell. I’ve been left alone, I have no one’s support, and I’m convinced the situation can only get worse. Which is why I am preparing myself, putting my affairs in order, my papers, my accounts, arranging my final wishes, and trying to leave everything organized in case one day I don’t come back. And just as in my business, I’m also trying to put some order in my memories and my feelings, some of which I still have, though not many. The blacker everything around me becomes, the more I rummage among my feelings and retrieve the memory of the good things life has given me. And now that my days are running out, I’ve recognized one of the few things that was really worthwhile. Do you know what that was, Dolores? You. You and this daughter of ours who’s the spitting image of you in the years we were together. That was why I wanted to see you.”
Gonzalo Alvarado, this father of mine who at last had a fac
e and a name, was speaking more calmly now. Halfway through his speech he began to look more like the man he must have been on any other day: sure of himself, forceful in his gestures and his words, used to giving orders and to being right. It had been hard for him to start; it couldn’t be pleasant to face a lost love and an unknown daughter after a quarter century of absence. But he had now regained his composure, the owner and master of the situation. Firm in his speech, sincere and raw as only someone with nothing left to lose can be.