The Sickness (11 page)

The day before Dr. Miranda comes back to work, the usual morning letter turns suddenly into a real emergency:

The journey back seems longer. It's almost as if the afternoon light were stopping the ferry from traveling any faster. The mood among the passengers is different too. They're all going home, the sand is slowly trickling from their memories; everyone on deck seems filled by a slight sense of disillusionment. Andrés, moreover, feels frustrated and disappointed with himself. He has lied to Mariana on the phone; he didn't have the courage to tell her that he hadn't been able to do what he'd intended to do on this trip. That lie makes him feel even more vulnerable. It's a multiplication of his own stupidity. That very morning, in Pampatar, on his father's insistence, he had again behaved absurdly. He had to find a way to complete the lie that had been the whole justification for the trip. Ever since they arrived, his father had kept reminding him that they had come to the island to see a house that someone was supposedly offering him as part-payment of a debt. It had been a rather tangled and ambiguous story, never fleshed out with too many details, but on the island, where it had to become fact, the story proved almost too fragile to survive.

“Aren't we going to see that house, then?” his father asked, somewhat puzzled, over their breakfast of fresh fruit.

“Yes, of course, that's what we're going to do this morning.”

By the side of the road, on the way to Pampatar, Andrés spotted a condominium under construction. He didn't know what else to do. He braked rather sharply, hurriedly explained to his father that this was the housing complex they had come to see, but then insisted that he stay in the car.

“Wait for me here,” he said, before striding off toward the building site.

He spoke to an engineer and with some workmen who, in rather desultory fashion, were putting the finishing touches to the roof of one of the houses. He asked ridiculous questions and waved his arms about, so that his father, from a distance, would assume that he was talking business, asking about practical details to do with the architecture of the houses, that he was finally dealing with the real reason for their trip. He managed somehow to stretch this out for fifteen minutes. The engineer began to think Andrés must be mad, either that or an idiot determined to waste his time. Then, most absurd of all, as he took his leave, Andrés embraced him. The engineer then thought that he was not only an idiot, but queer too. Andrés went back to the car to tell his father a new pack of lies. His father didn't like the houses.

“I don't think it's a good deal,” he said.

Andrés remembers the scene and feels faintly amused, but somehow pathetic too. It's all part of the same overarching emotion. Perhaps it simply angers him to see himself being so weak, so incapable of dealing with the situation. He's
done it so often, with so many people, even cruelly, without a scrap of pity, feeling that he was doing the right thing, that frankness should, ethically speaking, be part of the medical armory. Now, however, he finds himself caught up in a whole circus of infinite procrastinations. His father comes over to him, carrying two coffees. One with milk, one black.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

The lights of La Guaira are getting ever closer. Andrés looks at him and knows he has no choice now.

“What's wrong?” asks his father, realizing from his son's anxious face that something is up.

Andrés puts his hands together and clears his throat. The words feel almost like heartburn inside him. He can feel the vowels scraping against his esophagus, the consonants rushing toward the roof of his mouth. It's inevitable. He can do nothing to stop it now. That's how it is sometimes. You always end up speaking when you hadn't intended to, when you weren't expecting to, when there are no more “better moments.” Sometimes the words just say themselves, speak for themselves.

“You've got cancer, Dad,” Andrés blurts out, albeit quietly.

There are some things that can only be said quietly.

He wishes it were all much hazier, he wishes his memory of that afternoon were not so very clear, that it had receded a little, that, with the passing of time, it, too, had gradually faded and sunk into the whole pointless compendium of the past. But no, that afternoon is still there, sharp, wounding, rough; ever since then, behind every afternoon, there is always that other afternoon, so much more solid and so resistant to being forgotten. Andrés has done everything possible to make it disappear, but it's no use. It's a stain that nothing can wash out, that never goes. For two whole weeks, Andrés has kept seeing himself in that afternoon, every afternoon, always that same afternoon, one afternoon inside another, repeating over and over:

“You've got cancer, Dad.”

His father was completely taken aback. Andrés couldn't meet his gaze and turned away, ashamed. In the background
was the port of La Guaira, intermittently illuminated. They stood for a few seconds in silence, then his father said:

“Look at me.”

Andrés wouldn't, but his father insisted:

“Look at me.”

He didn't need to raise his voice. His tone was strong and authoritative.

“Look at me, damn it!”

When Andrés did finally turn to face him, he saw a shaken, tearful man. It would be hard to say exactly what emotion was troubling him most just then: surprise? fear? indignation? rage? His chin was trembling. His father's face suddenly turned incredibly pale, like a sudden white blush. Andrés could almost hear the teeth crunching inside that tight, tremulous jaw. His father dropped his coffee cup, and when it hit the floor, the plastic cracked and the hot liquid splattered Andrés's shoes.

“How long have you known?”

Andrés again felt like a child hauled up in front of his father, he thought again that the whole trip had been a terrible, stupid mistake. His father spoke to him again as his father. For a moment, they ceased being two adults, who were occasionally friends and occasionally not, who shared a common history; for a moment, they returned to that age when they really could only be father and son, nothing more.

“Does that matter?”

“It does to me.”

Andrés shifted uneasily on his feet, made an attempt at a gesture, opened his mouth to speak, then said nothing.

“You knew right from the start, didn't you? From the first tests.”

Andrés could find no sounds to make. He felt as if words had suddenly deserted him.

“I asked you not to lie to me, Andrés. That was all I asked of you.”

“I didn't lie to you,” Andrés said in a whisper.

“No, of course not. You just concealed the truth from me!”

“If you'll let me explain . . .”

“So that was what this trip was all about.” His father spoke with bitter sarcasm, then, with scorn. “To give me the big news!”

Then he turned abruptly and went over to a rail almost at the front of the boat. Andrés hesitated for a moment. He sensed that his father was crying or trying very hard not to. He waited a few minutes before joining him. He imagined that would be best, that his father needed time to quell his anger, his rage. Then, very slowly, he walked over to him, trying to be as discreet as possible. His father did not turn round, but kept his back to him. The port was getting nearer.

“You didn't dare,” he muttered hoarsely.

“No.”

“You had thousands of opportunities. We were together on beaches, we slept in the same room . . .”

“I couldn't do it. Whenever I tried to tell you, I just couldn't.”

“But you could now,” added his father somewhat resentfully.

“Yes, I don't know what came over me. But that certainly wasn't how I wanted to tell you. I'm sorry.”

Very slowly, his father turned round. Andrés could see that his eyes were wet with tears and that beneath those tears lay something resembling both melancholy and rancor, some emotion for which the dictionary did not yet have a word.

“I'm sorry,” Andrés murmured again, as if he could go on repeating those words for the rest of the journey. As if those were the only words he had to hand, the only ones left to him.

Still keeping his distance, his father said: “All this makes me think that it's not something straightforward.” He looked at him with eyebrows raised interrogatively. “If it was nothing very serious, you wouldn't have found it so hard, we wouldn't have come on this trip.”

“Yes, it's serious,” mumbled Andrés awkwardly.

“Say that again.”

This was an order.

“Say that again. Tell me that it's ‘serious.' Tell me the whole truth now.”

They both fell silent, looking at each other. How long did they stand like that? His memory doesn't tell him. That is one thing he can't remember. He only has that frozen image of them, studying each other, saying nothing. Until an acid teardrop cuts the image in two, from top to bottom, like a knife, tearing the scene apart. Andrés could no longer hold back his tears. However hard he blinked, he couldn't do it: that was his response. Like a confused and cornered child, forced to accept that
there's no way out. He could barely manage a mumbled “Forgive me, Dad,” his voice broken by sobs.

Javier Miranda stared at him, astonished, overwhelmed. He appeared to be trembling or trying hard to keep his body from trembling. He bowed his head, turned, and walked off into the shadows.

They got into the car in silence, left the port and drove up the motorway to Caracas still in silence. On two or three occasions, Andrés tried to start a conversation, but received no response. His father remained mute throughout the journey, staring straight ahead. Andrés imagined that the news had left him paralyzed, that he was still taking in that information, as invasive as a scalpel. When they stopped outside his father's apartment building, Andrés got out to help him take his suitcase from the trunk. Then he made to accompany him to the door, carrying the suitcase, but his father stopped him.

“Thanks, I can do it,” he said in an oddly gentle tone.

Still wrapped in that same silence, he set off toward the door. Andrés watched him, every nerve tensed. When he could stand it no longer, he shouted:

“Would you have preferred not to know?”

His father stopped, but didn't turn to look at him.

Andrés asked again: “Would it have been better if I hadn't told you?”

His father stood for a moment as if pondering the question, as if the question were a peach pit under his tongue. Then, sadly, he went up to the door and into the building. Without saying a word. Without turning round.
Why should this happen to me? Why me? Ever since that night, Javier Miranda keeps asking these questions over and over. As if it were a personal matter, as if he were addressing nature's complaints department and had sat down to talk to the manager. Why me? Why should this happen to me?—while he submits to more tests, more examinations. Why me? Why should this happen to me?—when the oncologist speaks to him in incomprehensible jargon. Why me? Why should this happen to me?—as he starts a new session of chemotherapy.

“How are you feeling today?” asks the nurse with a smile.

“I'd rather have been run over by a car.”

Ever since that night, everything has changed. First, there's his state of mind. He can't shake off the depression that doesn't so much wrap around him as drench him. He's angry with life, furious, resentful; he feels powerless, terrified, knowing that there's no escape. Finally, and in the very worst possible way, when he's almost seventy, he has learned the cruel meaning of the word “fate.” This is it. That's all. A syringe. His relationship with his son has changed too. In fact, his relationship with everyone has changed: and that, of course, includes Andrés. He no longer knows how to treat him, what to do, what to say to him. Deep down, he feels sorry for the others, he regrets what's happening, he'd like to spare everyone else this whole pointless process, this exhausting task. When he sees them, he invariably bows his head. He knows how awkward the situation is for them as well. Perhaps it would all be easier if he
tried to look happy, if he pretended, if he behaved as if nothing were happening. Perhaps that would be ideal for everyone, to die discreetly, without anyone noticing, without anyone realizing.

The most marked change, however, is in his body. Javier Miranda feels that he has lost it, that it no longer belongs to him. He has never felt that before, never felt so clearly the stark divide caused by illness. Now he's dramatically aware of a separation between him and his own body. He is apart, inhabiting a damaged structure, inside a skin he no longer governs, that no longer speaks to him, that has another government now, that does not answer him, that lives for itself and for its own destruction.

Sometimes, at night, before sleeping, he feels this with exasperating clarity. He's in the bathroom, standing at the mirror, holding his toothbrush, looking at himself. It's the last ritual of the day. He hasn't even turned on the light. Only the lamp in the corridor dimly illuminates his image in the glass. He sees it then—so painfully clearly! He can feel its presence in everything—in his hair, in the shine in his eyes, in the color of his skin, even in the shape of his head. The illness is doing something he hadn't thought possible: it's taking over his very physiognomy. In the early hours, one Wednesday, after peeing, as he passed the bathroom mirror, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the bones beneath the skin, the ever more evident shape of his skull. As if the mirror were an X-ray.