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.Only now did father and mother discover that both had refused to pity Santiago because in this house no one was permitted to pity anyone.We can betray with pity those whom we love.“Is that why you favored Danton so openly, Juan Francisco?”Laura had boasted of the eloquent silence between mother and son.Solitude and quietude had united them.Was that also true about the relation of Santiago to Juan Francisco? Was being explicit about what was taking place more than an offense? Was it a betrayal? Mother and son lived a skein of complicities, shared thoughts, ways of saying thank you, everything but compassion—damned, forbidden compassion … did the father also live and feel this, at a distance, celebrating the other son, father of both?Every mother knows there are children who take care of themselves.Trying to protect them is an effrontery.That was how it was with Danton.To her, his father’s nearness to him seemed an abuse; Juan Francisco understood nothing, gave everything to the son who needed nothing, Danton who almost from infancy played all day unaware of what might be happening in the shadows and silence of their home where his brother lived.But Laura knew instinctively that even if Danton needed no attention and Santiago did, an excessive display of it would have been more offensive and damaging to the weak boy than to the strong one.That wasn’t the problem.Danton moved through the world adjusting everything to his own advantage.Santiago disregarded everything except what he considered essential to his painting, his music, his poetry, his Van Gogh and his Egon Schiele, his Baudelaire and his Rimbaud, his Schubert …Now, seeing both father and son, Juan Francisco and Danton, weeping over the handsome, ascetic body of the young Santiago, Laura realized that the brothers had loved each other but were too modest to show it—brotherly love is virile; sometimes it must wait until the moment of death to show itself as love, affection, tenderness … Now she blamed herself.Had Laura Díaz stolen all her glories from the world just to give them solely to Santiago? All the virtue for the weak brother? Didn’t the strong brother also deserve something? Had she in reality lost two sons?“Did I ever tell you,” said Juan Francisco after the funeral, “that one night I surprised them talking to each other like men? Both were saying, ‘We’re all we need.’ They were declaring themselves independent of you and of me, Laura.How incredible to surprise your sons in the very moment when they are declaring independence.Except that Santiago really meant what he said.All he needed was himself.Danton’s different.He needs success, money, society.He needs more than himself; he’s fooling himself.That’s why he needs us more than ever.”Would there be time to correct thirty years of errors in a shared life with two adult sons, one already dead? Santiago wrote a poem just before he died that Laura showed to Juan Francisco, especially one line: “We are translated lives.” What did it mean? What did those everyday phrases the boy used mean? Don’t leave the cage door open, those are homing pigeons in there and they won’t leave, but cats are different, they go and come back to hurt … “The sun doesn’t always hit me on the head.” Perhaps they meant that Santiago knew how to detach himself from himself, transform himself, discover the other within.She discovered it, too, but didn’t tell him.What about you, Juan Francisco?“My sons are my biography, Laura.I don’t have any other.”“What about me?”“You’re part of it too, darling.”Was that Juan Francisco’s secret, that his life had no secret because he had no past, that his life was only external, the fame of Juan Francisco the orator, the leader, the revolutionary? And behind it, what was there that opened up behind it? Nothing?“There was a girl in Villahermosa who suffered from mongolism.She would threaten people, hit them, and spit, all violently.Her mother had to put blinders on her, as if she were a horse, so she couldn’t see the world and could calm down.”“Was she your neighbor in Tabasco?”No, he didn’t have neighbors, he said, shaking his head.“Who are you? Where are you from? Are you ever going to tell me?”Again, he shook his head.“Don’t you realize that separates us, Juan Francisco? Just when we’re on the verge of understanding each other you deny me the story of your life once again?”This time he nodded his head.“What did you do, Juan Francisco? Were you a hero who simply got tired? Was your heroism a lie? Do you know that’s what I’ve come to believe? What myth are you going to transmit to your sons, the living and the dead one, too—have you thought about that? What are you going to leave us? The whole truth? A half-truth? The good part? The bad? Which part goes to Danton, who’s alive? Which to Santiago, who’s dead?”She knew that only time, which fades like smoke, would reveal her husband’s jealously guarded secret [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]