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Authors: Almudena Grandes
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here by the middle of June, when it starts to get hot. You know how much she likes to have her grandchildren over in the summer.’
‘I could go and stay with her there, help her with things,’ she pursed her lips, her face both puzzled and hurt, ‘but she doesn’t want me to.’
‘Of course she doesn’t, because she’ll be coming back here, and she needs you to look after the place in the meantime, to pay the gardener and so on . . . That reminds me, I brought some money for you.’ From my wallet, I took out half a dozen sealed envelopes held together with an elastic band, each one carefully marked with my mother’s elegant, old-fashioned handwriting. ‘Has there been any post?’
‘It’s in your father’s study.’ Lisette gave a shrug. ‘I always used to leave it there. I’ll go and get it if you like . . .’
‘No, I’ll come with you . . .’
I did not know how my brothers had felt, I knew that I was going to find this very difficult, and yet I had not anticipated the aching sadness that breathed through every object, permeating the whole house with an invisible patina at once ancient and impossibly new. Heading towards his study, something I could have done blindfold, every step I took, every door I opened, every thing I touched jolted me with the realisation that this was a step, a door, a thing that still existed in a world where my father did not.
Matter has no spirit and yet my soulless body ached at the implacable memory of this room, the antique wooden desk, the wine-coloured leather wing chair, the fading Persian rug and, at the far end of the room, the low table, the pair of armchairs and the sofa, its back to the huge glass-fronted bookcase. The study smelled of my father, it held the touch of his fingers, the sound of his voice, the gaze of those eyes that had looked around this room day after day, year after year. Some of the most important events in my life had taken place in this room. It was here that as a teenager I had phoned my girlfriends in secret and read illicit books, here that I had confessed that I did not intend to study architecture, here that I announced that I had received a scholarship to study for a doctorate at a university in America, here that I told my father I was going to marry Mai and that I was going to have a child. Yet none of these things seemed important now, while the harsh glare of the furniture, the mathematical precision of the angles between desk and chair, stapler and letter-opener, appointment book and pencil holder, all proclaimed the passing of this man who would never use them again. Standing in this impossibly lifeless room, the certainty of the loss hit me again. I wondered how many more times it would happen, how long it would be before I would simply remember my father as I wanted, rather than feeling obliged to do so by rituals, by well-meaning words and ceremonies.
I love my father. I admire him, I need him, I miss him, but I had not yet learned to conjugate those verbs in the past tense. It wasn’t easy. In death, we say, all men are equal, but it’s not true, they are not equal in our memories. My father was more extraordinary than we, his children, would ever be, and his strength, energy and integrity were reflected in us, doing more to keep us whole and united than all my mother’s affectionate scheming. I knew this better than anyone, because I was the one who had drifted away the most, the only one who had not attempted to be like him. I regretted that now, in spite of the yawning gulf between my beliefs and his. He always knew that I loved him, that I admired him, that I needed him, but that was not enough to relieve the nagging feeling that I had ended up being the son he would never have wanted to have.
It was not easy being the son of a man like my father, a natural charmer, a born winner, a magician, the genie of his own magic lamp. I never met anybody who did not like him, did not submit eagerly and seek out his company.
‘I could go and stay with her there, help her with things,’ she pursed her lips, her face both puzzled and hurt, ‘but she doesn’t want me to.’
‘Of course she doesn’t, because she’ll be coming back here, and she needs you to look after the place in the meantime, to pay the gardener and so on . . . That reminds me, I brought some money for you.’ From my wallet, I took out half a dozen sealed envelopes held together with an elastic band, each one carefully marked with my mother’s elegant, old-fashioned handwriting. ‘Has there been any post?’
‘It’s in your father’s study.’ Lisette gave a shrug. ‘I always used to leave it there. I’ll go and get it if you like . . .’
‘No, I’ll come with you . . .’
I did not know how my brothers had felt, I knew that I was going to find this very difficult, and yet I had not anticipated the aching sadness that breathed through every object, permeating the whole house with an invisible patina at once ancient and impossibly new. Heading towards his study, something I could have done blindfold, every step I took, every door I opened, every thing I touched jolted me with the realisation that this was a step, a door, a thing that still existed in a world where my father did not.
Matter has no spirit and yet my soulless body ached at the implacable memory of this room, the antique wooden desk, the wine-coloured leather wing chair, the fading Persian rug and, at the far end of the room, the low table, the pair of armchairs and the sofa, its back to the huge glass-fronted bookcase. The study smelled of my father, it held the touch of his fingers, the sound of his voice, the gaze of those eyes that had looked around this room day after day, year after year. Some of the most important events in my life had taken place in this room. It was here that as a teenager I had phoned my girlfriends in secret and read illicit books, here that I had confessed that I did not intend to study architecture, here that I announced that I had received a scholarship to study for a doctorate at a university in America, here that I told my father I was going to marry Mai and that I was going to have a child. Yet none of these things seemed important now, while the harsh glare of the furniture, the mathematical precision of the angles between desk and chair, stapler and letter-opener, appointment book and pencil holder, all proclaimed the passing of this man who would never use them again. Standing in this impossibly lifeless room, the certainty of the loss hit me again. I wondered how many more times it would happen, how long it would be before I would simply remember my father as I wanted, rather than feeling obliged to do so by rituals, by well-meaning words and ceremonies.
I love my father. I admire him, I need him, I miss him, but I had not yet learned to conjugate those verbs in the past tense. It wasn’t easy. In death, we say, all men are equal, but it’s not true, they are not equal in our memories. My father was more extraordinary than we, his children, would ever be, and his strength, energy and integrity were reflected in us, doing more to keep us whole and united than all my mother’s affectionate scheming. I knew this better than anyone, because I was the one who had drifted away the most, the only one who had not attempted to be like him. I regretted that now, in spite of the yawning gulf between my beliefs and his. He always knew that I loved him, that I admired him, that I needed him, but that was not enough to relieve the nagging feeling that I had ended up being the son he would never have wanted to have.
It was not easy being the son of a man like my father, a natural charmer, a born winner, a magician, the genie of his own magic lamp. I never met anybody who did not like him, did not submit eagerly and seek out his company.
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