Читать книгу Humiliation - Paulina Flores - Страница 9

Are we almost there?” moaned Pía. “I’m tired.”

Simona watched her younger sister panting and dragging her feet. “Shhhh,” she said, “quit whining.”

They had been walking for over an hour on the side of the street where the sun beat down hardest. Their father was a few steps ahead. He had realized too late that the shade was on the other side, and the cars speeding down Bellavista wouldn’t let them cross now. In any case, the uneven number they were looking for was on this side, the sunny one, and they were nearly at their destination.

“Dad! I’m tired!” said Pía, and she sat down on the hot ground with her legs outstretched.

Simona watched her father. He didn’t seem to hear Pía and went on walking.

“Dad!” Pía shouted.

This time he turned around, came back, and picked her up. As he went on walking resignedly, Pía’s head peeked over her father’s shoulder like a puppet taking the stage. She hugged his neck tightly and smiled in victory.

Simona raised her eyebrows and shot her sister an angry look, letting her know just how much work she gave other people by being so little. Still, she couldn’t help feeling a little bitter.

Simona was tired too, but she was too big for her father to carry her.

The year was 1996. The girls were nine and six years old. Their father was twenty-nine, and unemployed.

Simona had to hurry to catch up. Her father’s strides grew even longer and faster. His jaw was clenched as he walked, or at least it looked that way from what she could see of him. He was nervous, thought Simona. But seeing him tense today didn’t make her sad like other times; instead, her chest filled with pride. It meant that her father cared about what was happening. And what was happening, what was about to happen, was her idea. She put her hand in the pocket of her dress and squeezed the ad and the map as if they were winning lottery tickets.

Her pride also stemmed from the satisfaction of knowing that she did understand what her father was feeling, and that her little sister didn’t. Simona was the one who had spent all those nights with her ear pressed to the wall, listening to her parents fight. And the next morning she would get out of bed to look up in the dictionary all the words they had said to each other that were new to her. Sometimes she even looked up ones she had heard before, but that in her opinion didn’t apply to her father: loser, coward, selfish.

Simona suffered, but at the same time she loved feeling part of the solemnity of adult conflicts. This was the kind of responsibility that came with the position of older sister.

Since summer vacation started, every morning was a long, grueling walk. Downtown, Providencia, Las Condes. All pretty places, clean and modern. Far away from the neighborhood where they lived. The father had lost his job a while ago, but with the girls home on summer vacation, he had no choice now but to take them with him when he went to drop off résumés or attend interviews. Their mother said they couldn’t be left alone. She used the word abandon: “You can’t abandon them in the house.”

At first the father had found it a nuisance. He saw it as his wife taking revenge on him—after all, she could have made more of an effort to find some old neighbor lady with time on her hands who could take care of the girls. Then he decided it wasn’t really such a bad idea. Maybe they would give him an advantage. If people saw him come in with two little girls in tow, maybe they’d take pity on him and give him the job.

“Remember, think about something sad,” he’d say to his daughters before they entered the office buildings.

“Like if Mom and you died?” asked Pía, confused, the first time her father said it. Her eyes grew watery and intense.

The father corrected himself. “No, no. Not that. Not so sad. What I mean is that you can’t go around laughing or playing or cracking jokes while you wait for me. I want you to pretend to be sad. Fake sad, like the actresses on TV . . . and then I’ll take you out for french fries and the three of us will laugh by ourselves.”

Pía smiled in relief, happy at the idea of french fries. But her eyes filled up with tears again when Simona told her: “You know what I think about to get sad? I imagine Mom and Dad are going to break up.”

Simona raised her eyes to look defiantly at the sun. She’d been warned so often not to do that, but now she felt utterly confident, capable of absorbing all the sun’s rays. Because this morning would be different. This morning they would triumph, and all the effort and failure that had come before would be worth it. And she had planned it all. Finally, her help would do some good.

She’d been trying to contribute for a long time. In the afternoons, she sat at the kitchen table next to her father with her own pile of newspapers in front of her, and she went through them looking for any and all job advertisements. She marked them with a fluorescent highlighter, cut them out carefully, and glued them onto a white page. Once the page was covered in pasted ads, she filed it in a folder labeled CLASSIFIED ADS FOR DAD. At the end of the day, she handed the folder to him with all the gravity the situation called for.

She was driven and enthusiastic, but not because she wanted her father to find a job. Nor because she wanted to end her parents’ fights, or the family’s economic straits. Rather, she longed for her father to be again the way he used to be.

At first, when she found out he’d been fired, she couldn’t help but feel satisfied. She didn’t tell a soul, but she was pleased. Finally, she would have fun with her father all day long! Every day! And it was summer vacation, too—it was like a dream. Nothing would get in the way of their games: not work, which left him so tired at night; not her mother, either.

Because her mother seemed like the biggest obstacle. She never let Simona spend time with her father: she took over and dominated every aspect of her life, and her little sister’s life. She made them food, brought them to school, to birthday parties, took them shopping for clothes. When her father came home from work, her mother went on taking charge of everything herself: checking the girls’ homework and their backpacks, drying their hair after their baths, making sure they brushed their teeth well, tucking them in and turning out the light. Simona received a “good night” from her father only when he got up to lock the doors. And then there were Sundays. The day she and her father could finally have fun, her mother would butt in with her scolding. “Don’t bother her, Alejandro,” she said when he lunged at Simona to start a tickle war. “She’s a little girl!” The same thing at lunch, when her father started in with the jokes: “Hey, look over there!” he’d say, and then steal food from her plate. “Let them eat in peace,” her mother said. But Simona didn’t want him to leave her alone, she didn’t want her mother to defend her. She knew they were games, and she liked them. But her mother didn’t understand, and she complained to her girlfriends that it was “like having three kids instead of two,” or that “he always makes me into the bad guy.”

But as it turned out, things only got worse after he lost his job. And then Simona realized that there was an even bigger wall that separated her from her father.

The first day he was home, she got up very early, eager to snuggle up with him in bed. She ran to his room, but when she turned the knob she found it was locked. She knocked a few times, gently, but the door stayed closed until lunchtime. When her father finally appeared he was in a bad mood, and he complained that her mother hadn’t left anything to eat. After making some gluey noodles with half-cooked hot dogs, he told her and Pía that, starting now, they’d have to make the beds and divide up the housework. Then he locked himself in his room again. There were no jokes or tickle wars. Her father came out only to go to the bathroom, his face scruffy and ever less healthy. And everything they did made him mad. Things that had never bothered him before, like when she sang the songs from The Little Mermaid, her favorite movie. Before, they’d always sung those songs together, and they’d recited the dialogue from memory. “Poor Unfortunate Souls” was her favorite, and the one they sang the best.

“Here’s the deal,” her father would say, imitating the malevolent voice of Ursula the witch. “I’ll make you a potion that will turn you into a human for three days. Got that? Three days. Before the sun sets on the third day, you’ve got to get dear old Princey to fall in love with you. That is, he’s got to kiss you. Not just any kiss—the kiss of true love!” Her father just loved that last line, and so did she.

“If I become human,” Simona would reply, playing the innocent and dubious Ariel, “I’ll never be with my father or sisters again.”

“That’s right . . . but . . . you’ll have your man. Life’s full of tough choices, innit?”

Simona was sure that her father loved her, but she could also tell that something was making him feel lonely, and that all the love she could give him didn’t help; quite the opposite, in fact. In some strange and inexplicable way it seemed to weaken him and make him feel more alone. She thought that solitude was related to one of the words her mother had said in their fights, one she’d also looked up in the dictionary: humiliation.

So, when she’d seen the casting call a couple of days earlier, it was as if a miracle had come down from heaven. How had she not realized? How had she not thought of it sooner, when it was so obvious? All that time looking at classified ads for carpenters, bakers, assistants, watchmen, salesmen, drivers, and more watchmen, never realizing how bad those ads must make her father feel.

Now, while she walked, she took the clipping from her pocket and read it one more time:

GREAT OPPORTUNITY: Casting Call. Ad agency seeks women and men of all ages for publicity campaign—prestigious international brand. Tryouts: Monday–Wednesday, Bellavista 0550 . . .

Simona loved TV. She always paid special attention to the commercials, because her sister never understood them and asked her to explain.

There were many reasons her father was destined to triumph in the casting, but two in particular stood out. The first and most obvious: people in commercials were much less handsome than her father. To say less handsome, in fact, was an understatement. It’s just, her father was beautiful! He looked like Luis Miguel, the most beautiful man on the face of the earth. She told everyone: “My dad is like Luis Miguel’s twin.” And he knew it too, and he seemed to like it, because he always sang to her “Será que no me amas,” imitating Luis Miguel’s haughty flirtatiousness as he danced. He turned his face in profile, grabbed his hair, gave a kick and a turn. He moved forward with little jumps, swaying his hips, while Simona did the backup singers’ chorus: “Noche, playa, lluvia, amas.”

And that was the other reason: her father had a flair for performance. At least, that was what her mother always said: “Alejandro missed his calling. He should have studied acting or something, it’s in his nature.” Simona caught the mockery behind the comment. And not only because her mother’s tone implied it was a joke, and not as serious and tragic as Simona saw it: her father’s talents wasted. She knew something about what her mother thought of actors, and it wasn’t good. To be extroverted, to draw attention, to show off. After so many reprimands from her mother, Simona had eventually learned that being extroverted was a kind of defect. A flaw that she’d been born with, like the original sin inherited from the first disobedient parents, but without the possibility of redemption. She was a girl who attracted attention and it made her feel small, minuscule. That’s why she tried to imitate her little sister, who tended to be quieter and more enigmatic. When Pía wasn’t whining she had the gift of seeming simply uninterested, letting herself be loved, never feeling the need to seek out affection. Pía’s personality seemed much more appropriate. But it was almost impossible for Simona to be like her; she couldn’t help the way she was. And although it had been painful to bear that burden, now, as she walked beside her father, it was something that honored her and filled her with happiness. Because being extroverted was a quality she shared with him. Something that brought them closer, that could destroy any obstacle that came between them.

“We have arrived,” said Simona ceremoniously, and she bowed toward the enormous house that stood before them.

“Finally!” said Pía, still in her father’s arms.

He set her down with a sigh and asked Simona for the map. He looked it over nervously and then peered at the house, doubtful. It was a big, old three-story mansion, with all the darkness and cold typical of an aging construction, but painted a modern, strident green. A getup that inspired distrust.

Simona saw the hesitation in her father’s eyes. It hadn’t been easy to convince him about the GREAT OPPORTUNITY. She couldn’t let him get cold feet now that they were almost there; she took his hand and tugged on it, saying, “Let’s go in, let’s go in. They’re waiting for us. They’re waiting.”

“Are you sure it’s here? There’s not even a sign. What’s the production company called?”

“It’s just so they won’t get so many people bothering them,” said Simona quickly. “Can you imagine all the people who would come if they knew the casting calls happened here?” And she pulled harder on her father’s hand. “Let’s go,” she insisted, practically begging.

“Yeah, let’s go in, Dad, it’s really hot out here,” said Pía, not so much excited as imploring a resolution.

“Okay,” said their father. “We’ve come this far, what’ve we got to lose?”

They rang the bell on the intercom, and there was no Who is it? or Can I help you? from inside; the door simply opened.

After so many hours in the sun, the darkness inside blinded and disoriented the father for a moment. When he could see better, he realized right away that the inside of the house was also suspicious. Its original structure had clearly been altered. Where the living or dining room should surely start, there was a wall, a thin partition put up to create more offices. He felt ill at ease in the gloom of a small false foyer that allowed a steep staircase as the only possible path. The floor was of gray stone, the only element that seemed to have resisted the changes. The worst part was the silence. Too much silence. Not like a place where people were working. And there he was, cornered, with his daughters. Halfway between the front door and the staircase, with no one to receive them or to ask what they wanted.

The father lifted the girls onto the second step and knelt down in front of them. He took a deep breath, looked up at them. They both smiled back at him.

He immediately looked away. Poor things, he thought. He could never meet their eyes; that’s why he had to “act the clown,” as his wife said. All this time that he’d been forced to spend with them lately, it had been overwhelming. They were always there, wandering around the house, waiting for him, demanding things from him, depending on him. Nothing ever seemed to disappoint them, but he hid in his room because he couldn’t even meet their eyes. The truth is, he didn’t know who they were: Who was the better student in school? Which one didn’t like salad? Which one hated taking baths? Who was afraid of the dark? His wife talked about them in bed, but he couldn’t retain anything. He’d become a father very young. Too young. Accidentally and without preparation. And he had responded by going along with it. Doing his supposed duty: face up to it and forget about himself for a time. Leave aside his plans and projects like a half-eaten apple. Work. He’d spent all his youthful energy on working, without questioning it much. Leaving a great unknown between him and what his life could have been if he’d invested time in his own dreams. Without ever finding out if he could have conquered the world.

It was true that, at first, the most important thing had been financial security. But he also knew that all that time, as his daughters were growing up, he’d been hiding. Limiting his contribution to an exhausting job from Monday to Saturday. And now that he had nothing material to contribute, he felt useless and excluded. His wife was much better than him, and she was right when she threw his lack of resolve in his face. It was logical for her to be tired of taking charge of everything. And all he could do was crack jokes and play games with his daughters. He couldn’t think of anything to do but act like a playmate, one you casually and miraculously meet in a park but don’t know if you’ll see again the next day.

“How do I look? Not too formal?” he asked, adjusting his tie. He was wearing the blue suit, white shirt, and brown tie that he always wore to work interviews. He felt suffocated, and he wanted to run away. Every time he had to go into an office he felt the same thing: the urge to flee.

Simona smoothed his eyebrows with a thumb, the way her mother did whenever they were tangled.

“You look so handsome,” she blurted, so effusively that she turned red.

“My little monkey,” he said, tousling her hair with one hand.

He stood up and started to climb the stairs. At the top, another door awaited them.

“How do I look?” asked Pía.

“You don’t matter,” Simona told her. “Dad’s the one who matters.”

They rang the second bell. They waited for a few seconds and a man appeared, ushering them in with effusive politeness. Simona watched him with surprised interest. He was a very handsome man, like her father. But his beauty was different. He had dark hair, a sparse beard, and an earring in one ear.

“Casting?” the man asked her father, who replied with an uncertain “Yes.”

“Come in, come in,” he said, leading them to his desk.

The place itself caught Simona’s attention, too. No doors leading to offices, no secretaries. It was just a room in an old house. Enormous and open, with a very high ceiling. Beyond the desk hung a white cloth, and tripods, cameras, and spotlights were set up in front of it. It didn’t look anything like the other companies they had visited, but, Simona thought, that must mean something good.

The man settled into an executive chair lined in white leather, and the three of them sat in some plastic chairs that were modern and uncomfortable. He pressed his hands together as if he were about to pray, and began: “Well, then, let me explain how this works . . .”

He told them about the agency, its trajectory and reputation. He said that they operated in partnership with other publicity agencies. That they handled important brands. That now they needed people for a specific campaign, but that they were always looking for new faces. He talked nonstop, eloquently and naturally, about a ton of things Simona didn’t entirely understand but pretended to follow, nodding her head just like her father did.

The man paused and smiled. “Now,” he went on, and his excited tone switched to a more reserved one. “We need photographs of people so we can show them to the company. They’re the ones who give the green light in the end,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and showing his palms, as though to say “I am innocent, see ye to it.” “The photos,” he went on, “are for what’s called a portfolio. Everyone in this business needs one, and if a person doesn’t have one, we make it for them. The photography session has a cost, obviously, which is fifteen thousand pesos. You can also have it done at another studio.” He paused and raised his hands. “Of course, our prices, considering that in general we end up working with the people we photograph, are much more convenient.” The man waited for an answer with a smile. “What do you say?” he insisted, when the father didn’t answer.

“Good, good, it all sounds good. No problem, let’s do that portfolio . . . It’s just that really, I’m a little nervous because I’ve never done anything like this and . . .”

Suddenly a bell sounded. Practically the first noise they’d heard since they’d entered the house.

“Can you give me a second?” asked the man with a smile. He stood up, went to the door, and opened it a crack. A feminine voice—they didn’t turn to look—murmured something that the man replied to, also in an undertone. Then he closed the door.

“Sure, sure,” he said as he went back to his desk. “It’s the first time. I can tell. But you don’t have to worry, your daughters are lovely. The brands are going to love them. They have . . . they have just the look we need.”

“My daughters?” asked the father.

“Sure. It can’t be the first time you’ve heard that.”

Simona turned her head toward her father and bit her tongue. She saw him sink a few inches into the chair, his face red and his mouth agape. She saw him narrow his eyes as if to focus them better. He was just as surprised as she was, bitterly surprised, and Simona felt her heart shrinking, and the big room around them also began to shrink. Like those torture chambers in Indiana Jones movies, where walls with knives close in menacingly, trapping the protagonists.

“Lovely. Just charming. Look at the smile on this little one here,” said the man, turning to Pía, who was grinning saucily at all the compliments. “I bet she gets her looks from her mother.”

“My daughters,” the father repeated to himself, almost in a whisper.

“Yes, your daughters,” said the man, confused. “Well, wherever those genes come from, they’re marvelous,” he added.

“Yes, my daughters,” the father said again, now trying to hide his surprise. “They’re lovely,” he added in a quietly affectionate voice.

“Well, then . . . who should we start with? The little one looks like she wants to go first.”

“Yes. Whatever you say. With her . . . but . . . you know . . .” He paused and forced a smile. “The thing is, I don’t have any cash on me just now, I’d have to go take some out. I’m going to run to the ATM and we’ll come back to take the photos.”

“If you want, you can leave the girls here. You can go to the ATM while we do the shoot.”

“No, I can’t leave them alone, you know . . . their mother . . . she’d kill me.” He apologized and let out an awkward giggle. “But we’ll be right back.”

The man sighed and twisted his mouth to one side. “I understand,” he said, but his eyes betrayed what he was thinking: “Once again, they’re wasting my time.” He stood up, and the father and Simona imitated him immediately. Pía stayed sitting another moment longer, fiddling with her dress, all smiles. The man walked quickly to the door and indicated the way out to the street, which was obvious. He didn’t mention that there was an ATM at the gas station on the corner. He knew they weren’t coming back.

The door closed and the three of them went down the stairs in silence. Simona chewed her lips. She had a knot in her stomach, her body felt weak, and she thought she might tumble down the steps any second. She didn’t have anything to hold on to because there was no railing, and her father was on the wall side. Pressed against the wall. He looked like he was about to fall over, too, but his steps weren’t shaky. They were firm, or at least they possessed a weight and violence that could be associated with firmness. His eyes were fixed on the ground, his hands were balled into fists, and his tongue darted over his lips. She could see a little thread of saliva that went from one corner of his mouth to the other. She wanted to say something to him, but she didn’t dare. She could feel his anger. Because he wasn’t nervous or tense anymore—something in him had come unbound. But it wasn’t something good. Not for her. He was furious. She could almost hear her father’s heart pounding. Instinctively, she glanced at his leather belt. But she didn’t feel afraid, just sad at how old and worn out it looked. She tried to take his hand but he went down faster and faster, she couldn’t keep up. No, he wasn’t going to look at her or give her his hand. And she couldn’t stand it. And the stairs seemed endless.

He reached the ground floor and flung the door open wide, and Simona remembered how he slammed the door when he locked himself in his room, and she ran down the stairs to make it outside. To stay beside him. She couldn’t be left out again.

On the sidewalk, the sun beat painfully into her eyes; she could barely distinguish her father’s shape, silhouetted against the light.

“Do you have a bank card like Mom now?” asked Pía when she joined them outside.

He didn’t look up. Started to look for something in his pockets.

“Dad!” Pía shouted suddenly, the way she did when she was nervous, on days when she stood in the window and shouted “Christmas!” or “Birthday!” She could feel the tension too, then, and needed it to end.

“How stupid,” blurted the father, and he clutched his head with both hands. “How embarrassing!” he shouted, letting his rage loose. “How humiliating!” he said, and turned his face to Simona. He looked her straight in the eyes, which were reddish brown just like his, and she met his gaze and finally she could see her father’s contempt. “What an idiot! How stupid! How humiliating!”

He turned around and started to walk, muttering all the while.

Simona stood paralyzed with her eyes full of tears. Her body was shaking. She thought the world was falling in on her, and that she couldn’t bear the weight of it alone. Because she was alone. She’d been wrong. She’d made a terrible mistake. She had humiliated her father, and he would never forgive her. He’d never forgive her. They wouldn’t sing songs again, he wouldn’t surprise her with tickles. She’d ruined everything, she thought, and just when she felt that all the sadness of the earth was falling on her head, her little sister’s round face appeared in front of her. Her eyes were very wide, disconcerted, fearful. And then Simona saw her sister as she never had before, and she felt pity for her, even more pity than she felt for herself. Because she knew that her sister didn’t understand what was happening, and she did. There would be no french fries that afternoon. And that was enough, that was everything. She took Pía by the hand, firmly, and together they started back toward home, following their father’s footsteps down Bellavista.