A Distant Father Read Online Free PDF Page A

There was one year when he called me Mylène Demongeot, another when I was Pier Angeli. Then I got old and he stopped giving me nicknames.”
    “You were prettier than those actresses.”
    “Are you going to hold classes tomorrow?”
    “Of course, Mama. My fever’s gone.”
    “You almost left with it, Jacques. I’ll never let you go to Angol with Cristián again.”
    “I got sick because I didn’t bring an overcoat.”
    “Acting like the young male lead in some movie.”
    “Yes, Mama. Never again.”
    I keep hold of her wrist. The exact words are there, but unfortunately they don’t do their duty.
    “What will you teach your young pupils tomorrow?”
    “A little history. A bit of geography.”
    “What?”
    “I’ll talk to them about the tunnel on the road to Lonquimay.”
    “ ‘Las Raíces?’ ”
    “They’ve surely been through it several times, but they don’t know it’s 4,537 meters long. They don’t know its construction required the removal of 184,000 cubic meters of rock with the help of 175,000 kilos of dynamite; they don’t know that 240,000 bags of cement went into building the concrete tunnel lining.”
    Her eyes wide and unblinking, Mama hums a little tune to dissimulate the pride produced in her by the depth of my professional knowledge. I recognize Yves Montand’s song “Je ferai le tour du monde.”
    “What time shall I serve you your breakfast?”
    “Seven o’clock.”
    “In bed or at the table?”
    “At the table.”

SEVENTEEN
    Throughout the rest of the week, my pupils behave like storybook children. They bring me apples, and before I eat them I rub them on the lapel of my jacket until they’re shiny. To prevent Gutiérrez from asking me about Angol on my very first day back, I decide to give long dictations, which keep the pupils at their desks. I set them difficult words. For example, “disciplinary,” “accession,” “wallop.”

EIGHTEEN
    At noon on Wednesday, glancing through the window of the seamstress’s workshop, I see Elena Gutiérrez, the older of Augusto Gutiérrez’s sisters, trying on a blouse that needs to be taken in. Luckily, she’s got her figure back, she says. In the South, she says, you eat so much cheese, and there’s so much fat in the milk. Now she has only skinless chicken and vegetables for dinner and drinks a lot of parsley water.
    She gets close to the mirror and says that her cheeks look “frightfully healthy.” She’d like her cheekbones to be more prominent, she’d like to be as pale as Greta Garbo in
The Kiss
. She wants the blouse good and snug at the waist, she declares, and when a certain man puts his hand on her belt to lead her out to dance, she wants the embroidered hem of the blouse to feel good to him. She’d love it if the blouse could ride up a little when he pressed it and he could touch her skin.
    I withdraw to the plaza before she can notice me and let one of my pupils, who works as a shoeshineboy, pass a cloth over Dad’s former footwear. According to an announcement in the
Diario de Angol
, next month it will begin to publish Raymond Queneau’s great novel
Zazie in the Metro
. The installments will run throughout the winter.
    Two facts go unrevealed: I haven’t turned in the book yet, and I haven’t yet been paid the advance I was promised. Nor is the translator’s name, my name, even mentioned.
    I’d like to see my name in print sometime. A bit of fame would lend me prestige in Teresa’s eyes. According to Gutiérrez, I have to ask her to dance, attach myself to her like a limpet, and breathe into her ear. I don’t need to say anything to her. The girl’s like the Electrola in the Danubio Azul, he informs me. She knows all the songs on the radio.
    “You squeeze her and she’ll sing. And then, Professor, I dim the lights, all at once, and you have to give her a French kiss.”
    I ask him why he’s helping me so much in the conquest of his sister, and he says that one favor pays for another. He needs an