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I went to get a candle. In the flickering light, the room looked like an air-raid shelter. I felt like a detective. My father had stored his memories in that space, which was as minuscule and crammed full of things as the cab of a truck. It’s not that he was a meticulous man, or especially nostalgic. It would make more sense to explain this hoard as the result of a nomadic life. You wouldn’t have to be a genius to figure out that the belongings that Gabriel had kept after spending half his life on the move constituted an essential part of his biography.
    Making the most of the daylight, I took a number of cardboardboxes into the dining room and opened them one by one. I was so engrossed by what I discovered that the hours slipped by until it got dark. Every time I stumbled across some relevant document, or memory-laden object, I left it out on the table to study in more detail later. Thus, clues slowly emerged with mounting intrigue that seemed calculated on my father’s part. A black folder bearing the emblem of the Spanish consulate in Frankfurt kept all his expired driving licenses, for example, and passports with pages stamped by customs officials of a good many countries in Europe. In one brass box, advertising Cola Cao with little drawings of African children, he’d tucked away about twenty letters that he’d exchanged with Petroli after they both left trucking and no longer saw each other. Underneath them, yellow with age, was a pile of scraps of paper from another sort of correspondence: the erotic tales that he and Bundó had written for each other in the House of Charity when they were kids.
    Another folder—this is it, this is it, this is it!—held a pile of documents concerning the four of us. Names, addresses, copies of birth certificates, photos of our mothers and of us, drawings we did when we were small, which he had taken with him as mementos . . . It must be said that this folder was the one most battered by use (and I mention this without any filial vanity). Amazed, I set about leafing through its contents and couldn’t stop. It wasn’t long before the other three names on the policeman’s list appeared before my eyes. Christof, Christophe, Christopher . . . It seemed to be some kind of joke. I went to look for a blank sheet of paper and a pen and jotted down all the details that might make the revelations more plausible. The more I learned, the more the enigma of Gabriel grew.
    That evening, as I was going over to my mother’s place by the club Metro, stunned and disturbed because, among other things, I’d discovered that I had three half-brothers scattered across Europe, a memory from my childhood came—or burst—into my head. It was the image of a man—my father—who sometimes, for all his apparent composure, couldn’t stop touching the edge of his left sleeve with his right hand. A swift, mechanical gesture, not natural, a sort of tic.

3
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Imperfect Orphans
    S o are we orphans then?”
    â€œAll four of us are the only sons of an only son. And an only daughter. You could say that the whole time we were unaware of each others’ existence—we were orphaned of brothers, if such a thing is possible.”
    â€œImperfect orphans.”
    â€œAfter Cristòfol’s phone call, when I discovered I had three half-brothers, I imagined we’d be united by some sort of birthmark. A secret sign that Dad had tattooed on us in the cradle so we could identify each other, like those abandoned princes in stories. I’ve got one of those marks, a sort of scar on my right shoulder. It looks like the silhouette of a running greyhound with very thin legs. Do you have that by any chance?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, I do, but it’s on my left buttock and it’s not a scar but a mark on my skin, a proper birthmark, and it’s not in the shape of a dog. When I was a little kid