… a question only kids ask themselves for real, and then we sick people ask it again: is it okay to lie?, is it okay to be lied to?, a healthy grown-up won’t even give it a thought, the answer seems obvious, right?, we learn to tell lies the same way we learn to talk, they teach us how to talk and then how to be quiet, I don’t know, like when you play football, for example, first you kick the ball and then, unless you’re stupid, you learn to not kick it, to move around tricking the other players, kids lie too, of course, I lied all the time when I was a kid, but, what I’m saying is, until you get to a certain age, you think it’s wrong, that is the difference, I don’t think we grown-ups are any worse, you know?, every kid contains the beginnings of a possible son of a bitch, this much I know, it’s just that kids, and perhaps we adults are to blame for this, start by dividing the world into good and evil, truth and lies, the only time it’s okay for them to lie is when they’re playing, then it’s allowed, so kids become grown-ups when they play, sort of the opposite of us parents, we play so we can be kids again, well, and then you grow up, and you lie and are lied to, and it isn’t wrong, until one day, when you’re sick, you begin to worry again about lies, you worry about them every time you talk to the doctors, your wife, your family, it’s not a moral question, it’s, I don’t know, something physical, deep down you’re scared stiff of the truth, but the idea of dying with a lie scares you even more, lies help us to carry on living, don’t they?, and when you know you aren’t going to carry on, you feel they’re no use anymore, do you know what I mean?
Why am I talking about this?, ah, the weather thing, these painkillers make me half dopey, when you started doing the weather thing it made me laugh, you should have seen yourself, you were staring hard at the road, doing something with your finger on the windscreen, pulling faces, and soon after you told me the sky had changed, to begin with I played along because I thought it was a game, then, I’m not sure when, I started to realize you were serious, and besides you were so thrilled, from then on, I tell you, son, I spent the whole journey asking myself, do I tell him or not?, bah, best not, I thought, he’ll find out for himself, but I don’t know if you’d convinced yourself, or if it was a coincidence, or what, because you kept saying you’d guessed right, as a game I found it amusing, but as an expectation it was sad, if when you finally saw that the weather did as it pleased, that neither you nor I nor Pedro could do anything to change it, wouldn’t you feel, I don’t know, terribly small?, anyhow, maybe it’s foolish and by now you don’t even remember, but I didn’t want to fall asleep today without telling you this.
From here, as soon as I open my eyes, I see the sky, as if I were in a plane, a very slow-moving plane, and you know what it looks like?, the dawn, I mean?, an insult, that’s what it looks like to me, when I was young I was a night owl, I liked doing things while everyone was asleep, I felt untouchable, as you get older you become a lark, you start to worry about being late for things, night owls think they’re stealing a march on everything, but the moment they wake up they’re already running late, since I got sick I don’t like the morning so much, it’s, I don’t know, too loaded with expectations, and the silence of the night scares me, I prefer the afternoon now, it’s less demanding, so I’m watching the sun go down, and I start to wonder, you see, where, where the hell does beauty come from?, not from things, that’s for sure, I look at the tea tray, for instance, a grey plastic tray, slightly battered, with that curved edge things that are made to be stacked have, covered in scratches from cutlery, the knife marks, one next to the other, remind me of an electrocardiogram, the clusters of dots from the forks, close up, are like dice pips, and suddenly this tray turns into a thi—hold on, someone’s knocking on the door.
At least this time they knocked, she must be a student nurse, the older ones burst in, as if this were their room, recently I’ve been eating more, I had lost a lot of weight, you saw me, I took some appetite stimulants with me on the trip, they sort of worked, it’s hard to trust food when you keep throwing up, you start to see it as something completely alien to your organism, I don’t know, some kind of invasive substance, I took the appetite stimulants and some other pills with me, none of them to cure me, all to make me feel less, that’s the weird thing about drugs, the ones that supposedly cure you destroy you on the inside, and the ones that supposedly aren’t a cure make you feel like a person again, does that mean you have to stop feeling like a person in order to get better?, maybe that’s why for so many of us it doesn’t work, because we won’t let the poison in completely.
The day of the race at the petrol station I’d been feeling sick all day, I couldn’t catch my breath, it happens sometimes, I don’t know what the hell it depends on, the heat, the humidity, being tired, I’ve no idea, and you can run faster and faster, you train for everything, bullheaded hare, it’s like you had a pair of wheels in your backside, you take after your granddad a little in that way, he always used to say that it was fine to go down fighting, and, just to annoy him, I’d say: what about fighting to lose?, you were determined to beat me, weren’t you, your legs are getting long, and you know the worst thing?, the most shameful thing?, when I saw you were pulling away from me I started to run for real, it upset me for a moment that you were going to win, then I realized I couldn’t do it and I slowed down, I shut myself in the toilet, I waited in there for a while until I got my breath back, when I would insist on stopping for you to take a leak, for instance—no, it’s nothing, hi, it’s nothing.
Last night I watched a movie with your mum, she brought her laptop, good idea, a wonderful comedy with Katharine Hepburn, have you heard of her?, I mean, do people still know who Ms. Hepburn was?, the movie didn’t seem dated, it’s still hilarious and, how was it?, as wicked as intelligence itself, that’s what your mother said last night, so don’t give me the credit, I get distracted when I read, I think about a hundred and one other things, maybe that says something for books, I don’t know, but it doesn’t happen to me with movies, when I’m enjoying a movie, it’s as though I disappear, if you follow me, at first I thought it was a bit frivolous of me, I mean, in my state, to laugh out loud like that, but I soon let myself go, and it worked better than any drug, it was a kind of, which reminds me, my pill.
Actually, well, there was another reason to enjoy the movie, being there, next to your mum, without talking, because what could we say to each other?, laughing at the same gags, the two of us just there, alive, knowing we love each other, and that we’ve hurt one another, that’s the power of movies, right?, you are moved at the same time as others, you can share books as well, of course, that’s what your mother always tells me, but we enjoy them separately, not together, maybe books are for people on their own, I’m going to leave your mum on her own, whenever we both laughed she’d squeeze my hand.
Do you remember sometimes when she called us, there wasn’t much coverage, we told her we’d call her at the next stop, and then we’d forget, and the poor woman kept calling, sick with worry, and I handed you the phone so she’d be less angry, sitting in the truck is like watching a really long movie, right?, your mum got upset, I think, she ended up not always answering her phone, I could tell she was tense, I kept saying we were fine, I don’t know whether she believed me, I had a few dizzy spells, the worst one was on the way there, in Tucumancha, I was even scared I’d let go of the wheel, the road was full of bends, I hadn’t driven that much in years, it was early on in the journey, and I was still telling myself: I can do it, I can do it, I must be able to do it, like you with the weather, right?, we’re both bullheaded, you and I, dizzier and dizzier, and there was nowhere to stop on that stretch of road, and that’s when I got really worried, that’s when I thought your mother was right and the trip had been a crazy idea, and I remembered Uncle Juanjo, who’d suggested I get some practice before setting off, and I remembered your granddad, who did exercises every morning for half an hour, and all of a sudden I thought I was an irresponsible father, I think this was what made me feel the dizziest.
And what about the fan?, the one you said was going to unscrew itself from the ceiling and slice our heads off?, we stopped there because I was lost, son, what a disaster, I turned back three or four times, I couldn’t even understand the instructions on the GPS, the roads weren’t right, they’d changed, I didn’t feel good that day either, it’s strange, for the most part I felt worse on the way there than on the way back, that night what I needed was a comfortable bed, bah, a bed in any case, what a crappy mattress, right?, but what I think about most now, what I most remember, is when we slept next to each other in the truck, on our sides, pretty uncomfortably, and I clasped your chest, I could feel you breathe and I didn’t sleep a wink, I stayed awake all night, euphoric, listening to every sound …