Tender is the Flesh(41)

He looks at her without saying anything and she continues, “All right, well what’s going to happen is that you’ll go there in the car and you’ll be next to your father at all times, including during the cremation.”

“I know, Nélida. I’ve been through this before.”

She goes white. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to her, not until now. Nélida gets up quickly and says, “I’m sorry, I’m an old fool. I’m sorry.” She keeps apologizing until they reach the waiting room, where he sits down and she offers him something to drink before leaving in silence.





12




He drives home with his father’s ashes in the car. They’re on the passenger seat because he didn’t know where to put the urn. The cremation was over with quickly. He saw his father’s body slowly enter the oven in the transparent coffin. He didn’t feel anything, or perhaps what he felt was relief.

His sister has already called four times, though he hasn’t answered. He knows she’s capable of driving to his house to get the ashes, he knows she’s capable of anything to stick to the social convention of a farewell service for their father. Eventually he’ll have to answer.

It’s late when he drives past what was once the zoo, what no longer has a name. But he pulls over. There’s still a bit of light.

He leaves the car with the urn in his hands. The sign is on the ground and he walks past it.

He goes straight to the aviary without even thinking about the lion’s den. In the distance, he hears shouts. It must be the teenagers, he thinks, the ones who killed the puppies.

When he reaches the aviary, he climbs the stairs to the hanging bridge. He lies down and looks up at the glass roof, the orange and pink sky, the night that’s approaching.

He remembers when his father brought him to the aviary. They sat right next to each other on one of the benches that used to be below the bridge, and for hours, his father told him about the different species of birds, their habits, the colours of the females and males, about birds that sang during the day or at night, about those that migrated. His father’s voice was like brightly coloured candyfloss, soft, immense, beautiful. He’d never heard his father sound like this, not since the death of his mother. And when they climbed the bridge, his father pointed to the stained-glass man with wings and the birds alongside him and smiled. “Everyone says that he fell because he flew too close to the sun,” his father said, “but he flew, do you see what I mean, Son? He was able to fly. It doesn’t matter if you fall, if you were a bird for even just a few seconds.”

For a while, he lies there, whistling a song his father used to sing: Gershwin’s “Summertime”. His father would always put on Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s version. He’d say, “This is the best recording, it’s the one that moves me to tears.” One day he saw his parents dancing to the rhythm of Armstrong’s trumpet. They moved in the half-light and he stood there for a long time, watching them in silence. His father stroked his mother’s cheek and, still a young child, he felt that this was love. He couldn’t put it into words, not at the time, but he knew it in his body, in the way one feels that something is true.

It was his mother who tried to teach him to whistle, though at first he couldn’t get it. Then one day his father took him for a walk and showed him how it was done. “The next time your mother wants to teach you,” his father said, “pretend to struggle a bit first.” When he eventually did whistle in front of her, she jumped for joy, and applauded. He remembers that from that day on, the three of them would whistle together, like a sloppy trio who enjoyed themselves nonetheless. His sister, who was a baby, looked at them with bright eyes, and smiled.

He stands up, takes the lid off the urn and throws the ashes down from the bridge. They fall slowly to the ground and he says, “Bye, Dad, I’m gonna miss you.”

Then he takes the stairs back down and leaves the aviary. When he reaches the playground, he crouches to gather some sand, enough to fill the urn. It’s sand mixed with rubbish, but he doesn’t bother to pick it out.

He sits on one of the swings and lights a cigarette. When he’s done smoking, he stubs it out inside the urn and puts the lid back on.

This is what his sister’s going to get: an urn full of dirty sand from an abandoned zoo with no name.





13




He drives home with the urn in the boot. His sister has now called numerous times. She calls again. He looks at his phone with impatience and puts it on speakerphone.

“Hi, Marquitos. Why can’t I see you?”

“I’m driving.”

“Oh, right. How are you doing about Dad?”

“Fine.”

“I was calling to tell you that I’m planning to have the farewell service at home. It seems like the most practical option.”

He doesn’t say anything. The stone in his chest moves, grows.

“I wanted to ask you to bring me the urn today or tomorrow. I can also stop by your house to pick it up, though that’s not ideal because of the distance, as you can imagine.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“No. Not today, not tomorrow. When I say so.”

“But, Marqui—”