Translator: Tomás Guarna Reviewer: Gisela Giardino
I am going to read to you something that happened to me three years ago,
and also in October, 2013,
that has to do with a photo that hurt me.
I saw a photo that hurt me; I will tell this in present tense.
I was in San Jose, Costa Rica,
in a hotel, giving a talk similar to this one.
I will tell it in present tense, as if I were there.
I am in San Jose, Costa Rica, it's raining.
I've just ordered a coffee at the hotel bar,
I'm having breakfast.
I open my laptop
and, out of nothing, I see I'm tagged in a Facebook photo.
I think it's a mistake because, at first sight, I can't see myself.
I can't recognize me.
It only takes me a second, less than a second, even,
until I understand.
I keep staring at the picture I'm seeing in Facebook,
with my eyes wide open, without blinking, I keep staring.
I spend some time on it, and some more, and my expression stays frozen.
I remain motionless looking at this picture
like when hares stay still in the highway while a truck approaches them.
The hotel waiter must think that I'm watching some 3D porn
in my laptop, some new porn, wonderful porn,
because I don't even react when he arrives with my coffee
and fat guys always react when the waiter arrives.
(Laughter)
I make a huge effort not to cry,
because there's a lot of foreigners like me, having breakfast,
and I don't want anyone to see me like this.
Crying takes me by storm because my father died
in July of 2008, and now we're in October of 2013, in Costa Rica,
since my dad died, five years earlier,
it's the first time I see a picture of him
without blurring my eyes.
Fucking Facebook and its intrusive tags.
I didn't even have time to blur my eyes.
A second strike underlines that perplexity.
I believed I knew all my family photos,
but that one was never in my childhood albums.
In the picture there's a clear summer sky, there's an innocent cropped cloud,
there's a building I remember well, it's a Pepsi building.
We're in the most famous beach in Mar del Plata.
Where had this photo been all this time, I ask myself.
The answer is simple: nowhere.
It's a slideshow of my Grandpa from my mom's side I'd never seen before.
My aunt Ingrid decided to digitize all the family photos
before time deemed them useless.
When she found this one, she emailed it to my mom
and my mom uploaded it to Facebook.
Two hours later I'm in this table in Costa Rica, off guard,
thinking about how much us fat guys like hotel free buffets,
and then this image strikes me defenseless.
Since my dad died, something's up with me and his photos: I don't like seeing them.
I've been avoiding them for five years.
Really, when there's no other option, I glimpse at one.
In the entrance of my sister's home there are two photos of my dad,
but before going through the hall of that entrance
I prepare myself very well the Photoshop of my eyes,
I put on the "Gaussian blur" filter to 65 percent
so I pass through and see it unfocused.
As I'm a coward.
It's not as if I'm scared to see him,
or that I start pouting immediately.
It's more like a superstition.
Once, Dolina said something in the radio that struck me.
He said that in the photos where dead loved ones show up,
the dead know they are dead and they look at you, from the photo,
with a knowing nod, as saying, "What are you going to do about it?"
That's how they look at you.
And I don't know if it's true, but when I'm near a photo of my dad
I avoid it just in case.
It's a way of preservation.
It's the same mechanism that prevented me, all these years,
from stepping in the house in my home town, where my dad died.
The many times I had gone to Argentina, because I lived in Spain, I passed
my house in Mercedes, because I wanted to keep the memory
other images of those rooms,
harmless images, more mundane,
where nobody dies in the dining room chair.
I wouldn't know what to do in that house if I went there today, the same way
I'm now in Costa Rica and don't know what to do with this Facebook photo
that shows up unannouncedly,
when I haven't even started breakfast.
In the photo there's a sky and there's a building that says Pepsi.
And although it's many years old, the photo is, to me, new,
because I'd never seen before, not before nor now,
an image where both of us were so close,
so near at the beginning of our story.
It could be January or February of year '73.
No longer than that.
And my dad has me in his arms.
In the photo I'm about to turn two and we're looking at each other.
He looks right at me, I look at him a bit sideways.
"Do I know he's my dad in this picture?,"
I wonder in Costa Rica while my coffee gets cold.
I guess, yes. At two, you already know how to recognize deep relationships.
And him, does he know I'm his son?
In the most profound and absolute sense, does he know I'm his son?
His smile seems to tell no.
He still doesn't know I'll never be a good tennis player.
He doesn't have the slightest idea that in the future
he'll spend many nights sleepless
not knowing where I am
nor at what time I'll come back, if I do.
He doesn't know that one day I'll move far away,
and that I won't be near when he dies.
He doesn't know, then.
It's summer, we're in Mar del Plata, he doesn't need to know that.
Then what does he know about me, that man?
What does he want from me that afternoon?
Does he fantasize in that moment about our future talks,
the same way I think about the ones with my daughter?
Does he understand, or at least imagine,
that my right hand, chubby and flexible, is already in typewriting position?
Does he know I'm going to be a writer? He doesn't.
Does he know I'll write about him sometimes, when I grow up?
Or that one day I'll be in front of 10,000 people talking about him?
Does he know that when he dies I'll take five years to truly mourn him
and that I'll do it in a hotel in Costa Rica, and not in his burial
not even at home, where I can't even return?
Does he know that? He doesn't.
That's why I never want to see photos nor get into the dining hall of my house.
Because I don't like the questions that turn up
when I'm caught off guard thinking about my dad.
What will the hotel waiter think
when he sees a fat guy crying in silence at breakfast?
I try to calm down, but I can't.
Now I think that I'm turning two in that photo,
but what strikes me the most is my dad's age, not mine.
Roberto is about to turn 29, he's much younger than me.
He's a young guy with his first son in his arms.
I know that feeling,
the one of having your fist child in your arms
and believe in eternity.
I have to cry, I think.
I had to do it sometime.
What's messed up is that it's in Costa Rica, so far from all,
and that there's an old Dutch couple staring at me.
What's messed up is that my stomach has closed in a free buffet.
(Laughter)
I hope it's true that Facebook is going bankrupt in two years. I hate it.
(Laughter)
Because it's not here where I had to cry, it wasn't now.
I had to cry the night my sister called me
to tell me Roberto had died, but "I couldn't" cry that night.
I was playing with Nina, my daughter, who was four,
in the study of my house in Barcelona, the summer windows were open.
When I figured what was happening
my first reaction was that Nina didn't see me cry,
so I asked her mom to take her.
I was scared to break down and that she, my daughter, got scared of me.
That unresolved cry never got resolved.
I almost get to cry a week later, in Buenos Aires, on a stage,
when we went out with my friend Chiri to present my first book
and Roberto wasn't in the first row.
But I couldn't cry then, either.
In one moment, before starting to sign book in the hall of that theatre,
a friend from Mercedes, Fernando Luna, called me aside.
Fernando is an old friend from Mercedes
who had gone to see my book launch.
But I have to tell something about him before saying what he told me
a week later after my dad's death.
I have to tell that many years ago, in '92 or '93, I worked in a magazine
in Mercedes, and I traveled to Mar del Plata to interview Fernando Luna.
He made a TV show that many people in my town watched,
where he interviewed people from Mercedes in Mar del Plata.
His wife was the camerawoman of that TV show,
and his sons handled the cables.
Fernando had two sons.
The youngest, Leon, had just turned or was about to turn ten.
Those days I was with Fernando Luna's family in Mar del Plata,
I got to see Fernando's relationship with his son up close:
They had a terrific complicity, specially when it came to football,
and they reminded me a lot of my relationship with Roberto.
One morning Fernando was telling me, for the feature I was writing about him,
that he had gone with his son Leon to see a Boca vs Independiente match
for the summer cup in Mar del Plata, and that they got lost in the car,
and they passed by the stadium and got there only for the second half,
when Independiente was already winning one to zero.
And then, there was a goal from Boca and they annulled it.
And Fernando would tell me "What a pity, we missed the first goal
and the one we could see didn't even count...
There was a guy swearing in the benches that threw a bottle to the referee.
Do you remember, Leon?"
And Leon stared at him and said "It was you, dad."
(Laughter)
I remember many exchanges between Fernando y Leon,
verbal ping-pongs between the two, as if they had planned them beforehand.
I thought that if those comedy steps were natural, they were a good thing,
but if they had prepared them to make me laugh,
they were the best father and the best son in the world.
Some time later, I think a year later,
Leon died suddenly,
when he was eleven years old,
from a fatal disease.
I was already living in Buenos Aires, and I was told about that tragedy
on the phone by my dad.
That morning, when I hung up, I cried my heart out.
The same way I had started crying in Costa Rica.
I started crying uncontrollably with short twitches,
as if they were huge hiccups, and I thought I'd never stop.
The way that my dad, Roberto, gave me the news on the phone was demolishing.
I think that was the reason I cried.
He didn't say anything special, because he was too timid for serious matters,
but there was something in his voice that tried to say, "I'm scared."
There was a hint in the phone saying, "never do that to me."
Another year went by and Fernando and I started a newspaper in Mercedes.
We talked a lot at that time,
and he told me that it was me who had taken the picture
that was in Leon's grave, back in the Mar del Plata days.
And he asked me if I wanted to go to see that picture.
I told him no, although I remembered the photo perfectly.
Fernando also told me that afternoon
that after the death of a son some minors wounds could heal
but that you could never be happy again.
It had been many years since I'd last seen Fernando,
when I saw him show up in that theatre that evening of 2008,
a week after my dad's death.
Fernando called me aside.
I guessd he'd offer his condolences,
as many other people from Mercedes had done during those days,
but he just greeted me and said:
"This morning I sent you an email, did you read it?"
I told him no, that I had been on the go all day.
And he said "Read it, Hernan, read it."
Re-reading that mail, that's like a sort of verbal photo,
would help me a lot, sometime later, in a room in Costa Rica,
to calm my crying fits.
The email said this, Fernando had written it:
"Last week, I left home to buy a Sabina album,
in downtown Mercedes and I passed by the bookstore
to see if your book had gotten here,
and on the curb was your dad with your book in his hands.
The guy was looking at the storefront because the bookseller had put there
a bunch of your books in a pile,
as if they were bestsellers.
One day, your daughter Nina will be older
and you'll understand better what I'm telling you.
I write this to you and I get goosebumps,
as if I were in the Bombonera.
Your dad and I started talking,
I think he told me Chichita was looking for me
to go to see your book launch and in that moment there was a silence.
Now, I realize I wanted to tell him something and didn't find the words.
I wanted to tell your dad I always saw you as a tremendous guy.
I wanted to tell him I feel an enormous pleasure
when a new Boca player shows up and in his third play I predict:
"This one is going to be amazing, he's going to do great in Boca!"
It happened to me with Riquelme, with Bati, with Marisco.
And a couple of years ago, it happened to me with your son.
That's what I wanted to tell him, but I didn't say anything.
Still he must've understood something, because people are also instinct,
that's why he looked at me, the way your dad would, a bit sideways,
and told me: "Well, see you at the theatre, in Buenos Aires."
I'd never talked so much with him about so important things like that morning.
Later, and I know this now because I believe in God,
and because I don't have a child that writes books,
because mine left earlier,
I confirmed your dad was a great guy.
And that is much more difficult that writing books.
When I left he stayed there, in front of the park,
with your book in his hand, looking at the storefront.
The next day, they gave me the news and I couldn't believe it.
I had to tell it to you because it's true, it's not just a phrase:
You made him happy to the last day of his life.
You can't imagine how that man was standing there, looking at your books."
That's what Fernando wrote to me.
And then, I did cry.
And I never stopped crying in Costa Rica.
I had to cry. And crying helped me.
In that room in Costa Rica, when I finally calmed down,
when I got tired of crying and had no more water left in the dam,
I understood that the first picture of Roberto and I, the one in Mar del Plata,
was the first picture of a story that lasted almost 40 years.
It's the picture that I want to chose as the first one of that story.
And I chose it at the last photo of this story this morning of 2016,
when I have the guts to tell this story out loud without crying.
Yesterday afternoon, when I was practicing, I cried,
and this is the first time I can tell it entirely without crying.
I want to use this October morning in front of you to end my mourning.
From today, I guess,
I will be able to look at my father, to face him again,
without blurring my eyes.
Thank you.
(Applause)