CHAPTER 6

Senator Piedraita

I woke late. I had that particular heaviness of short, badly slept nights. The first thing I did, before even washing my face, was walk to the living room.

“Sebastián!”

No answer. I saw the blanket and the sheet folded on the sofa. There was no trace of him.

“Sebastián!”

The silence that followed struck me, entirely out of proportion, as a kind of confirmation of what I already feared.

I thought he had left without saying goodbye.

I thought the night before had been, for him, simply an awkward anecdote starring a rich, weepy stranger.

I thought he was already on his way to his village, Génova, leaving me with a box of sleeping pills, a dead father, and the idiotic feeling of having imagined a connection that had only existed on my side.

I went toward the entrance, determined to call Lucho and ask whether he had seen him leave. Just then, Sebastián came out of the bathroom, already dressed.

“Were you calling me?”

“Yes,” I said, with a relief that probably showed more than I would have liked. “I thought you’d gone.”

“No, how could you think I’d leave like that, without saying anything? It’s just that I like getting up early, habit… you know.”

“Wait, I’ll bring coffee and we’ll have something for breakfast.”

I went to the kitchen. Behind me, I heard the television come on, the volume low, the unmistakable tone of a morning news program.

I put two cups on to heat. In the background, the anchor’s voice announced who would take the empty seat after the death of Senator Piedraita. The archive footage was the usual: Congress, a press conference, a coffin draped with the flag.

“I hope they all die, those bastards,” Sebastián said from the living room, with genuine contempt, without a trace of doubt. “Goddamn corrupt politicians.”

I walked into the living room with the two cups in my hands. Something in me changed before I could fully process it.

“What did you say?”

“About what?”

“What did you just say?”

We stared at each other. The whole room seemed to shrink. The space between us, which barely twelve hours earlier had been warm and full of possibility, suddenly had enough distance to hold all the rage I hadn’t known I’d stored up.

“Please, get out of my house.”

“I don’t understand, why are you acting like this?”

I didn’t know how to explain it to him. I looked at the images on the screen: the coffin, the flag. I felt my vision cloud with something that wasn’t exactly tears yet, but looked very much like them.

Sebastián watched me without understanding. Then I walked to the coffee table, picked up the picture frame (the same one that had spent two days changing places, face down, face up, as if moving it could change something) and handed it to him without a word.

I watched him recognize the face. I watched him connect the dots. I watched him go, in the space of a second, from confusion to something like astonishment.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m truly sorry. I didn’t know who your father was. Forgive me, okay?”

There was, even at that moment, a strange hint of a smile on his face, the kind that doesn’t quite fit with an apology. I didn’t give it much importance. The argument was running its course, and there was no room to stop over such a small detail.

“Get out of my house,” I repeated, with less conviction this time.

“Listen to me, forgive me. I don’t know what I was saying. What I said, I said without meaning it. I don’t want to hurt you, least of all now.”

“Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk.”

He came closer anyway. He hugged me without saying anything more. I didn’t hug him back, not at first, my arms still rigid at my sides, holding the cup of coffee that somehow I hadn’t let go of at any point during the whole argument.

“You’re someone very important to me,” he said, against my shoulder. “I don’t know how to make up for what I said. I got carried away by the moment, and by that anger at this country’s ruling class.”

He pulled back a little, enough to look me in the eyes, and then sat down on the sofa, as if he needed physical support for what came next.

“You know? My life hasn’t been easy at all. They didn’t just end my father’s life. They also recruited me into the guerrillas when I was barely eleven years old.”

I sat across from him, the coffee cup still in my hand, completely cold by now, with not the faintest idea of what I was about to hear.