A Distant Father by Antonio Skármeta Read Free Book Online

paid for
Zazie in the Metro
, I’ll pay you back.”
    “That’s fine, Prof.”
    “How do you feel?”
    “Terrible. I turned fifteen and nothing happened.”
    “Your problem is you think only about your virginity. You have to arrive at sex in a more subtle way.”
    “Prof, if you called me here to give me a lesson, let me remind you that today is Saturday and there’s no school!”
    He kicks the ball out from under my foot and tears off down the court, dribbling the ball around imaginary opponents like a soccer player. He stops under the basket at the other end, kicks the ball straight up, catches it in his hands, and scores again.
    He comes back to me in an excellent mood.
    “The money you loaned me,” I say. “It was for this.”
    I take out a train ticket and lay it across his bare knees.
    “Are we going to Angol?”
    “You’re going to Angol.”
    “By myself?”
    “You’ve been crowing about being fifteen years old.”
    “They won’t let me in, Prof.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I tried two years ago.”
    “Ah, you were a baby then.”
    He scratches the area between his nose and his lips and then asks me to feel it.
    “Can’t you tell? I’m starting a mustache.”
    The plan I made at dawn is being carried out precisely. I hand him an envelope with a card inside containing instructions for the next steps he’s to take.
    “Open it at home, and be at the train station at four o’clock.”
    “Will do, Prof.”
    “Make sure you bring every item on the list I just gave you.”
    “Of course.”
    “You won’t need more than five thousand pesos. There’s no reason for you to go there with that whole roll of bills in your pocket.”
    “Five thousand. Got it.”
    “And put on long pants and a tie. You’re going to see a lady.”
    Gutiérrez touches his throat as if the red tie were already knotted around his neck.
    “Five thousand pesos,
Diary of My Life
, long pants,” he enumerates.
    “The rest of the money stays home.”
    “You’re a great teacher, Prof.”
    “You can mention that to the judge in the local police court when the time comes. I could wind up in jail for this.”
    Augusto Gutiérrez looks anxiously at his watch and snaps his fingers, encouraging the hands to advance without pause to four in the afternoon.

TWENTY-FOUR
    At three fifty-five in the afternoon, the normally empty platform in the Contulmo train station looks like the scene of a political gathering.
    There are three clearly distinct groups.
    My mother is wrapped in her fur coat, sporting a felt hat like something out of a forties movie, black kid gloves, and an umbrella, which she dangles pensively.
    Teresa Gutiérrez is wearing a skirt and a man’s jacket, with a gray scarf covering her shoulders and her neck and, at her feet, a leather suitcase the color of pale coffee.
    The stationmaster is trying to tie the various ends together, maybe even inventing a story for all these characters.
    And now there’s me.
    Bleeding as though from a bullet wound, but obsessed with my plot.
    Before approaching my protagonists, I head for the stationmaster. I want to instruct him as to what hemust say when Augusto Gutiérrez’s dad crosses the tracks in his pajamas later tonight, waving a flashlight and looking for his children Augusto and Teresa. The stationmaster must lie and tell Teresa’s father that he saw the two of them leave for Angol together.
    “A lot of movement today,” I say.
    “A wide range. Including your
señora madre
, right?”
    “Yes. She’s going to Angol to pick up a package my father sent her from Paris.”
    “And the Gutiérrez kids.”
    “Teresa’s accompanying Augusto to the store to exchange a birthday present that’s too small for him. A Windbreaker like James Dean’s.”
    “And you?” he asks me.
    “I’m here to tell Mama good-bye.”
    Next I go over to the Gutiérrez group.
    Teresa is pale and vacant. The remnant of childhood that once protected her seems to have melted away. She stands