Translated from Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine
On the eve of his long trip, Eladio Salinas admitted he had waited a long time—perhaps too long.
Gilberto would agree. His pleas had often resounded in his father’s ears.
“When you coming down, old man? I don’t even know how long I’ve been out here in LA, and you never come to visit! I know you don’t like traveling, but this is getting ridiculous!”
Gilberto was exaggerating: he had moved to Los Angeles barely a year and a half ago. But to tell the truth, he had a point. He knew his father’s deep-rooted reluctance to board planes, ships, or trains—well, if they had trains in Puerto Rico.
Eladio deeply hated traveling, in whatever form it took. Each time he had turned a deaf ear to his son’s pleas he reasoned with himself, thinking his resistance to wander God’s earth was not just the product of imaginary fears but of painful traumas. His life had been saturated with travels, forced upon him by economic duress as well as political reasons.
In the prime of his life he had lost all he called his own. He attempted to regain these losses through a series of exiles that never proved prosperous. Coups d’états, revolutions, dictatorships, hurricanes, earthquakes, and bankruptcy had come between his illusions of prosperity and the elusive goal of success. A relentless and miserable streak of bad luck followed him wherever he went in the Caribbean: from Havana to Miami, from Miami to Caracas, from Caracas to Managua, from Managua to Mexico, from Mexico to San Juan. This was the end of the line for his ambitions: he marooned his dreams in Puerto Rico in a small cleaning company for stores and offices of negligible square feet and squalid ambitions. This was the meager fruit of so many years of struggle, sleeplessness, and deprivation.
His earnings were modest, but they allowed him to live with some sense of decency. His job, however, was another matter; even in his role as proprietor, the daily keep-on-keepin’-on was hard going. Eladio did not shy away when it came to shouldering an extra load. He was already used to this line of work; having recently arrived at “the Island of Enchantment” with little youth left and even less money, he cleaned floors to make a frugal living by scrimping and saving. If an employee couldn’t show up for any reason, he didn’t think twice: he’d jump right in to sweeping hallways, polishing tiles, washing windows, beating carpets, cleaning toilets, and tossing trash. There was scarcely enough time for frivolous intimacies in his barren existence. The birth of Gilberto was one of those quirks of fate that happen by pure chance.
He would always remember her because Adelaida was a good employee: she balanced the books, took his calls, and was a faithful companion on those sullen nights when he was determined to forget it all, sitting in some bar, a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, until dawn broke and the owners of the dive called out “shut down the lights and let’s go.” Eladio couldn’t remember too well how it happened, what inevitably had to happen. It was in one of those early mornings of unbridled boozing; in his mind, all that was left were vestiges, ashes of what he later thought was merely a moment of weakness. Since he never thought himself a smooth talker, his wordy seduction of that skinny woman with the cinnamon-colored skin and firm ass, on a never-ending, sleepless night of sad boleros and stiff drinks, reminded him always of the melodramatic climax of a Venezuelan soap opera.
Months later, knowing Adelaida’s protruding belly was not just owing to the gorgings of the Christmas season, it never crossed his mind to doubt the honesty of a single, poor, and foreign woman: a gentleman does no such thing. Adelaida decided to bring the pregnancy to term and Eladio went with the flow, experiencing neither joy nor bitterness. When Adelaida gave birth, he recognized his child without hesitation; he would bestow on him the name of the kid’s grandfather Gilberto, a native of Orense, where relatives, whom his son would never know, still lived.
This unexpected fatherhood never felt like another burden to Eladio. His heart and mind joined together in harmony to reveal to him that blind fate, which had always pushed him onwards to work and to save, had now given him, in that boy’s well-being, a reason to live. Living with Adelaida ceased to be a sporadic occurrence; Eladio found a small, one-story house a few blocks away from Roosevelt Avenue, not far from a small square, so that Adelaida could look to the care of the infant, living sheltered from the worries and dangers of the streets. He never thought this meeting of bodies and souls was merely a way to relieve his libido or a condescending gesture of pity. He took a liking to this skinny woman: she was faithful, complacent, and, in every sense of the word, clean. What more could he ask for?
With time and habit, he definitely would have married her, had death not intervened. What took her from his side, so swiftly and decisively, was one of those relentless tumors, unforgiving to the most resistant liver or the cleanest of lungs, moving in its unbridled course toward total consumption. As much as he missed her, this was but another blind stroke of fate to which he should respond with more work and resolution.
Stoic, almost impassive, Eladio paid the expenses for the funeral home where the lifeless body of Adelaida lay exposed, even though he had an overwhelming repugnance to ceremonies of mourning, to the point of forbidding that his own corpse be rendered any such tribute (and so that he wouldn’t be a bother to anybody, even after death, he had donated his body in good legal standing to the inexpert hands of the medical students of the Centro Médico de Río Piedras). Adelaida’s wake was officiated for the benefit of the few employees of the business, who were very close. Eladio was even determined to cover the costs for the caulked coffin’s return to her native land, the coffin containing the mortal remains of that woman he could have perhaps loved. Nevertheless, he had neither the desire nor the strength to accompany her remains to their final resting place at the cemetery of San Pedro de Macorís in the Dominican Republic.
Without fussing or fretting, Eladio took upon himself the charge of the newborn. The task undertaken in those years filled him with an inexpressible pride. He knew he spared no expense throughout his son’s childhood because the boy was seen by the best doctors, treated in the best hospital, and educated by the best teachers in exclusive bilingual colegios. He paid for all this by working from dawn to dusk, living an austere life, filled with well-hidden renunciations. When his daily drudgery brought him home at night, exhausted and in a rotten mood, he made an effort to share with his reserved and busy Gilberto the few hours they spent together; later he would comfort himself contemplating the smiling picture of the boy (each day growing older) that he placed over his narrow nightstand. Eladio’s only vice unleashed itself occasionally on those dull weekend nights when his worn-out body would yield lividly to rest after a series of ice-cold Medalla beers, ceremoniously taken from the fridge and imbibed until he found himself dazed in front of the television.
When Gilberto graduated from high school with excellent grades, he was already a lean, strapping young man, somewhat withdrawn in character, but quite a formal fellow in his manners: always using “usted” with all of Dad’s acquaintances. That’s the way he was when he spoke Spanish, which didn’t happen often, considering English had become a lingua franca among kids his age. Eladio, who couldn’t even pronounce “yes” in English, was pained by his son’s willful estrangement from his language. But they were both silent on this matter. Eladio played deaf when Gilberto went on in his father’s presence in that gibberish for the benefit of his schoolmates, mostly white kids. Bearing the marks of the digital revolution, Gilberto spent his hours chatting online and listening in his room, alone and in full blast, to jazz, rock, and hip-hop playlists he had amassed online. But Eladio preferred tangos, boleros, danzas, and Caribbean folk tunes: those scents of the past, fragrances of yesteryear that failed to awaken the faintest interest in Gilberto’s rockero sensibilities.
Eladio had waited all his life for the inevitable parting of his son: his multiple exiles had taught him that nothing is beautiful and lasting. It didn’t surprise him in the least to know that Gilberto wanted to go to study engineering outside of Puerto Rico. A private university in Georgia had offered him a generous scholarship. Gilberto accepted the offer without thinking twice. Eladio considered his son’s decision a good one: it was, after all, his future that was at stake. Toward the end of summer, Gilberto packed his luggage and, early one morning, Eladio accompanied him resignedly to the airport. The dim light of dawn was the perfect camouflage, concealing the sullen paternal countenance within their parting embrace.
Eladio suspected and feared what this parting meant: a one-way departure. Common sense dictated that Gilberto would toil away his future in cold, distant places. But the father’s heart disregarded these thoughts and lived off hopes. He couldn’t wait for his son to once again blast the walls of his room with that unbearable music. The wait would be long, perhaps interminable. Eladio knew this well. Gilberto’s absence would be the paining spur driving him to work without rest, until his last breath, to build for him a blessed, prosperous, and misery-free existence. He worked like never before and saved all the money he could.
In contrast, Gilberto let himself be taken in by the necessities proper to his age—parties, booze, drugs, an occasional hooker. From afar, uneasily, the father watched how his son changed addresses as quickly as he changed girlfriends. He began to fear Gilberto would not finish his studies and would waste his youthful years on a dissipated life. No less did he worry for the young man’s promiscuity; every time he vacationed on the Island during the Christmas season, he introduced to his father a brand-new girlfriend. After meeting the third one, Eladio didn’t care to make the effort to remember their names, which in any case he could not pronounce.
All Eladio’s worries were in vain. Gilberto practically steered his own course. He graduated in engineering with honorable mention at Georgia Institute of Technology in the field of telecommunications. Boosting himself with courage and whiskey, Eladio managed to fly out to Atlanta the day of the ceremony. Bursting with pride, he saw his only son step onto a decorated stage to receive his diploma at the hands of some gray-haired guy talking up a storm, dressed in a heavily adorned gown. In the bits and pieces he could understand, he seemed to be a very important person. The anxiety Eladio began to feel on learning that the recent graduate was offered a good position in Los Angeles was not expressed, either directly or indirectly, to any of his close friends. Despite the passage of time, he hoped for his son’s return to the paternal home. When he discovered that not only would he not be returning but would be moving even farther away, his heart sank. The conversation was excessively brief. Eladio listened with increasing anguish to the enthusiastic chatter gushing from his son’s mouth, but barely said a word. Gilberto, who could decipher with perfect clarity his father’s silence, was miffed and suddenly hung up the phone, muttering some excuse.
From that moment, telephone calls diminished in frequency and duration. Gilberto’s expected annual visits to the Island during the Christmas season did not take place; in one of those laconic calls, he communicated to his father that he had to remain in Los Angeles from November till January, for work-related reasons. The necessities of daily life wrapped his son in its mantle of speed, worry, frustration, and fatigue. He was driven, for he wanted to succeed in his profession and gain increasingly higher salaries at all costs. The father was determined to increase the inheritance that would secure his son’s happiness—nothing else mattered.
As another year turned, during another one of Gilberto’s sporadic calls, Eladio came to learn to his surprise that his son was about to commit the kind of mistake all upright men should avoid. Out of the blue, Gilberto was getting married in a foreign land to a woman no less foreign to everything his father cared about: language, culture, and family history. On hearing the news, Eladio said nothing: he wasn’t a man of recriminations or reproach. His terseness and lack of enthusiasm were eloquent enough. Gilberto paid no mind.
For reasons Eladio could never gather, there was no proper wedding. Without explanations given to anyone and unguided by differing opinions, the couple hit the road to Las Vegas. On a hot summer night, in the Little Chapel of the Flowers, they had their clandestine wedding without fanfare or guests. The words “aggravation” and “disappointment” could not describe the profound malaise that overtook Eladio. His most faithful employees noticed this immediately. Taking pity, they tried to liven him up, bringing him small gifts or inviting him over to eat or have a few palos of whiskey. On those evening get-togethers Eladio hit the whiskey hard, yet never opened up. But he didn’t need to. They all knew the source of his ills.
Months passed and Eladio began reconsidering. Seen in a different light, it was not so bad that Gilberto moved out to California. His son’s professional success admitted no guesswork: he made good money and had a good house in a good neighborhood. Apart from that, his future was secured: with his paternal inheritance, he might even go on to start his own business. As for marriage, this was a mystery that from afar Eladio could divulge to himself. Would his son be happy with such a hasty marriage? There was no way of knowing this from here. Gilberto was always discreet to the point of silence in everything concerning his married life with Fiona, a daughter-in-law about whom Eladio knew nothing. There was an easy way to resolve this enigma. But Eladio, by instinct, was leery of taking this step. When his son encouraged him to come stay a few weeks with him and his wife, he dragged his feet on the matter. Gilberto, who knew so well how much his old man disliked plane travel, still insisted from time to time. If there was another reason that explained Eladio’s evasiveness, Gilberto couldn’t know with precise certainty. The son’s pleadings and scoldings had begun to chip away at his resistance. But Eladio was not decisive, and if someone had asked Eladio the reason for his unwillingness or how long it would last, even he wouldn’t have known how to respond.
One day, while washing his face, he gazed deeply into the daily mirror of painstaking ritual shaves: his was the image of a tired, weak, bald man with a curved spine and a face furrowed with wrinkles. These past weeks, he hadn’t been feeling well; without anyone knowing, he consulted a few doctors. That same night he called Gilberto; without alluding to his precarious health, he announced his decision to pay them a visit next week, if they didn’t mind. He bought his ticket without hesitation or setbacks. He commended to his trusted employees the management of the business, confirmed the mention of his son’s name in a series of legal documents, and left in a visible spot a paper stipulating the donation of his remains. He drew money from his checking account and managed to stuff it all in a large manila envelope, sealing it carefully. He shopped at various stores so that he wouldn’t arrive in Los Angeles empty-handed. He impatiently waited for the day of his departure.
His luggage wasn’t heavy. Eladio was a man of few needs. On the plane, he conquered his fears of a rolling and tumbling flight by downing a few whiskeys on ice. Landing at the airport in Los Angeles, he was pale and his knees were shaking. Gilberto and Fiona waited for him at the exit. Thank goodness! His son had the same smile Eladio remembered he had as a boy when they lived together at the house near Roosevelt Avenue. He seemed fortunate—but was he? On embracing him he noticed he had put on a few pounds. Fiona was the object of a quick inspection: blonde, skinny, stacked—couldn’t speak a word of Spanish.
The dazzling lights of Los Angeles roused little wonder in the old man. It was like other big cities he had the misfortune of knowing: large, loud, sprawling, and gritty. The son’s house, although small, left a good impression. But you couldn’t tell it apart from the surrounding homes with their earthy facades, reddish-tiled roofs, wide marquees, trimmed hedgerows, polished sidewalks, and even the green hue of the lawns—all the same. Eladio deposited his tired bones on the bed offered by his son. In a few moments, he was asleep.
The week he spent in the company of his son and his daughter-in-law at times seemed long, and at other times, too short. The days were hectic as Gilberto and Fiona were intent on showing him from their car windows the most picturesque neighborhoods of Los Angeles. But the nights were peaceful, with tolerable home-cooked dinners and well-prepared cocktails. Eladio couldn’t deny the good times he had with them when they took him to the celebrated observatory at Griffith Park or to the vibrant pier of Santa Monica, although the Getty Museum was a bit boring, despite its magnificent views of the boundless urban landscape. He preferred downtown Los Angeles for its market, which reminded him of the one at Río Piedras. On these long strolls, Eladio and Gilberto scarcely spoke, even when alone. Sometimes Fiona tactfully stayed at home, and Eladio quietly appreciated this gesture. The few times Gilberto spoke to his father, it was to complain of the numbing drudgery of daily life, the intrigues his coworkers plotted, and even his wife’s mediocre cooking. The old man realized with sadness that they had very little else to say to one another. It was as if they lived in disconnected worlds. Gilberto was on the cusp of vitality and success; Eladio was rolling downhill, heading toward death.
At night, stretched out in bed, awaiting the consolation of sleep, and with increasing discomfort, Eladio would hear through the drywall separating him from the marital chamber the muted moans of pleasure his daughter-in-law emitted, joined together by his son’s quiet groans, until they reached the silence of satiety. Eladio wondered how fulfilled Gilberto could be, with such a busy, regimented life, filled with hindrances that even vacations couldn’t relieve. Neither could he understand the evident attraction his son felt for that pale gringa, who, as she got older, would dye her hair blonde, cover her face with makeup, and flaunt tits way too big for a body without curves, from her scrawny neck to the painted nails on her tiny feet―but that’s none of your business, Eladio. To each his own. If that makes him happy . . .
Since his son’s unexpected wedding, Gilberto’s happiness had become a constant concern for Eladio, but, in the last days of his stay in Los Angeles, the well-being of his only heir had become his secret obsession. He scrutinized Gilberto’s face every time he saw him with Fiona: when she cooked her bland evening meals and Gilberto prepared cocktails with tequila, rum, or whiskey; when the three met at the dining table to eat slowly with punctuated silences and few words; or when he saw them sprawled out on the couch, facing the television—their bodies joined together, other times apart. While they distracted themselves with this or that movie, Eladio furtively studied Fiona’s still beautiful countenance, smooth and always made up, and he found it inexpressive. From time to time, a furtive glance lost itself in the depths of her neckline, almost always exposed, which he felt was exaggerated. His daughter-in-law was affable with her husband and attentive, perhaps somewhat cold to her father-in-law. Eladio tormented himself because he couldn’t exchange one word with her, outside of some yes or thank you, gestures and smiles only.
The week concluded, and Eladio failed to draw out anything with clarity. He saw no obvious manifestations of overflowing happiness in his son’s life; life’s vulgarity tended its mantle of everyday routine over the couple but neither did he see the ominous signs, the pernicious quarrels, the bitter disagreements that unhappiness entails. In vain did he sleuth these out each time he was in their company. In Eladio’s presence the hugs, kisses, caresses, and other signs of affection were quick, bashful, and discreet (and the married couple’s audible and embarrassing intimacies were best not to think about). Discreet as well was the hushed chatter heard at various moments throughout the night or early morning from his son’s room, which Eladio could not understand.
The day of departure finally arrived. Eladio preferred to spend the afternoon at the house. After so many strolls, he needed a rest. The hour was soon approaching. He placed his final belongings in his worn-out suitcase and came out to the driveway. On the nightstand of his room remained a bulging manila envelope, sealed and addressed to his son. Gilberto and Fiona were outside, waiting for him.
It was a cool afternoon, with clear, serene skies and clouds of various shapes losing themselves on the horizon. Everything was ready: Gilberto had parked in front of the entrance. The trip from Encino to LAX was not far, but traffic on the 405 worried him. Eladio learned that Fiona wouldn’t accompany them to the airport so that father and son could spend some time alone—tacitly, he appreciated this final touch. His daughter-in-law embraced him, leaning her perfumed body to one side, the way big-breasted women do to avoid awkward rubbings. The gesture caught Eladio’s attention. He disguised his discomfort, remembering the hushed moanings heard a few nights back.
“Promise you’ll come back soon”—Fiona said after disengaging from the embrace. Eladio tried to smile. He assented with a few slight nods. With ease, Gilberto adjusted his father’s light suitcase in the Audi’s large trunk and signaled that they were leaving. Standing in the driveway, waving her hand, Fiona said her farewells.
Gilberto faced a giant traffic jam getting to LAX. He was in a bad mood and, after parking the car, suggested to his father that they have one for the road on the panoramic heights of the Encounter. Dusk fell and the city lights came alive; the old man looked on and felt an uneasiness whose cause he could not specify. Gilberto ordered a gin and tonic; Eladio a whiskey on the rocks. The background music was terrible but not loud; at least they could talk. Gilberto, as usual, didn’t say much. Their talk was as sporadic as it was insubstantial.
Eladio took advantage of one of those awkward silences, arming himself with courage to ask Gilberto what he longed to know before it was time to go:
“Son, are you happy?”
Gilberto thought this over a few seconds; to Eladio this seemed forever. He answered quietly and listlessly.
“Come on, old man. What you want me to say? Coming at me with such things . . .”
Eladio went pale, furrowed his brow, lowered his head, even his eyes, and said nothing to his son. Instead, he devoted himself to consuming the glass of whiskey he had in front of him with deliberate slowness. When it was empty, he entertained himself by gazing and cradling the glass between his trembling fingers.
They didn’t speak until the time came to leave. Eladio insisted on paying the bill; Gilberto barely objected. Once in the street, the two men walked over to the noisy and crowded security gate, in front of which they would have to take their leave. They hugged. For the first time, Gilberto noticed his father’s fragile bones.
“Take care, old man!” —said Gilberto.
“Don’t worry about me” —answered Eladio.
They separated from their embrace, and Eladio began his return trip to the Island. Gilberto saw him walk away with his light luggage through a long corridor. The old man’s bent shoulders seemed to bend even more, as if he carried a great weight in his suitcase. Gilberto stood there a few moments, waiting for his father to turn around to wave good-bye, but Eladio never turned around. His figure was shrinking and blurring with every step, until it finally vanished into the crowd.
Notes:
This story, “La Visita,” appears in Jorge Luis Castillo’s short story collection La Virgen de los Boleros.
Author and translator thank Michael Grafals for his collaboration (a rough draft) on “The Visit.”
