My Documents

by Megan McDowell Alejandro Zambra

  My own relationship with my father, however, was closely tied to soccer. We watched or listened to games, sometimes we went to the stadium together, and every Sunday at noon I went with him to a field in La Farfana, where he played goalie. He was really good—I remember him suspended in the air, grabbing hold of the ball with both hands and clutching it to his chest. Still, I always suspected that his teammates hated him, because he was the kind of goalie who spent the whole game barking instructions, ordering around the defense and even the midfield players at the top of his lungs. “Pass it back, man, pass it back! Here! Pass it back, man, back!” How many times did I hear my father call that out in a tone of utmost alarm? When he yelled at me—if he ever did—it was never as loud as those shrieks on the soccer field. His teammates endured them with annoyance, or at least that’s what I assumed, since trying to play with that nonstop commotion in the background can’t have been pleasant. But he was respected, my father. And he was really good, I’ll say it again. I would settle in behind the goal with my Bilz or my Chocolito, and sometimes he would glance at me quickly to be sure I was still there, and other times he would ask me, without turning around, what had happened, because that was my father’s main problem as a goalie, the reason he never went pro: his myopia was so severe that he could see only as far as the midfield. His reflexes, however, were extraordinary, as was his bravery, which he paid for with two fractures in his right hand and one in his left.

  During halftime I liked to go and stand in the goalie’s spot, and invariably I’d think about how immense the goal was. Over and over, I wondered how anyone could possibly block a penalty kick. My father blocked penalty kicks—of course he did. One out of every three or four: he never dived for them early; he always waited, and if the kicker’s execution was anything less than perfect, he attacked the ball.

  ***

  I remember a trip to the country when Camilo discovered I blinked between streetlights. I still do it, even when I’m driving; I can’t help it. As soon as I get on the highway, I start blinking carefully, trying to hit the exact midpoint between streetlights. That day, my sisters, Camilo, and I were crowded into the backseat of my parents’ Chevette, and Camilo noticed that I was tense, concentrating, and then he started to blink at the same time that I did, smiling at me. I got worried, because I didn’t want to make any mistakes; I fervently believed that only if I blinked between streetlights would we all be kept safe.

  My nervous habits don’t bother me so much now, but when I was a kid they used to make me so anxious that even the simplest activities became unbearable. I guess I was partly or completely OCD. Like many children, I scrupulously avoided the cracks in the sidewalk. If I ever accidentally stepped on one I fell into a state of unspeakable despair—and yet I knew, on some level, that it was all too ridiculous to talk about. I also had an obsession with balancing out parts of my body: if one leg hurt, I’d hit the other one to make them even. Sometimes I’d move my right shoulder to the rhythm of my heartbeats, as if I had two hearts. I had some truly random routines as well, like going nine times up and down the steep staircase that led from the pool to the park. This wasn’t really so strange—it could have been a kind of game—but I managed to keep it from being one by hiding it carefully: I’d stop at the bottom step, shake my head as if I’d forgotten something, and then turn around and retrace my steps.

  If I mention all this it’s only because Camilo always seemed willing to help me. That time in the Chevette, when he realized that I was nervous, he patted my hair and said something I don’t remember, but I’m sure that it was warm, caring, and subtle. Sometime later, when I started telling him about my eccentricities, he told me that everyone was different, and maybe the strange things I did were normal, or maybe they weren’t, but it didn’t matter, because normal people stank.

  I could fill many pages writing about Camilo’s importance in my life. For now, I remember that it was Camilo who, after many long and sophisticated arguments, managed to get me permission to go to my first concert. (We saw Aparato Raro at the Don Orione school in Cerrillos.) He was also the first person to read my poems.

  I’d written poems since I was little, which was, of course, a shameful secret. They weren’t any good, but I thought they were, and when Camilo read them, he did so respectfully, though he immediately explained that these days poems didn’t rhyme. That was news to me. I’d never read a poem that didn’t rhyme, and I’d always thought that poetry was something unchanging: ancient and immutable. But it was great to hear, since there were times when it cost me the world to find rhymes, and I knew I couldn’t always fall back on the easy combinations.

  I asked him what the difference was, then, between a poem and a story. We were stretched out by the pool—in full-on photosynthesis, as he would say. He looked at me with a pedagogical expression and told me that a poem was the exact opposite of a story. “Stories are boring. Poetry is madness, poetry is savage, poetry is a torrent of extreme emotions,” he said, or something like that. It’s difficult not to start inventing, not to let myself be carried along on the scent of memory. He definitely used the words madness, savage, and emotions. Torrent, maybe not. I think extreme, yes.

  Back at home, he picked up my notebook and started to write poems himself. It took him maybe half an hour to write ten or twelve long texts, and then he read them to me. I didn’t understand a thing. I asked him if other people understood his poems. He told me that people might not understand them, but that wasn’t the important thing. I asked him if he wanted to publish a book. He told me yes, he was sure he would, but that wasn’t the important thing, either. I asked him what the important thing was. And he said this, or this was what I understood: “The important thing is to express your feelings, to show yourself as a passionate, interesting man, maybe a bit fragile, someone who isn’t afraid of anything, someone who accepts his feminine side.” That was definitely the first time I heard the expression “feminine side.”

  Another day, not long after that, he asked me if I liked men or women. I was a bit alarmed, because there were certainly guys that I liked—Camilo himself, for example—but I was quite sure that I liked girls more, much more. “I like girls,” I told him. “I like them a lot. I think they’re hot as hell.”

  “Okay,” he said, very seriously, and then he added that if I liked guys it was all right—that happened sometimes too.

  ***

  I remember Camilo that afternoon, standing on the bow-shaped bridge in Providencia, smoking. I could tell it was not your usual cigarette, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. “It’s too strong for a kid,” he said in apology when I asked him for a drag, because by then I’d started smoking, once in a while. This must have been 1986 or early 1987; I was ten or eleven years old. I’m sure of that because at that age I still didn’t know my way around Providencia or downtown Santiago very well, and also because later that day we went to buy True Stories by the Talking Heads, which was still a new album then.

  “We have to solve your problem,” Camilo had told me that morning as we were walking toward the bus stop. I asked him which problem, because I thought I had a lot, not just one. “Your shyness,” he replied. “Women don’t like shy men.” And I really was shy back then; I’m talking about genuine shyness, not the kind you see now, when so many things are blamed on shyness it’s almost a joke. If someone doesn’t say hi, it’s because he’s shy; if a guy kills his wife, it’s because of shyness; if he cheats a whole town, if he runs for office, if he eats the last bit of Nutella from the jar without asking anyone: shy. No, I’m talking about something else: stuttering, introspection, insecurity.

  “I’m going to help you,” Camilo told me. “I’m going to give you a lesson, but don’t worry, you won’t have to do anything—just don’t leave my side, no matter what I do.” I nodded, feeling a bit dizzy. During the hour-long bus ride, he told me jokes, most of them ones he’d told me before, but this time he told them in a very loud voice, all but shouting. I thought the lesson was t
hat I had to laugh equally loudly, which was very hard for me, but I tried. Then, as we were getting off the bus, he told me that that hadn’t been the lesson.

  We went up onto the bridge and stopped halfway across. Camilo smoked in silence, while I looked down at the murky, rushing water of the river, which was higher than usual. I focused on the current, until I was so concentrated that I had the feeling the water was standing still and we were aboard a moving boat, although I’d never been on a boat in my life. I stayed like that for a long time, fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. “We’re on a boat,” I said to Camilo. I had trouble explaining; he didn’t get it, but then, suddenly, he saw it too, and let out a cry of profound and growing astonishment. We went on gazing at the current while he repeated, “Incredible, incredible, incredible.”

  Afterward, as we were walking toward Providencia, he told me that he now respected me. He added, emphatically, “I liked you a lot before, I still like you a lot, but now I respect you, too.” When we got to an intersection, maybe Providencia and Carlos Antúnez, he looked at me, made a subtle, sharp movement with his head that meant now, then threw himself to the ground, clutching his stomach, and started laughing extravagantly, scandalously. A group of people gathered around us right away, and I did not want to be there, but I understood that this was the lesson. When he finally stopped laughing, there were five policemen there asking him for an explanation. Camilo gave me a nod of approval—I had stayed beside him the whole time, and I had even laughed a little, too. I watched the cops’ faces, impassive and severe, while Camilo rattled off a disjointed explanation in which he talked about me and my shyness, and how it was necessary to teach me this lesson so that I could, he told them, grow. He had disrupted the public order, we were living under a dictatorship, but Camilo managed to placate the policemen, and we walked away after making the strange promise never to laugh in a public place again.

  “I’m really high,” Camilo said to me, or maybe he said it to himself, a little concerned. We went to a store to buy the Talking Heads album. The place seemed different from any record store I’d been to—everything struck me as luxurious and exclusive. When the sales clerk handed us True Stories, Camilo translated the opening lyrics of “Love for Sale” for me, though he may have gone a little off course, since he didn’t know any English. I took the album from him, examined its red-and-white cover, and then I gave him the same quick gesture he’d given me: now. He barely had time to acknowledge it with a panicked look before I took off with the record in my hands, and we went running, dodging pedestrians at full speed, for a long time, laughing like crazy.

  That afternoon, when we got home, there was a soccer match. I don’t remember which one, but Colo-Colo was definitely playing, and Camilo stayed to watch it with us. My father asked him why. “I don’t have a father,” Camilo said. “You’re my godfather, so you have to teach me about soccer. Otherwise,” he warned, winking at me, “I’ll turn out to be a fairy.”

  It became routine for Camilo to watch the games with us, but I don’t know if my dad enjoyed it. The questions Camilo asked were so simple and off-base that, before long, boredom overcame us.

  ***

  On December 4, 1987, I committed a mortal sin. Los Prisioneros had just released La cultura de la basura, their third album; I was dying to buy it, but I didn’t have a single peso. I considered stealing again, but I didn’t think I could do it—that time with the Talking Heads had been a spontaneous flash of inspiration. Then I had a better idea: since the annual Telethon was happening that day, I asked my parents for money to help the handicapped children, and then I headed off to the store and bought the cassette.

  I had a terrible time of it. I locked myself in my room to listen to the tape, and at first every song sounded, in one way or another, as if it were about my act of villainy. I decided that I had to go to confession, but I was afraid of the priest’s reaction. “Confess to me,” Camilo said, when I told him I felt guilty. “What do you need to go blabbing your business to a priest for? Also, I’ll tell you straight off: masturbating is not a sin. I think even Jesus whacked off a few times thinking about Mary Magdalene.”

  I laughed so much I felt giddy. Never in my life had I heard such heresy. There was a picture of Jesus above the table in the living room, and from then on I could never look at it without thinking that he was making that face after ejaculating. Anyway, I had never thought that masturbation was a sin. When I told Camilo what I had done, he told me that the telethon met its goals through the sponsorships alone, and that maybe I had needed that cassette, maybe I had done the right thing. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Okay,” he pronounced. “If you still feel guilty, pray that one prayer where you have to hit your chest.”

  “What about your godmother? Have you seen her?” I asked him one morning—in those days he used to stay over and sleep in the living room. He’d get up early and come back from the market with a watermelon, because it was summer. He said yes, that she was still his mother’s best friend.

  “And you? Do you have godparents?”

  “Yeah, my aunt and uncle, my mom’s brother and sister.”

  “That’s no good,” he said. “The idea is that they aren’t family. Aunts and uncles will give you presents anyway. I think my father should be your godfather,” he told me very seriously. “When I go see him I’m going to ask him to be your godfather.”

  Camilo still insisted that we teach him about soccer, and sometimes we practiced penalty kicks in the street. But my father would get fed up; he said that Camilo didn’t concentrate, that his interest wasn’t serious. Still, one weekend the three of us went to the Santa Laura Stadium to watch a double-header. First it was Universidad de Chile against Concepción. Camilo, to my father’s and my annoyance, had decided to root for the U, which had been his father’s team, although of course he didn’t even know the players’ names. He liked the way that everyone in the stadium criticized and shouted at the players, but was surprised to see that they got angry with the ref. He decided to come to his defense, and although at first people didn’t take it well, it was truly funny to hear Camilo, every time the ref called a foul or carded a player, stand up and yell, “Very well done, sir! Excellent decision!”

  Camilo kept cheering on the referee during the next match, which was between Colo-Colo and Naval, I think. I joined him for a while, even though watching Colo-Colo was to me a very serious matter. I had grown up admiring Chino Hisis, Pillo Vera, Carlos Caszely, Horacio Simaldone, and, of course, Roberto Rojas—“el Cóndor.” I had hated some players too: Cristián Saavedra (I don’t know why) and, during the period when the coach inexplicably used to make him and Rojas alternate as starters, Mario Osbén. That infuriated me. One of the great joys of my childhood was going down to the fence to yell at the coach, and I’d really let him have it. At home, cursing was strictly forbidden, but at the stadium I had free rein.

  None of those players were on the team anymore that day at the stadium with Camilo, but the one I missed the most was obviously Cóndor Rojas. All Chileans admired Rojas, but for me, because he was a goalie, it was also a roundabout way of admiring my father. What’s more, I knew the position perfectly, and I considered the goalie’s job to be without a doubt the hardest. Sometimes I played goalie too, trying to emulate Cóndor Rojas, or maybe my father (in all but the shouting). Still, when I joined the Cobresal Youth leagues, in Maipú, playing on the same field where Iván Zamorano began his career, I tried out as a midfielder and not a goalie. I was afraid, perhaps, that I wouldn’t be good enough.

  ***

  Why did Camilo spend so much time with us? Because we loved him, sure. And because he didn’t like being at his own house. He fought with his mother about his religious beliefs and about the political situation. Before the 1988 referendum, Camilo went to all the demonstrations in favor of the “No” vote, and that led to severe arguments. He wanted “No” to win because he hated Pinochet, but also because he thought that, if it did, his father woul
d come back to Chile. But Camilo’s father didn’t want to come back, or at least that’s what Auntie July always told him: “Your father has another family now. He has another country. He doesn’t even remember you.” But Camilo’s father still wrote to him, sent him money, and called him every once in a while.

  Auntie July was tough. Even so, she treated us very well the one time we went over to her house. She gave us bread cake and banana milk while we played Montezuma’s Revenge with Camilo’s halfbrothers. It was strange to see Camilo there. He didn’t seem to belong. I went into his room, and it was as if he didn’t live there. He used to give my sisters and me posters and pictures to hang on our walls, but there was none of that in his own room: I was impressed by those white, empty walls, without even a nail to hang a photograph.

  Oh, what did Camilo study? Administration or Management of Something, at the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, which back then was called the Instituto Profesional de Santiago. But he didn’t like to study. Once, he tried to give me math lessons, but it didn’t work out, and, anyway, I didn’t really need them. Nor do I know if he read much, though I feel like he did. Now I sometimes think, from this suspiciously stable place that is the present, that Camilo was immature. But no. He wasn’t. Or he also had another side, an intuitive, generous, perceptive side.