Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Four
Of course Eli La Paiva knew where he could find his son, but he also knew better than to accost him when Philip wouldn’t be in a suitable mood to talk to him. Then again, he knew what his son would say, and so had no need to ask him anything; he knew that any advice, admonition or plea would fall on deaf ears and reap, in fact, scowling scorn. But he also knew that the conversation he now sought was something the two of them had to undergo, as a ritual, if nothing else. This was the moment—he knocked on the door which communicated between their rooms, aware that his son would be woken, but be just the right amount of dazed to prove receptive to what he had to say.
Sure enough, a yawning, frazzled Philip opened the door. “Yes, Father?”
“We need to finish the conversation we started.”
“I thought it was finished.”
“No.”
Philip sighed, and retreated into his room for a drink. He didn’t bother to offer his father one, knowing, in his own limited way, it would be declined.
“I just want to tell you I love you,” Eli said.
“Thanks.” Philip was scraping around in the ice bucket; only tiny shark-tooth shavings could be dredged up.
“I just needed to say that.”
The smell of tiny drops of sweat soaked into shirtsleeves; the exact number of particles of dead skin which constituted the dust on the dresser; the complete circumstances surrounding the production of every painting in history whose hue corresponded with the shade of umber now hovering around them; the lives and deaths of each occupant of this room, with all their sins and virtues, including their final terrors whilst Death stroked their cheeks, and what came after—all this, and much more, Eli perceived, though he had no wish to do so.
He took a deep breath, and continued: “You see, I won’t be around much longer.”
Philip finally looked straight at him. “Are you foretelling your own death, then?”
“Death? Well, yes. . .but that doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, it doesn’t? Can you see that, too?”
“Of course. But. . .” He moved closer.
“Yes?”
He knew his son would recoil, he knew the reasons why, he knew Philip wouldn’t want to recoil, and he knew that he couldn’t help it—he hugged him, and there, each chin projecting past the other’s shoulder like a conflicted Janus, he whispered, “When I am wiped out, when you are wiped out, when all life is wiped off the earth—for all of the minutes we’ve already existed under the sun, flitting befuddledly, ants along a log, we will still exist—we will still exist—in those snapshots of time. No one can ever take those away. They are imprinted on the scroll of eternity, inexpungeably. Therefore are all of us immortal; therefore are our victories undying; and therefore are our mistakes forever unrecoverable.”
He felt the pain in his son, from the solitude, the freedom, which he’d so long sought, and had finally, just this moment, achieved. But he knew that his words would ring through his son’s ears for the rest of his life.
He’d needed to say it, before he went away.
He’d said it, because he knew it was the sort of thing his son would have wished to hear.