Chapter 2
I can still remember my father. He was tall and handsome with large eyes
and a black moustache. Whenever he was with me he would kiss me and tell me
stories and try to make me happy. Whatever I did was fine by him. If I messed
up his books or got his clothes dirty, he wouldn't get cross. But some days he
would come home quiet and serious. Then he would sit down in a chair or walk up
and down the corridor with his hands behind his back. Then there would be a big
row with my mother. He would yell at her, saying all sorts of things, his face
twisted with anger, making me afraid. My mother would flee to her room,
sobbing. I had no idea what it was about, those arguments. I only knew that a
short time later, there he would be with my mother, all kisses. And the rest of
the evening until bedtime, he would give all his attention to her, and his eyes
would be red from having cried so much.
I loved him because he would let me do whatever I wanted and because he
would come and play with me on the floor like a child of my own age. Later on I
would learn lots of things about him; his excitable nervous nature, his
bitterness towards the world. It was the story of a man in thrall to his
passions, a man with a sensitive heart who dwelt too much on his pain. My poor
father! I can see him now led out of the house by the policemen on the day of
his crime. As he bent down to give me a farewell embrace, his boyish face was
sunk in despair. The love he had for his wife had been the love of a madman.
His place wasn't in the prison where they sent him. Indeed, my father would die
ten years later in a mental hospital struck down by a paralytic stroke.
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