When they opened the door for him, he walked right past without saying hello, went up the stairs, reached the room at the far end of the house, collapsed on the bed, and slipped into a coma. Freed from himself in this way, at the edge of the abyss of death that he would soon fall into, he experienced what I think were the first moments of peace he had known since childhood. It was Christmas, the happiest time of year for children in Antioquia.
Yet it had been so long since we were kids. Days, years, our entire lives had rushed past us like the Medellín River, which the city had turned into a sewer, so that instead of teeming with the shimmering fish of years past, its raging whirlpools and murky waters could now drain the shit, and nothing but more and more shit, all the way out to sea. By New Year’s, he had come out of the coma and was faced with both the ineluctable fact of his illness and the dusty asylum of his house, my house, which now lay practically in ruins.
But did I just say house? Christ. How long had it been since it stopped being mine. Ever since Papi had died.
Hence the dust, because after he was gone, nobody ever swept. With my father’s passing, the Crazy Bitch had lost not only a husband, but also a servant, the only one who had never quit on her. He lasted her half a century, more or less.
Those two were the spitting image of love, the very sun of happiness, the perfect marriage. They produced nine children in the first twenty years of their union, whi.