The Sickness (19 page)

“What do you want? What can I do for you?”

His father thinks for a moment.

“Talk to me,” he says with some difficulty, as if he had to drag the words to his lips. “Talk to me about us.”

Silence is a sharp stake. Andrés feels as if his tongue were a stone in his mouth. Then he realizes that this is all they have, the one shared thing that remains to them: their last words. That hoarse, weak voice signals the end of the body, sound is the only bit of life they still have.

What are last words like? What do they taste of?

His father makes a small gesture, again reaches out his hand, as if to draw him closer, to have his son still nearer. Andrés bends forward, almost crouched over him now.

“This is how I want to go,” murmurs his father. “Listening to you talking.”

And he again closes his eyes. Perhaps even opening and closing his eyes hurts him now. Passing the time hurts too.

Andrés feels as if his mouth were full of tree bark. He feels a deep, deep sadness. He's crying, not holding back now, not trying to stop his tears. His father's hand between his two hands feels ever lighter. Why do we find it so hard to accept that life is pure chance?

His father opens his eyes again, tries to smile, and gives him instead a look of fragile tenderness.

“Talk to me,” he says again. “Don't let me die in silence.”

ALBERTO BARRERA TYSZKA
, poet and novelist, is well known in Venezuela for his Sunday column in the newspaper
El Nacional
. He cowrote the internationally best-selling and critically acclaimed
Hugo Chávez
, the first biography of the Venezuelan president.
The Sickness
won the prestigious Premio Herralde—an honor previously bestowed on Roberto Bolaño and Javier Marias, among others—and was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2011.

 

MARGARET JULL COSTA
has translated many Portuguese, Spanish, and Latin American writers, among them José Saramago, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, and José Régio. She was joint winner of the Portuguese Translation Prize in 1992 and won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1997.

 

CHRIS ADRIAN
is a pediatric oncologist and the author of three novels, most recently
The Great Night
, and a collection of short stories,
A Better Angel
. He is a fellow at the Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars and a writer in residence in the Program in Narrative Medicine at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Copyright © 2006 Alberto Barrera Tyszka Translation copyright © 2010 Margaret Jull Costa Introduction copyright © 2012 Chris Adrian

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

 

Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and New York, New York

 

Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, 1700 Fourth St.,
Berkeley, CA 94710,
www.pgw.com

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Barrera, Alberto.

[Enfermedad. English]

The sickness / Alberto Barrera Tyszka ; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa ; with an introduction by Chris Adrian.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-935-63926-8

1. Hypochondria--Fiction. 2. Fathers and sons--Fiction. 3. Physicians-Fiction. 4. Cancer--Patients--Family relationships--Fiction. 5. Stalkers--Fiction. I. Costa, Margaret Jull. II. Title.

PQ8550.12.A62A2 2012
863'.64--dc23

2011051580

First published in Spanish as
La Enfermedad
by Editorial Anagrama,
Barcelona, 2006

 

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by MacLehose Press

 

First U.S. edition 2012