Hotels in the Air

Carlos Franz

Catherine Bayle (Trad.)

«Then, at the top of the hill, I saw the hotel. It was beautiful, straight out of a fairy tale…»

Bohumil Hrabal, I Served the King of England

A yellowed photo from a newspaper. July 1977. It sounds like centuries ago, doesn't it? It seems like yesterday to me. You've got to look closely. A face in the third row, a little to the left, circled in pencil. A face brilliant with sweat, trying hard to smile midst all those uniforms. My father.

He had lost his job two years before. The privatisation of state hotels embarked upon by the new regime left Víctor Martínez-Coll in the street. After decades working for the National Hotel Chain, where he rose to be Head of Catering. We had lived all over the country, in the Hotel Casino in Puerto Varas in the lake district, in the Hostería de Arica in the north, in the Gran Hotel in Puerto Montt overlooking the islands and the fjords of Chiloé. As a child I was happy in those great damp manager's houses, with their wrought-iron rocking chairs in the patio, their endless corridors, their huge wardrobes full of white clothes for playing at ghosts. Then they sacked him. My parents separated and for months I heard nothing of him. Until the day he turned up so that we could celebrate my fourteenth birthday together. We celebrated it in the prestigious Club de la Unión in Santiago. «The highest authorities are invited», he told me, with the air of one who had intimate knowledge of the highest authorities, a knowledge only possible in those who had served at their tables.

Parties began early, well before the curfew, in those «exceptional times». We went through the palatial door of the Club at six in the evening. A lewd red tongue of carpet licked down the stairs to the street. Grand official cars with chauffeurs at the wheel waited in line. My father didn't take the least notice of the liveried porter who held out his hand demanding our invitations. He walked straight ahead to the service entrance, half a block down. He still possessed the cocky bravado of the employee. He was proud of using doors forbidden to mere mortals marked «Private access only». He went up to the thick grille and murmured something into the dark interior.

«Ronald... Table one here».

It sounded like a spell, an open sesame. «Ronaaaald...!». He repeated the name a little louder, all the while looking towards the main entrance. Where decorated officials and their wives in evening dress blue were processing with slow vanity in single file up the marble stairs.

«Okay, I'm coming, there's no need to shout», a voice finally whispered from inside.

The grille opened a little and we entered the frozen hallway of a porter's lodge. A tall, nervous man, about my father's age, led us swiftly through the heavy revolving door. He was wrapped in a stiff blue liveried uniform, very elegant, like a chamberlain from a royal court in a film.

«Don Víctor, this is the last time I'm doing this...»

«For old times' sake, Ronnie». My father patted his back with real affection. «Who promoted you to Head Waiter in the Hostería de Arica? Eh?»

«Yes, that's true, don Víctor. But things are different now. This is no time to be risking my job. Or my head...»

«This is a great day. It's the boy's birthday...»

The man looked at me with an unexpected tenderness that shamed me.

«Incredible. I knew you when you were a babe in arms,» he said.

A long tiled corridor led into the bowels of the Club. I made out billiard rooms in semi-darkness. The balls shining in their pockets like glass eyes gouged from some giant. I had a feeling that there were going to be problems. Beside us a stairway with a bronze banister rose towards the din of the party in the floor above. (I'll never forget the noise of that party upstairs.) My father sat on the first step. He searched laboriously through his battered leather briefcase. Then he took out a tie even thinner than his own and passed it to me. The knot was already done.

«Try it on and we'll be ready. Thanks, Ronnie, I won't forget this. You'll have a place for certain in my hotel, if you ever decide to take off that uniform».

His hotel! The mythical hotel of his own, his inn at a crossroads, with an open fire and copper pots hanging from the beams, and its roadside restaurant. So he was still dreaming the same dream. And he was talking as if it were a reality. Could it be true this time?

Before I could ask him he pushed me upstairs. All of a sudden we were in the great reception hall of the Club. The effect was overwhelming. Colossal columns, chandeliers. And on the pedestals young marble women, bashful in their nakedness midst so many people in evening dress.

«First we'll go and leave our things in the cloakroom», he said, alluding, with the air of a duke in exile, to his crumpled raincoat and my school parka.

We hadn't even got half way across the packed room when I noticed that we were, unmistakably, being followed by a couple of security guards. The type with blue-ish cheeks that need to be shaved twice a day. I tried to warn him, but he shut me up with a pinch, murmuring, «Look straight forward. And don't open your mouth...».

Like an expert sailor in turbulent social waters, he took the helm. He tacked in another direction, heading us off directly to the portico. A decrepit gallery of smiling veterans was framed in the gigantic arch. My father pushed his way in, ignoring all protocol and stepping into the line of the «highest authorities» waiting to be announced.

The man with the shining raincoat, with the worn-out hold-all and the little hat in his hand. And the boy with the parka and the blue wool jerkin knitted by his mother. What a pair of layabouts in the midst of such military splendour and plush upholstered women! It could never work. Even I realised that. Someone would point at us. The very air of self-importance that my father tried to adopt would give us away.

Let's take a look at him. Protected by the passage of time. As if from behind the false mirror used in courtrooms to protect the witnesses. But, remember, it's not our place to judge. ...Víctor Martínez-Coll is short, with greying blond hair and delicate hands. There emanates from him the slightly cloying odour of cheap shaving lotion. He looks tired. He shows signs of the tremble and the loose skin of a glutton on a diet. Although in his case we can guess at other reasons for his abstinence. By simply looking at the heels of his shoes, worn down on one side, we can see the long itinerary of the unemployed. The blue blazer that was always a bit tight now hangs on him, and the golden buttons, none of which match, are hanging off. And the rest of his outfit? What is there to say? We need look no further than his tie, which, according to him, belongs to an «English Regiment», but which -I discovered this years later- only belongs to some English school. In any case, a boy's tie and too short at that. For which reason, and probably so that no one will measure the little strip of cloth that hardly reaches his sternum, he never unbuttons the jacket. In short, as much elegance as can be mustered from true poverty.

Even if a stroke of good luck were to improve his appearance, his attitude would betray him. It irredeemably suggests what he could be if he were not unemployed. A Head Waiter on his day off. Or, at best, the maître d' of a hotel that's seen better days. As I was to witness a thousand times, he automatically steps forward to open doors, or falls behind to fix the jacket of perfect strangers. And his restless gaze seems always at the beck and call of some distant hand about to click its fingers. They are all gestures that underline the character of a man in service: always on his toes. Someone who spends his existence fearing the complaints from the table at which life has been badly served. Someone who would go running to attend to the complaints, if it were not for a dignity akin to panic that stops him.

Another security guard had appeared now just beside the portico. He had the same little twisted telephone wire coming out of his ear, and he was talking to the button of his sleeve, like a mad man. I thought all was lost. I wanted to run before it was too late. I looked for an escape route: the way was blocked by the men's decorated chests and their wives' complicated accessories. However, before I could betray him or the madman with the blue-ish face could intervene, my father grabbed hold of the outstretched hand of the first host, a tall individual of distinguished mien with a stupid look.

«Congratulations! What a great day for your Institution!» he said, shaking the hand too vigorously. And he added other pompous phrases in the same vein, before introducing himself: «Víctor Martínez-Coll. And this is my assistant. From the Society Pages. We black' blackre here to cover the event. We're from...»

He mentioned a very well known morning paper. His finger was pointing to a badge on the collar of his blazer that could just as easily have been the logo of some newspaper or the advertising for some brand of oil. The stupid look lit up for a moment as if a camera had already flashed. «Of course, of course. Thank you for coming. In the name of the Institution».

That done, my father took off his greasy raincoat with a lordly gesture and handed it to the guard, along with his briefcase and my parka. «Would you kindly take these to the cloakroom? So that we can get straight to work. We have to get back before they put the paper to bed». Who hasn't seen this type of brusque daring that from time to time takes over certain deeply shy people? In the most hidden depths of their mute anguish we can only guess at an igneous nugget of madness, which it is better not to put under pressure.

The guard was rooted to the spot at such a display of daring. He wanted to consult the main host, but he was already too busy with other guests. And, without looking back, we headed straight into the bright crowded rooms.

*  *  *

«Try the king-crab», my father said to me, stopping a waiter carrying canapés. «They're not from a tin. The Air Force brings seafood fresh from Punta Arenas. It'll have arrived this morning on a special flight. Try this crab...»

«Delicious», I muttered as best I could with my mouth full.

«The anniversaries of the forces of order are characterised by their unusual timetables. And by finishing on time. But there's always loads to eat. Although, it has to be said, the Marines generally put on a better spread than the Air Force...».

He was thinking aloud. Or was he teaching me? I realised that there was a whole ranking system in operation. A Gastronomic Guide for gate-crashing cocktail parties. How would he designate them? With little parachutes instead of stars or forks?

«Of course, if they would let me take you out at different times we could go to weddings and diplomatic receptions. The Embassies serve ethnic menus on national days. You can travel without leaving the country. But this isn't so bad, is it? I bet you won't forget this birthday in a hurry, eh?»

I nodded. I would never forget it. And I swiped a glass from a passing tray. He looked at me approvingly. Tenderly.

«I knew you'd like it. This atmosphere is very, very...» he looked for the word. For a second I intuited one of the possible sources for this lexicon that had impressed me since I was a child. I had the vision of a man filling in a crossword puzzle, sitting on a box in a restaurant, biting the end of a pencil. Until he found the correct word.

«This atmosphere “blacksparkles”,» he said at last.

I felt more confident. I was beginning to understand the game. I was almost enjoying it. I had drunk my glass of white wine. And the heavy satin curtains, the women's perfumes, the military orchestra playing waltzes in the background, everything «blacksparkled» a bit. I was even beginning to use crossword vocabulary, the vocabulary of my father.

We even made conversation with a couple of foreign officials covered in constellations of stars. They were the air force attachés from Guatemala and Grenada, I think. In any case, countries not much bigger than an air field. «On board a Mirage you cross them in the blink of an eye...». And their teeth almost fell out of their black thick-lipped mouths, they laughed so much. Maybe the glasses of Chardonnay gave me courage. Or maybe I did it to put us on a par in this world of travellers. In any case, all of a sudden I found myself asking my father, «And where have you been this year...?». Like someone asking a soul mate who's been lost from sight. Simply because fate sets asunder what it has brought together.

His smile disappeared:

«What are you talking about? Me? Where would I go?

«Yes, you. Who else?» I answered, still possessed by the momentum of my enthusiasm. «You were travelling, weren't you? How's the hotel idea coming along?»

«Well, you know,' he explained to the attachés, 'It's a very long story...»

Undoubtedly, in this he had not changed. All his stories were long stories. And none offered a clear answer. What was he so afraid of? Telling me a lie? Or destroying my illusions?

«Tell me that story», I said, a bit peeved by the way the sentence was left hanging in the air. «I missed you». The blow hit hard. He turned red. He turned on his heels looking for help, displaying that painful ability for offloading responsibilities that distinguishes the fainthearted.

Perhaps on that occasion I could have found out about the dark year during which my father was out of our lives. If I had insisted, if I had pushed him when we were with the air force officers... But even failures have their fairy godmother. One that covers their lost steps, wipes out the unpaid tabs, including memory. And allows them to go on living. This time the godmother took the shape of a tall woman in a red tailored suit and high heels. She was carrying the unmistakable notebook used by reporters, and a very fat photographer panted along behind her with his arsenal of cameras around his neck.

«Miss!» called my father. «We're ready for a photograph...». The woman looked the little, agitated, slightly sweaty man blocking her path up and down. I suppose she was about to let him pass. But at that moment my father added, «with our friends...», and he took the smiling and starred air officers from Guatemala -or was it Grenada- by the elbow.

The man backed him up with some Caribbean gallantry that softened the powdered disgust of the reporter. Finally she made a sign to the photographer. The fat man framed the picture and lent back elastically, hoisting the camera. «Say cheese», she said, between her teeth.

The attachés were on each side of us. My father was in the centre, with his arm round my shoulders. The huge hand of the Guatemalan, weighed down by a gold bracelet, rested on one of his. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He winked at me, relieved. Isn't this an unforgettable evening he seemed to be saying to me. We would even be in the newspaper.

And he hadn't had to answer any of my questions.

«And now, if you'd be so kind as to tell me your names?» whimpered the reporter. With titles and positions. For the Society pages, please. My father's smile fell again. There was a palpable sensation of loss. He fumbled nervously through his pockets. Misshapen pockets where men without title or position sink deep into the lining of their jacket.

I think my first memory is of my father's fear. My conscience began to tick the first time I saw him tremble. I must have been four or five years old and had been taken to a parachute display. By some Regiment beside whatever hotel we were in at the time, in Angol or Traiguén, perhaps. I remember a grass pitch, a brass band, a very blue sky strewn with bright slowly descending mushrooms. All of a sudden the crowd is silent. Even the band has fallen silent. I remember people's raised heads, straining back at an impossible angle, eyes dilated with surprise. And then the fascinating dark bundle falling like lead among the parachutes. Almost on top of us. And my mother holding me, protecting me. Even so, I think I see clearly the face of the man falling, arms flailing, his mouth wide open is if drowning in a pool of air, before crashing into the centre of the pitch. A «THUD» resonates in the sepulchral mid-day silence. And the crowd runs towards him, shouting, calling for help. Everyone, except my father, who's nowhere to be seen. My father who will appear a minute later at the foot of one of those wind sleeves, doubled over by the retching, vomiting.

I'm not saying that he was a coward. His was a common fear, I think: the fear of launching himself into the emptiness of life. An apprehension expressed in his temperament, at once slothful and utopian, so common, moreover, in kind people. A tendency to take just those steps that others expect, putting off indefinitely the one individual leap that would justify their being. Something that seems like kindliness, but that is fear. Fear of testing dreams, launching them, leaving them for an instant suspended on high, and then, possibly, everything turning out badly, and the dreams plummeting into an abyss. A fear that can last a whole life.

Or until something obliges us to jump into thin air.

*  *  *

Two years before the party in the Club, the day that his blue marching orders blue fell onto his desk, my father came home floating. Literally. It was one of those very windy days that the spring delivers in Santiago. Maritime winds slipping through the throats of the cordillera. A foretaste of summer sticking its tongue out at us from the beach, thrusting its breath of salt and freedom in our faces. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and my father was on his way home at this unusual hour, through the Gath y Chaves Alley. The football stopped, a corner was left in the air. The little man, with his schoolboy's briefcase, passed amongst us without seeing us. Levitating between the bungalows and the lime trees, now in full leaf. Floating, dragged along by the great wings -even then a bit grimy, it must be said- of the raincoat that he never took off, the scrupulous man fending off the cold until mid-summer.

He made his way directly to the garage and, taking hold of the key ring hanging on the side, opened the padlock. I left the football and watched him, fascinated. The garage was a room full of objects forbidden to me. My father called this junk room, in a rather chilling way, the dark room. Inside could be heard a phenomenal din; boxes falling, suitcases flying, a cloud of dust billowing up over the threshold. A small holocaust consumed these forgotten things that even a nomadic family that's spent its life in hotels manages to accumulate on its travels. Even the cradle of my little sister who lived less than a year went flying out.

My mother came out of the house wiping her hands on her apron, a present from her husband. The extremely elegant monogrammed chef's apron from the Hotel O' Higgins (for these privileges, sometimes, a whole life is dedicated to the service of others).

«Víctor, what's the matter?»

«They've thrown me out», answered an unfamiliar voice from inside the garage, and he coughed. «I have been sacked, allowed to go, dismissed, rationalised...». Doubtless, he had reread the letter, crossing off every word, until he had learnt the euphemistic vocabulary of privatisation off by heart.

«Víctor», my mother repeated, pale, as only she could ever be. As pale as dough before it goes into the oven. «What will we do now?»

«I'm going to have my own road-side restaurant, or maybe a country hotel», answered my father, emerging from the garage with a dusty filing cabinet full of sheets of paper and blueprints. «We'll live the way we've always wanted to».

«The way you've always wanted to», she corrected him. «Which is very different».

And she cleaned her glasses on her apron in order better to see the difference.

My mother was short-sighted, ambitious and loyal. With, it has to be said, the type of loyalty that she would prefer not to be put to the test. Víctor Martínez-Coll's vocation to be an independent hotel owner was one of the few tests that managed to put her off track. If my mother's voice was raised and their bedside light was on until very late in their bedroom, it meant that her husband had taken more unpaid leave. Once again, as if possessed, he would wrap up the maps and train timetables, the guides for hostels and European country inns that were his inspiration in his schoolboy's briefcase. And the next day we would watch him go, armed with his gumboots, his little Tyrolean hat and the old Leica camera with the tarnished chrome plating. Ready to trap this obsessive Shangri-La of alternative tourism that had been the stuff of his dreams. «But why don't you try for promotion where you are, why don't you demand what's yours instead of haring off after some dream?! With your ability you could be a Managing Director by now,' my mother would shout in the bedroom. And he would blackstammer, 'I've told you a thousand times, woman. I don't want us to depend on anyone. I want us to be in-de-pen-dent! Is that so difficult to understand?»

The day was breaking and I doubt if they could have understood each other. He was off in search of his dreamed-of independence. And she was just not going out to say goodbye. I imagined him with his antiquated compass wandering through the countryside, the mountains, all around those little villages in the Andes where he used to take us sometimes. A compass for finding the fountain of eternal youth in whose springs he would build one of his fantastic inns. With its kitchens full of rustproof utensils and its thermal and mud baths, all good for the heart. Then he would come back with photographs of a TB sanatorium abandoned at the top of a hill, the dried-out swimming pool in some riverside resort blocked up years before, some internee's earthquake-damaged house up for sale. He would make plans, do accounts and balances, he would glue his photos in the spaces he had carefully left when typing up his projects. The old portable Underwood would click away until dawn for a week. Then he would visit banks, encourage reluctant partners, leave them blue carbon copies of his illustrated projects. Little by little he would come down to earth, overcome by the difficulties of the enterprise, forgetting, until the next time...

And when he returned to earth, battered by disillusion, my mother would caress his blond, already greying, hair, take his hand and they would return reconciled to the bedroom. In time we even managed to foretell the date and the hour of those outbursts of independence. By a little fevered window of madness that would appear at the side of his pupil.

«And tell me, Víctor,» continued my mother the afternoon he was sacked. «What are we going to eat this time until you've got your hotel?»

«Don't worry, pet. We'll never go short of food. Never. How could someone in the catering business go hungry? I know every chef and maître in Chile. We could eat free for a year without ever eating the same thing twice, if we wanted to...».

I knew this dialogue by heart. I would mimic it moving my lips in silence. Then she would retort:

«And the mortgage. Are your waiter friends going to pay that too?»

And that was it, it was out. The famous Mortgage! After fifteen years living in hotels and state hostels, my mother had threatened to leave him if they did not put down good roots. Roots, real roots. After many discussions and the failure of some new hotel castle built in the air, my father gave in. He asked to be transferred to Santiago and got into debt for a quarter of a century in order to buy the house in the Gath y Chaves Alley. He had paid eighteen instalments on the bungalow, with a garden in front, blackwicket gate, a garage for a car that we did not have, and life insurance, just in case the debtor died before the debt was paid off. In short, the mythical house where the first thing my mother did was to plant trees that would grow quickly and put down strong roots, deep roots.

For a while we thought that Víctor Martínez-Coll had been cured forever of his dreams of being an independent hotelier. But here he was again, clinging to the file with his projects in it. Hell bent on converting into an opportunity this condemnation to forced freedom that destiny had thrown in his face. With his free hand he swiped the air, brushing aside my mother's objections: «Don't worry, we'll sort ourselves out. The money for the bills will come from somewhere...». And he accompanied this evasive gesture with a wild look that spoke of the remote crossroads where his inn would be built.

«Víctor,» be reasonable. «Your projects have been rejected a hundred times. You don't have what it takes to be a businessman. Get that into your head. But you have got friends. Important people don't forget when they've been served well. Ask one of them for a job...».

My mother had her own weapons in this war. She remembered something and ran off into the house. A second later she reappeared in the front garden, with the thick album that normally sat on the little coffee table in the centre of our living room. She excitedly flicked through the heavy tome, from which emerged photos and cuttings from yellowing newspapers. «These people are grateful to you, they'll remember you, they ate well. And they've got influence: here's the Cardinal, and here's that millionaire that's so famous these days. Do you remember the singer that stayed for a month in the Hostería de Arica? Well, he's now Minister of Education. I'm sure it's the same person, I saw him in the newspaper the other day. Yes, here he is! It's him, there's even a dedication. He wrote that it was “Unforgettable”... Hear that?! Unforgettable!»

And my mother looked up, triumphant, with her large reading spectacles on the end of her nose. She met the disapproving look of her husband, who shook his head a few seconds before exploding: «Never! I wouldn't dream of it. When will you understand that hospitality is sacred, that you can never ask for anything except fair payment in exchange for hospitality? We've discussed this many times. For a hotelier it's a question of principle. How could I create a clientele if it's common knowledge that I go around asking for favours from my customers? Answer me that».

This was a perfect picture of them. In the little garden of the bungalow, threatening each other: they looked like two fanatics from different sects flourishing their sacred books. My father with his file of utopias and my mother with her faith in the society columns. And holy war was inevitable.

«I'll pay the mortgage with this», added my father, decisively, angrily banging his hand against the dusty covers of the file that contained all his projects in progress.

«Dreams! Fantasies!» she answered. «Use your influence, your friendships, like everyone else does. If not, what's the point of having had your photo taken with so many famous people?»

And she showed the open page with the photo where they both appeared -with fifty other people- beside the candidate on his campaign tour who stayed in the Gran Hotel Pucón during the presidential elections of 1964.

And perhaps this was, finally, their alliance, the minimal plot of promised land that every couple must have for their marriage to flourish. My parents had in common the childish vanity of certain little people of this world. They loved to be photographed. Not to steal the show. Nor to block anyone out. Simply to be included in the frame. To be photographed with the people that they themselves had helped to make happy. I can see Víctor Martínez-Coll tapping a glass with his fork after some Masonic convention, inviting the assembly to be photographed in the gardens, «courtesy of the house». So that each conference participant could take away a copy in a frame designed by him that said, «Souvenir of my stay in...». I can see the group lined up in rows on the mini-golf lawn and the manager taking his wife by the hand and both running with their fleet steps, waiters' steps, to be included in the photo beside the Grand Master. The very same photo that my mother would send on the following day to the local newspaper, La Mañana de Talca: «Brilliant closing ceremony of Congress in Pichilemu». The same cutting that would end up carefully stuck down in her famous album.

«This hotel will be able to pay much more than your mortgage!» my father shouted again, furiously showing another of his filed projects. It'll pay two mortgages, ten mortgages!»

But my mother wasn't listening to him. She had sat down on the kitchen step and was leafing nostalgically through her own book. More cuttings of photographs from the provincial society press: side by side with political leaders, First Ladies, even some American actor who came salmon fishing in the River Trancura. With dedications underneath from «illustrious», «prestigious» faces, after overnight stays at innumerable engagements, banquets and gatherings, conventions and conspiracies, catered for in the hotels and hostels the length of the country that they managed through almost two decades. That was what my mother had faith in. In the indestructible memory left by a traditional feast for a hundred people cooked in the old Posada Nacional de Ancud. In her belief in the permanence of a summer wedding they organised by the shores of the Llanquihue. And there they are, this short, happy couple, with something bewitching in their little picaresque eyes, who appeared from God knows where, arm in arm between the bride and groom.

*  *  *

However, it seemed Víctor Martínez-Coll's ancient compass was leading him astray during that period. The farther away he had to travel to find the ideal situation for his hotel, the less time the executives gave him to repay his mortgage. One year after his dismissal, around the middle of 1976, the AMP «Freedom» (the Association for Mortgages and Pensions, which my father translated as the Association for the Murder of the Petit-bourgeoisie) had auctioned off the house in the Gath y Chaves Alley. And my parents separated.

It didn't happen all of a sudden, but little by little. It was a loneliness that imperceptibly penetrated our lives. All of a sudden we looked at the ceiling of the bungalow and there was a black stain from the leaking roof that had not been repaired that year. All of a sudden, something in our family had burnt out, like the fuse that Chilectra, the electricity company, had blocked with a type of lock, which I, with my thin fingers, learned to turn fraudulently. Until they came to remove the meter.

For his part, my father also removed himself from our lives little by little. By the time of the impending auction of the house, he had all but disappeared. He did not fade, like others, into the dark night, he just began to come home less and less. He would spend a few days away. Where? Looking for work we supposed. Although I did notice my mother's pained grimace when she saw him go out suspiciously armed with his Leica, the machine for trapping utopias. Be that as it may, he would return home from these expeditions more and more pale and baggy-eyed, as if he had been partying for days on end. (He who, until then, had never tasted alcohol, unless it was to oversee the amount of spirits in the steamed puddings.) Then he would return, still absorbed in his own personal, all too obvious, paradox. That of a hotelier, a great host, twice winner of the State Hotelier's national award for gastronomic excellence, who couldn't provide food for his own family.

The last time he appeared at breakfast time -at the time when the buses arrive from the south. All of a sudden we found him standing hesitantly at the kitchen door, greeting us with that gesture of his, shrugging his shoulders and showing his open, empty palms, as if to say: «It's only me». My mother invited him in without a word and served him coffee. My father lifted his battered leather briefcase and took out a paper bag. She looked at him sceptically. With shaking hands, he opened the little bag and carefully placed on a plate two dozen canapés. Large, luxurious, canapés of salmon and caviar.

After his next trip he never came back.

*  *  *

Childhood has an immutable centre. When the world is still this little crystal ball in your hands whose fascinating mystery nobody expects you to penetrate. A suspended timeless nucleus that we often intuit just as we are about to lose it. For me this centre was the year that we stayed in my grandfather Cayo's house, during my father's silence and absence. The long yet very brief year during which I learned to imagine.

Where could he be? Why so silent? Was he being trailed by that sinister AMP that had auctioned our house? Had he become a criminal on the run? Had he enrolled in the Foreign Legion? Or had he found that crossroads of his and was he building the wayside inn he had dreamt so much about?

Don't ask me why, but I was sure that this time he would find his destiny. And that he would reappear at any moment and show us the photos of his new hotel, in a landscape of snowy mountains and wooded valleys. And he would take us to live there... I pictured him leaning over the blueprint of his project, examining the minute details of the reconstruction of a wonderful country mansion. Like the ones we often visited together, listening to him unfold the imaginary wings of the extensions, the hole for the swimming pool, even the trees from whose fruit we would make home-made marmalade that would become famous. And above all, the big neon light visible from the motorway: «Gran Hotel Martínez». Crowned by a temporary announcement: «Opening Here Soon». Even today, when I see a grown man standing at the side of a motorway, I can't help thinking that it's him, timing the frequency of the provincial buses in order to work out when his future clients would arrive.

It had been difficult for me to super-impose my own ever-growing fantasies on my father's absence. Fights and scuffles in the school playgrounds followed the rumours and the gossip. My father was roaming the world sleeping every night in a different hotel in order to import the very best; the journey was getting longer and he was now in India... That was my favourite version. I won some of those fights. And I even managed to make some charitable or imaginative schoolmates believe me.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one to fantasise about him. From time to time I would surprise my mother flicking through the newspaper to the local news sections, carefully studying the provincial society photos. And then, so that nobody would notice, she would return the newspaper perfectly folded to my grandfather's armchair. My grandfather Cayo! The retired Officer, who never approved of the wedding of his only daughter to this 'innkeeper». The fierce widower who bathed in cold water at six o'clock every morning, howling like a Cossack, and who extracted his own rotten molars by himself (I witnessed this) with pliers. Fierce Cayo, who used to tiptoe into the back bedroom where my mother and I slept to see if our feet were covered up.

We had been living with my grandfather for a year or so when a policeman appeared to deliver a blackcourt order, and I learned that he had returned. What negotiations had there been? What judicial agreements? They never told me. All I knew was that from then on he would have access to me every fortnight, on Saturdays from 3 until 8 in the evening, sharp. Starting the next week, which was precisely the day of my fourteenth birthday.

My grandfather tore the paper into a thousand pieces. He cursed the law. My mother simply made the sign of the cross. And on Saturday the old man put on his uniform and she her best dress to hand me over, spic and span, in the hall of the house in Ñuñoa.

«Don't even bother to ask him where he's been. Show no interest, don't mention his projects», my mother instructed me, inspecting my ears for the fifth time. Did she want to feign indifference through me, or was she afraid that he would have a mad fit, a bit like mentioning the noose in front of a condemned man?

I fully intended to do the opposite. I had been preparing for this meeting for two weeks. In secret I had rehearsed the scene, the words I would say to him: that he should take me with him, now that I was big enough to help in the hotel. I was already tall enough to be the perfect bell boy, one of those «buttons» boys I used to see working in the summers and whose uniforms I had looked at so often in envy. Would he have noticed how I had grown two notches on my mother's seamstress's tape measure?

I don't know if he thought I had grown. But I remember that I, for the first time ever, found him smaller. He seemed to be another person. He had always had the air of a neat man, almost polished. With his rosy cheeks and the sleeves of his impeccable shirts protected against black pot handles and the ink of the accounting books. Someone who didn't even take his tie off at home and who was wont to say that «cleanliness is the hotelier's dignity». At that re-encounter I think I felt lost. No matter where he had been, this skinny, badly shaved man was not in charge of a hotel and had not gone abroad. Or if he had, it was in third class in one of those boats where immigrants sleep in their clothes.

The man took a step towards me. My mother took a step back. It looked like a hostage exchange. My perplexity must have seemed all too evident, because he felt obliged to explain: «I'm Víctor. I ...»

He still had the habit of leaving his sentences hanging in the air. And he would never finish them, leaving them to drown in absolute silence and forgetting. On this occasion and seeing my confusion, I suppose that he was about to explain to me «I'm your father».

«Where are you taking him?» demanded my grandfather, appearing from behind.

He looked as if he was expecting a campaign plan.

«He is invited to an official party on the occasion of his birthday», declared my father, squaring up to him.

Perhaps it was the word «official» that placated Cayo. Or the ghostly air of his pitiful son-in-law. The fact is that he bent over so close that I could see the slight bristling of his shaved skull. «Have you got loose change with you?» he asked (he had given me a ton about half an hour earlier). «Ring me every half an hour, okay?... And especially if there's any sign of trouble».

«He's old enough to have bit of a social life, isn't he?» «he» interrupted, more than anything for my mother.

She did not answer. But when she kissed my forehead her damp eyes were steaming up her glasses. As we walked away I turned round three times. At the door, shoulder to broad shoulder with Cayo, my mother was waving goodbye in the wrong direction.

«Try these Ecuadorian shrimps», my father said to me, stopping the fiftieth tray and sucking the tips of his fingers. «They're delicious. You've got to try them».

Following in the wake of the choicest trays, we had entered the Grand Hall of the Club. Touched, my father watched me devour a skewer of gigantic shrimps while he held another one for me. I don't think I ever made him happier in his life: by eating hungrily at a party he had invited me to, attended to like a king.

And to think that, given the circumstances, everything could have turned out pretty well, I suppose. My father would have taken me home gorged that night. And I could have told my mother and Cayo that I had celebrated my fourteenth birthday «at an official party». Everything would have turned out fine if Víctor Martínez-Coll had not fallen prey, on that very evening, to the supreme temptation of the fearful parachutist: to feel the delirium of throwing himself into free fall. And from the heights of power, no less.

All of a sudden I realised that my father had forgotten about the next brochette, the juice of which was running down his wrist. For a moment I feared that the security guard with the blue cheeks had re-appeared, smelling us out midst the shaved necks and the crumpled décolletages. But the restless gaze of my father - the look that was always alert to the shouts from an imaginary table - had fixed itself on a point in the centre of the Hall.

«Follow me carefully», he said.

He left the brochette on a passing tray and discreetly put his fingers to his lips. He feinted agilely forwards amongst the guest, steering us towards the centre of the party. Underneath the immense chandelier was a group of officials in full uniform. In the midst of them were a few diplomats with their lugubrious dark suits, as if they were there only to offset the brilliance of the gold braids and decorations of the men in uniform.

«Who are they?» I asked, pulling at his sleeve.

«The guests of honour, the highest authorities...»

We went closer, taking refuge behind the backs of a pair of corpulent ladies. They were talking nineteen to the dozen, softened in their admiration of power. Looking closely, I could almost swear that they had goose bumps, just like any fan. In any case, the fat tremulous shoulders offered a natural balcony, a perfect hiding place.

In the centre of the circle of officials a greying general was listening smilingly to his subalterns, without agreeing with any of them. For an instant I thought I recognised that round forehead, blue the pouting smile that made him look like a child about to cry, blue the little blue baby-Jesus eyes. But then I wasn't sure. There are no faces more unreal than those we see all the time in photographs and screens. Perhaps that's why the first reaction we always have when we see someone famous in the flesh is incredulity. We follow a television star down the street to be certain, with the stupid expression of those who never appear on life's screen. And if we can, we touch them. We all have a little of Doubting Thomas at the apparition of Jesus Christ.

«Is that, I mean, could it really be... him?» I stammered, pulling my father's sleeve.

«The man himself», he murmured, without taking his eyes off him. «The President. With a cocktail in his hand...».

And just at that, the high heels appeared again, clicking along. Luckily, the reporter didn't notice us. She was too busy excusing herself, trying to make her way into the group. The military officials and the diplomats were forming an iron circle around Pinochet. There was some confusion. The ambassadors were falling over themselves with excuses about protocol, the colonels stood to attention automatically. Nobody wanted to turn their back on anyone. And least of all on the General. Although he wasn't bothered, pardoning everything with those little imperturbably happy eyes. The reporter tried to put Pinochet and his aides de camp in the centre. The obese photographer was waiting, focussing. In spite of the confusion, the group had an air that I'm sure my father would have called «sparkling». All those uniforms and dark suits in the centre of the hall, excusing themselves, under the cascading lights of the great chandelier.

«You can't be thinking of...» I said. I suddenly knew what he was about to do.

He turned to me, panting with excitement. And I suspected that there was a touch of the old madness in his voice when he answered.

«Photos like this only happen once in a lifetime».

He was murmuring as if possessed. As possessed by anxiety as a parachutist about to jump. Now I know that at the heart of the fear of the void there is a voice that calls from the abyss. Terrified, I realised that he was no longer listening to me. Violently snatching his hand from mine, he fixed his blazer and centred the knot of his «English» tie. Then he sneaked through the admiring women and sauntered up to the presidential group.

He had his hands in his pocket. He was affecting an inward look, like a carefree wanderer gazing at his own inner horizon. Only his sweating temples betrayed the intensity of his concentration. If it wasn't for that, anyone would have said that he was simply passing by... I can almost swear that he was whistling. I even believe that he made as if to kick an imaginary pebble, or perhaps a crumpled-up serviette...

And then he leapt. With an elegance and grace we would never have imagined him capable of. A grace reserved for that instant of immortality, which was destined for my eyes only. He gave a little jump and landed on his feet just behind Pinochet. Fallen from the sky, you might say. Like a distinguished and valiant parachutist landing on his feet at the exact time and place of his destination. And he stayed there a second, on his tiptoes like a ballerina, stretching so that he would be immortalised in the silver light of the flash.

*  *  *

«Would you care to accompany us? This way please...»

The security guards with the blue cheeks took us by the elbow, showing us their irregular teeth. All of a sudden we were alone in the middle of those packed rooms. And they didn't even give us time to say goodbye to the Guatemalan Air Attaché.

«Infiltrator!» and «Spy» were the gentlest epithets. «We'll teach you a lesson!»

The infiltrator answered using the repertory of conventional sayings that I knew so well. Trying out turns of phrase learned in a self-help book to see which suited the present situation. (100 Infallible Ways to Overcome Difficult Situations was one of the classics I found in his library). His elaborate formulas had the unbearable stench of an alibi. «You really should bear in mind... This is a grave error...». My father's courtesy spurred his persecutors on. Once out of sight of the crowd they took him by his «English» tie and, pulling him, they dragged us towards a side corridor. There was talk of making an example of him. These were not times to tolerate mockery of the established regime... My father was red, dishevelled, they had torn the lapel of his blazer when they ripped off his badge. But still he persisted in maintaining a certain dignity for the gallery. «Gentlemen, I can explain everything», he was saying, smiling and bowing at the same time to the service personnel watching him fly along the corridors. He seemed to be less afraid of the blue faces than of being made to seem ridiculous in front of his «colleagues». They mustn't think ill of him. As for me, a blind pride surged from an unknown region somewhere between my liver and my heart.

«Bastards!» I shouted, taking him by the hand and lashing out. «Leave him alone. He's an independent hotelier...»

Perhaps it was the word «independent» that saved us. Or the Head Waiter of the Club, who vouched for him. But the fact is that we soon found ourselves in the street. Picking up his things, the contents of the schoolboy's briefcase, my parka. The departing guests looked with a certain curiosity at the man and the boy picking up that rubbish from the red carpet. My father tried to explain it all to them, to the aloof faces looking the other way. «A lamentable mistake, an embarrassing misunderstanding... I will be taking this further...». All of a sudden he looked at me. Did he have a premonition that I would one day tell the story?

Afterwards, we walked up the Alameda, crossing dark streets, in the mid-winter acid mist of Santiago.

«I touched him», my father said finally, as we got to the bus stop.

«You touched him? Where?»

«On the back, while I was on tiptoe. I didn't know where to put my hands. So I put my arm round his waist».

He sighed. He seemed racked with a profound anguish. Like the anguish of Siegfried after bathing in the blood of the dragon that would make him immortal.

«I thought you hated him. I would have stuck a dagger in his back...»

But of course, I wasn't my father, who even hid nail clippers out of the reach of children.

«He's a bit fat», he continued, without listening to me, sinking further into the glow of power. «He's got spare tyres just here...»

«Yuck! Horrible!» I exclaimed. «Tell me the truth -why did you do it?»

«Do what?»

«You know. Get in that photo,...»

«What's wrong with that? I've had my photo taken with all the recent Presidents of the Republic. He was the only one left».

I looked at him. That night I was entering another age, and I was not satisfied with the old, comfortable explanations. My father must have intuited that, because he tried to avoid the question, repeating, «You don't understand. I touched him. It's not true that he uses a safety vest. Do you know what? He's not afraid».

«He's not afraid». As I repeat the phrase I realise why little people like my parents have their photos taken beside the rich and the famous. To grab onto something in the free fall of life. To have an illusion of support, of terra firma. The illusion that we are holding onto something or someone that will not give way. Because they are not afraid. It could be that power has its own black magic. That's why people rob buttons from stars or want to touch a president at all costs. Especially if he has absolute power. Rub them like an amulet, finger them like a talisman. Squeeze them until some of their immortality rubs off. And for the spell to last forever, be photographed by their side.

Seen in that new light, even Víctor Martínez-Coll in his shiny raincoat in the Santiago mist takes on a new dimension. Now I suspect where the change lay, the change that I had been aware of since he came to collect me that afternoon. The professional host, the builder of hotels in the air, had been replaced, substituted in some way during the year in obscurity. By this other man. This man who sneaked into life through the service door using his old work influences. And had his photo taken joylessly. The change couldn't be smelled or touched. It wasn't in the waft of dampness from his rancid raincoat, blackor in the loose skin of the shrivelled unemployed man. But somewhere much more imperceptible. I searched for the little window of madness that used to be fixed in his look when he went out in pursuit of his dreams, and I didn't find it in his eyes. It was a little spark of comprehension on my part and I hold onto that. And then he lowered his eyes. He wanted to add something, as if it wasn't clear enough already: «And anyway...»

But this sentence, like so many of his, was left hanging in the air. Because at that very moment he remembered something else and started looking through his briefcase. «Good God, I almost forgot...» He took out a bundle wrapped in gift paper and held it out to me. I didn't need to open it. As I touched it I knew that it was the old tarnished Leica, the machine for trapping utopias. A thousand times he had promised that he would let me use it when I was fourteen.

«But it's your camera», I protested.

«I don't think I'm going to need it anymore. Now it's your turn», he stated. «Many Happy Returns».

Although the reproduction is small and his name is not mentioned in the caption, I am a witness that it is indeed him. A face in the third row, a little to the left. You've got to look pretty closely. The acid in the cheap tabloid paper has corroded the scene. It is so yellowed that one can hardly recognise the President of the period. Nevertheless, by some whim of the ink, or thanks to the pencil circle that frames it, my father's face survives. It survives with absolute clarity, in the third row.