The Bolt

There was a time, in Dores's house, when the doorbell was a joy, because it announced whoever arrived, a neighbour, a piece of news, the children coming in from the street; and there was another time, that of this story, when the doorbell became the thing Dores most feared in the world, because it rang almost only to announce her son, and her son came almost only to ask, and sometimes he came in a way that left her afraid in her own house.

There is a sound that the mothers of these houses learn to dread, and it is the sound of the doorbell at the wrong hour, and Dores had learned it as one learns a language, by repetition and by pain. The doorbell, which for the rest of the world is a neutral sound, a simple announcement that someone has arrived, had become for Dores a laden sound, a sound that set her heart racing even before she knew who it was, because her body had learned to associate the doorbell with her son and her son with distress. And there was a sadness in this, that of a common sound having become, for her, a sound of fear; that of a thing as banal as a doorbell having been poisoned for her by life, transformed from a neutral announcement into a threat. Dores envied, without saying so, the houses where the doorbell was still only a doorbell, a joyful sound of visitors, and she measured, by that envy, how much her life had twisted, to the point that the most common sound of a house had become, in hers, the sound of what she most feared.

Dores had learned to know Quim's ring. There was the daytime ring, more or less normal, which even so tightened her chest because she knew he came to ask; and there was the night ring, insistent, repeated, the finger on the button without letting go, and that ring Dores knew well, and on hearing it her whole body froze, because the night ring was Quim's ring when he drank, and Quim when he drank was another, was a man who frightened her, who was not the boy she had raised nor the son she loved, was the drink with her son's face, and Dores, on the other side of the door, was left with her heart leaping, not knowing whether to open, whether not to open, whether she should, whether she could, caught between the mother's love that always wants to open to the son and the woman's fear that had learned to dread that ring.

There was a time, and Dores clung to that memory as to a proof that it had not always been so, when Quim was a good boy, her boy, laughing, full of future, a lad like the others, with dreams, with a knack for some things, with a life ahead. Dores kept that Quim in her heart, the Quim of before, and it was in part because of him that she could not shut the door to the Quim of now, because she saw in the sunken man the boy he had been, and a mother who sees the boy within the man cannot treat the man as a stranger, however much the man frightens her. And there was a particular pain in this, that of weeping for a son who was alive, that of longing for a boy who had become that man, that of loving at the same time what Quim had been and what Quim was, and of not knowing how to save one without letting herself be destroyed by the other.

Because Quim, Dores's son, had inherited from his father the thirst, and with the thirst the shadow. He was a grown man, of the age to make his life, and he made it badly, sunk in the drink as his father had sunk, and his life was a coming-apart slowly that Dores watched from outside, powerless, as one watches a boat sink from the bank. And in that coming-apart, Quim appeared at his mother's house, and he appeared almost always for the same reason: to ask. Money, above all. He came with a story, always a story, a debt, a strait, a promise that it was the last time, and Dores heard the story, which she already knew by heart because it was always the same with the names changed, and gave, gave what she had and what she did not have, because he was her son, because she did not know how to send him away empty-handed, because a part of her still believed, against all evidence, that this time the money would get him out of it, that this time it really was the last.

Quim's stories were always good, it must be said, they were stories that touched exactly where they had to touch, because Quim, even in the shadow of the drink, knew his mother better than anyone and knew which keys to press. Once it was a debt to dangerous people, who could bring him serious trouble if he did not pay; another it was a job he would get if he had something to present himself with; another it was his health, a problem, a doctor, a medicine. The stories changed, but they all had the same shape: an emergency, an imminent disaster that only the mother's money could prevent, and a promise that it was the last time, that with this one he would straighten out. And Dores, who had already heard those stories dozens of times, who knew by heart that they were stories, believed all the same, or pretended to believe, because she wanted to believe, because a mother wants to believe her son, because it was easier to give believing than to give knowing it was a lie. And Quim knew this, knew that his mother wanted to believe, and gave her stories she could believe in, and so the two of them kept up, without saying so, a kind of pact: he pretended it was the last time, she pretended she believed, and the money changed hands, and the drinking went on, and the pact repeated itself at the next visit, the same, with a new story.

It was never the last. The money Dores gave her son got him out of nothing; it sank him a little more, because it went to the drink, or to plug a hole the drink had opened, and at bottom Dores knew it, knew that she was throwing money into a bottomless well, feeding the very thing that destroyed her son. But to know did not make her stop, because between the knowing of the head and the not-managing of a mother's heart there is an abyss, and Dores lived in that abyss, giving what she knew did harm, unable not to give, because not to give seemed to her to abandon her son, and to abandon her son was the only thing she had, in her whole life, never learned to do.

The neighbours saw Quim come in and out of his mother's house, and murmured, because in a village everything is known, and there were those who censured Dores, oh Dores who does not bring that son into line, she always gives in to him, does his bidding, no wonder; and there were those who pitied her, oh Dores, poor thing, what that son puts her through. And Dores felt both things, the censure and the pity, and both wounded her, because the censure was unjust — it was not lack of sense, it was a deep strait that no one from outside had any idea of — and the pity humiliated her, she who had always been the strong one, the one who held on, the one who helped others, to see herself now the object of the village's pity because of a son. But Dores endured both, the censure and the pity, as she endured everything, in silence, with her head high in the street and undone at home, because to expose what was happening, to complain, to ask for help, was a thing she did not know how to do, that she had never learned, and so she carried alone a weight that crushed her, without letting anyone see its size.

The good days, when there were any, were almost worse than the bad ones, for the hope they brought. When Quim appeared sober, with a remnant of the boy he had been, and promised, with a sincere air, that he was going to change, that he was going to get treatment, that this time it was in earnest, Dores filled with a hope that hurt her from being so great, and she believed, because she wanted to believe, because a mother clings to any thread of hope like a drowning person to a plank. And then the hope came apart, because the promise was not kept, and Dores fell from the hope to the ground, and each one of those falls was a renewed pain, perhaps the worst of all, because hope repeatedly undone wears one out more than constant despair. Dores had learned, with time, to distrust her son's promises, not to let herself climb too high so as not to fall from so high; but she never managed to distrust entirely, because to distrust entirely would be to give up, and she did not give up, and so she went on climbing a little in hope at each promise, and falling at each break, in an up and down that wore her out more than any straight line of misfortune.

The drink, it must be said with care and with truth, had not made of Quim a monster; it had made of him a sick man, and that is a different thing. There were days when Quim appeared sober, and on those days he was still, beneath the harm, the boy Dores had raised, with a remnant of tenderness, of shame even at what he had become, and those days broke Dores's heart more than the others, because they showed her the son who was still there, buried, the son who perhaps could be saved if there were a way. And it was because of those days, of the flashes of the healthy son beneath the sick son, that Dores could not give up, because she saw that the son was still there, and a mother who sees the son still there within the harm cannot treat the harm as though it were the whole son. The illness and the son lived together in the same man, and Dores loved the son and feared the illness, and the drama was that the two came in the same body, at the same door, in the same ring of the bell, and she had to learn, and did not yet know, to open the door to one and shut it to the other.

The house, which had been a home, had become a place of fear and of waiting. Dores lived attentive to the doorbell, attentive to the telephone, attentive to news of her son, in a permanent start, and the start ate her, took her sleep, her appetite, her peace. She had grown thin, Dores, went about with the air of one who carries a weight that is not seen, and the neighbours noticed, oh Dores, poor thing, with that son, that son is wearing her down, and they were right, the son was wearing her down, but not in the way they thought, not out of malice in the son, but out of a thing deeper and sadder: the son was wearing her down because she let him, because she carried the son on her back, because she had made of her son's salvation her cross, and a cross like that, carried for years on end, crushes the one who carries it.

Dores's days organised themselves, without her wishing it, around her son and the fear of him. In the morning, she woke already with the son in her head, asking herself whether he would come, whether he was well, in what state he was. In the afternoon, she lived attentive, started at any ring, any step in the street, any noise that might be him. At night, it was the worst, because the night was the hour of the dreaded ring, and Dores lay down without resting, with her ear listening, and slept badly, with a light sleep that anything broke. Her whole life turned around Quim, the fear of Quim, the wait for Quim, and nothing was left her for herself, not a thought, not an hour, not a rest, because the son occupied her whole head, from morning to night, present when he came and present when he did not come, because his absence was as occupying as his presence, made of waiting and of fear. And so Dores had no life, she had only the son, she had only the fear and the wait and the distress of a son who was sinking, and it was a non-life, an existing suspended around another, that consumed her without giving her anything in return but more fear.

And the most terrible is that Dores no longer recognised her own house. The house that she and Aniceto had made, where she had raised the children, was now a place where she was afraid at night, where she locked up the things of value, where she hid the little money she had so that the son would not take it, where she lived on alert as one lives in a dangerous place. Her house, her refuge, had become the stage of her fear, and that, for a woman who had made of the house and the family her whole life, was a dull and permanent pain, that of having lost, without leaving it, her own home, transformed by her son's illness into a place of dread.

She had grown thin, Dores, and aged quickly in those years, because fear and distress wear out a body faster than work. She went about with a tired air, of one who does not sleep, of one who carries a weight, and her clothes began to hang loose on her, and the neighbours noticed, and she made excuses with the age, with the heat, with whatever it was, so as not to have to tell the truth, which was that it was her son eating her from within. She had ceased to care for herself, Dores, because all her attention and all her money went to her son, and a woman who puts everything into her son ceases to put into herself, ceases to buy what she needs, ceases to make herself up, ceases to care for herself, and Dores had done that, had gone on neglecting herself to care for her son, and her own body, neglected, went on wearing away, as everything wears away that is neglected. And there was a sadness in seeing her, Dores, a woman who had been strong and dignified reduced to a tired and thin shadow, worn not by the age but by the distress, and the village saw it, and pitied her, and the pity, once more, humiliated her, because she did not want anyone's pity, she wanted only, at bottom, what she had never asked for: that someone help her carry, or rather, that someone tell her that she could lay it down.

But Dores did not complain, or complained little, because she had learned, as a girl, not to complain, to endure, to make herself the strong one, the one who holds everything so that others do not see. And she went on opening the door to her son, and giving, and covering, and saving, night after night, request after request, without seeing that she was sinking with him, without hearing, in the sleeping village outside, the voice the story was going to bring her, slowly, and that would tell her what no one had told her: that to save a son who destroys himself at the cost of destroying oneself saves neither of the two, and that there is a door that, shut in time, is more love than all the doors she had opened.