something worrisome in his face, an expression of fear or bewilderment. It’s the same expression I’ll see in his own face much later, in 1995, after his first heart attack.
On 17 March 1954, Fernán answers a call from Pedro Beltrán, editor of La Prensa, who invites him to his house opposite the San Marcelo church. In his haste, my grandfather leaves an article unfinished on his desk – only the title is legible: ‘This Time, the Real Crisis’ – and asks his son Mincho to accompany him. Beltrán welcomes them in and offers them cognac; over the course of the conversation, he formally invites Fernán to return to writing a column for the newspaper. Fernán is overjoyed. Little does he know that within a few minutes this joy will kill him.
There he is, trading ideas on possible names for the new column (Disappearing Lima, Eminent Peruvians, Luminaries of Lima, Landscapes) and discussing the frequency and length of the articles with Don Pedro – when he suddenly struggles to breathe and feels a stabbing pain. It’s his heart, which has begun to burst. Beltrán lays him on the floor. Seeing that his left arm is stiff, he runs to call a doctor who lives nearby, who arrives only to confirm the severity of the heart attack. At his side, Mincho sees his father’s leg shudder in a spasm, and all he can do is cross himself.
Beside me is a folder containing the front pages from the following day, Thursday, 18 March 1954. ‘Cisneros died yesterday. His life was a paragon of civic values,’ La Prensa. ‘Fernán Cisneros is dead,’ El Comercio. ‘The poet of noble causes has died,’ Última Hora. ‘Fernán Cisneros passed away yesterday,’ La Nación. ‘Deep sadness at the death of Cisneros,’ La Crónica. The headlines continue in further cuttings: ‘Journalism is in mourning across the nation.’ ‘Just as he returned to writing, Cisneros left us.’ ‘Sudden demise of the former editor of La Prensa.’ ‘A life dedicated to Peru.’ There are cables from newspapers in Uruguay, Mexico and Argentina announcing his death, as well as a series of reports from the wake, held in the editorial offices of La Prensa, and about the burial in the Presbítero Maestro cemetery.
I also have photographs of the ceremonies held on the centenary of his birth, in November 1982, at the Academia Diplomática and in the Miraflores park that bears his name: Parque Fernán Cisneros. I appear in some of these photos, aged seven, alongside my father, siblings, cousins. I still remember that sunny day in the park and the unveiling of the commemorative plaque and bust, which describes Fernán as a ‘poet, journalist and diplomat’. Further down, the plaque quotes the verse that we would repeat at countless breakfasts and lunches: ‘Birth, life, death – these are not the worst. True tragedy is to live without smiling. Everything grows beautiful with love. Birth, life, death.’ A sweet, sad verse that cloaks more truthful would-be epitaphs: the worst is not to die, but not to know; tragedy is not failing to smile, but remaining silent.
It is precisely because of the things that Fernán failed to do or say – far more than those he did and said – that I acknowledge myself as his grandson, and as the son of that other silent man, the Gaucho, who admired and loved his father in the same way that I loved mine, with the same love shot through with mystery and distance that is the only way to love a man of over fifty who indolently brings you into the world, uninterested in really accompanying you, and then imposes himself as the guiding force of your universe, the architect of everything you touch, everything you say, everything you see – though not everything you feel. And it’s precisely because I can feel something that he was unable to show me that I can tolerate the thousands of questions spawning in the space beyond the limits of the world he designed for me. Questions that arise in the darkness he never knew how to explore, perhaps because he’d inherited the very same from his own father too: discipline and distance; protocol and absence; awareness of duty, of force of will, of conduct. A responsible vision of the future, and beneath all of this a failed or clumsy love forged of letters and dedications, of verses and songs, of pompous and rhetorical words – but empty of affection, of closeness, of any warmth that might leave a visible trail a century later.
Chapter 3
Mexico City, 14 July 1940
My darling Esperanza,
I’ll begin by asking once again for a letter from our little Gaucho, in case that helps persuade him. And tell him I don’t want any old letter, but an account of everything he thinks, wants, and does. I think it’s time for a father to understand his son’s mind.
As a result of the nervous condition he suffered in his early years, our dear son has an understandable and painful inferiority complex that must be eradicated from his spirit. My impression is that he has often held clear intentions to return to formal study, but he is troubled and embarrassed by the belief that he has no knack for it. It’s a common situation. He is proud, so he doesn’t admit it, and since he won’t admit it, his spiritual confusion discourages him. He doesn’t study because he doesn’t like it, and he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t think he’s up to it. So he doesn’t attend school and deceives us all. Now, skipping school might be innocent enough today, but tomorrow it could lead him down the road to ruin. Therefore, I believe that you should return him to a boarding school, on my orders – but darling, allow him to choose which one. Or at least let him believe that he is choosing it. Talk up the virtues of the military college, for example. Don’t let him suspect that it is about punishing him or putting him on the right path. That way, he can enter the school with his head held high. Of course, this is my preferred choice of college because it will teach him love for discipline, for structure and for work. But may God guide your decision, my dear, and may it be your heart and not your sternness that seeks this end. If the autumn of my days is to be a happy time, we must all make an effort to save this child, while remembering that his difficulties are simply a matter of timidity and confusion. You probably think that his violent reactions are far from timid. But they are, my dear. By virtue of his timidity, he says nothing, and so he explodes, without knowing why. Write to me, my dear, and don’t fall silent, for life far from you is painful. Kiss my children and keep hold of my heart.
When I uncovered this letter my grandfather Fernán sent to my grandmother Esperanza about my father, he, my father, the Gaucho, had already been in his grave fourteen years. But in 1940 he was fourteen years of age and displayed personality traits that would never have fitted the man I knew.
It was a great surprise for me to learn, for example, that as a child my father had suffered from a nervous illness. My siblings and my mother knew nothing about it either. Curiously enough, my teenage years were marked by nervous attacks, allergies and acute asthma attacks that ended in exhausting nebulisation sessions in a cold room at the military hospital. No one knew where I could have inherited such weaknesses. The family history was there, but nobody was able to establish the link.
My grandfather believed that this illness left my father feeling insecure. Reading this was like discovering a new continent. From my point of view, my father was the most impenetrable person on the planet. A wall. A fortress. A bunker. His whole life expressed certainty: his words, his actions, his morals, his identity, his decisions. Everything about him expressed his certainty of never being wrong. Fear and doubt were faint shadows that flitted by in the distance.
Nevertheless, in the X-ray analysis of the Gaucho that Fernán conducted over the course of this letter, he is a confused, timid and violent child with an inferiority complex. The extraordinary thing about this description is that it matches that of the fourteen-year-old boy I was or believed myself to be: the boy who feared family mealtimes, who felt abandoned and powerless due to his inability to communicate with his father.
In the text, my grandfather refers to the need for everyone to join forces to ‘save that child’ that my father was. I wonder if my father ever read this letter. But more importantly, I wonder if he ever felt entirely safe from the childhood torments, so similar to mine, that we never managed to talk about.
Another letter from my grandfather, addressed to my father in the same year, reveals the conflicted sense of love that underlay their relationship, and the affectionate but subtly manipulative tone Fernán employed to try and win over his son:
You must tell me everything you want, everything you feel, everything you think with the frankness of good men and with the hope that your