demonstrate to me the speciousness of the visible world. Maya – the great cosmic illusion, according to Indian Vedic philosophy – imprisons us in its magic net, from which only a select few manage to escape by finally opening their eyes. All the others are compelled to follow shadows.
‘Love can’t be only a shadow,’ I replied.
‘Of course it can. It’s the shadow of partiality. Look, right now I’m glad to be walking with you along this beach, I like talking to you about a great many things, but is this love? No, it’s only the satisfaction of partial knowledge. In you, who claim to be my daughter, I love the reflection of my intelligence; I love what I recognise of myself in you. But if, for example, you had displayed a different genetic trait – maybe something you shared with some dull-witted aunt on your side of the family or mine – if you’d turned out to be a silly girl living for talk shows and the latest style in trousers, I would have shown you the door at once. I’d even have changed my telephone number so you couldn’t get in touch with me again. I’m not much interested in ownership – I much prefer recognition. I like the idea of detecting a sign, a trace, mysteriously passed on from generation to generation. And that’s the reason – my aversion to ownership – why I let you be free. Try to imagine what your life would have been like if you had known from the start that you were Professor Ancona’s daughter. You would have automatically conformed to pre-defined behavioural modules; for example, you might have felt duty-bound to be the first in your class. Or maybe you would have gone the other way and done your best to be as moronic as possible, putting nails through your eyelids and following every sort of repulsive fad like a sheep, just to drive me crazy with rage. But this way, you’re not a product of conditioning, you’ve grown up naturally, and you’ve become what you should be, not a greenhouse plant but a tree, standing majestically alone in the middle of a clearing, and all that’s thanks to me, because I hid myself from you, I withdrew. Don’t think it wasn’t a sacrifice on my part, as well. I had to renounce the innumerable little moments of delight granted only to fathers, but I didn’t want to clip your wings. Do you understand? I preferred to let your genetic inheritance manifest itself on its own, without distortions or conditioning, because in the end that’s our essence. For millennia, our DNA has rolled itself out, carrying in its strands the secret of how long our bodies can survive. You live, you survive, you die; everything’s inscribed there, in that speck of matter.’
The sun was hot that day. We sat on a rowboat that had been hauled up on to the beach and took off our jackets. My father lit a cigarette. My eyes fell on a dead cormorant not far from us; some raptor must have eaten its head, and the flies swarmed around its gaping neck. Had I moved it, I’m sure I’d have found the maggots already at their work.
He’d never asked me anything about my mother, neither who she was – which one out of so many – nor what had become of her. This seemed strange to me.
‘My mother’s dead,’ I said, without looking him in the face.
‘Ah, yes?’
‘She died a long time ago. I was four.’
‘This, too, is a species of good fortune. How did she die?’
‘In a car accident. I don’t know much about it. I think everything had become too much for her, and somehow . . .’
The smoke from his cigarette rose in symmetrical rings and drifted in front of his face. He breathed a deep sigh. ‘Right, that’s how it goes,’ he said. ‘The gene for guilelessness often carries a certain flaw.’
‘What flaw?’
‘A tendency toward self-destruction.’
One day, after our walk, he took me to lunch in the old town. He was probably a regular customer at the restaurant we went to, because the elderly waiter who led us to our table called him
‘Love can’t be only a shadow,’ I replied.
‘Of course it can. It’s the shadow of partiality. Look, right now I’m glad to be walking with you along this beach, I like talking to you about a great many things, but is this love? No, it’s only the satisfaction of partial knowledge. In you, who claim to be my daughter, I love the reflection of my intelligence; I love what I recognise of myself in you. But if, for example, you had displayed a different genetic trait – maybe something you shared with some dull-witted aunt on your side of the family or mine – if you’d turned out to be a silly girl living for talk shows and the latest style in trousers, I would have shown you the door at once. I’d even have changed my telephone number so you couldn’t get in touch with me again. I’m not much interested in ownership – I much prefer recognition. I like the idea of detecting a sign, a trace, mysteriously passed on from generation to generation. And that’s the reason – my aversion to ownership – why I let you be free. Try to imagine what your life would have been like if you had known from the start that you were Professor Ancona’s daughter. You would have automatically conformed to pre-defined behavioural modules; for example, you might have felt duty-bound to be the first in your class. Or maybe you would have gone the other way and done your best to be as moronic as possible, putting nails through your eyelids and following every sort of repulsive fad like a sheep, just to drive me crazy with rage. But this way, you’re not a product of conditioning, you’ve grown up naturally, and you’ve become what you should be, not a greenhouse plant but a tree, standing majestically alone in the middle of a clearing, and all that’s thanks to me, because I hid myself from you, I withdrew. Don’t think it wasn’t a sacrifice on my part, as well. I had to renounce the innumerable little moments of delight granted only to fathers, but I didn’t want to clip your wings. Do you understand? I preferred to let your genetic inheritance manifest itself on its own, without distortions or conditioning, because in the end that’s our essence. For millennia, our DNA has rolled itself out, carrying in its strands the secret of how long our bodies can survive. You live, you survive, you die; everything’s inscribed there, in that speck of matter.’
The sun was hot that day. We sat on a rowboat that had been hauled up on to the beach and took off our jackets. My father lit a cigarette. My eyes fell on a dead cormorant not far from us; some raptor must have eaten its head, and the flies swarmed around its gaping neck. Had I moved it, I’m sure I’d have found the maggots already at their work.
He’d never asked me anything about my mother, neither who she was – which one out of so many – nor what had become of her. This seemed strange to me.
‘My mother’s dead,’ I said, without looking him in the face.
‘Ah, yes?’
‘She died a long time ago. I was four.’
‘This, too, is a species of good fortune. How did she die?’
‘In a car accident. I don’t know much about it. I think everything had become too much for her, and somehow . . .’
The smoke from his cigarette rose in symmetrical rings and drifted in front of his face. He breathed a deep sigh. ‘Right, that’s how it goes,’ he said. ‘The gene for guilelessness often carries a certain flaw.’
‘What flaw?’
‘A tendency toward self-destruction.’
One day, after our walk, he took me to lunch in the old town. He was probably a regular customer at the restaurant we went to, because the elderly waiter who led us to our table called him
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