After dealing with all the paperwork relating to the inheritance, mother and son went to the father’s apartment to collect the keys and see what needed getting rid of and what didn’t before putting the place up for rent. It was raining heavily and there was a darkness that hung over the city like a moral eclipse.
It was five in the afternoon.
The apartment was on the tenth story of a fifteen-story block in which most windows opened onto the M-40, one of Madrid’s beltways. Carlos stood hypnotized for a while by the sight of all the vehicles driving around down there, stuck to one another, their wheels throwing up fans of water. He snapped out of it when his mother spoke.
“I’ll start with the bedroom,” she said, as if giving him the option of a little time to himself—in case, the boy supposed, he wanted to communicate telepathically with the dead man, since she’d denied him that by keeping the funeral from him.
When the woman had disappeared down the hall, Carlos paced the living room, trying to imagine his father in that space in which, had it not been for the books that lined the walls, almost everything would have felt impersonal and sparse. The furniture, all of which was mass-produced, was nondescript. Opposite the TV, though, there was a leather recliner that didn’t go with anything: It seemed like an extravagance. From that chair, the young man thought, my father used to watch the films that were neatly lined up in a section of the shelves clearly demarcated from the books. Carlos was no movie buff, nor was he a reader, so he barely paused to look at the titles of the books or the films.
Moving cautiously, like the intruder he felt he was, he soon found himself in the hallway, which had four doors along it (three bedrooms and a bathroom, he presumed, since the kitchen was by the entrance). His mother was rummaging about in the bedroom at the end, so he went into the first room on the right, which looked like a teacher’s study. On the desk, which was neutral and tidy, he couldn’t help but notice a soft-covered notebook whose first pages seemed to be written in, the handwriting clear but nervy, which he attributed to his father. Moved by this discovery, he untucked his shirt and, trying not to damage the notebook, secreted it against his lower back, tight under his belt. Then he tucked his shirt back in and walked a few steps to check that it held.
And then, feigning a composure he did not feel, he went through to where his mother was looking thoughtfully at the objects in the bedroom, which were similarly few and far between. She seemed disappointed.
“It’s all so stark!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Carlos agreed.
“What were you doing?” she asked.
“Just having a look around over there.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Nah, nothing. A lot of books.”
The boy poked his head apprehensively into the en suite bathroom, which smelled like a bathroom that had been used. He thought he could smell some body odor, which reminded him of his own. On the sink he saw an electric razor that was the same brand as his, and a plastic cup with a toothbrush poking out.
In the third bedroom, possibly the guest room, they discovered an ironing board and some creased shirts on the bed.
His father’s shirts.
*
It was growing dark when Carlos and his mother set off back home. The rain had stopped. From time to time, the sky lit up with a lightning flash, unerringly followed by thunder. They drove with the car windows open, as June was well under way by now and the temperature pleasant. It was nice to breathe in that damp air after several months of pollution and drought. His mother was driving. Carlos didn’t have his driver’s license; he’d never felt the desire to learn.
“Why did he live alone?” he asked.
“Because he was a troubled man,” replied his mother, as if reciting a litany, “and troubled men usually live alone.”
“You also live alone.”
“I live with you. Besides, I have a boyfriend. One of these days I’ll bring him home, you’ll see.”
“He didn’t have much apart from the books and the movies.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? My dad.”
“So much the better. Clearing a house can be a nightmare.”
*
Later, once he was sure his mother was in bed for the night, Carlos shut himself in his room, opened his father’s notebook for the first time, and read:
It is death that compels me to write these lines. The death of a ten-year-old girl who was my daughter, though nobody knew but her mother and me. I killed her, though that is something I cannot prove.
I’ve been living in this apartment for nearly twenty years, ever since I broke up with my wife not long after having a son with her, whom we named after me. Carlos, with whom I lost touch out of a fear of loving him. I chose, so as to separate myself from my son, to just drift away, to stretch the process out over several months, so the amputation wouldn’t prove painful for either of us. Still, the cut left a wound in me, which, though never deep, nonetheless did not form a scar and which now brings with it a constant discomfort, though less severe, I suppose, than the feeling of loving one’s children when you’re aware that every beat of their heart is an inexplicable event; every breath, a unique occurrence; every blink of their eye, a miracle.
The way I went about ceasing to be his father was, in short, by distancing myself from him, by eliminating him from my life. That’s what I did with the first and only novel I ever tried to write, too, which I left half finished and in the end set fire to, like someone taking out the witness to a crime. That hurt me, too, but not as much as the struggle to give him a good start in life. I promised myself then that I would not write again, or have children again, and I kept to it, until this current relapse of recounting to this paper something that only this—only paper—could bear.
So. Let’s do it.
About twelve years ago, two young newlyweds moved into the apartment next to mine, and we immediately established a very close friendship. The husband, because of his work, traveled a lot, so it became common for the wife and me to meet alone, usually in my apartment. Amelia—that was her name—liked reading, and she got a lot out of borrowing books from me. Since it didn’t take me long to learn her tastes, my recommendations tended to hit the spot. The characters in the novels—she read only novels—started to connect us in ways that soon went beyond the bounds of friendship.
Sometimes when her husband was away, we would spend the night together.
Not the whole night. She’d leave in the small hours, open the neighboring front door, and get into her own bed, which, in a way, given the mirroring arrangement of the two homes, was like a reflection of mine.
I saw no risk in what we were diving into because she, like me, was very careful, and, also like me, she wasn’t asking for the relationship to go anywhere. Nor did it feel like we were being dishonest to her husband, because, according to what Amelia told me, her bond with him had only improved since ours had begun.
One day, Amelia told me she was pregnant, assuring me I was the only possible father. She’d done her calculations and knew the actual night and moment of conception. My guard went up
instantly, but, showing considerable patience, she assuaged my doubts: She would pretend that the baby was her husband’s. With that decided, we stopped meeting alone. I believed her, because she was a woman of strong convictions, and so, once I’d gotten over the first moments of uncertainty and panic, the idea of being a father in secret, and with no commitments, began to excite me: a father without any of the tribulations inherent in fatherhood, but with my daughter—we soon learned it was a girl—right next door. I’d see her grow up, I’d give her presents on her birthday, and maybe she’d even call me “uncle.”
Uncle Carlos.
It sounded good to me. Maybe that second experience of fatherhood would relieve the pain that the first had caused in me.
The girl, Macarena, was born and I lent the first-time parents a hand. Later, as the years went by, I did indeed become a kind of uncle to the child, who, fortunately, had inherited none of my physical features—she looked so like her mother. Often, when her parents had to go out, I played babysitter, and did so with great pleasure, as she turned out to be a bright and very curious girl. And she enjoyed my company as much as I did hers.
When Macarena was five, her parents separated, because of which my relationship with her and with her mother became more intense, so much so that, although they lived in their home and I in mine, we became a real family.
Some afternoons, I’d collect her from school, bring her back to my place, and help with her homework, so she could finish it quickly and watch some TV before her mom came to fetch her. Sometimes she’d tell me stories about school and her friends while we ate a bowl of pistachios, which she loved. I’d watch her movements carefully, trying to spot traces of myself in her, although, fortunately, I never did.
Our lives went along peacefully enough, anyway, though I couldn’t deny that beneath that calm, the same demon was stirring that had led me to leave my previous family and destroy my unfinished novel.
Then, the other day, Macarena told me that something very strange had happened to her.
“I haven’t told anybody this,” she added.
“What was it?” I asked, trying to look more interested than I actually was.
“A white butterfly came out of my ear,” she said.
When faced with my distant, possibly ironic silence, she added that she’d been home alone, as her mom had gone down to the newsstand on the street. She was doing multiplication tables but left them for a moment to go to the kitchen for a piece of chocolate. Then, as she stood there, just about to reach into the cupboard, she felt a prickling in her right ear, and when she went to scratch it, she noticed that there was something trying to get out. She moved her finger away, and immediately a white butterfly emerged, not overly large, which fluttered around near the ceiling before coming to rest on the range hood.
“The amazing thing,” she added, “is that I was that butterfly. I was in two places at once: standing on the kitchen floor, as a person, and also up on the range hood, as a butterfly, and I could see myself looking at myself in amazement.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“I heard the sound of the door, and it was Mom, obviously. Then the butterfly flew back into my ear and went back into my head.”
“Into your head,” I said, echoing her.
“Yeah, and it disappeared.”
“Right,” I said.
“Don’t you believe me?” she said after a few moments, seeing my impassive expression.
“Of course not,” I replied, smiling.
Macarena made a gesture that I wasn’t sure how to interpret, and we just went on eating pistachios in silence.
After Amelia had come by to fetch her, I went out onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette, and a white butterfly, not overly large, landed on the railing.
“Hi, Macarena,” I said.
And that was it.
*
The next day, her mother dropped the girl at my apartment because an unexpected engagement had come up and she hadn’t had time to get ahold of the sitter. I told her not to worry, that she could go, no problem, it wasn’t any bother.
It was 7:00 p.m., the time I usually have a little snack, so when we were left alone, I took out a bowl of pistachios and we started to eat them between us while she talked to me about school. Then she asked what work I did “exactly,” and I said she already knew: I was a language teacher.
“That’s my worst subject,” she said, “but I’m good at math.”
“You can’t have it all,” I said.
“Ask me something.”
“What do you get if you add six to sixty-six?”
“Seventy-two,” she replied instantly.
I was about to say no, that if you added six to sixty-six you would get six hundred and sixty-six, but I wasn’t sure she’d get the joke and didn’t want to confuse her.
“Very good,” I said.
Since the pistachios were making us thirsty, I poured out two glasses of water with ice and a slice of lemon.
“My mom says I shouldn’t have ice,” she said.
“Want me to take it out for you?”
“No.”
She took the glass and had a sip, very cautiously. I laughed and she laughed. Then we sat in silence for a little while. She had taken the slice of lemon out of the glass and was sucking on it with an expression of pleasurable displeasure. Finally, she spoke again.
“Know what happened to me yesterday?” she said.
“What?”
“I was on my own, in my bedroom, and my ear started prickling. Soon the butterfly came out of my ear again.”
“Oh, right,” I said.
“It wasn’t out for very long, because Mom called me, and it went straight back into my head.”
“How long is not very long?”
“As long as it takes to heat up some milk in the microwave.”
“A minute, then,” I said.
“More or less, but I spent the whole time flying all over the room. It actually makes you a bit seasick to be seeing things from above and from below at the same time.”
I gave her a smile like I understood, and soon Amelia came to fetch her.
That night, when I went out onto the balcony to smoke my pre-bed cigarette, I saw, sitting on the railing, a butterfly identical to the one from the previous night, perhaps the same one. Its white wings shone in the darkness. I moved my index finger and thumb toward it like a pair of tweezers, and managed to catch it.
“Got you, Macarena,” I said.
I took her into the room where I read and grade my students’ papers and exams, and pierced the
insect’s thorax with a pin, which I stuck into the corkboard on the wall. I was struck, looking at its body, by the fact that it seemed to suggest the shape of a girl, but I dismissed the idea as sick. I watched it fluttering its wings for a little while, as it wasn’t yet dead, but when it did finally expire, they were left almost completely closed, unlike when you see them in proper collections.
Soon there was a loud knocking at the front door. The girl had been taken terribly ill and she was desperately asking for my help.
“What’s the matter with her?” I asked as I ran toward her bedroom.
“She’s complaining of a stabbing pain in her chest.”
When I reached her, she had stopped breathing. Amelia was losing her mind, and I had to take her out of the bedroom.
*
The other pages of the notebook were blank. Death had prevented him from writing in them. Carlos presumed that it was the opening of a story or a novel, something fantastical.
Troubled men, he thought, write troubled things.
__________________________________
Excerpt from Juan José Millás’s Only Smoke. Translation copyright © 2025 by Thomas Bunstead and Daniel Hahn. Published by Bellevue Literary Press: www.blpress.org. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
