My youngest daughter, barely fifteen years old, has spent two weeks in New York, doing an internship at the most important newspaper in that city. I also began my career as a journalist at fifteen, at a conservative newspaper in Lima, where I was a reporter and columnist, and to which I contributed to sinking into bankruptcy, three years after they hired me. Will my youngest daughter be a journalist? Does she want to follow the erratic steps of her father? Does she aspire to the rigors of public life that were imposed on me by chance when I started my career as a television journalist at eighteen, after the newspaper went bankrupt? I don’t know. But I feel a discreet pride that, unlike her two older sisters, who have made their best effort to distance themselves from me, to not resemble me, she, my youngest daughter, tireless reader, looks with curiosity at the feverish life of a newspaper, and that particular newspaper, the New York Times, which I read every afternoon the old-fashioned way, in printed paper, staining my fingers.
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Although one of her sisters lives in Brooklyn, my youngest daughter has been so busy, so full of commitments, outings, and adventures, that she preferred not to see her. They are sisters, but not that much. They are sisters because I am the father of both, but they have different mothers, mothers who were never friends and at one time were enemies. My youngest daughter slept on the campus of a New York university, accompanied by a friend who was also admitted as an intern at the newspaper. She wrote me an email in the morning, while having breakfast, and another at night, before sleeping. She didn’t call me on the phone because she knows I don’t talk on the phone and only use email to send hesitant signals that I am still alive. In those emails, she called me Barclays, my literary alter ego, and signed, smiling, “your favorite daughter”.
I couldn’t live with my two older daughters when they were children. Their mother and I divorced and the three of them went far from me. However, I saw them every month. But we couldn’t be a happy family, my two daughters, their mother, and I, living in the same house, traveling together. I was the father who lived far away and arrived every month with gifts. I was the absent father, the strange father, the famous father, with a bad reputation. My daughters got used to seeing me occasionally and traveling with their mother. I was out of the family picture, although sporadically I appeared with gifts. Although I was far away, on an island six hours by plane, I never stopped paying all their expenses, the unavoidable and also the superfluous, which of course were the ones they enjoyed the most.
However, the gods granted me the fortune of remarrying and, this time yes, living happily with my wife and our daughter. We have lived together, in the same house, on the same island, since I got married and our daughter was born. After failing in my first attempt as a husband and father, I thought that that predictable, calm, peaceful, bourgeois form of happiness would be denied to me. Luckily, I have been proving for fifteen years that I could redeem myself from that frustration and that, if I have slept well, and now I sleep better than ever, I can be a patient husband, a smiling father, and a reasonably happy man. The love for my wife demands patience, humility, submission. The love for my youngest daughter is a celebration of humor, her making jokes, teasing me, mocking me.
I see my older daughters from time to time, as I did when they were children. I would lie if I said I still see them every month. We see each other, at best, twice a year. My eldest daughter was born in Washington, is a lawyer, and works in that city. I am very proud of her. I know she loves me, but also that she is not in a hurry to see me, that she prefers me far away, that she sees me as a dangerous father who doesn’t know how to keep secrets and tells everything. My second daughter was born in Miami, is an expert in tech companies, has married a lawyer, and they live in Brooklyn. They travel often, live the high life, love each other very much. I am very proud of her, but we don’t see each other as often as I would like, perhaps because she gets bored coming to the island where I live, maybe because, at my age, I am too lazy to travel so often.
What most distinguishes my youngest daughter, an outstanding student at the most prestigious private school in the city, is her formidable memory and powerful eloquence. She shines in debate competitions between schools. When she speaks, especially when she speaks in public, when she displays her memory and loquacity, she flies high. She speaks perfect English and Spanish, and good French. When she turned fifteen, she asked me to go to Paris. My ex-wife speaks French perfectly and has spent her life having French boyfriends before me, after me, and perhaps simultaneously with me. I don’t speak a word of French and that’s why I don’t understand. My youngest daughter also stands out when she writes. She does it often, although she doesn’t always let me read her texts. I don’t know if she will be a writer, journalist, actress, filmmaker. Probably she doesn’t know yet either. I hope I live long enough to see her flourish.
The other afternoon my wife asked me to buy tickets to see the bronze medal match of the World Cup, to be held in a stadium half an hour by car from our house on the island. Although the tickets were expensive, I bought them and did not regret it. Not content with that, as passionate about football as I am, when it was confirmed that the Spaniards and Argentines would play the World Cup final in a stadium near New York, my wife obsessively encouraged me, possessed by an incurable fever, trembling with anxiety and excitement, to, overcoming my stingy accountant calculations, and lazy husband, buy three more tickets to see the World Cup final in the stadium half an hour from New York. I confess it was not easy to subordinate myself to her, to please her extravagant dreams, to surrender for love and hesitantly write the numbers of my credit card on the FIFA page. I did it not only because I love my wife, but also because, when I have to make a heavy, important decision, I try to remember that I don’t have much life left, that I have lived sixty-one years not always healthy, often intoxicating myself, walking on the edge of the cliff, and that, with luck, exaggerating, I will have eight or ten years of good life left, no more. Then I thought: if I die in eight years, should I travel to New York to see the World Cup final between the Argentines and the Spaniards, no less than Messi’s farewell to the World Cups? I didn’t hesitate any longer. For love of Argentina, and Messi, and also out of affection and gratitude to Spain, which has published so many books of mine, I paid for the tickets, booked the flights, and found a hotel with a pool to take a dip after the match.
My youngest daughter is waiting for us in New York, after two weeks without seeing her. Early Sunday we will fly to that city, meet her, and without delay, drive to the stadium. We will not wear Argentine or Spanish jerseys. We will applaud good football and celebrate the goals, all the goals, hopefully there will be many, it would be nice if there were six goals like in the previous World Cup final. I watched that battle alone, in a hotel in Buenos Aires, cheering like crazy for the Argentines. Now I wanted to stay home, on the island, sunk in my recliner, refreshed by the air conditioning, but fate, I mean love, I mean my wife and my daughter, will take me to New York, to the stadium, to enjoy and suffer the World Cup final. Spain will arrive as the favorite, after beating the French in an amazing match. They have only conceded one goal and seem unbeatable. But no one should count out the heroic Argentina of Messi. Yes, during the World Cup they have shown to be vulnerable, but precisely because they know they are imperfect, they are capable of recovering from their temporary defeats, rediscovering their former greatness, entrusting themselves to the god Messi, the maker of rain, and, playing organized chaos, pure passion, the still undefeated dream, prevail in epic battles that seemed lost. I will applaud the Spanish goals standing, but I will shout with euphoria the Argentine goals and cry singing: O juremos con gloria morir.
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