A respected father, a bottle hidden behind a cupboard, and a night his son will never forget.
He never drank for show. He was not a man you could call a drunkard. No, his relationship with alcohol was subtler, almost meticulous. At nightfall, when silence wrapped the house and the outside world finally seemed to drift away, I would sometimes hear him, with disarming discretion, open the bottle hidden behind a cupboard. The sound of the cork slipping free of its narrow neck echoed through the corridors like a stifled confession. It was the signal that the day was over, an end marked by a heavy, crushing loneliness.
He drank slowly, each sip carefully measured, as if he were seeking in alcohol not oblivion but a kind of comfort, an escape from reality. The amber liquid slid into his glass and, with it, a flood of unspoken thoughts, broken dreams and gathered regrets seemed to pour. In those moments, I could almost see my father’s mask begin to crack, revealing the traces of a silent battle he was waging against his own demons. His face grew darker, his eyes lost themselves in some distant contemplation, and an imperceptible shadow seemed to spread over his soul.
Even so, he never let this inner struggle show. Outwardly, he always kept his imposing bearing, his firm voice, but inside I could sense that tremor, that tension ready to burst at any moment. His movements grew a little slower, his laugh a little more forced, and his words, usually so measured, sometimes became more hesitant, betraying a weariness that only alcohol seemed to ease, if only for a while. All this being said, you will understand my dismay when, one night, I caught my father crawling on all fours, like an animal, through the corridors of our house. I remember it as if it were yesterday.
The story continues in the book.