[h2]His gaze has judged me since I was a child. All my mischief, stumbles, perversions, and mistakes were condemned by his cold eyes, injected with pride and oil paint. He was framed in carved Gothic wood, and his size was massive. It was he who taught me the thrill of vertigo. As a boy, I would glance sideways at the angle the frame formed with the wall, my imagination constantly conjuring the fear that the painting’s stony weight might overpower the nail’s resistance and crush me like an insect.[/h2] [h2] [/h2] [h2]The stories about his biography were always inconsistent. My aunt Emilse nostalgically recounted that in the 1930s, he laid the tracks for a railway that gloriously traversed the province of Formosa. My grandmother insisted he was the immigrant who brought the first batch of penicillin to Argentina. My father’s voice grew haughty as he claimed the man had founded the Córdoba Zoo. Though I never met him, I remember him as an adventurer who accomplished all these feats, along with a few additional exploits of my own invention.[/h2] [h2] [/h2] [h2]As a child, I often wondered how they had maneuvered the painting into the house. By my calculations, it wouldn’t have fit through the door. I once theorized that the house had been built around the painting. In his honor, of course.[/h2] [h2] [/h2] [h2]At nineteen, I unsuccessfully tried to emulate his long, lion-like beard. At twenty-two, I mimicked his imposing expression to make myself seem intriguing to girls. At twenty-four, as a good Jew, I visited the land of my origins.[/h2] [h2] [/h2] [h2]For three seasons, I explored the Promised Land. I harvested yellow watermelons on a kibbutz in Masada. I bid farewell to my virginity with a co-worker pulling overtime in a bakery in Karmiel. I was awarded Israeli citizenship while serving in the IDF.[/h2] [h2] [/h2] [h2]At twenty-eight, I returned to a mature Buenos Aires. Its avenues had become noisy metallic parades. Its bars displayed bottles filled with novel colors. Its skirt-makers increased their profits by saving on fabric. Its gray sidewalks transformed into stages where the finest spectacles could be admired.[/h2] [h2] [/h2] [h2]The once-solid walls of my house had become flimsy surfaces, vulnerable to the onslaught of dampness. Soot had triumphantly subdued the carpets and furniture. My ancestor’s portrait no longer dominated the space it once had. At first glance, its dimensions seemed oddly modest. [/h2] [h2] [/h2] [h2]Disbelieving, I grabbed a tape measure from the sewing kit I inherited from Aunt Emilse. As I approached to measure the painting, my eyes met those of an old man, fearful, sad, and defeated.[/h2]
