Brothers (Sixth Chapter)

Sixth chapter

Blas resigned himself but did not give up. It was the time of the test.

He had always been rebellious, driven by his ideas, pressured by his mother to achieve closeness with his father and rejected by him. It was hard for him to acknowledge it, and he had always felt aversion toward this impertinent and demanding young man, too much like his mother.

He wanted him far away from him, but it became inevitable that he would take charge of him. He had paid generous allowances to keep him away from himself; yielding to the mother’s blackmail, he had to take charge of him, but it was not a happy experience. He was uncontrollable, irresponsible, willful and impulsive. A bad student, disorderly, opposed to authority, questioning order, fond of easy things: the complete opposite of what he sought, the polar opposite of his other son. He could never make them get along and gave up until he left them alone and what happened happened.

He had sown the seed of evil and disorder with his other children. The house was now not in order.

He was worried about what was happening with Bautista.

When the son returned from visiting his sick mother, he discovered that his brother Blas was no longer there. He worried, with certain intuition, that his father had found out everything. His father knew his weaknesses, but he did not yet know the intimacies that tormented his spirit.

Bautista was very worried about his mother, with increasingly aggressive osteoarthritis, difficulties that affected her mood, in addition to his feelings toward his brother.

He did not want to openly accept that he felt an increasingly intense attraction toward Blas. He was attracted to his freedom, boldness, intensity, personality. With Blas he felt nullified in his autonomy by his mere presence. It was a feeling of absolute submission to his desires. Besides, his overflowing passion was intimidating. He manipulated and controlled him and he could do nothing; that bothered and frustrated him. He feared him and desired him at the same time.

And now that he arrived at his father’s house and did not find his brother, he felt at the same time liberated — and calm — but also with a strange feeling of emptiness. Deep down he desired him.

But he desired Blas not only because of his dominant and all-encompassing presence, but because he made him feel emotions and pleasures that were strange, extreme and satisfying to him.

Bautista refused to accept his homosexual condition; that conflicted him and the mere idea bothered him.

Besides, he was uncomfortable disappointing his father. And he was doing it, in a way that overwhelmed him. He disappointed him and lied to him. And he did not like lying; it was not in his nature.

All these processes exhausted him physically, mentally and spiritually.

He wanted to concentrate on studying, he shut himself in his room, but...