Dad returned from Beijing noticeably affected. Not only was he all of a sudden fragile and withdrawn, but even his physical appearance had undergone a transformation. He had more gray hairs and had lost several pounds. But mostly it was the desolate expression that rendered his face unrecognizable. Soon after he begin building, all by himself, a study in our attic that from the start looked to me and my mother like—as much as he denied it—a kind of pagoda. It was the first time I can remember that her eyes sought complicity in mine. Her look was cheerful but also worried about her husband’s mental health; a worry I of course shared. When he finished his study Dad moved most of his books up there and did the same with those he later acquired. His behavior made me think of emperors buried with all their belongings in monuments built solely for that purpose. Every book he bought after that had to do with his new fascination; theater, novels, philosophy, history, astrology, Confucianism, and Buddhism, usually in English editions, were shipped to our house and as soon as he took them out of the box he brought them straight to his study. My mother, at that point still humoring him, joked that her husband had entered a rebellious phase necessary for his emancipation. What’s true is that Dad didn’t spend as much time with her. Instead of talking to her at night or rehearsing lines with her in their shared studio as he used to, he spent hours locked up in his new refuge. Seeing him so reserved and silent also reminded me of monks who seek solitude in the mountains so that they can meditate. However, my mother did not see things in quite the same way. She soon abandoned her tolerance and began fuming whenever he appeared in the window of the pagoda, contemplating the evening with the faraway look that never left his eyes anymore.

One Saturday morning soon after that Dad got in the car and left the house very early, without letting us know. When I saw the dismayed look on my mother’s face, I had to stay with her and instead of going out with my friends like I always did I helped her make lunch. When he came back he had with him a terrarium in which we could make out the shape of a viper. He hastily greeted us as he walked by the kitchen door with his new purchase. There were too many changes in too short a time and we didn’t know how to deal with them. We tried to interrogate him during dinner. Why did you buy it? What are you thinking of doing with it? Is it poisonous? Dad didn’t give us a single good reason and just gave us what felt like excuses, saying that the snake was a healing symbol in the Chinese tradition.