SYNOPSIS
(EXTENDED VERSION)
Back to: Part 6
Part 7
Papi, Your Time Is Not Yet Come
Central protagonists: Andrew, Pablo
The narrative switches to Andrew as he comes back to Moscow. He cannot process the trauma of Pablo's betrayal, because no one else had known the full meaning of his dreams about emigration, and no one could vandalize them as brutally as Pablo did. As the weeks pass by, Andrew drowns in paralyzing clinical depression — the major mental disorder he had never experienced, despite many years of struggle and powerlessness that had shaped his life. Not only his bodily functions like sleep and appetite become disrupted, but his memory and concentration are also increasingly impaired, making it excruciating to perform familiar, trivial tasks like those he has at the outpatient clinic. He eventually has to quit that job, and loses the small earnings it brought, which exacerbates his shame and misery. He's devastated to realize that he's unable to even feel love and joy spending time with his daughter. His soul becomes a barren, empty desert, and he sees no way out.
One August morning, he answers a call coming to his mobile from a Spanish number he hadn't previously recorded. Pablo's mother, through her sobs, tells him that Pablo's gone missing and asks if he'd contacted him. She gives him a brief account of what happened and describes the unprecedented despair Pablo was in, and mentions his words about "going away forever". Unlike his parents, Andrew knows the full story about this marriage and imagines the shame and entrapment Pablo is feeling. Hearing that he's gone missing for a few days, Andrew says he's gonna come to Barcelona on the next available flight. Flipping through the pages of his travel passport, he luckily founds his Spanish visa is still valid. His wife and mother-in-law are shocked seeing him feverishly pack his suitcase. They're scared for his sanity, but telling them a clumsy lie, he leaves for the airport anyway.
After arriving in Barcelona, he goes to the spot in the Montjuic park where Pablo had came out to him. He knows this place had meant a lot to Pablo over the years, and he also remembers the nightmare that used to repeatedly haunt him, with Pablo jumping off the cliff from here. As if to confirm his vision, now he finds a scrap of paper with Pablo's handwriting that is, in fact, a suicide note. Pablo meant what he said to his parents.
Paralyzed in his mental agony, he receives a call from Pablo's mother. A few hours ago, his high school friend Daniel, being among the few people aware of Pablo's disappearance, spotted him at a gas station refueling his Mercedes-Benz limousine. Daniel wasn't able to catch up with him, but watched Pablo race onto a particular highway leading away from the city.
Andrew keeps silence about Pablo's note he'd found. Too little time has passed for Pablo's family to file a police statement about him having gone missing, so his mother instead tries to hire a private investigator, while Andrew and his father decide to immediately comb neighboring towns and countryside by car. During the first day, they don't encounter any trace. Andrew's depression symptoms aggravate as he feels unable to find Pablo and prevent his death.
Hundrers of kilometers away from Barcelona, Andrew stays overnight at a roadside motel. The next morning, Pablo's mother calls him and says she's got a speeding ticket in their mailbox, with the highway camera shooting Pablo's car close to Andrew's currentlocation. Andrew rushes to continue his search and soon finds the first trace at the motel where Pablo's bought a meal and an overnight stay the previous night. The host shows him the direction in which Pablo drove away, and Andrew continues over here, praying to God for Pablo's life. As he speeds through the uninhabited, scorched countryside, he remembers his recurring nightmare from a few years ago. He randomly chooses roads and turns and scans through the towns, and his quest yields no result until a miracle happens. Speeding down another empty road, he spots a little girl standing on the roadside and stretching out her hand. As he pulls over, the girl asks him to give her a ride home, which she says is within a few miles. Andrew is confused but agrees. Ten minutes later, he drops the girl at the house she points at, and she shows him the direction to go where he'll "finally find who he's looking for".
Andrew questions his sanity and wonders if it all is a continuing delusion. In one and a half miles out of town, following the girl's direction, he spots Pablo's white Mercedes limousine in the parking lot of a motel. He breaks into the locked room and finds Pablo amidst an overdose attempt. His pulse and breath are weak, and he realizes the narcotic drug hasn't been fully absorbed. He drags Pablo to the bathroom and after a few attempts induces his vomiting. He calls the ambulance, watching Pablo's vital signs and willing to start CPR at any moment. He realizes that his years-long nightmare came true almost fully, but he has succeded to outrun its fatal ending by the narrow margin.
Pablo regains consciousness in a general countryside hospital a few hours later, with Andrew and his father waiting together. Due to privacy concerns, Don Alberto insists that his son be discharged, assuring the doctors that he can safely and quickly transport Pablo to a private clinic in Barcelona where his admission is already arranged by his mother. Pablo is crushed by shame and still groggy from the drug when he sees Andrew and learns that he was the one who saved him. He does not say a word to Andrew as they go back to Barcelona.
Despite the apparently miraculous salvation of his loved one, Andrew's depression doesn't improve a bit in the following days. His sleep is still broken, and he forces himself to eat. He avoids visiting Pablo in the clinic and talking to his parents. Going out, he realizes that the beautiful city where he once felt true belonging is now as grey and gloomy as Moscow. Unlike Pablo's parents, he knows that the aftermath of their relationship — not the dope scandal — was the primary reason behind Pablo's suicide attempt. He knows they have to talk and confront the truth finally, but he can't find the rights words to say, nor can he see the solution.
He only visits Pablo in the morning before his planned discharge, realizing that their conversation needs to happen without his parents' presence. Unlike the severely depressed Andrew, Pablo doesn't look or act paralyzed. Instead, he's willing to reckon with the truth and take action. He says that Andrew's unlikely finding of him made him certain that God has blessed their relationship, and it cannot be a sin. He regrets the time it took him to realize it and the pain he'd caused Andrew. He says that he's ready to start from scratch and act from truth. He's willing to come out to his parents and his team, and says he's accumulated enough wealth to retire from professional sports and become an entrepreneur instead — but his biggest priority is Andrew moving to Spain and them living together.
Andrew takes a long pause before replying, struggling to find the right words. He says that he's mentally ill, so, in his current perception, there's no way he'll ever experience love or joy again. He believes that his mental, emotional, and intellectual functions are permanently damaged. He thinks his mission in Pablo's life has been accomplished, and he encourages Pablo to move on with coming out and finding his love elsewhere. He decides to go back to Moscow and start working at the same academic clinic where he'd began his practice — vacations opened here as the previous cronies' establishment moved to another institution. His new position will be more trivial and low-paid than his previous one, and he hopes he'll be able to function in it despite his obvious cognitive impairment.
When he proceeds to verbalize the idea that his mental illness is a God-sent punishment for his ambition towards a better life, Pablo cannot take it anymore. He realizes that Andrew's cognition is heavily distorted by the illness, and that it's years of struggle and trauma, followed by his betrayal of their love, that led to this catastrophic outcome for his mental health. He tells Andrew that going back to Russia, the place that caused him so much misery over the years, will perpetuate his condition. His support and love here in Spain, aided by therapy and psychoactive drugs, will by contrast heal his soul.
Despite the clear logic in Pablo's arguments, Andrew cannot really hear him. His sense of self-worth, and his belief in the possibility of a better future, are completely ruined. As Pablo tries to disprove his illusions and give him reality-checks, his cell phone rings. Andrew's previously blank face now shrinks in horror. Sofia tells him that his wife and daughter are severely injured in a road collision with a truck, and pleads with him to come back as soon as he can. Appalled and unable to say anything sensible to Pablo, he leaves and catches the flight to Moscow in a few hours.
Their conversation interrupts before Pablo can tell him that at the peak of his drug intoxication, he had a vision. Crawling up the dirty floor of what looked like a tunnel, he saw a blinding light in the distance. A small girl emerged from it and approached him, with her feet bare and her steps noiseless. She placed a hand on his shoulder and said, "Papi, your time is not yet come. You have to go back".
Next: Part 8