Scheherazade – XIII — The Matador

I hated my father’s score-settling letters the way some people hate bullfights. Having my father read them out loud to me was an exquisite torture… but I'm the son of a matador.

My father wrote to master the world, to make it obey him. He enjoyed the expression of himself in writing and particularly in writing letters – his turns of phrase, his unassailability there, his ownership of the last word, the seductive bon-bon of the putdown.

The uglier, bloodier letters were often chivalry skirmishes over humiliations, responding to …