the father who could not hear the son speak
Himself, for two years before his death, had had this delusion of silence when I spoke: I believed I was speaking and he believed I was not speaking. Mario averred that Himself had never accused him of not speaking.
Context
Dropped flat into the fact-fugue, in Hal's own first-person voice, is the corroboration of everything the wraith told Gately: for the last two years of his life the father perceived the son as silent — Hal knew he was speaking, Himself heard nothing come out. The gap was total and one-directional (Mario, who could always be reached, was never accused of it), which locates the failure precisely at the father-Hal channel. It is the "nothing come out" thesis confirmed from the mouth that supposedly produced nothing. [sweep · shared-ground fathers-sons]