The night falls deep: I sense the moonlight with my heart. Once more, I cannot sleep. What troubles me are these pearls, these little devils: memories. Though taking many forms, like ill-intended water, a face, a name, a man always appears. His eyes are a thousand eyes, his face is a thousand faces, his soul is a thousand souls. Love and storm-born passions, tranquility and vengeance, obscurity and kindness, weariness and hope: these are his avatars.
One memory, in particular, comes to me, conjured through the mystic fingers of the night. L and I are swimming in a hostile summer day. At sunset, tired and sublimely happy, we head back to my house. As it was usual in the hellish summers of Corrientes, there is a blackout and we have no electricity. A familiar dilemma is faced: Open the windows and allow the nightly breeze to flow, but with it the innumerable mosquitoes; keep the windows closed, the plague at bay, and bare the heat.
As we debate which of these equally terrible faiths to endure, just when the final rays of light are perishing at last, as if from another world, my father's voice appears, calling us in from the upper floor. We blindly go up the stairs, passing by the painting of virgin Mary (in Andean Baroque style), barely making our way to the frail candlelight that in the distance burns.
The dying flames of the candle whispered something indecipherable and true. The silhouette of my father, like a shadow, was standing in the little terrace, looking at the sky. Above him, because we were far from the city and there were no lights during the blackout, a myriad of stars of every color blazed. Over the floor of the terrace, three mattresses were lined up next to one another, with little space between them. The breeze was strong enough to keep the mosquitoes away. As we lie there, below the starry nakedness which roofed our weariness, without blankets or pillows, my father began to speak: Those are the Tres Marías, that is Orión... And so we fell asleep.