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. Violence and love, tranquility and vengeance, obscurity and silence, weariness and hope: these are his avatars.
No memory, however much we strive to exile it, is ever fully cast into oblivion. I now recall, for instance, dark waters in a summer night, sands claggy and disagreeable to the feet. Now it is day: L and I are swimming. We head back to my house and find that 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. My father calls us in from his room: in the little terrace, he has lined up three mattresses next to one another. We are far from the city, no artificial light disturbs the voided air, a myriad of stars of every color blaze. The breeze is strong enough to keep the mosquitoes away. As we all lie there, in the terrace, without blankets or pillows, my father begins to speak: Those are the Tres Marías, that is Orión... And so we fall asleep.