DANIEL MOYANO
417
me, but the policeman, whom you also badly insulted when he came
to ask you what was happening, prevented it. One of your friends
took out his military ID and showed it to the policeman and at once
you all got into the auto. I was straightening out my clothes. The
policeman murmured something, and when I approached to say
something to him, because I was terribly ashamed, he said what
perhaps you would have said if he hadn't interrupted: "And
you - get out of here once and for all. Beat it right now." The
automobile had disappeared by the time I really heard or finished
hearing his insult . They were hard words, which had suddenly
transformed you and, in a ce rtain way, me . But I'd no sooner heard
the words than a part of me hid them in a very secret place so I could
forget them, so I in some way wouldn't find that place.
Never would I have told you this, son. I kept it in that un–
known part which does not belong to me, and it has never left that
place. Nor could I say you made me suffer. I understood you. And a
proof of how right I was is that kiss you just gave me when you came
in. Had I hung onto that earlier event, you'd have shown me now
that I was wrong.
That night, after leaving the lead drummer's house , I remem–
bered all this and much more.
If
she hadn't said to me , "Come now ,
don Bias , I'm surprised that you still believe certain things," refer–
ring to the help you'd have given me and making your possible affec–
tion doubtful, perhaps those memories would have remained in that
secret place where I'm used to keeping things which can hurt me .
The ugly side of the matter is that after the memory of each episode
came another one, worse. I decided to bring it all out in the open to
get rid of it all, so the next day I would confront the lead drummer's
wife and defend my son.
And the result was excellent. The candid part of me said it was
dangerous to dredge from my secret part the things I'd always
feared : it could mean beating my head against the wall. But the
woman's voice, which had then come from the kitchen to the table
where I was sitting, came to me now in bed and demanded that I do
it. I opened that door with great fear. Once, when I was very young,
I discovered something in the rear patio and forgot the matter. An
aunt of mine used to have nocturnal visions and cried out in the mid–
dle of the night , asking them to help her and protect her from certain
creatures which came to devour her while she was sleeping. We
looked for the strange things in every possible hiding place, but with
no luck. I remember I tore the canvas over the attic hole with a long
