DANIEL MOYANO
425
cities. Besides, it is through waiting that desire matures.
It
is good to
see the day unfurl, feel the movement of the earth like something
which is happening intimately. The seasons, once feared, are now
the very existence of one who feigns beautiful changes. Memories
themselves are a form of permanence, life arrested, not buried,
which is always within hand's reach, which is always a new possibil–
ity of living. When I was a young father and you an indifferent son,
your coldness made me despair. You never performed spontaneous
acts of affection and hardly accepted my own. That time I was sick
you came into my room twice, but said nothing. When the doctor
left and our fears vanished, your mother, joyful, embraced me in
bed and wept against me. "I was afraid something awful had hap–
pened to you," she said. After, she got up and in her great happiness
said, "Victor, come hug your father because he's all right, he's not
sick." You came in shortly after and stood beside my bed. It was an
embarrassing situation for us both. I felt like somebody who had
deliberately hurt himself to get protection. You hesitated, I don't
know what you must have felt, and because you hesitated so long, I
extended my arms and said, "Come, son, give your father a hug ,"
feeling, shamefully, that I was begging an action of love which other–
wise might not have come. You climbed up on my bed, first let me
hug you and then you yourself hugged me. But you didn't give me
the kiss I expected. That attitude of yours was the cause, for years,
of secret shames. That lost kiss came now, all these years later, as if
it had been seeking until now the perfect moment of maturation.
What good, then, is impatience? The adult son who kissed me just
now is the same son who had no desire to bend over my bed when I
was sick. I understand now that your mother was right : "It isn't that
he doesn't love you; that's the way he is ." But I needed a lifetime to
realize that. Luckily, meanwhile my desire has ripened into posses–
Sion.
All those things I thought about in bed , tossing and turning as
if to run from some of them . Suddenly I remembered I hadn't looked
for Margarita's letter in which she invited me to spend a few days
with you both and which I had promised to the lead drummer's wife.
I got up and went through some cabinets, but I realized it would be
very hard to find because it was a very old letter. To go back without
the letter was shameful, so I decided to write one in which I told
myself that you and Margarita wanted me to live with you because I
was old and mustn't be in La Rioja going without. I recognize that it
was a shameful act. Afterward I leaned against the fence, looking at
