THE SON
It is a powerful summer day in
Misiones with all the sun, heat, and calm the season can offer. The wilderness,
fully open, feels satisfied with itself.
Like the sun, the
heat, and the calm of the environment, the father also opens his heart to the
wilderness.
"Be careful,
chiquito," he says to his son, abbreviating in this sentence all his
observations, which his son understands perfectly.
"Yes,
father," the child responds, while reaching for his shotgun and slipping
his cartridges into the pocket of his shirt, which he closes carefully.
"Return at
lunchtime," says the father, still observing.
"Yes,
father," repeats the boy.
He balances the
shotgun on his hand, smiles at his father, kisses him on the head and leaves.
His father follows
him with his eyes for a while and then returns to his task of the day, happy
with the happiness of his little one.
He knows that his
son, educated from his tender infancy in the habit and precaution of danger,
can manage a rifle and hunt anything; it doesn't matter what it is. Even though
he is very tall for his age, he is only thirteen years old. And it would seem
like he is younger, judging by the purity of his blue eyes, still fresh with
childlike surprise.
It isn't necessary
for the father to raise his eyes from his work to follow the path of his son
with his mind: he has crossed the red trail and walks directly to the jungle
across the clearing in the forest.
To hunt in the
jungle - to hunt furred game - requires more patience than what the son has.
After crossing the jungle's island, his son will go around the cactus boundary
and to the valley in search of doves, toucans, or perhaps a pair of herons,
like the ones his friend Juan had discovered some days ago.
Alone now, the
father smiles at the memory of the hunting passion of the two children. They
sometimes hunt a raven, a quetzal, even, and return triumphant, Juan to his
ranch with the nine millimeter rifle that he had given him, and his son to the
plateau with the great Saint-Etienne shotgun, of caliber 16, quadruple lock and
white gunpowder.
He was the same. At
thirteen years he would have given his life to possess a shotgun. His son, at
that age, possesses one now; - and the father smiles.
It isn't easy,
however, for a widowed father, without other faith nor hope invested in the
life of his son, to educate him like he has done, free in will, sure of the
small feet and hands he has had since four years of age, conscious of the
immensity of certain dangers and the weakness of his own strengths.
This father had to
fight strongly against what he considered his egoism. It is so easy for a small
child to miscalculate, set a foot into the emptiness, and result in the loss of
a son!
Danger is always
present for a man no matter his age; but the threat diminishes if, from early
on, he is accustomed to his own strengths.
In this way, the
father has educated his son. And to succeed, he had to resist not only his
heart, but also his mental torments; because this father, of weak stomach and
weak eyes, suffers, starting from some time ago, hallucinations.
He has seen,
concrete in his sickness' illusions, memories of a happiness that should not
spring anymore from the nothingness in which it has isolated itself. The image
of his own son has not escaped this torment. He has seen him one time, rolling,
covered in blood, when his son was struck by a bullet in the workshop because
he smoothed the buckle of his hunting belt.
Horrible things...
But today, with the shining and vivid summer day, the father, whose love for
his son knows no bounds, feels happy, tranquil, and sure of the future.
At that instant,
not very far away, sounds a gunshot.
"The
Saint-Etienne . . ." muses the father at recognizing the detonation.
"At least two doves in the jungle..."
Without paying more
attention to this insignificant event, the man abstracts himself anew into his
chore.
The sun, already
very high, continues ascending. Wherever it wants to look - the rocks, the
earth, the trees, - the air, pulsing as if in an oven, vibrates with heat. A
profound buzz that fills the entire being and infuses the environment as far as
the eye can see concentrates all tropical life on this hour.
The father takes a
quick look at his wrist: 12 o'clock. And he lifts his eyes to the jungle.
His son should
already be back. In the mutual trust that they have with each other - the
father of gray hair and the child of thirteen years, - they never trick one
another. When his son responds: "Yes, father," he will do as he says.
He said that he would return before twelve o'clock, and his father smiled at
seeing him leave.
And he hasn't
returned.
The man turns to
his work, exerting great effort in concentrating on his chore. It is so easy,
so easy to lose your notion of time in the jungle, and to sit for awhile on the
ground while you rest immobile...
Suddenly, the
midday light, the tropical buzz, and the father's heart stop at what his mind
had just touched upon: his son resting immobile...
Time has passed; it
is 12:30. The father leaves his workshop, and supporting his hand on the
mechanic bench, the memory of the crash of the bullet surfaces from his inner
recollections, and instantly, for the first time in three consecutive hours, he
realizes that after the boom of the Saint-Etienne, he has heard nothing more.
His son has not returned, and the wilderness is waiting at the border of the
forest, waiting for him...
Oh! A temperate
character and a blind confidence in his son's education aren't enough to escape
the specter of fatality that his father, of ailing vision, sees rising from the
line of the jungle. Distraction, forgetfulness, fortuitous delay: none of these
insignificant motives that could slow the arrival of his son succeed in
entering the father's thoughts.
One shot, only one
shot has sounded, and a good while ago. After it the father has not heard a
sound, hasn't seen a bird, and one sole person has not crossed the clearing to announce
that upon crossing a wire, a great calamity...
Head bare and
without an axe, the father goes. He rushes to the clearing in the forest,
enters the jungle, skirts the line of cacti without seeing a single sign of his
son.
But the wilderness
continues endlessly. And after the father has traveled to the well-known
hunting trails and has explored the valley in vain, he perceives the dreaded
assurance that, with each step he puts forward, he brings, fatal and
inexorable, the cadaver of his son.
There is no
reproach, lamentably. Only the cold reality, terrible and consuming: His son
has died upon crossing a...
But where, and in
which part! There are so many wires there, and the jungle is so, so unclean!
...Oh, so dirty! ...It is such a small act, that he is not careful when
crossing the threads with a shotgun in his hand...
The father
suffocates a shout. He has seen rising into the air...Oh, it is not his son,
no!... And he turns to the other side, and to the other and to the other...
Nothing can compare
with the color of the complexion and anguish in his eyes. The man still has not
called to his son. Even though his heart clamors for him to shout, his mouth
continues to be mute. He knows well that the sole act of pronouncing the name,
of calling to his son in a loud voice, will be the confession of a death...
"Chiquito!"
suddenly escapes from him. And if the voice of a man of character is capable of
crying, then mercifully cover your ears against the piercing anguish that
resonates in that voice.
No one and nothing
has responded. By the red light of the sun, grown older by ten years, the
father goes looking for his son, who has just died.
"Son of
mine!... Chiquito mío!..." he calls in a small voice that echoes from his
core.
Already before, in
plenty of happiness and peace, this father has suffered the hallucination of
his son, rolling, with his forehead split open by a chromium-nickel bullet.
Now, in each dark corner of the forest he sees the brilliant reflections of
wire; and at the foot of a post, with a discharged shotgun at his side, he sees
his...
"Chiquito!...
My son!..."
The strength that
can enter a poor hallucinating father at the worst nightmare also has a limit.
And we feel that his hallucinations escape when he suddenly sees them flowing
into a side path towards his son.
For a boy thirteen
years old, it is enough to see, from fifty meters away, the expression of his
father without an axe inside the jungle, quickening his pace with wet eyes.
"Chiquito..."
murmurs the man. And, exhausted, he lets himself fall seated in the white sand
and gathers his son's legs into his arms.
The child, embraced
as such, remains standing, and upon understanding the pain in his father, he
caresses the bowed head slowly:
"Poor
papa..."
In the end, time
has passed. It is already three o'clock. Together, now, the father and the son
begin their return to the house.
"Why didn't
you look at the sun to figure out the time?..." murmurs the first.
"I did,
father... But when I started to return home I saw Juan's herons and I followed
them..."
"What you put
me through, chiquito!..."
"Papi..."
the boy also murmurs.
After a long
silence:
"And the
herons, did you kill them?" asks the father.
"No..."
An unimportant
detail, after everything. Under the sky and the hot air, the soft light in the
clearing of the forest, the man returns to the house with his son, whose shoulders,
almost as tall as his, carry the happy arm of his father. He returns drenched
in sweat, and even though his body and his soul cry out in sorrow, he smiles of
happiness...
***
He smiles of a
hallucinatory happiness... Well the father goes alone. He found no one, and his
arm is supported by emptiness. Because behind him, at the foot of the post and
with legs up high, tangled in barbed wire, his beloved son lies before the sun,
dead since ten in the morning.
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