Indeed, like this. In an instant it was all over, an instant of my life that I will never forget was his reply, shrugging his shoulders at that moment.
Come on! It would seem to you, because you were small.
Look, little yes, I wont argue with you, but silly, no. Something that had swallowed my friends, left and only left a hole in the ground, just that.
He was silent again for a few seconds, surely that he was thinking about that distant moment. I looked at him, but I didnt want to break his silence and I also waited quietly. When I already thought that he would not continue, that the memories would not leave him, he continued again.
The big ones started running, you know! The parents, and I saw how my mother, who was crying, took my little sister and me and hugged us and there was no way she would stop crying, holding us there, almost drowning us, and she didnt want to let us go. Then, over the years I have understood that all that was joy, but then, I did nothing more than say Mom, I have not touched it, I have not touched it. She seems not to understand what I wanted to say and later I had to repeat it many times to others who asked me. It is true that my life changed. I still remember that many strangers came to town. Very ugly men, all dressed in black, who did nothing more than touch me and ask me what had happened and where the other children were. I kept repeating them what had happened, but they did not want to believe me. I lived there a few more years, but one day my father got tired and said that we would leave because he did not want to be there anymore. It seems that other men wanted to keep asking me, so one night in a car that we had in which my father went to the field to work, we got up and left the town. I do not know where we would go because I fell asleep. I would have been about ten years old, and my little sister seven, but they had never bothered her because they said, since she was so young when that happened, that she would not have realised but I know that she did because sometimes I noticed that she couldnt sleep and asked quietly what was wrong, and she told me I dont want to sleep so they dont come and take me when I dont see them. That ended her life one doctor said. She became ill and there was no way to heal, the fact that she did not sleep left her with less and less force, until her body could not bear it anymore. By then my father had also died. Well, it was a silly accident. One rainy day he started running to take refuge and when he got close to a tree, it seems that a lightning bolt broke a branch of that tree and it fell on my father killing him on the spot. Of course there are things in life that are better to forget. Well, the fact is that I had to take care of my mother who did not raise her head, refused to eat, another older sister and my little sister. And of course these are the things. Where are you going to get a young man to pull an entire family from? I enlisted and became an aviator, that way I helped them. The pay allowed them to eat, but they could not bear the loneliness, and my mother and my little sister soon gave up. So now I only have my older sister, who, by the way, is not that we get along very well, because she always blamed me for everything, she said that if I had not left we could have gone ahead, and my mother would not have died.
Tears ran down his face and I stood in silence at his side. I decided to wait, not to break that silence that I thought it was necessary.
All he was telling me was something he must have deep inside and when he released it, he was freeing himself from a heavy burden.
Suddenly Enrique got up and approaching where I was, hugged me and in my ear I heard with a thread of voice that said to me:
Thank you, friend! I needed it, you know, I had never told anyone like that And walking away a little bit, he told me Have I made you feel bored? While he cleaned his face, as if wanting to erase those spilled tears.
No I replied, smiling. I wanted him to calm down completely and to be sure that by my side he was fine, that I would never reveal his secret.
Well, if you want, Ill tell you something else he said, looking at my reaction.
Even more? I asked quietly.
Yes, it is that my life has been, I think, a little particular.
Well, go on, Im all ears.
Look, I was already in my twenties. One night I couldnt sleep and I went out to the field, you know, the needs that sometimes we have. Well, I was going back inside and when I reached the door, I thought I heard something. He didnt even give me time to turn when a blinding light crossed the sky. I stayed in the same place where I was. It couldnt be true! I didnt want what I still remembered as a child to happen to me and that it had given me so many headaches, but no, I was lucky. At the moment, the truth is that I do not know if it was seconds or minutes, or perhaps hours that I was there without moving a single muscle, as if wanting to go unnoticed, and if someone was somewhere that did I expected that it did not notice that I was there. It was natural that all those who lived around the environment were asleep at that time, but I was not lucky, perhaps their way of detecting is different, because I am sure that nobody had never moved me and I could not know if I was there much less if I was far away.
And what happened? I asked him, curious. You have to see how impatient I am, but he was even making me nervous when listening to him.
Well, what had to happen, no more and no less. They approached me and said Hello and I dont remember anymore. Probably, I fainted.
But how are they going to talk to you? And who were they? Come, clarify it for me!
I dont know, because I dont remember seeing them, but I can assure you that I did hear them, and I think there were three of them, but dont ask me why I know. I know! And I can only say that, I heard perfectly how they said to me Hello.
Come on, joker! That cant be possible. Assuming they were, I dont know, aliens, how would they know your language? So how could you have understood them?
Look, Ive asked myself that a million times. Well, yes, it is an exaggeration! But what I want to tell you is that every time I think about it, I ask myself the same question. How could they talk to me about something that they understood? That would be impossible, of course, Ive been through something like that twice in my life, everything can be possible now, dont you think?
CHAPTER II.
We were sitting quietly. The afternoon was coming to an end, the sun had just hidden over the horizon. When he proposed his idea and I heard it I thought it was great.
What do you think if we go there? And we see in situ the place and if it is possible, that, surely it will be, talk to someone who witnessed it.
But what do you say? And how could it not have occurred to you before? Of course, that would be great was my immediate reply.
Now remembering it, with the perspective given by the passage of time, it did not seem to me such a good idea. That little trip had brought us a lot of complications, and in the end, what for? We had not clarified anything, just a lot of preoccupations.
I sat on the bed, here alone in my room. I began to review mentally, I do not know why, that distant day when the two of us gradually entered that place. As we saw it, we did not find it pretty, as we both at the same time express, Ugh, what a place! Nothing beautiful.