Read Online The Dream of My Return by Horacio Castellanos Moya - Free Book Online
Authors: Horacio Castellanos Moya
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could maintain that peculiar mood Don Chente had left me in.
But my mind had already started down the wrong path: by shaking the foundations of my first memory, I had set in motion the pendulum that was now carrying me at enormous speed from tranquillity to disquietude, because the memory of the bombing was not encapsulated outside of time but rather served as the foundation for important images of myself that were now beginning to falter, like the image of myself as a child who cried with fear every time I heard a siren, whether it was the police or a fire truck or an ambulance, how I would be gripped by dread just hearing the shriek of a siren, precisely as a result of the trauma caused by the aforementioned bombing, for the first thing I must have heard when I crossed the courtyard in my grandmother Lena’s arms was the shriek of the sirens as they were approaching, and I can still see myself as a child with my grandparents on a balcony on Comayagüela’s Avenida Central watching a parade, perhaps celebrating the coup d’état that allowed my grandfather and his cohorts to finally get rid of the liberal government that had bombed us; when the parade sirens went off, I flew into a panic and began to cry uncontrollably. A traumatized child who broke out in tears of dread at the shriek of a siren: that was me, until who knows how or at what age—I have no memory of the precise moment—I turned into a normal child who could hear the shriek of a siren without crying or getting upset, which is rather unusual if one considers that I achieved this without therapy or any other help, and I have no awareness of having done so, as I said, for I lost my fear without making any particular effort, in the same way one loses one’s baby teeth. Then, to my surprise, I discovered that I had no memory of those sirens approaching my grandparents’ house immediately after the bombing, the ones that would have caused the aforementioned trauma, no matter how much I closed my eyes on the terrace of La Veiga and attempted to recall the shriek of those sirens that prompted my childhood fear; there was no trace in my auditory memory, only silence, which led me to wonder where I had gotten the idea that my childhood cries were the result of that bombing, if that had been my idea at all, if it wasn’t something else that my grandmother Lena had planted in my head and that I had then turned into a memory . . .
“Are you waiting for your friend?” the waitress asked, taking me by surprise; I had not seen her approach, perhaps because I’d closed my eyes while searching my mind for a memory that didn’t exist.
“You startled me,” I managed to say, sitting up straighter as she placed the vodka tonic down on the table.
And I told her, yes, my buddy Félix would soon show up, as long as no last-minute problems arose at the magazine, though I immediately asked myself if she had meant Mr. Rabbit, with whom I’d come to this terrace a couple of times. But why should I care whom the waitress had in mind, considering the scale of what had just happened to me: the simple act of attempting to establish my first childhood memory in order to decide where to start telling the story of my life had turned into an unanticipated labor that threatened to foment dangerous internal chaos, which made me suspect that Don Chente’s suggestion that I write my autobiography had not been fortuitous—there was a hidden motive behind the old man’s suggestion that was somehow related to the hypnosis sessions I had undergone. And to confirm this, I decided to persist in the task of scrounging around in my memory, for under certain conditions obstinacy can be a virtue; I then tried to establish my second memory, which would have come after the bombing—what a great title for the first chapter of an autobiography, if you’ll excuse the digression, “After the Bombing,” a splendid title, I repeated to myself enthusiastically, as if I were hard at work writing
But my mind had already started down the wrong path: by shaking the foundations of my first memory, I had set in motion the pendulum that was now carrying me at enormous speed from tranquillity to disquietude, because the memory of the bombing was not encapsulated outside of time but rather served as the foundation for important images of myself that were now beginning to falter, like the image of myself as a child who cried with fear every time I heard a siren, whether it was the police or a fire truck or an ambulance, how I would be gripped by dread just hearing the shriek of a siren, precisely as a result of the trauma caused by the aforementioned bombing, for the first thing I must have heard when I crossed the courtyard in my grandmother Lena’s arms was the shriek of the sirens as they were approaching, and I can still see myself as a child with my grandparents on a balcony on Comayagüela’s Avenida Central watching a parade, perhaps celebrating the coup d’état that allowed my grandfather and his cohorts to finally get rid of the liberal government that had bombed us; when the parade sirens went off, I flew into a panic and began to cry uncontrollably. A traumatized child who broke out in tears of dread at the shriek of a siren: that was me, until who knows how or at what age—I have no memory of the precise moment—I turned into a normal child who could hear the shriek of a siren without crying or getting upset, which is rather unusual if one considers that I achieved this without therapy or any other help, and I have no awareness of having done so, as I said, for I lost my fear without making any particular effort, in the same way one loses one’s baby teeth. Then, to my surprise, I discovered that I had no memory of those sirens approaching my grandparents’ house immediately after the bombing, the ones that would have caused the aforementioned trauma, no matter how much I closed my eyes on the terrace of La Veiga and attempted to recall the shriek of those sirens that prompted my childhood fear; there was no trace in my auditory memory, only silence, which led me to wonder where I had gotten the idea that my childhood cries were the result of that bombing, if that had been my idea at all, if it wasn’t something else that my grandmother Lena had planted in my head and that I had then turned into a memory . . .
“Are you waiting for your friend?” the waitress asked, taking me by surprise; I had not seen her approach, perhaps because I’d closed my eyes while searching my mind for a memory that didn’t exist.
“You startled me,” I managed to say, sitting up straighter as she placed the vodka tonic down on the table.
And I told her, yes, my buddy Félix would soon show up, as long as no last-minute problems arose at the magazine, though I immediately asked myself if she had meant Mr. Rabbit, with whom I’d come to this terrace a couple of times. But why should I care whom the waitress had in mind, considering the scale of what had just happened to me: the simple act of attempting to establish my first childhood memory in order to decide where to start telling the story of my life had turned into an unanticipated labor that threatened to foment dangerous internal chaos, which made me suspect that Don Chente’s suggestion that I write my autobiography had not been fortuitous—there was a hidden motive behind the old man’s suggestion that was somehow related to the hypnosis sessions I had undergone. And to confirm this, I decided to persist in the task of scrounging around in my memory, for under certain conditions obstinacy can be a virtue; I then tried to establish my second memory, which would have come after the bombing—what a great title for the first chapter of an autobiography, if you’ll excuse the digression, “After the Bombing,” a splendid title, I repeated to myself enthusiastically, as if I were hard at work writing
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