What was certain was that as long as she didn’t bring a ladder to look on top of it, it would be impossible for her to find it, and I dare say, why would she bring a ladder? Alright, perhaps to change the bulb if it blew, but it was glowing perfectly brightly.
I was also sure that they only came into the rooms to clean up just once a day and as I had checked when I got back from the convent, the bed had been made and the towels had been changed in the bathroom. She wouldn’t be back here again today.
Another small detail; if it was dinner time, the girl would be serving the tables, so I was sure that no one would enter in my absence.
Putting on my sweater and feeling more relaxed, I went over to the door, opened it and closed it behind me. Heading down the long corridor as I went to the dining room, I thought, “And where will I leave it tomorrow when I have to go to work?”
“Manu,” I answered myself for some reassurance, “just leave it there in the same place, I’m sure there’s no way anyone will find it, and besides, who would think to look for it? Nobody knows you have it,” and more calmly, I opened the door to the dining room and sat there were my companions.
“At last! sleepy! Look who we had to go find to get dinner, when you’re normally the first to arrive saying you’re about to pass out from hunger, and you start snacking on bread while they bring us the food. Are you coming down with something?” they asked me.
“What are you talking about? I’m just tired, something that can be remedied with some sleep,” I replied to reassure them.
Dinner passed without any major upheavals. I tasted what I’d been given without much enthusiasm, and I must have made some strange expression, because they told me laughing:
“They haven’t quite hit the mark with your preferences today. Boy, that means your situation is more serious than we thought, because you normally always praise everything they serve us. We’ve never heard you say, ‘I don’t like this!’ You’re always the first to clear your plate and wipe it clean saying, ‘The sauce is the best part, and it’s a shame to waste it,’ and today it seems you’re even having difficulties chewing. Have you got tonsillitis?”
“No,” I answered reluctantly, “I’ve already had my tonsils removed, I still remember how bad those days were after the operation when I couldn’t eat anything,” I told them so they would leave me alone.
“Tell us, tell us,” they said, “you never told us that, that there was a time when you’d gone without food and you didn’t die,” Jorge was saying, ever the jester.
Everyone laughed at the remark.
“Don’t laugh!” I said, becoming serious, “I had a really hard time.”
“We’re tired of hearing you say, ‘I’m so hungry that if I don’t have something to eat, I’ll die,’ so tell us about that. Come on! How could you put up with a day without eating?”
Reluctantly, because what I wanted was to go back to my room so I could finally open that little book in peace, the book that had been so zealously hidden, I started telling them about it, saying:
“Alright, well, like I said… when you have them removed, you can’t eat.”
“Wait,” said Jorge, who was always the loudest voice in the room, and who always came up with ideas, “and to celebrate this secret that you’re about to share with us, shall we have a little something?”
When I heard the word “Secret,” I was petrified, what was he saying? Could he know something about what was going on?
When he saw my face, he continued saying:
“Boy, I didn’t know it would be so difficult for you to talk about something that I don’t think is that serious.”
As words were failing me at that moment, he started saying:
“Well, when I was little, they operated on me…”
“You too?” the others asked.
“Nah, I’m just trying to help him get started,” Jorge said between laughs.
At that point, I realized what they wanted, and I said:
“Yes, when I was little…”
“What age?” they asked me.
“Don’t interrupt him, or he won’t tell us,” Jorge insisted.
“Alright, I’ll continue, I was eight years old, I remember it perfectly, I got really sick one day. My mother sent Carmen, who as you know is two years older than me, she sent her running for the doctor. He lived on the same street as we did, so it didn’t take her long to get there, although as he said, he didn’t like visiting anyone outside of his practice hours, because he had to rest too. What if he fell ill? Who would tend to him?”
“The thing is, I must have had a high fever, I still remember that my father picked me up and carried me to the car. Wait no, it was my mother who took me…”
“Can you make up your mind?” Santi said impatiently.
“Yes, the doctor must have said something to them, because I remember very clearly that my mother started crying and my Dad scolded her, and I found that surprising, ‘We have to move quickly, this is no time for tears,’ I heard him say. Even with the amount of time that’s passed, I’ve not forgotten that, because I’d never heard my father speak to her like that before.”
“Then I remember that he took me and carried me out of the house in his arms, as if I were a little kid. Then in the car, he was driving and my mother was in the back seat. She held me almost lying down, I remember having seen the street lamps shining from back there,” I said a little thoughtfully.
“So what are you saying? Are you gonna keep telling us your story or not? What do the street lamps have to do with anything?” Jorge asked me again.
“Look, it’s because I’d never been out at night in the car, I’d seen the street lamps lit now and then on the street, but not from that angle, with my head on my mother’s legs. I saw the lights go by in such a strange way, that I remember it perfectly well, as if it were happening right now. I remember making an effort and I got up a little to look out the window, and I saw how dark everything was. You could only see the row of street lamps lighting the place. I couldn’t make out where it was. It felt to me like it took a long time. I don’t remember anything else, until I found myself lying on a bed with a huge light above my face and someone, I think a man, but I’m not sure, was watching me with his mouth covered.”
“‘Just relax, everything will be alright, do you know how to count?’ asked that stranger with an unfamiliar voice, and I said yes.”
“‘Well, can you count to ten for me?’ he said, and covered my mouth with something strange. I remember hearing myself saying three, four, and then nothing else.”
“I don’t know what happened, just that I wanted to continue counting at five when I woke up, and my voice wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t hear myself count, and my mother by the bed said:
“‘He’s waking up.’”
“And I saw how my father, gave me a kiss with a worried face. That really surprised me, because he wasn’t the kissing type. Maybe he would give me one at Christmas, or on my birthday, but nothing more, and at the time I remembered that it was neither of those days. What might have happened for him to have kissed me? So I thought I had to ask him what was wrong.”
I stopped to take a breath, and Jorge impatiently took the floor.
“But boy, you still haven’t told us how you felt without eating,” he was telling me.
“Wait for me to continue then. I remember that I was very hungry. I was in bed, I had visited a doctor whom I didn’t know, that was not the norm, then I learned he was a specialist who had operated on me, an otolaryngologist,” I was saying, when I was interrupted again.
“You remember a name like that so well given how difficult it is,” the boys told me.
“Yes, because when I asked what he was called, and they told me, my father wrote it down for me so I wouldn’t forget it, and I read it so many times that I learned it by heart and that’s why I still remember it. Because I couldn’t talk, well I tried but nothing would come out, I communicated by writing in a notebook with a pencil, which the nurse gave me. I’m sure she knew what had happened because she gave it to me the first time she came to see me.”
“‘As you’re old enough and because I’m sure you know how to write very well, when you want something, just write it here,’ and taking the two items out of her pocket she told me, ‘Take them, do you like them?’”
“The first thing I wrote said:
‘Is it for me? Thank you, yes, I like them a lot.’”
“‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I bought them for you,’ she was saying there next to my bed.”
“‘And can I take them home with me?’ I wrote again there in the notebook.”
