THE CAPTIVE

They tell this story in Junín or in Tapalqué. A boy disappeared after an Indian raid; he was said to have been carried off by the Indians. His parents pressed a futile search for him. After long years a soldier who came from the interior told them of an Indian with sky-blue eyes, who might very well be their son. At last they found this man (the chronicle loses track of the exact circumstances and I don't want to invent what I don't know) and thought they recognized him. The man, formed by the lonely life of the wilds, no longer understood the words of his native language, but let himself be led, indifferent and docile, up to their house. There he stopped, perhaps because the others stopped. He looked at the door, but without understanding. Suddenly, he lowered his head, let out a shout, went down the entrance hall and the two long patios at a run, and burst into the kitchen. Without hesitation he plunged his arm up the blackened fireplace chimney and pulled out a little horn-handle knife he had hidden there as a boy. His eyes shone with joy and his parents wept because they had found their son.

Perhaps other recollections followed this one, but the Indian was not able to live within walls, and one day he went off to look for his wilderness. I wonder what he felt in that vertiginous moment when the past and the present were confused; I would like to know if the lost son was reborn and died in that moment of rapture, or if he managed to recognize, like an infant or a dog at least, his parents and his home.

—Translated by ELAINE KERRIGAN