–3–

Their love was unbearable. After that day on the beach, my father became the strong one and I became the weak one. My mother’s caresses seemed like charity compared to what she reserved for my father. When she was with me she was unable to hide her desire to be with him. Her bedtime stories grew shorter. The long sessions of hair-stroking that used to send me off to sleep were replaced with perfunctory kisses. She abandoned me to the threatening shadows in my room. How many times I wanted to cry out! How many ghosts I saw dancing at my window! One of them had rattles for hands. His appearances were announced by the clattering of his rattles. The most torturous thing was knowing they’d come, waiting for them without being able to avoid the wait. I don’t believe in other-worldly beings, spirits, tortured souls, or whatever you want to call them. But I believe in these ghosts that tormented me in my childhood. After so many years, fear still prowls around me when they turn out the cell light. It’s strange, in my current condition, to be afraid of the dark … This isn’t a cell? For me, it is.

At first I tried to come between the happy couple, using everyday ploys which are all described in the literature on psychoanalysis in chapters that deal with the inevitable complex. I got between them so they couldn’t hug. I came up with excuses not to leave them alone. But, like I said, I was the weak one. This weakness was to become even more evident on the most terrible night of my life. One of the most terrible nights, that is.

My parents now slept with their door closed. I stayed outside, in the prison of the world. That night, I woke to the sound of the ghost’s rattles. The clattering was louder than ever. I tried not to look at the window. Lying face-down against the wall, beneath the covers, I hid my head under my pillow. Useless. Terror often exercises an overwhelming attraction. My resistance broke when, in addition to the rattling, I heard banging on the glass. It was the first time this had happened. So I looked.

There he was, my old acquaintance, dancing in a frenzy. Beside him, however, was a figure I’d never seen before: a boy my own age, kneeling, as if about to be sacrificed. A blue stone shone in one of his hands … What did he look like?

His face was mine.

I leapt up and ran to my mother’s door. I stopped in front of it in breathless silence, although I really wanted to bang on it and scream. I stood there for a minute or two, not knowing what to do. I decided to continue when I heard a loud noise coming from my own room. The ghosts have got into the house, I thought, petrified. I carefully pushed my mother’s door open and went into the walk-in closet. I hesitated before entering the bedroom itself when I saw that the light in the bathroom, on the other side, was on and shining across a part of the bed. But there was no way I could go back — I’d sleep on the floor by my mother’s side. It was the only way I’d be safe.

I took a few steps forward, and to this day I regret having done so.

The spectacle taking place on the bed was horrible: my mother, naked, was sitting astride an enormous penis. The penis I’d always wanted to see and had always avoided looking at.