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RUBRIC
THE STORY OF A SON


THE SECOND DAY
The story of a son who never stopped being a son


From the height of my inexperience, I can assure you that thirst seems to be the most extraordinary and terrible thing in children's lives. Extraordinary because it opens them up to desire and the search for and surplus of what has always been so. Terrible because they don't know how to name what's missing and there are so many doors that open. Which one to knock on? The safest? The easiest? The closest?

I knocked on the door of escape. I wanted to go far away.

I put my suitcase on my back and received my mother's kiss, the sparkle of water in her eyes and a final wave. It was ten minutes before the train left.

My father walked beside me, like someone who wants to be late. In truth, I wasn't in a hurry either, and although I wasn't, I was, and with such unbridled force that, for a moment, I forgot the vertigo of moving forward.

I saw the wall of the school where I had learned science and error. If only I could go in for a minute, sit in the second desk in the third row and ask what I never asked. Because it was ten minutes before the train left and I no longer knew what it was like to be big like my dad.

When we arrived, he looked at me as if to take the fear out of my eyes and took out of his sun-faded vest an old, bruised piece of paper: one last recommendation. How could I tell him that I didn't want to grow up? That I was a son and not a man? That I was still afraid of the lord of the carts, of the night and its shadows... Goodbye father. Goodbye, son.

He was carrying his suitcase and the weight of a terrifying note. He didn't cry: he wanted to look like a man, not a child. Fifteen springs accumulating socks, strength and bravery. He was the second of a horn to plunder the reserve for that hard winter.

He wrote:

Learn the way there, but don't forget the way back.

From your father, who always held your hand.

She carried a suitcase on her back and a story made up of everything. Like my mother's soup: made up of what was there and what was missing; of what she knew and what she never even named; made up of soft and strong fires, boils and scalds, vigilance and carelessness. A story made of the raw; made of time; made of me.

Was that what I needed? A door that closed, a start, a change of scenery, the collapse of my world? I don't know. But I do know that it was terrifying to travel alone, without knowing who the man in front of me was, or the end of his existence. But above all, it was terrifying to travel alone, without knowing exactly what I was for.

Yes, I chose the cutting door. I let go of my father's hand, I left my brothers and my mother. I went where I wanted, I did what I wanted. -Maybe I'm lying. I didn't always go where I wanted, nor did I have everything I wanted, but I liked to think I did. But when the night came and I was alone, terribly alone, I couldn't help but remember how much I missed it and how much I longed to be bigger.

Text by Verónica Benedito, asm
Voice of Fausto Raínho Ferreira


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