Lumbre

Translated from Spanish by Luis Ruby. "Every piece of wall in this city bears, like a skin, the traces of my history." "I was born - ninety years after Urquiza's troops camped on the lands of Gorostiaga - on the morning of January 28, 1942. On the shores of Laguna del Tigre. On that day - at the same hour - Pavese noted in his Turin diary - could it be that he knew about the lagoon, about my mother's death struggle, who bled to death under the stars, about me, a fragile being on the boards of the milk cart? - To remember something means to see it - for the first time - now. Memory is a luminous birth." The story recounts three days in March 2002: The narrator Federico Souza returns to his hometown after many years of absence because an old family friend, Pajarito Lernú, has died under unclear circumstances.