Fatima: The Final Secret. Juan Moisés De La Serna

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

      “She picked it up again to read what I had written, she answered laughing:

      ‘Of course, I told you they’re for you, as they say, ‘You can’t take back a gift you’ve given, that way you won’t get into heaven.’’”

      “I was amazed because I’d never heard anyone say that before and I asked my mother, or rather I wrote in that notebook:

      ‘Mom! What is this missus talking about?’”

      “The nurse, who thought that what I was writing was also for her said:

      ‘Missus? How old do you think I am young man?’ and laughing, she left the room.

      “I didn’t understand what she meant, but my mother told me:

      ‘Rest up, you still have to recover.’”

      “I picked up the little notebook again and wrote:

      ‘And when can I eat here Mom?’ I was already noticing that my stomach was grumbling having not eaten anything for a while.”

      “‘I’m afraid you can’t do that yet Manu, they’ve had to remove your tonsils,’ she said, looking at me.”

      “‘What does that mean Mom?’ I wrote, and I put my hand to my throat as if I wanted to look for a scar, but I didn’t notice anything, but in spite of it I couldn’t speak, even though I wanted to.”

      “My father took my hand with a lot of affection, and sitting on the bed he said:

      ‘Manu, tonsils are the little lumps that hang down at the back of the mouth, and if they get bad, they have to be removed.’”

      “‘Right,’ I wrote in my notebook, ‘Well, if they have already been taken out, when can I eat something? I’m starving.’”

      “Oh, so when you were a kid you also said that you were dying of hunger?” interrupted Jorge.

      Getting up from the table, I said:

      “I’m done, I’m not telling you anymore, I’m going to sleep.” But at that moment, the girl entered the dining room and came over to our table, with slices of cake piled onto a tray, one for each one of us.

      “Go on then! Get outta here! It’s your loss, all the more for us, we’ll divide up your slice among us,” Santi was already saying, “since you’re so tired, I bet you’d rather be in bed than eating this.”

      I looked at that tasty treat, chocolate cake, I could hardly miss out on that and I sat back down again. We distributed the slices, tossing each onto the little plates that they had set down for us. They gave me the biggest piece, saying:

      “You’ve earned it for sharing your secret, but don’t take a bite until you finish telling us everything.”

      “Well, there’s not much left to tell. I was there, admitted to that place, which I later learned was a hospital in La Coruña, which my parents had had to take me to in a hurry that night. Like I said, I was admitted and I wasn’t even allowed to take any water at first. I was allowed after a while, but just water. I don’t know how long that took, to me it seemed like a month or more.”

      “Come on! Stop exaggerating,” the boys said when they heard me say that, “nobody stays in hospital for a month for tonsillitis.”

      “Yes, СКАЧАТЬ