TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Rodrigo Fresán

1. The one who, in a house fire, rescues his son.

2. The one who, in a house fire, rescues the manuscript of his novel.

3. The one who, in a house fire, rescues his son, gets him to safety, and goes back into the flames to rescue the manuscript of his novel and dies in the attempt and leaves his son an orphan.

Place your bets, don’t give it too much thought, quickly now.

† The accelerating time of adults (the accelerating particles of adult-time, which makes them think and feel that time is flying by and burning up and consuming itself faster and faster all the time) is, paradoxically, the promising and slow and leisurely time of children. The time of kids-children is what makes the journey of adults-parents so vertiginous. For people who have not had children, time passes more slowly, and they never get to experience thewild panting of watching, immobile, howchildren grow and grow with each passing day. Those who have not had children (those who have never gotten addicted to that substance of children, whichmakesyou see somany thingsyou’ve never seen and wouldn’t ever see if you hadn’t first been devoured by them, because best make clear: it’s Saturn’s own children who devour him) will never bear witness to that terrible sight that suddenly makes the Theory of Relativity so easy to understand. See it: there is a boy of about six venturing into the cave of the open door of the wardrobe of his bedroom, to explore the prehistory of old toys (some broken but impossible to dispel to oblivion) while his father watches, trembling, the artifacts that his son is unearthing and that he bought what feels like yesterday or, at most, last week. 198