It happened to me when I arrived in the capital, in the Quiroga neighborhood. I was 11 years old. My aunt Cecilia sent me to buy bread on the corner, less than two blocks from the house. My cousin Álvaro, a little older than me, liked to run errands because the landlady always gave him a bandage.
When I went out for the errand, he stared out the window. She would wait for me to return and before I entered she would come out to meet me:
“So that he gives me what is mine!” —He warned me from the first time and reiterated it each time.
I left happy. I bought the bread and received the bandage: a lollipop that I kept in the bag.
As I left the store, a well-dressed man with a tie told me:
—Young man, from your town they sent a parcel to your mother.
—For mom…?, who?, where is she? I asked between surprised and happy; nothing distrustful despite the well-known warnings.
—A countryman! I have it there, near here. Come with me!
With the innocence of a young villager recently arrived in the city,
Naive! I followed him.
My cousin, seeing me take the other way, after a stranger, ran away. He soon caught up with us and called out to me.
The man disappeared as I turned to look.
I never knew where it went.
The scolding and hitting of the aunt, my mother and the cousin, he only
worried about the lollipop!, were less shocking and painful than the news:
This afternoon a well-dressed man in a tie kidnapped a young man in
Quiroga neighborhood…
But, not as much as the next day’s headline:
They found the kidnapped young man south of the city in a sack…
It appeared without vital organs or eyes!
