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my father had died; waiting for me there was my mother’s best friend, who stood up to give me a hug, then burst into tears, though she soon pulled herself together and told me that my brother Alfredito would be joining us soon, the principal was going to get him from his classroom, but he mustn’t find out yet about our father’s death, because he was only seven years old, too young to understand, they would tell him later, after they’d prepared him, whereas I was already a young man, at eleven I should be able to control myself, not say anything or cry while we were in the car on our way to drop Alfredito off at the house of some relatives, who would look after him. And that is what happened: with a knot in my throat, I held back my tears on the way to drop off my brother, and I kept holding back my tears while my mother’s friend drove me home, even when we passed the Hospital del Seguro Social, where they’d taken my father after the “accident,” as my mother had called it the night before, after receiving the phone call; and I continued to hold back my tears the rest of the morning, at the house, where swirls of people were coming and going, and at the funeral home, where they took me at noon, where I spent the rest of the day and the whole night and the following day, still like a zombie and with a knot in my throat, holding back my tears, even when I went up to the coffin they brought in, and I could see through the little glass window the waxen face of my father, his moustache finally trimmed, and two pieces of cotton wool sticking out of his nostrils, the first dead body I’d ever seen in my life, which completely fascinated me and I went up to stare at several times, holding back my tears, still like a zombie; and when I milled around with relatives and acquaintances, surprised to see the long line of friends from Alcoholics Anonymous who filed sorrowfully past my father’s coffin, and still that afternoon when we lined our cars up to drive in a procession to the cemetery; it was then and there, when the gravediggers lowered the coffin then threw the first shovelfuls of dirt on top of it, that the knot in my throat suddenly came undone, and I rushed away from the crowd that had gathered around the gravesite and hid behind an old Kapok tree, where I finally let go of the tears I had been holding on to for so long. And I didn’t tell any of this to Don Chente because my whole life, every time I’d wanted to talk about it, the knot would again tighten in my throat, my eyes would again start burning, and I would turn back into a zombie, and now was not the time to make a scene.
    “Let’s go into the other room,” said the doctor. And that’s when I became aware of my fear at the imminent prospect of being hypnotized, a fear that took turns in my mind with the idea that the whole thing was a sham, that Don Chente wouldn’t be able to hypnotize me, but my fear as well as my incredulity stepped aside to make room for my curiosity about what method the old man would use to try to hypnotize me, which I discovered once I lay down on the exam table, anxious, my eyes glued to the ceiling, awaiting instructions, with that familiar tingly feeling, as if I were about to take my first trip on hallucinogenic mushrooms, which was the first thing that came to mind, that time we climbed the San Salvador volcano to collect the mushrooms that we then put in a jar with honey so they would lose their flavor of dirt and cow shit and that I ate with that same tingling curiosity I felt now, waiting for the psilocybin to kick in, to dismantle my psychic apparatus in order to give me access to new perceptions, surprisingly enough without any extraordinary visions or sounds but rather with a simple opening into a world beyond the senses, where I split off from my self and was able to perceive myself in all my squalor and absurdity, an experience that marked the end of my adolescence and turned out disastrously for one of us, my