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relatives or friends, and we danced and drank non-alcoholic beer and lit Catherine wheels and powder-keg volcanoes and launched rockets that exploded into rackets of colour in the yellowish night sky of the city, that darkness that’s never really dark. And never, never did I wonder what Ricardo Laverde might be doing at that same instant, if he was praying the novenas too, if there were fireworks and if he was setting off rockets or lighting Catherine wheels, and if he was doing so on his own or in company.
    The morning that followed one of those novenas, a cloudy, dark morning, Aura and I had our first ultrasound. Aura had been on the verge of cancelling it, and I would have done if that hadn’t meant waiting another twenty days to find out about the child, with the risks that might entail. It wasn’t just any old morning, it wasn’t a 21 December like any other 21 December of any other year: since the early hours of the morning the radio and television and newspaper had been telling us that American Airlines Flight 965 , which departed from Miami for Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport in the city of Cali, had crashed into the west side of El Diluvio Mountain the previous night. It was carrying one hundred and fifty-five passengers, many of whom weren’t even going to Cali, but were expecting to catch the last flight of the evening to Bogotá. At the time the news came out they’d found only four survivors, all with serious injuries, and the figure would not go any higher. I knew the inevitable details – that the plane was a 757 , that the night was clear and starry, that they were starting to talk about human error – from the news broadcasts on all stations. I regretted the accident, felt all the sympathy I’m capable of for the people waiting for their relatives, and for those who, in their seats on the plane, understood from one moment to the next that they would not arrive, that they were living their last seconds. But it was an ephemeral and distracted sympathy, and I’m sure it had died out by the time we entered the narrow cubicle where Aura, lying down and half undressed, and I, standing by the screen, received the news that our little girl (Aura was magically sure it was a girl), who at that moment measured 7 millimetres, was in perfect health. On the screen was a sort of luminous universe, a confusing constellation in movement where, the woman in the white coat told us, our little girl was: that island in the sea – every one of her 7 millimetres – was her. Beneath the electric brightness of the screen I saw Aura smile, and I’m very afraid I won’t forget that smile as long as I live. Then I saw her put a finger on her belly to smear it with the blue gel the nurse had used. And then I saw her put her finger to her nose, to smell it and classify it according to the rules of her world, and seeing that was absurdly satisfying, like finding a coin in the street.
    I don’t remember having thought of Ricardo Laverde there, during the ultrasound, while Aura and I, perfectly astonished, listened to the sound of an accelerated little heartbeat. I don’t remember having thought of Ricardo Laverde later, while Aura and I listed girls’ names on the same white envelope in which the hospital had given us the written report of the ultrasound. I don’t remember having thought of Ricardo Laverde while reading this report out loud, discovering that our little girl was in a fundal intrauterine position and she was a normal oval shape, words that made Aura erupt into violent fits of laughter in the middle of the restaurant. I don’t remember having thought of Ricardo Laverde even when I made a mental inventory of all the fathers of daughters that I knew, a little to see if the birth of a daughter had a predictable effect on people, or to start looking for sources of advice or possible support, as if I guessed that what I was heading into was the most intense, most mysterious, most unpredictable