The hidden room

            I was born in Ourense but taken to Xinzo de Limia a little after. Xinzo de Limia is a village of Ourense’s province. My family left the house in the village when I was five and we went to live in Ourense for one year and then we settled down in Madrid.

Records as an infant in the village. I had experiences I had kept deep in my memory. The case of the hidden room at my parents house. I was four years old. My father took me to a room I hadn’t seen before and I can’t say no more because I don’t remember what happened that first time in the hidden room. I call the room the hidden room because neither my brothers nor my cousins knew about the room and I was so sure the room existed that I insisted in searching it tirelessly. One day I saw a light coming from a room at the place where I used to search for the hidden room. I heard my father’s voice coming from the room’s open door: Come in, Poldo. I had in mind that coming in the hidden room would be an experience most extraordinary, unforgettable. I knew it was to be so, for although I had no memories from the first time I had been in the room with my father, I know it had impressed me much, to the extreme of having the room in mind all the time. I entered the room and saw my father, a man his age and a little girl about ten years old seated on chairs and manipulating switches on a long counter in front of them.

            There were two flat screens like cinema’s screens on which there were films or images I don’t remember. My father asked me to come beside him. When I was beside him he told me to look at the images on his screen attentively. I did. Apolo V in ignition. My father asked me if I didn’t know Werner von Braun had sent Apolo V to the Moon. I answered I didn’t. Then he introduced to me the man his age seated between my father and the girl. This is Werner von Braun, the wisest man in the world, my father said. After you, he added immediately. I remember I thought about what my father had said. I asked my father: How do you know? Because it is true , Leopoldo, said the man. Nice to meet you, the man called Werner said stretching his hand with mine. This is Margaret, my daughter. Are you Leopoldo?, the girl asked looking at me fixedly. Yes, I am, I answered. Come to my screen to help me remove space debris, Margaret said to me. Wait a moment, Poldo, said my father, I want you first to watch something in mine. I looked up at my father’s screen. Look now. On the screen I was watching my father on some ashy ground doing the greeting of raised arm with clenched fist. Who’s the man?, he asked me. You are the man, I answered. Do you see me?, he asked. I do, I said. Where I am, Poldo? I don’t know, I responded. On the Moon, he said. Didn’t you know the Moon existed? No, papa, I didn’t know. Well, what am I doing?, he asked. Greeting, I said. Well, Poldo, it’s all right. Now pay attention to the images I’m going to put on. We four were very attentive. Then we saw a multitude of black men and women, many chidren and babies, naked almost them all, locked up in a warehouse. My father said to us: This happened in Rhodesia. The overcrowded multitude was pleading for their lives, some of them trying to find a hole to escape through, all them shrieking helplessly. Suddenly the screen went completely white. A bomb had hit full them all. It was a shock. The four of us reaction was beginning to weep in a state of deep consternation. After a while we four calmed down a little. My father had switched off issuing images on his screen. He told me to go to where Margaret was and I did. Margaret told me she sometimes used to remove space debris. I thought for a moment Margaret was somehow abusing of my father’s, because what she did was something I could do myself. She was looking at her screen and throwing missiles to what seemed indeed pieces of space debris. I don’t remember anything more, only that I thought of my father unveiling what had seemed a secret, of next time I would enter the room and of feeling envious of Margaret’s game.