The Schooldays of Jesus Read Free Page B

little Florita to whom he is closest but Maite, her sister. Maite is seven, a few months older than he. She is the prettiest of the three sisters and the most thoughtful in disposition.
    One evening the boy confides in Inés: ‘Maite asked me to show her my penis.’
    â€˜And?’ says Inés.
    â€˜She says if I show her my penis she will show me her thing.’
    â€˜You should play more with Bengi,’ says Inés. ‘You shouldn’t be playing with girls all the time.’
    â€˜We weren’t playing, we were talking. She says if I put my penis in her thing she will get a baby. Is it true?’
    â€˜No, it’s not true,’ says Inés. ‘Someone should wash that girl’s mouth out with soap.’
    â€˜She says that Roberto comes to the women’s room when they are asleep and puts his penis in her mother’s thing.’
    Inés casts him, Simón, a helpless glance.
    â€˜What grown-up people do may sometimes seem strange,’ he intervenes. ‘When you are older you will understand better.’
    â€˜Maite says her mother makes him put a balloon on his penis so that she won’t get a baby.’
    â€˜Yes, that is correct, some people do that.’
    â€˜Do you put a balloon on your penis, Simón?’
    Inés gets up and leaves.
    â€˜I? A balloon? No, of course not.’
    â€˜So if you don’t, can Inés get a baby?’
    â€˜My boy, you are talking about sexual intercourse, and sexual intercourse is for married people. Inés and I aren’t married.’
    â€˜But you can do sexual intercourse even if you aren’t married.’
    â€˜It is true, you can have sexual intercourse if you are not married. But having babies when you are not married is not a good idea. On the whole.’
    â€˜Why? Is it because the babies are huérfano babies?’
    â€˜No, a baby born to an unmarried mother is not a huérfano . A huérfano is something quite different. Where did you come across that word?’
    â€˜In Punta Arenas. Lots of boys in Punta Arenas are huérfanos . Am I a huérfano ?’
    â€˜No, of course not. You have a mother. Inés is your mother. A huérfano is a child with no parents at all.’
    â€˜Where do huérfanos come from if they don’t have parents?’
    â€˜A huérfano is a child whose parents have died and left him alone in the world. Or sometimes the mother has no money to buy food and gives him away to other people to look after. Him or her. Those are the ways you get to be a huérfano . You are not a huérfano . You have Inés. You have me.’
    â€˜But you and Inés are not my real parents, so I am a huérfano .’
    â€˜David, you arrived on a boat, just as I did, just as the people around us did, the ones who didn’t have the luck to be born here. Very likely Bengi and his brother and his sisters arrived on boats too. When you travel across the ocean on a boat, all your memories are washed away and you start a completely new life. That is how it is. There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now. Time begins. The clock starts running. You are not a huérfano . Bengi is not a huérfano .’
    â€˜Bengi was born in Novilla. He told me. He has never been on a boat.’
    â€˜Very well, if Bengi and his brother and sisters were born here then their history begins here and they are not huérfanos .’
    â€˜I can remember the time before I was on the boat.’
    â€˜So you have told me already. There are lots of people who say they can remember the life they had before they crossed the ocean. But there is a problem with such memories, and because you are clever I think you can see what the problem is. The problem is that we have no way of telling whether what these people remember are true memories or made-up memories. Because sometimes