...of a critic

That same night, after a short dream, I woke up and opened my eyes in the darkness; I remembered that I was in an unfamiliar bed; I thought of the dispersed fragments of my family; and suddenly I went back to what had happened one afternoon in the dark dining room. I hadn't understood Muneca. If my friend had known her - the one who'd been my teacher at school - perhaps he would have suspected something interesting about that life. Over the years of my friendship with him, my curiosity about other people's dramas had grown. And one of the most secret consequences I was hoping for from my concert was that he would introduce me to people I didn't know and I would go into unfamiliar houses. That was my most dangerous thought as I was preparing for my concert, and I didn't always manage to keep it at bay. I wished there were no drama in my own house, not only because of the suffering it caused us but also because I wanted to immerse myself in the drama of others. I don't know why that gave me such great pleasure. Already, during the concerts intermission, I had been thinking about this, as if in a grip of an uncontrollable vice. When the concert began, I played the first notes; my fingertips punctured the silence. Though the concert hall was seeded with expectant ears, the severest critic was the silence; it opened a dark mouth that yawned far too wide as soon as the humblest sound appeared, making it run to join the other sounds. But later, once a certain empathy had developed within the audience, the sounds waited for the silence to hush them with its cape.

[My First Concert in Montevideo from Lands of Memory, Hernandez, F.]