THE ORIGIN OF PAIN

Strangely, the separation from my family felt more painful in adolescence. I often oscillated between hurricanes of bitter grief and waves of extreme sadness when nothing and no one could console me. Alegria had an eye for noticing such moments, and she knew exactly when to give me the only few adequate remedies she possessed: the story of my origins. Her experience as a wise woman knew that understanding the demons that had haunted our ancestors constituted the key to becoming familiar with those who were terrorising us in the present.

'Your parents are identical: two cups manufactured by the same factory line, two different colours, but all the same cracks in all the same places,' Alegria began rolling on her rocking chair as if to calm my anxiety or perhaps her own.

Sitting further on the stairs, I was listening intently. My face turned towards the sun which was about to set over the mountains, I remained silent.

'The ideology of men and its wars force them to activate their most basic survival instincts, but what war never teaches them is how to return to the state of normal life when there are no more enemies and the massacres are over,' she continued in a weary voice, 'Borys?' she called out from behind me after a long silence.

I swivelled my body towards her, leaning back against the wooden balcony post, my head tilted back slightly. I clung to my grandmother's silhouette as if to life. Her face appeared even darker in the dawning twilight. She was no longer swaying, her small body leaning in my direction.

'Your parents' problems aren't yours!' she exclaimed in a calm and assured voice, 'It may not seem like it, but I assure you that I'm telling you the truth. Your mother's permanent silence and your father's inconsolable defensiveness are two sides of the same anguish: How to survive in the worst conditions? How can you prove your humanity to the very people who treat you even less than an animal?'

She sighed for a moment before leaning back in her chair to stare into the distance. Then, she continued to rock herself slowly as she added, 'Trauma is contagious. It's passed on from parent to child like an inheritance, generation after generation. Like any inheritance, you're free to accept it or refuse it, but you can't deny it. It belongs to you by birth right because of your affiliation alone.'

'Did you also inherit trauma from your parents?' I asked, lifting my head to see her better.

Alegria burst out laughing; the roof over our heads started shaking as she kept rocking vigorously to the rhythm of her laughter.

'I carry the trauma of my ancestors on my skin,' she finally said softly, staring straight ahead while a veil of sorrow came to cover her face. Then suddenly, she sat up and leaned forward towards my direction to look me straight in the eye like an eagle, 'I passed it on to all my children, including my daughter Gloria who then passed it onto you and your sisters, but you know what?' she stopped dead in her tracks, her gaze still fixed on me, waiting for my answer. Intrigued, I shook my head to indicate that I didn't know. So, she continued, 'The trauma will stop right there. You'll live long enough to celebrate the end of it. I saw it in a dream. The original trauma will become the desire of a world very different from that of today.'

I never knew by what coincidence Alegria had predicted the tragic sequence of events of the century that had just begun and the discovery that would turn the world upside down nearly seventy years later. Whenever I think of it, I can't help but imagine her rocking gently, her loud piercing laughter rising to the ceiling of her colonial house, echoing off the hallway walls of the history of mankind.