"The Rescue"

Daniel Moyano

It had been a year since her 21-year-old son Carlos had been murdered. The murderer, the police said, was still hiding in the hills. The police continued to look for him.

And then, the murderer appeared at her door. He was desperate.  He was emaciated and his clothes were ragged and torn. For some reason, she hid him from the police. He explained that he did not mean to kill her son.

He stayed in the cabin--in Carlos’s room. When Carlos had died, she had covered the mirror in Carlos’s room with a black cloth. She would not let the man sleep in Carlos’s bed. She made him sleep on the floor.

 Then the transformation. She repaired his ragged clothes. She took the black cloth from the mirror. She allowed him to sleep in Carlos’s bed. He had now become her son.

Editor’s note: “Caught suddenly in an extraordinarily tight spot, the woman’s innate humanity surfaces.”

About the Author: “Born 1930 in Buenos Aires, Daniel Mohyano went to live in Cordoba at six, first with relatives, then in a reformatory. He was provincial correspondent for the province of La Rioja, on the daily Clarin of Buenos Aires, before going into self-exile to Madrid. Author of several prize-winning stories, Mr. Moyano is now at work on a fictional-historical fusion about the many Facundos in Argentine history. HE Francis, a recognized short story writer, is the talented translator. Mr. Francis has had four Fulbright fellowships, three to Argentina, a country with which he has had fourteen years of intimate relationship.”

Short Story International #14. Sylvia Tankel, Ed. June 1979, pp. 9-22.