The lost day - short story - Latin America: Private Eyes & Time Travelers

TELLING THIS STORY, I KNOW, WILL CAUSE many an open smile, others will inspect me with offended eyes, and most will think I have sadly lost my mind.

One afternoon, we were cooped up in the emergency room of this city's hospital located opposite the Alameda Park, battling the strange illness of a young bricklayer, who, while remodeling an ancient cell in the San Jeronimo convent, had fallen faint and not come around, showing symptoms of delirium, anguish, and intense fever. My companion, Dr. Silva, invited me to join him for a beer or two. That was in the first days of April and the heat was intolerable, so I agreed without hesitation.

We drank in the corner brewery, undisturbed by the gazes of other patrons who noted our white uniforms with disapproval. A little later we left. The air had cooled with dusk, so we continued walking on the sidewalk keeping the Alameda to our left; already the dark and mysterious hour approached. We turned onto the street to our right, towards the apartment we used as a lounge. And we had taken only a few steps inside when the entire floor seemed to vibrate and the lights went out completely ...

The possibility of an earthquake prompted us to retrace our steps to the Alameda, where we would be safe, just in case. While we were walking I began to feel a strange sensation; the apartment appeared to have changed, and at the same time, the ordinary sounds of the grand city had ceased. The prevailing silence amplified the noise of our footsteps, which carried an unspeakable sinisterness. We breathed a sigh of relief when we glimpsed a light at the corner. But, oddly enough, it was a torch that bobbed away from us ... Suddenly the moon began to emerge from behind the clouds. It was a full moon, and what it illuminated forced us to doubt our senses ...

Everything around us had changed. In a strange and unsettling way, the Alameda trees seemed different. The streets were utterly deserted, and on crossing towards the Alameda, we saw that it was cobbled. At the same time, all of the buildings so familiar to our eyes had vanished ... Now, in the middle of amply open fields, massive colonial constructions loomed with iron gates and quarry stones as their principal ornaments.

"It can't be!" I exclaimed. "What's happening?"

"It must be a dream," responded Silva. "And those beers must be playing a dirty trick on us."

"Then we're sharing the dream, because I feel it too," I said.

Disconcerted, we approached the Alameda, fearful of taking one more step. Looking around that strange and mysterious city, it seemed in repose yet threatening beneath the light of the full moon. Seated under an immense oak, we fell gradually into slumber. Sunlight and street sounds woke us. Even on the Alameda, our dream continued. Noisy coaches, gentlemen mounted on spirited steeds sporting long swords, capes, and feathered caps. Town criers, peasants, water vendors, all circulated through these streets amidst an uproar bursting with vivacity. We rubbed our eyes to wake ourselves up, but all continued as before.

"What's happening to us?" I asked.

My friend, who was always a bit philosophical, responded: "It's too real to be a dream. A few unsettling possibilities remain. We're either traveling through the past, or we're dead. If we're dead there's nothing we can do about it. But if we're traveling in the past there are two possibilities. We may have slipped through a crack in time, one hundred years back, or we're traveling only in our minds. I hope it's the last! Because if it's the first option, no one has ever returned to tell about it ..."

Hearts oppressed with dry, irrational terror, we forced ourselves to struggle to our feet and walked towards the east with the bustling townspeople, who shot us looks of bewilderment. Realizing they found our clothing odd, we took off our laboratory coats, and, opening the collars of our shirts, we looked uncannily similar to those street vendors.

"Tuesday, April 2nd," said my companion.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"It will be a memorable date for those who know us. Two young doctors disappeared on April 2nd and, just like in the stories, were never seen again."

"Don't joke about such things. We've got to figure out what's happening to us and where we are."

"I don't think that will help us much, but let's go."

And so we arrived at the heart of our city. The Zocalo! How different everything was! How strange! The great plaza known to us had disappeared. In its place had sprung various constructions and cheap grocery stores. It was a huge marketplace in which, amid hollering and confusion, everything imaginable was sold. We continued walking and a little farther down found a small square from which we could see what used to be the cathedral: now it was an amorphous monster of stone, without its graceful towers nor its carved facade. The Palace was squatter and seemed to have suffered a great fire. Beyond its forest of scaffolding, one could see part of its dilapidated walls covered in soot. To the right, dominating the small square, gallows hanging from a tall platform made us shudder; more to the right, a ditch full of vegetation and canoes flowed towards the south side of the plaza, which served as a wharf and a loading dock for goods. The animation was prodigious, and, in spite of the early hour, one could see gentlemen with great curled wigs accompanied by ladies in huge hoop skirts and parasols leaving the cathedral to board their swift coaches. All was new, evocative, and strange. The sensation of dreaming persisted. Nothing about it could be real. Even so, the hunger that began to make our stomachs suffer was certainly genuine. And Silva soon solved the problem. Gold has always been a universal language, and we showed a golden ring that Silva wore on his finger to the food vender. Soon we were devouring a roast chicken and drinking a refreshing beverage, in the depths of which floated black seeds with a furry white coating. Silva deposited some coins in his pocket.