En Junn o en Tapalqun refieren la historia.Un chico desapareci despus de un maln; se dijo que lo haban robado los indios.Sus padres lo buscaron intilmente; al cabo de los aos, un soldado que vena de tierra adentro les habl de un indio de ojos celestes que bien podia ser su hijo.Dieron al fin con l (la crnica ha perdido las circunstancias y no quiero inventar lo que no s) y creyeron reconocerlo.El hombre, trabajado por el desierto y por la vida brbara, ya no saba or las palabras de la lengua natal, pero se dej conducir, indiferente y dcil, hasta la casa.Ah se detuvo, tal vez porque los otros se detuvieron.Mir la puerta, como sin entenderla.De pronto baj la cabeza, grit, atraves corriendo el zagun y los dos largos patios y se meti en la cocina.Sin vacilar, hundi el brazo en la ennegrecida campana y sac el cuchillito de mango de asta que haba escondido ah, caundo chico.Los ojos le brillaron de alegra y los padres lloraron porque haban encontrado al hijo.Acaso a este recuerdo siguieron otros, pero el indio no podia vivir entre paredes y un da fue a buscar su desierto.Yo querra saber qu sinti en aquel instante de vertigo en que el pasado y el presente se confundieron; yo querra saber si el hijo perdido renaci y muri en aquel xtasis o si alcanz a reconocer, siquiera como una criatura o un perro, los padres y la casa.

The story is told out in one of the old frontier towns either Junin or Tapalquen.A boy was missing after an Indian raid; it was aid that the marauders had carried him away.The boys parents searched for him without any luck; years later, a soldier just back from Indian territory told them about a blue-eyed savage who may have been their son.At long last they traced him (the circumstances of the search have not come down to us and I dare not invent what I dont know) and they thought they recognized him.The man, marked by the wilderness and by primitive life, no longer understood the words of the language he spoke in childhood, but he let himself be led, uncurious and willing, to his old house.There he stopped maybe because the others stopped.He stared at the door as though not understanding what it was.All of a sudden, ducking his head, he let out a cry, cut through the entranceway and the two long patios on the run, and burst into the kitchen.Without a seconds pause, he buried his arm in the sootblackend oven chimney and drew out the small knife with the horn handle that he had hidden as a boy.His eyes lit up with joy and his parents wept because they had found their lost child.Maybe other memories followed upon this one, but the Indian could not live indoors and one day he left to go back to his open spaces.I would like to know what he felt in that first bewildering moment in which past and present merged; I would like to know whether in that dizzying instant the lost son was born again and died, or whether he managed to recognize, as a child or a dog might, his people and his home.