They talked about it many times after that, until they set a date, which the notebook records. (I check; they stuck to their plan.)

From that point on they tried to do things they hadn’t done before: sweat in a Turkish bath, shoplift, burn down a tree, sell newspapers at dawn, bet on a racehorse, cut a rooster’s head off, kill their fathers.

Each killed his own father symbolically. The one writing the diary made a sketch of his father, naked, with all his attributes, then scribbled out the genitals and made a circle over the heart like the mouth of a hole. The other one gradually stole all his father’s belts, one by one, and cut them into little pieces. He called the belts “torturers.”

They decided on a method for killing themselves, after much reflection, discussion, reading, and speculation. They chose a gun, for speed. They stole it from the torturer father. Days before, they carried it off for a few hours to rehearse, “to listen to it,” says the notebook. They went, as they would again in the end, to the solitude of the hills. The first to fire, against himself, would be the one who drew the short straw. Then the gun would be left for the second one, who would use it immediately. They hated the idea of disfigurement, wanted a bullet to the chest. (I compare this to the facts of the case: They didn’t carry it out as they’d planned. Why? When the moment arrived, did Manuel lose his courage, and then his friend “had” to kill him?)

They said goodbye to a number of things and to hardly any people. The author of the notebook tormented himself trying to choose the right words to say goodbye to his mother without rousing her suspicions. “I wanted to give her a kiss but I haven’t done that for so long it might make her wonder.” Many times, with slight variations, he wrote, “I’ll get up from the table before they do. I’ll say ‘See you tomorrow,’ and gaze at them from the doorway.” Once he added, “If they only knew. . .”

“If they only knew. . .” The sweetness of it is like a hope of being saved.

•

When she sees me, Mamá starts worrying. “Has something happened?”

I smile. “I came for lunch.”

Mamá sighs in relief but is still worried. “If only you’d said so. Will you be all right with the food all the rest of us have? You’re never here weekdays, only on Sundays, certain Sundays.”

At the table, my sister-in-law tries to demonstrate that she’s no longer upset with me for having scolded her son. Loudly enough to be overhead, as if making a joke, she says to her husband, with a sidelong glance, in a protective and affectionate tone, “He looks like a normal person.”

The effect is as intended. Without needing to speak I demonstrate that everything’s fine. Because really, it’s all the same to me.