No one knows where Puntas is

Twenty years ago, I was with my friend, Puntas, discussing books. He is one of the few Bolivians honored to have completed a Literature degree.

One of my sad reflections that night was that Ray Bradbury was unjustly considered a minor author due to his genre. Puntas responded by saying that "Fahrenheit 451" was a magnificent book and a tribute to literature.

I argued that the book was an allegory for printing presses and that the best thing Ray had written was the short story "The Rocket Man," the only one that makes me cry when I read it, as it tells the story of a boy who wants to be an astronaut like his dad. But he forbids it, saying, "when you're in space, you want to return to Earth, and when you're here, you want to go back to space." Perhaps due to personal experience, but I always saw it as a perfect metaphor for describing immigration.

—Now I understand your dumb look; that story clearly deals with a child's suffering during a divorce for another woman—Puntas said, and I didn't want to agree, although I realized he was suffering because his old man was with a Brazilian, so I stayed silent.

At the end of Bradbury's story, the father dies burned by the sun, and the mother raises the son alone. I remember in a seedy dive bar, I ran into Puntas' old man; he was drunk and on the floor, seemed not to be breathing. —I hope he doesn't come back to Earth— I thought to myself, remembering my friend.

After a long three minutes, the old man woke up, and Puntas, dear Puntas, in the midst of a small cloud of stars from the sky, disappeared.