1975 - two years later

My father seemed to be a little less convinced than I was, and in truth he gave the impression of a man who amuses himself by listening to nonsense, and yet has great difficulty in restraining himself from bursting out laughing.

- In what month of 1975? He inquired ironically.

"Certainly in the autumn," replied Augustine, as if not noticing my father's tone. - Adam was created in autumn, and the end will certainly come in autumn as well. Naturally, we cannot state anything in more detail. In the end, the Son, Who, less than the Father, knows neither the day nor the hour. We don't know that either.

I thought deeply about what I had heard, and then my mother appeared on the doorstep: "How about orange juice?"

We begin to learn

This conversation brought the final result. Already feeling sympathy for Jehovah's Witnesses, I now acquired an additional argument: the end of the world was approaching. My father thought I was smart enough not to believe such a bunch of stupid things. He was wrong.

In the weeks that followed, Augustine came every Sunday morning and brought me some books. What I read brought me deep disappointment. The tone was aggressive and offensive; The argumentation hurt me with its naivety, and the literary style did not take into account the rules of Spanish syntax.

The teaching of grammar in our college was very strict, and it was painful for me to read such Spanish, through which the grammatical constructions of English from the other side of the Atlantic shone through.

I told all this to Augustine, who did not attach much importance to it. He did his best to explain to me that all this was written for ordinary people, and to a large extent intended for the countries of Latin America. Moreover, the main thing here is not the style or the editing, but to embrace the whole world, for the end is so near.