Down memory lane

The noise of the oscilloscope has come to a halt. I opened my eyes very slowly. Everything is blurred, but one thing seems to be true: I am not at the Mithraeum any longer and it's no longer nighttime. My sight takes ages to become clear, but it's possible to realize I'm back at the farm Taurinos. Silence is absurd. It's daytime, but no birds show up to sing by my window; there is absolutely no sound. I'm in the guest room I have occupied since I arrived here, my laptop is on the corner desk as if I had never left the room. Some memories come back to me very, very slowly. What did I do? And the most important, how did I end up back in this bed?

I remember something now, not much, but something. I had taken decades to open the iron gate at the entrance of the ring. I was closing the ceremony with my fight, that's it. Finally I decided I had to do it at once and opened the gate. I entered the ring yet took as long as before to decide to open the last bay. I don't remember why, but I opened it up and nothing happened. No. The beast was in there, strangely quiet after kicking like hell minutes before. I approached him and he just sprang on me from the back of the open bay.

I remember another thing now: the mystery of how the motion within the ring was different from anything we know. I remember when the bull jumped and threw me to the other side of the ring, there was no impact of his body against mine when he pressed me to the wall. It was like his 500 and some kilos were but a feather in the wind landing on someone lying on the floor. Yes, this was a fascinating issue of the ceremony in my view and I swore to myself I was going to decipher the mystery when my time to fight came.

Then, I was fallen down and somehow I made it past the bull's paw that was pinning me to the ground and stood up. And what more? I make some efforts to remember. Nothing. There is a gap between the moment I managed to stand up and this moment I'm living right now. And it scares me to think the moments might have been erased from my memory for my protection. And this silence all around me, what does it mean?

I turn my eyes around the room and I see that the door is opening. Absolutely no sound. Duílio must have oiled the hinges. When the door opens completely, I have Duílio, Andrés and a man I've never seen looking from the corridor. Andrés runs my way and throws me on the bed with a hug. I fall without a sound, the bed coils are pressed without a sound, the door opened without a sound, Andrés is now speaking to me… without a sound.

O my God. I am deaf.

Instinctively, I pushed Andrés gently aside and sat down on the edge of the bed, stunned. My head is feverish with thoughts, but no more sounds. The boy, his father and the other man watch me in disbelief.

"I can't hear you", I said only with the vibration of my voice that I couldn't hear anymore, "apparently I have become deaf. If you speak slowly, maybe I'm able to read your lips…"

Andrés looked at his father with the typical expression of those who don't know what to do. It must have been the goddamned oscilloscope. It had to be it. I tell Andrés what I think and he reacts by sighing and sitting down at my side on the edge of the bed.

At the Hospital Regional do Sul de Minas, on Rui Barbosa avenue, downtown Varginha, I was made to pass all kinds of examinations that I could stand and others I couldn't, they made me swallow video cameras and all. The conclusion was that no zone in my ear had been affected. In other words there is nothing physical affecting my hearing. But the silent world around was oppressing me. I now understand the deaf and their occasional rage. As we left through the main hall a big wall clock told it was Tuesday, not Sunday.

"Yes, Ms. Grisam, you slept from Saturday afternoon to this morning. Today's the tenth of March. Mom took breakfast to your bed two days in a row, but it was no use, you wouldn't wake up. So we decided to call the doctor who came with us, he's from here and arranged the appointment and the exams in the hospital" Andrés couldn't foresee my mental, temporal and spatial confusion.

At dusk, the other Taurinos started coming for a gathering. Anderson was the first. He greeted me, "hello killer" or whatever I could read from his lips. Andrés walked closer and told him I had gone deaf. Anderson glared at me with big eyes and was confused for a while.

"I pray that she can recover soon" Andrés said to the other. The different accent and wording of the sentences makes it difficult for me sometimes to read their lips, but I do understand the heart of the matter in time, within a context.

Taurinos' Ancient Society reunited tonight. The homemakers have gone to town, since they are in Outer Chamber. I tell Andrés I was lucky to have woken up on the right day for a Taurinos' Ancient Society meeting and he said the meeting was arranged on account of my waking up. I tell everybody I am deaf and the commotion is visible. It lingers for undetermined time.

The six handlers took turns in telling the others what their fight in the arena had been, even the most detailed and atrocious details, everything I reported here yesterday. Until they got to what I last remembered. It seemed to me that after Andrés was finished with his narration, it was my turn to tell the others what went on with me. But what went on with me?

Out of the blue, Renan stands up from his chair, stops in front of me and falls on his knees as if he was worshiping me as an ancient [religious] idol. I'm stunned and ask him what kind of new prank that is.

"Oh it's no prank, ma'am. I have prayed for your presence all my life."

"Renan, what the heck are you talking about?"

He frowned at me. The others were exchanging looks, trying to figure out what was going on. Adriano explained that Renan was fascinated at my performance in the arena and was worshiping me. Now this thing. Adriano added that not only Renan, but all of them were hypnotized by what I did in the arena. He tells me they couldn't even shout to me so mesmerized they were, silence was the only thing they heard besides the bloody oscilloscope.

"Did the bull get hurt?", I asked from the top of my naiveté. Laughter washed all over me, the laughter of six lads at once.

"Say a bit spoiled", Guilherme laughed, trying to catch the spirit of the conversation, "in fine grains."

My God. So I have spoiled the bull. I felt no sympathy for him though. He had killed one of our good friends. On the other side of the porch, Anderson acts as if he has realized something. I see him talk to Adriano and Bruno with their eyes on me. Andrés seems to overhear what they say.

"Ms. Grisam we want to hear your account of what you did on the arena", he says with a concerned expression.

"I remember I was in front of that gate, entered the ring and took ages to step on the second slab and liberate the bull. You know what slab it is, no?"

"Yes, yes, and then…?"

"Then I opened the bay to free the animal. He didn't get out of the bay. I approached him and he just sprang on me. I remember that even pinned under his paw I could somehow stand up. Don't ask me how. From that on, I remember nothing."

"That's not what happened! You kidding us?" Renan was growing impatient.

"Easy, Renan; she can't remember it for now, can't you see?" helped Bruno.

"Can't you remember? You came along with us on the back of the vehicle telling jokes and all at the end of the ceremony. How come you can't remember?"

"I don't remember returning here nor how I ended up in the bed."

"Ms. Grisam, pay attention to me. You do need to remember. And tell us what happened in that arena on Saturday. You see, it's very important…" Andrés seemed very anxious, holding me by my left sleeve until I had him to stop it.

"I've already told you what I remember", I was confused by the general pressure and all I wanted was to go back to bed, even after all I had slept.

"And I've already told it was nothing that happened in the arena, Ms. Grisam" said Renan still slightly upset.

"What can I do about it? This is what I saw. I couldn't even see the grandstands."

"None of us could. It's all done so you are alone in the ring, you and the beast and nothing else. And he jumped over you but you managed to jump aside and he landed with his horns on the ring guard. He never threw you to the ground, that didn't happen", explained Guilherme.

"It seems to me it's six against one here. Did everyone of you see the same thing?"

"Yep", answered Bruno, "we have commented it all the way here."

"Renan hasn't slept for two days now only waiting for you to wake up so he can interview you on what you did", added Guilherme as Renan nodded while staring at me.

Andrés and the others stared at me as if I were a broken computer in the middle of a video game championship. I suggested the worse for me. That they could tell me in detail what I did on the arena, beginning to end.

"We can do that, but if you don't remember it yourself it'll be no use", explained Andrés.

"Can anybody tell me why it is so crucial that I remember it myself? I got six bona fide witnesses with the true story on their minds, isn't it all we need?"

"No, ma'am", intervened Bruno, "if you don't remember anything that happened in the arena it's because nothing happened. It doesn't matter if we six saw what you did there. If you don't remember taking part it is because you didn't take any part at all, because the experience didn't stay in your memory. If you didn't take part in the ceremony it didn't finish the way it should. And finally, if it didn't finish the way it should, all that we all together did was no use. That's the story"

I stop here to reflect. There were possibilities of everything going wrong I could never have imagined in the long run. And now I'm here contemplating one of these possibilities. It was not enough to do it all, it had to stay on my mind like the branding iron Andrés brands his cattle with.

"Who can start telling me?"

Renan asked to be the first, "lemme tell my master what she did down there, if I'm wrong you can all help put it right, okay?"

He told me the bull jumped over me, I deviated from his spring and he hit the circle guard, etc. He says I then caught the animal by its tail and spun him and made him hit all the guard's fixation posts with his face that little by little started falling apart in blood and broken teeth [in his own words].

"It was super cool, Ms. Grisam", added Adriano.

"Super cool is not up to her standard", commented Guilherme to Anderson's mischievous little smile.

"Then you picked up your sword that was among the guts and blood everywhere and stabbed him so deep you made it to his other side. It was beautiful to see him bleeding from two places at once. "

"Wait… You said I picked up the sword from the floor. I remember this."

"Great Mithra, she's beginning to recall it", Andrés looked as if he was about to burst with happiness.

"I mean I remember thinking I needed the sword that was out of reach and amid all the junk that was already in the arena when I walked in."

"Indeed, it was something you have remembered", Andrés insisted, "let's see what more can come to your mind."

Renan resumed the narration. He said I applied his technique of moving the handle of the sword in circles in the animal's flesh and thus opening more and more the wound on the animal and said he was very proud she had adopted his technique in my handling. But the violence I did it with was what made the most of his impression. I was appalled to have become his guru. I definitely never intended to.

"Sure it was Mithra himself who sent you down to Taurinos. I had never seen anything so fiendish and atrocious in my life. What makes you so ferocious? What do I do to get there where you stand?"

"I'd love to tell you, but I don't even remember what I did, let alone telling you how I did it."

"Tell her more, Renan; let's see if we can jog her memory", asked Andrés.

Renan now told me I barked the bull completely, head to paws. The sufferance for the bull, he added, was extreme without his leather. And then the sword pierced the animal right on his very flesh, because there was no more skin to protect him from my fury.

"It was delightful to see him completely exposed, at the mercy of your stabs. I cried for sheer happiness. He was getting the punishment he deserved, nothing more, nothing less. I enjoyed each of his moos and every second of his sufferance. I wish I could be there with you. I wish I was you. For the first time in my life I felt being a woman would not bother me."

"Renan, we know how shocked you still are, but please don't overdo it", pondered Anderson under a shower of laughter that included Renan and me.

"Go on, Renan", urged Andrés.

"Go one what? Want me to tell her all the four hours?"

"Four hours? Is this what I spent in the circle with that beast, four hours?"

"Yes, you entered the ring at eight-fifteen. At twelve-fifteen we six went down to get you out of ring. You were lying there in the middle of all that blood, horns, leather, viscera, still tearing the bull's flesh in pieces that got smaller ad smaller, all with your hands." told me Renan.

My God. Four hours of my life I decided to ban from my memory. Or it decided to ban them itself. Where'd everything I did go? Did it go to the infinite, like text you take hours typing without saving just to see it erased forever by a sudden crash in the computer?

"Well, can you remember anything else?" Andrés was at once worried and impatient.

"Just what I told you, as I told you."

"You can't have forgotten it, Ms. Grisam! For heaven's sake, please don't tell us you can't remember! How can you have forgotten when we came back, we talked non-stop in the car, holy shit, it is impossible that you have forgotten this all!" Adriano was nearly crying now. He even motioned to stand up, but Andrés pulled him back to the chair. Moments of tension fly over the porch, like vampire bats ready to bite.

"Easy, Adriano. Despair won't get us anywhere. We have failed. Unless she recalls what happened to her in the arena, the Society has failed. We did the most difficult. And she did the most difficult of it all. Now she can't recall it and there is nothing we can do about it. How can we force someone to remember something? We told her the most important things and if she still doesn't remember anything, waiting is all that is left to us. We'll wait until she recalls it all or until we make sure we all have done it for nothing. Sad but true, my brethren." Andrés finished speaking and took off his glasses, wiping his watering eyes with the back of his hand.

Renan, Adriano and Guilherme are crying. I feel like crying too. For a while there we were a team, with all of a team's divergence, contradiction, but a team that once intended to save the town. I had been bound to the conception that once the work had been finely done by everyone of us it would suffice. But now I see it won't be that simple. We did it all correctly and still we failed. How could we come to this?

"I can't believe it, just can't believe it, all the work we did… The sanctuary, the painting, the construction, I had prepared myself since last year for the ceremony… We did all right in the sanctuary, all prepared all willing, all able, even Ms. Grisam who did more than everyone of us together. And what the fuck has it all been for? Come on, Ms. Grisam, be kind and lie to me, tell me we haven't done this all to see it end up like this. Have mercy and try to remember. Don't tell us there is no more hope at all, I beg you please…" Adriano was outraged, possessed by some mad and explosive mix of despair, anger and sadness.

"Now it's enough, Adriano", intervened Andrés, "and all of you now, listen to me. You all want a scapegoat? Here's me. It's all my fault that we failed. It was me who decided to induct Ms. Grisam to the Society. You know pretty well that she had no clue as to why I made her sign her name under Renan's. I never told her she'd have to substitute for any of us who had problems trying to make it to the ceremony. And the disgrace happened to fall on our brother Arthur", Andrés had his own tears now coming down his face "I inducted her because I thought as a "seer" she could be of use during the works and you did see how brave a warrior she really was in the arena. Who could foresee our brother was going to end like that? Who could foresee that Ms. Grisam would forget everything in between entering the ring and going to bed? I was totally wrong when I inducted her. I curse the day I did it. I curse the goddamned animal that took our friend away from us. But I'm not saying these things to get out of my responsibility. I am ready to accept any punishment the Society thinks I deserve. When I say any, I mean it. I do mean it, my brethren."

I told them to speak a bit more in front of me or else I wouldn't be able to read their lips. I understood a bit of what had been said by Andrés and was quick to talk them out of any kind of martial court of whatever to that effect.

"This is not your choice alone, Ms. Grisam", said Andrés sniffing behind watering eyes and rolling tears, "it is the majority of the Society that will judge this. You and the other five."

"And I think there must be a judgment. I don't want to think we strove like hell the way we did to end up in this situation. I have always been against inducting a woman to the Society. So has Adriano and so was Arthur, remember? Something must have gone wrong because of her being a woman.", said Bruno and agreed by Adriano.

Now Bruno's and Adriano's chauvinism returns in full effect. If in their point of view I did everything right during my time in the ring even doing much worse than six men did, so the issue would have to be found later on. Somewhere I'd have to fail, after all I'm just a woman anyway. Anderson, Guilherme e Renan agreed there should be a judgment. They all asked Andrés to leave. The plot thickens.

"Well, I'll vote for no judgment at all", I was quick to declare as Andrés disappeared out of reach.

"Well, I'll tell you there will be a judgment and four more members are with me. So you have lost your first petition", responded Adriano dryly. Anderson was kinder still he confirmed the judgment. Renan did the same, a sad and defeated expression on his face. Guilherme and Bruno (the latter needless to mention) said aye to the judgment. I asked them when the judgment would take place. They told me they were already judging him. I asked them how they could judge someone that was not present. They replied that Andrés already knew what he did, already knew what they thought and all of them already knew what punishment was fit for him. Before my total astonishment, they called Andrés back to the porch.

"We have reached a decision, Andrés. D. Stella has one day for each one of us handlers to remember what went on in the goddamned ring. If she fails to recall it, you'll drown in Horns Falls." Adriano declared, speaking for the group.

"He's not speaking for me, Andrés, believe me."

"But I am, I tell you I am speaking for you too. You're a member of this Society, Ms. Grisam and you have to comply with the decisions. Whatever the Society decides is your decision too. The majority wins, and the majority has decided it would be this way." Adriano was outraged and aggressive as he retorted.

"I thank you for the defense, Ms. Grisam, but I stand with my brethren and will accept the punishment as it has been decided. You have the right to condemn me. I brought my friends here to celebrate our victory. Our hope of a new Taurinos, free from the rules of the bulls. Never thought it would come to this. But I have no choice other than accepting my brethren's sentence. My life, yours, theirs and the whole town's are in your hands now."

This mayhem tonight | Book of brilliant things

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