Resolution

We finally arrived at the top of the mountain (or should I say top of the world?). I learned it from the tired voices of Duílio and master Danilo. It wouldn't take us long to reach the farm Taurinos. Something worried me above all of the things I should be worrying about now and from here to eternity. I didn't remember what it was, lost in the sea of past memories and sensations physical death had brought to me.

The voices of those camping on the farm Taurinos, waiting for my final resolution started coming in a crescendo within the sound landscpe now so familiar to me. I had never managed to form a family, now I had countless relatives in this tiny town in Minas Gerais.

Andrés told me not to rise for the moment. The car came to a stop in front of the crowd that fought for a better view of the final resolution. I heard the terrified voices of those who supposed the three had returned without me, probably already waiting for the Apocalypse to come down on the town, like fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. I heard Guilherme voice in sheer dismay, coming up to the car.

"So, my brothers... So this how it all ends?", his voice clearly showed desperation.

I couldn't take it any longer. I told Andrés that was hardly the moment for practical jokes. I rose back to position and even with the hard time I usually have opening car doors from the inside, I somehow managed to open it fast and got out to the night outside.

"Come on you brat and give me a hug", and I hugged him amid a din of shouts and screams I hadn't heard of before, the sound of voices of hundreds and hundreds of townspeople for whom the scene depicted a Renaissance for the town.

"We choose life!", Andrés shouted from the top of his lungs, jumping over the car's hood much to his father's disappointment. Duílio even came closer for a damage report to himself. "We choose life!", and the crowd responded to Andrés shout with the thunder of those hundreds of townspeople with an ear-piercing volume coming out and fireworks enough to explode anyone's eardrums. The scene all touched me real deep. The eternal life so many had waited for in vain throughout the millennia was now something we could touch, ready to play that important part in everyone's life in town. Is this how it goes whenever someone dies?

I had no more arms to hug so many people. I was dead — no pun intended, of course — tired and wanted to be in horizontal position as soon as possible. I saw and talked to each of the boys. Renan had that annoying luminous beam splatted all over his face. Adriano and Andrés talked to each other freely and non-stop. Guilherme was still clinging to my waist. Anderson laughed and teased me all the time with the details of the journey into the night. Bruno… Where would he go if not standing here with his friends on a night like this? Bruno. The real cause of my worries. This is how we lost Arthur.

"Where's Bruno?", I asked all of a sudden, making Guilherme come unglued from me and shut down his process of osmosis.

The lads all looked around. No sign of Bruno anywhere near or far from us, "I swear he was with us all the time, till the car stopped and you all come out", said Adriano, still puzzled, "where'd he go?"

"I think I know where he might be", I said, "probably home. And we have to go and talk to him right now."

"Ah, you'll sure have a lot of time to talk to him, Miss Grisam, we can wait for the day to break" said Guilherme. I looked at him and said, "I got no doubts we can, Guilherme. But I doubt Bruno can wait that long."

"Brethren, Bruno said, nothing direct, but he said on his own way he was going to…", and just like Bruno himself, Adriano hesitated to be too objective, "You know these things people do when they are not very satisfied with life…"

Adriano was the one driving this time with all of the seven uptight members of Taurinos' Ancient Society inside. All was clear as crystal in my sight. Even in the jet black night all appeared so clear, the landscape the headlights revealed, the frightened curiangos flying away from the road's shoulders as we passed them by, the lads in truer than true colors, slightly saturated for that darkness, a clarity of sight myopia had taken away from me still as a child and that the coma's unconsciousness had only worsened. The deafness that had afflicted me as of the ceremony night had long become something of the past. It had been replaced by something like too much hearing. Such a sensitive and specialized hearing, so similar to a state of mental concentration, for good and for evil, as everything else here.

I forgot about what had happened to Bruno the day before yesterday and how I promised myself to be wide awake and alert. I knew he would make no moves while I didn't make mine and I had just finished my move. But he was playing no chess with me. He was plain desperate, this I could see very well at the Mithraeum (and it was not just me). He knew what everybody wanted, this is why he was desperate. I'd have to help the boy out as much as I could. Or much more than just this.

Lights on on the farm Pinho, as in every corner of Taurinos on this night of Renaissance, but there's a nervous contingent of people going to and fro around the farm. There's definitely something in the air.

As she saw us stopping the car, Bruno's mother came to talk to us appalled, "he won't let anyone in", told us the lad said he had been thinking a lot about life, but his father went down to the barn only to find him supported on his chin by the barrel of a shotgun. He had been there since he saw the car coming and went home. His father couldn't come any closer afraid the kid fired the shotgun, trigger-happy fingers all over Bruno.

Light filtered softly into the barn when I walked in all alone. There was simply no sound inside, all I heard was the voices of those who hadn't crossed the threshold of the barn doorway. The barn was large, but I didn't take long to see him in the same living colors I saw the other lads and the townspeople. He was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, still supported by the shotgun on his chin. I cast a look around him and saw the ammunition box lying on the same floor not far from him. The real and strong colors of everything around me only contributed to making the scene even weirder and sent goosebumps up and down my spine.

He wouldn't look at me, but it was plain to see he was aware of my presence there. I took one more step his way.

"You might hurt yourself seriously" he said in a calm tone of voice you seldom find in a moment of reflection like that, "It spreads a whole lotta lead all over, you know…"

I took two more steps closer to him.

"I don't want to hurt you…"

"I haven't come here to tell you you must not do it, Bruno. I have come here to tell you you must do what you want."

He was not expecting me to say that. The lad was looking at me confused. Men's minds are so square, anything minimally out of place seems to get the floor off their feet. I sat down at a certain distance I could not reach out for him. I wanted him to feel secure.

"I have come to tell you that there is someone in Taurinos who supports you whatever the decision you make. Even a decision like this. I never wanted anything like this to happen, but it did. I'm responsible for everything that has happened to you, Bruno. I made an important decision hours ago and knew there was no turning back. I had Andrés by my side when I made my decision. So, I didn't want you to be all alone when you made yours. This is why I'm here. Because I understand you, Bruno. Because I've done the same as what you're thinking of doing."

He looked at me in silence, in calm desperation, with a paradoxical and deceitful tranquility as his index stroked the trigger of the shotgun that was a column supporting his chin. Probably the same shotgun he used for blasting the head of the great big beast that threatened to kill his father during the Law of the Bulls, a father that, against his best will, couldn't be of any help for him at that moment.

"You really don't care, do you?", and the first tear came out rolling on his face, escaping his left eye, furtive but free at last.

"Did you already know what kind of life we're starting now here in Taurinos and don't want to be included? Or you're just doing it to see if I really care about you?"

He was silent. Confused. Looked alternately at me and at the barrel of the shotgun in perspective under his lower jaw.

"What kind of life is this?", he asked me eventually, "that we cannot be normal people that grow and have children. We'll never get sick, never grow older, never die, and all of us are going to remain frozen in time. What kind of life is this?"

"The only life that showed up for us. The only kind that appeared, ours for taking among so many other kinds we've never seen. This life, the only one we could afford, is the one we have to clutch to. Andrés showed that to me plain to see, in a way I couldn't afford to ignore. His attachment to life was what encouraged me to return. I didn't even say this to him, but I guess he knows it now like the two of us do, since he knows everything that is going on in town. What encouraged me to return was the townspeople, the members of Taurinos' Ancient Society, was you. A people that has been waiting for this gift for at the very least fifteen centuries. Fifteen cenuries cannot be wrong, even with the moron here in one of the leading roles. I have returned because I wanted to stand with you all, come hell or high water. Because I wanted to be with you. Don't you take yourself away from me now. And, especially, don't you take yourself away from your dear ones and your friends. Even your friends, on their very peculiar and weird way need you so much you'll never know. This is the only life that showed up for us. Do what you like, the decision in the end is yours only, but please don't reject life at all."

His finger looked more nervous at each new word I added to what I said. Fearing that the worst might happen soon, I looked up a song in my mp3 player, amazed at how easy it had been to find it. I chucked the mp3 to him and asked him to listen to a last song before he decided to pull the trigger. He refused, in full distrust. I walked away from him to make him more confident and headed out for the barn door. I still saw it when he felt more confident, put on the headphones and started listening to the song.

"There are people who need you desperately, whoever you are, even if it's just for your love. There are people who don't know how to do it anymore. There are people who don't do it on purpose. There are people who don't even care about it. And those are people who need you desperately."

There Are People Who Need You Desperately, written by João Ricardo.

Outside, I was surrounded by the family (that probably was still ignorant of the fact Andrés knew all the current events in town as the palm of his own hand). I told them I had done everything I could, but the kid really needed some time to reflect. What good would it be to approach him and take brusque action when it could only make him pull the trigger, nervous and frightened? In the position he was, no one would be so quick as he would. I knew the absurd risk I was running, but alas I couldn't do anything else about it but to respect the boy's will. It had a lot to do with what people would expect to hear or see in moments like this. The boy wasn't running any risk of death really. Because, as he himself said, "we'll never die", he wouldn't die even if he pulled the trigger of that loaded shotgun. I was not being cruel to his parents, I was just asking them to give him time to think. Something he apparently hasn't had since the beginning of this story.

There were minutes and minutes of wait, minutes that felt like hours passing us by, everyone's fear and aprehension only grew worse, a crescendo of plight and premonition that started getting on everyone's nerves. When I got ready to walk in again, a car stopped not far from us. Renan, Andrés and Adriano were the first to poke their heads above the group. I myself could now feel what they said they had. From the car, there came Mr. Horácio Feletti, a huge beam on his face of the young boy he once was and who has just gotten a gift from life: the other car's door opened and we finally could feel all together the presence of a friend.

It was Arthur in the flesh. He was back. Who'd believe it?

Arthur quickly came by the astonished group of idiots we had become at his very sight, it was amazing to see him in all of that details in such real colors, "you'll have all the time in the world to wait, it seems Bruno won't", There was a pause of silence in there that felt infinite and then there were screams and shouts coming from the barn, Bruno's shouts so loud. At first, appalled, we refused to understand what was going on in there. Then we heard the typical shouts of friends who haven't met in a long while, screams of a Renaissance that you'd experience in few places, they were outbursts from someone who had the whole world passing by his mind on the last few days.

Lads are usually rude for this kind of thing. Many times they don't know how to motivate their friends, play havoc with satyre and derrogatory remarks. This can sometimes create a culture that prevents one from having sensitiveness to motivate the other.

The two friends emerged frrom the darkness of the barn before everyone's stunned eyes. The shotgun apparently had been left in there. He was hugged by his overwhelmed parents, all that jazz. The other lads took a while to come closer but when they did it was that annoying and happy ritual, throwing Bruno to the air like they liked to do, this time with the assistance of Arthur that, according to Andrés, my death had brought back from the kingdom of the dead. Bruno even asked me for a copy of the mp3 he had just heard at my request when he handed the player back to me. He had had his private Renaissance there. Nearly as a blood baptism. And he had it in the most amazing way one could conceive of. What more could he yearn for in life?

Longer than life | New dawn

Radio Universal: The Day Of Creation