Impact of time

Today I learned that Anderson is the blacksmith on duty in town. The one and only. Yet another of my findings on the basis of "but you had never asked us before…" I learned from Andrés that he and his father, Alberto, whom I first met during the chaos about the Law of the Bulls, lived on a smaller farm in the rural zone, not very far from the farm Teixeira. I would've given my dear readers a map of the town and its vicinities but I was always much too confused by the countless paths and sub-paths all over Taurinos to have a clue myself.

Duílio brought me to their farm, the farm Caldeira. He himself needed to talk to Alberto ou maybe he did because it had been long since their last time together. It was a rather organized farm, too organized a farm considering that it belonged to men alone.

Anderson didn't look happy at seeing me. Though he himself had gone to my house to talk about his problems, he felt my questioning too heavy for the moment he was living through. In this regard, he was no different than most of my patients. Like students that would love to learn without having to study, my patients wanted the solution to their problems without having to be neck-deep in shit themselves. "Dive into shit for me; see what you can do for me" seems to be their motto.

Alberto and Duílio hugged fraternally as two typical Taurinians and soon disappeared from view, talking happily about chores, fences, tractors and agricultural tools and all of those interesting things that are sheer delight for grown-up men in rural zones.

"You left something unanswered when you came to my house on Sunday", I complained, as soon as I found myself alone with Anderson. The boy was embarrassed as he looked at me. He took seat at the verandah and asked me to do the same.

"Why did you ask me about that, Miss Grisam? To really get to know about it or just because you were testing my knowledge on Taurinos' recent history?", there was a subtle trace of irony in his voice, so subtle that Anderson might not have perceived it himself.

"Just testing", I said, trying to sound cold.

"Sometimes it seems to me we are nothing but Guinea pigs in your hands", he had heavily accusatory, reproachful eyes set on me.

I said I didn't like the path we were taking in our discussion. Argued that if there were Guinea pigs in this story, I could easily have found myself as the first one. I said it all was being awful enough for everyone. Even if it was worse for him, my decision was the decision of the majority. All of us wanted to survive the impact of time, this was the reason why we did it. None of us ever stopped to think of the implications. Bruno did, but it was all too late. Master Danilo did, still in time to advise me to suspend the process and go back to my normal life. Apparently the abnegate countryman foresaw the whole of the confusion and knew the Universe could perfectly well go without it.

Anderson heard me without a word. He stomped sporadically on the verandah's floor, appearing to be indifferent to what I said. What he said, however, implied total attention.

"I curse the day I decided to keep on living", he said in total dismay, "I regret it more than I regret lending those arms to Renan so he could kill the cattle thieves. The Teixeiras have lots of weapons, I don't know why he'd want to take mine. He himself never seemed to know the reason why. He tried to talk me into killing the other guys, some two of them. I told him the most I could do for him was to lend the arms. I remember he smiled and said it was alright, that it could be solved later."

"If what you say is true, maybe Renan had an intuition of what was coming up, like he once said. Maybe this is how he tried to involve you in the story."

He rose from the chair fast and sudden as though he had been stung by ants.

"This can't be true! He is my friend! He wouldn't do that to me, Miss Grisam!"

"But he did nothing to you. The issue with the cattle thieves was your issue too. You might think it was easy for Renan to kill the guys and I have to agree he is a real sadistic little country boy. But somehow he resents doing what he does. Were it a piece of heaven he wouldn't ever need your help or help from anybody else. He'd do it all alone and would even get to refuse being assisted at all. You and your father haven't got many heads of cattle, it would be total havoc if a group of thieves got hold of them. You might not have understood why Renan would ever need your weapons, but you lent them with your heart. Because you knew, deep in your heart the issue was the same threat for everyone in this community. I remember you, decided, during the Law of the Bulls, saying you'd go like a steamroller crushing people if necessary. You just refused to stand there, arms crossed, waiting for everything to worsen and be sucked dry. Do you remember that?"

"I do remember", he looked clearly disturbed by my words.

"I was not there at the moment of the cattle thieves. Didn't even know you existed then, but I bet that was the same spirit that moved you to lend the arms to Renan. However, there was a barrier you never crossed: killing those men. Unlike Renan, you let yourself be taken by their human shape and constitution and it was taboo for you to kill people. I do understand you. It is indeed something very hard to do."

He looked at me with suspicions my last words had helped arouse in him.

"Have you ever done it? Ever killed anyone?"

"Yes, I have."

He cringed as though he was frightened by the very presence of someone who claimed to have killed someone else. When I told him the episode he was all gleeful to learn that the mechanic who forced me to do it ended up killed at Taurinos' main square by Renan.

"Well it served him right to die in Renan's hands", he concluded.

"Yup, but what if outsiders that only want to take a stroll in town are eliminated like that?", I opened my purse and gave him the two e-mails sent by Meire reporting the deaths in Santos. He read it all, eyes wide-open, in sheer disbelief, because he knew well the circumstances of Lopes' and Fernando's deaths in Taurinos. He only didn't know, as many others in town, that it had been reflected there in Santos too. I proposed, "does everyone coming to Taurinos have necessarily bad intentions?"

Anderson assured it was so. In a passionate way, it appeared. There seemed to be no room for doubts in the mentality of the average Taurinian: other than deliverers, no one would stay in town that was not moved by ill intentions.

We went for a stroll; he had intended to show me around. I asked him whether the two black animals I just got a glimpse of from a distance were cows. He laughed and said they were horses. I stopped in the middle of the path and asked who they belonged to. He said they were Renan's.

"Why does he leave his animals here? Do you look after them?"

"I shoe the horses for him. I shoe everyone's horses in town."

I still talked to Anderson for lost time about the subject that had been hauting him. Always trying to give him a hint he could be the one to balance the score, try to bring Renan to a more level-headed approached at handling the security issues surrounding Taurinos. He didn't feel very comfortable with my suggestions. Like my words were a damper on his hopes of escaping the function. When I took notice of the time around us, it was almost dusk. Duílio and Alberto were back to the verandah and the father found it strange to see his son's watering eyes.

"Your son is having a pack of little troubles, Alberto. And we can't even say everything is going to be all right. Because it just doesn't depend on us only."

At night, with a mischievous smile on his face, Andrés asked me whether I had really believed the horses were on the farm Caldeira just to be shod. Even Duílio laughed discreetly on his side of the dinner table.

"I figured that he was lying, more by the way he answered the question. But if he turns down the mission altogether, why would he accept Renan's black horses as gifts?"

"Anderson is weird. A part of him — that is the part of the Obscure Police — wants to. The other part — that is himself — does not."

I argued with father and son at that point. Said it was Anderson's weakness before the Obscure Police. How could he control the power without it controlling him in its turn if he had these two conflicting parts within himself? Obviously the power of the Police got a hold on him or he wouldn't have accepted the horses.

"Look, you yourself said he was not dominated by the power. But it has to be the part of him dominated by the process. You said it to me the day before yesterday, that his process was already beginning. Wasn't it what you meant?"

"Yeah, it was", he conceded, with an expression of embarrassment. I found it hard to tell whether it was sincere or faked, "but I have told you, Anderson is just weird. He is smart in his peculiar way. He has managed to evade the Police wisely so far. But we aren't talking about just any power. We are talking about the Obscure Police."

Half-life |

Radio Universal: Obscure Police