No harm

Woke up from a nightmare with the ritual on the top of the mountain. The figure of "Jacques DeMolay", open like a macabre bedsheet torn in several parts by Anderson's hellish machine; the curse he cast upon the Obscure Police while a speck of agonizing life still remained in that unfortunate man.

Woke up on account of the knocks on the door downstairs. I had lost the habit of looking to the porch through the window. After Agent Renan and his fearsome horse, God knows what there might be there lurking through its panes. All was still dark outside; the Sun hadn't risen over the beautiful mountains of Taurinos yet. I glanced at the clock; it was five in the morning. In the guest room, Meire was deep in her dreams, if she was really dreaming.

I turned on the light at the porch. When I touched the door knob, could clearly feel an unholy vibration, that put the weirdest creeps I've ever felt on my nerves. What I was about to see upon opening the door was no good thing. This I was sure of.

"Who's there?", and there was no reply at all from the outside. I suddenly remembered that my door wouldn't lock. It was just closed, but never locked. A vague sensation of panic started taking control inside of me. The vibration on the door knob was ominous. I decided to open. Knew that my decision would turn out to be a bitter regret, but didn't know how short a while it would be before it happened.

The sight of infinite horror I caught from the Agent threw me two meters far from the door. Much more resolution, in its utmost definition, far more horrifying than ever; the absolute terror we had managed to avoid yesterday appearing as a goddamned phantom in the very front of me, not out of the porch any longer, but nearly inside my house.

This has to be a bad dream. This has to be a nightmare. Apparently it was not. I opened my eyes very slowly, ready to shut them again in case the apparition persisted. The Agent Anderson was standing at the door, in his black uniform, standing exactly where his duck-billed phantom was seconds before. He smiled a slightly bitter smile that soon disappeared and approached me. I dragged myself back, trying to figure out who to fall back on for help in an extreme moment like this.

"Can I help you to stand up? I won't do you no harm", he said in calm and soft voice as if nothing had really happened.

"You've done it already", I replied, "the harm you could've done to me you've done already. I do believe in you."

I let the boy help me get back on my feet. He still had the signs of a perverse pleasure to scare the hell out of me still showing on his handsome teenager face.

"Why did you do that, Anderson? Why did you do that to me?"

"I wanted you to see what you didn't see last night in the field. I wanted you to see what the Obscure Police did to me. Because I hadn't shown you yet. Have you got any idea how it felt to have Renan come to me and tell me to go away because I would scare the hell out of all of you? No, you got no idea how it feels to be what I am now, Miss Grisam. You just got no idea. Thanks for helping Renan turn me into a monster. For the Eternity I'm going to thank you, forever and ever. So did you face the beast, Miss Grisam? You did, didn't you? This beast is me. A fourteen-year-old boy. This phantom is me."

Anderson now physically experienced what he had only as a legend before. I understood the kid. I couldn't help but understanding the horror he felt about himself in that condition. It depressed me to know he could feel it so deeply. He was far more sensitive than Renan in that matter. The ten-year-old little devil took pleasure in being terrible. Seemed to appreciate the legend he had turned into within the popular imagination. Anderson had severe problems with it — besides Renan who else wouldn't? — and nothing seemed to point at his getting used to it in a short term. As I'd never get used to the phantasmagoric sight of that ghastly apparition the Agents of Law assumed on Taurinos nights.

"I understand you, Anderson. I know you don't care about it, but I totally understand you."

He smiled a mischievous, ironic smile he intended to make look even more mischievous and ironic to my eyes.

"How nice and gentle of you! I agree with what you say: I really don't give a shit."

"Oh, but you never did, did you ever? Mainly when Renan had to ride the fields at night all by himself, no?"

The lad opened his eyes wide when he heard this as if he was about to jump over me. And that was what he did. We rolled on my living room rug; it was hard to hold that strong and angry little bull back and try not to wake Meire up all at once but somehow I managed to lock his head between my legs. I tried a technique with him that was said to work out well with octopuses to send them to sleep: to stroke him right between the eyes. If it worked out with the octopuses, it had to work out with him. After two minutes, his body calmed down from all that shaking and floundering. Anderson was now nothing more than a sleeping little octopus.

I put the boy on the sofa, took his boots off, almost got hurt by the spurs on their heels in doing it and covered him with a thick blanket on account of the cold of the night. I placed a cushion under his head and went back to bed.

Meire didn't understand a thing when she saw Anderson sleeping on the sofa. We were making some coffee and I didn't want to, but would soon have to wake up the little monster to have breakfast with us.

"He looks like a little angel sleeping. How handsome… How handsome children are in Taurinos!", she seemed she could never get enough of contemplating the kid asleep on the sofa.

"Oh, aren't they? I guess I had a margarine commercial on my mind when I had that ischemia."

Not even the memory of the goddamned ischemia kept us away from our good humor. Meire had to laugh, even from within her own state of confusion, "oh, Stella; only you could be that funny…", and added, "who would tell he did all he did. I just can't believe it was him last night in the field, coming on that horse."

We heard Anderson moan softly and stretch out on the sofa. I waited for him to loom at the kitchen door. He did, boots back on, the spurs tingling in the silence of the house. Meire retracted with fear and I told her not to do so. Said she was in my house.

"Can we talk like civilized people or will I have to smash one of my kitchen's chairs on the top of your head?"

Anderson approached me slowly and I picked up a chair.

"You can smash as many chairs as you want to. I wouldn't defend myself even if you didn't have the right to."

Anderson seemed embarrassed. Seemed ashamed of what he had done. He stopped in front of me and lowered his head, waiting for the chair to fall. As usual, Meire was at the top of her confusion. When Anderson raised his head again, I was already sitting, drinking my first gulp of coffee.

He was standing in front of us. There was a huge pause. Then I offered him breakfast. He was hungry. Very hungry after a whole night riding. Meire didn't want to or didn't know what to say to break the silence. If she did it, it would be just for satiating her neverending curiosity. I let the kid eat at will. See if his mind started working better when he was finally satisfied.

"I still didn't swallow what you said of me not caring about Renan's suffering", his anger still came through in waves, low tide, high tide.

"So swallow it along with bread. And then you tell me if I'm still wrong. You even say you hate Renan. You hate nobody; you're just too confused. Very angry with yourself. Why did you have to lend Renan those weapons? Didn't you want to help defend the town? Well, now you are defending it. The Obscure Police caught the two of you. It is not you and is not Renan, you are only two materializations of it. You lend it your surplus of energy. When you are on duty, you are like two antibodies acting in an automatic way to rid the town of invaders, aliens, outsiders or whatever you call the unfortunate beings that cross the city limits out of the blue. The Obscure Police is one more of the forces acting in this town, like what you called the Big One during the Law of the Bulls in Taurinos. You are just its instruments. That said, you are just healthy and normal boys from Taurinos. Face it since you cannot change it any more."

He was silent. Meire was silent. She wouldn't dare to get involved in a discussion she never knew the basis of. I was silent. And it was the blacksmith who broke the silence at last.

"You don't know what sufferance is…"

"Oh, don't I? You sure? Well, you don't know how it feels to welcome a friend in your house just coming from your funeral and have her tell you not much was left of your brain to justify going on with life after a stroke. You don't know how it feels to see yourself on a hospital bed, connected to tens of tubes and life-supporting machines that keep your carcass still 'alive'. You'l never kow how it felt like to have to decide whether I'd live or die without even knowing if dying would be the best solution to me. Now I learned through Meire this was the only decision left to me. I was fooled by Andrés. I had all of the pieces of the puzzled hidden from me by him. It was Adriano who saw it all. Weren't it for master Danilo to unite the townspeople and put an end to Andrés' secret, would it be you the one to leave your hardware store to come tell me the fearsome truth? Thanks to my death, you'll never live to know how it feels. Don't come here to tell me what sufferance is, you brat. One bright day you'll get used to all of this shit you're doing with Renan as your forever partner. Other than that, like him, you'll live forever full of youth and energy. No one said Hell was a good place to be, Anderson. Not even within Heaven."

Later on, when Anderson was gone, Meire brought up the subject of Hell inside Heaven. I realized I had to go slow with my friend. She'd get frightened so easily, she'd been like this since we first met. I explained there was a theory of British writer Aldous Huxley, in his book "Heaven And Hell" in which he defended we create our own mood for life after death when we died. Depending on the mood we used to feed, it would be Heaven or Hell. I created both simultaneously, one well within the other. One existing within the other, interpenetrating, interacting, interdependent. To be hell, it is necessary for Taurinos to be heaven. To be heaven, it is necessary for Taurinos to be hell.

"Oh, how weird. I think I'll stop asking you about things, Stella. The more you explain things here to me, the more confused I feel."

Guilherme called from the farm Teixeira later at lunchtime. Meire and I were having lunch with the Conselheiros on their farm. He said he had called me at home but no one got the call, so he thought the best course of action was to call the farm Taurinos.

"Tomorrow is Renan's birthday party", he told me, "he asked me to call to invite everyone there."

"Why didn't he call us himself?", I asked, baffled.

Renan would really call us later, but only to ask about Anderson. After learning that the blacksmith had gone to work as he did every day, apparently for the sake of his conscience, asked whether Guilherme had invited us to his party. I asked him why he didn't call us himself. He replied he was too busy looking for Anderson. That he couldn't reach him at the hardware store in the morning to invite him. He hung up saying he still had to find him.

I went back to the table, "Renan only called to see if he could spot Anderson. The blacksmith is really important to him."

"You'll never know how much", laughed Andrés.

"What do you mean by that?"

He noticed my interrogative expression. There were no kicks under the table, but I did notice his father looking daggers at him, his mother embarrassed, his elder brother perplexed without knowing what to say next. Andrés perceived the agitation around, retracted in his place and was all, "nothing important, they are just good friends, that's all."

Meire looked at me meaningfully. This time, she didn't look confused at all.

Mintaka, Alnitak and Alnilam | Unhappy birthday

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