Foreigner

Seven in the morning, I woke up to the clicking sound of shears amid the songbirds that land on the trees by my house. I opened my bedroom's window and saw my "new gardener" down there shearing the spiky plants from my fence. I went down and walked up to him.

"What are you doing? You shearing the plants off from my fence at last?"

Arthur smiled and said he wasn't. That he was only shearing them shorter because they grew too fast and soon no one would be able to walk in my house.

"I have got to come some three times a week to shear them", he said still smiling. Then, he looked serious at me and asked me if I had coffee, "I got out so early today, didn't have time to have breakfast, can believe it, Miss Grisam? Look, I don't need to come in, I can drink some coffee out here."

"Got no coffee", I said to him.

"Ah… All right then, just thought you'd have some" and Arthur went on working.

"Does it take long to do?", I wanted to get rid of him soon.

"Ah, it takes a little while; but is it hot for a day in July, no?", he wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, "could you possibly spare me at least a glass of water? Working in this sun makes one so thirsty…"

I was staring at him while he tested me. I said no. He was silent and went on working. I turned around and went in. Made coffee and while I was having breakfast, Arthur appeared at the kitchen window asking me whether I wanted him to shear other plants too. I said no. Didn't try to disguise I was having breakfast. He was staring at the table, the coffee, milk, the food and his young face looking at it all with desire made me feel terribly sorry for him. "My God, he is just a hungry and thirsty child", I thought. For a moment there I was tempted to give in. But I decided I was not going to. He didn't want me to help either Renan or Andrés, so I was not giving him anything. Not even water.

"Oh, you made some coffee, how cool! Now can I have some?", he tried for a last time with that beam on his face.

"Arthur; if you're finished, I'd like you to go. If you want to come and shear this shit you all put on my fence, alright, but don't you fucking pester me."

He eventually got discouraged and went to the back of my house to put away the shears. Mounted his horse and went away without any more words. Master Danilo crossed him on the road coming to my house.

"New gardener, eh, "sá" Stella?", he said as he got off his horse, "the young man looked a bit upset; did you give him a scolding?"

I told him about the first morning with my "new gardener" and master Danilo asked me if I knew what I was doing, denying Arthur even water.

"He was testing me," I said, "it was no real need."

"How could you know?"

I stopped for a while. Yes, how could I know? I had a strong suspicion I was being tested. Why would he leave his house without breakfast, so early to shear plants? As for the water I was really radical. But he was being as radical as I was.

Master Danilo changed to another subject within the same theme. Said that Andrés and Renan were already camping in the Sanctuary. They decided the matter with the Celestial Gardener out of the Council, amicably. They'd be there until they could find and bring out something that I had left back in the Sanctuary. I didn't miss any of my objects or belongings and wondered what could have really happened. I felt sorry for the two. I shouldn't, but I did. The figure of Renan came back to my memory, it was too hard to me to forget the boy. I drove away that thought and told master Danilo it was not something we thought of yesterday, but that Arthur's parents would eventually come looking for him in the evening.

"It was just a matter of time, master Danilo", I concluded.

"No, it was not, "sá" Stella. Arthur's parents would never show up."

"Don't you think they care about him? Is this what you mean?"

"They do care about him. But they had no reason to bother at all", he added, making me frown at him, "but why do you think they wouldn't care?", I was perplexed.

"Because at that same time Arthur's parents were watching television with him and his little sister at home and preparing to have dinner."

I got all startled. If Arthur was at his home at that time…

"So what was that thing in front of my house??? You knew about it and never told me a thing?", I was in sheer anguish because "that thing" had just left my house and promised me to come back here three times a week.

"If I told you that Arthur was at home watching TV at that time you'd have had a fit. You knew it was good old Arthur and it was hell, let alone what I had to tell you."

"What was that?"

"It was another aspect of Arthur as you have run into other aspects of Renan and Anderson. So it was Arthur but in an aspect that corresponds to this situation and to what must be done in it. So he was so different from the Arthur you know", and he went on talking, "if you deny water to him you are denying water to Arthur himself because he is not more than Arthur in another aspect. You are different when you're having fun at a club than you are when attending your patients but you're always you, it's only different aspects for different situations. For instance, have you ever seen Arthur in celestial-blue dungarees and them tools in the pockets? Course not, because Arthur never dresses like that. Dungarees, celestial-blue, does it all remind you of something? So the boys do it in a way you can understand. You are used to children, so the Celestial Gardener appears as a child. It would be real complicated for you to see him as he is. You mightn't even be prepared for what you'd see."

He went on saying it was complicated to deny water to him because the kids would be analyzing me in my everyday. He said he imagined it was a test from them but it was complicated just the same. So I questioned him saying that if he imagined it was a test what would keep me from imagining the same? What prevented the boys from knowing I imagined it was a test? In this case how valid would that test be when they knew I imagined it was all a test?

"I hadn't thought of it before, "sá" Stella", and master Danilo scratched his head, confused.

What master Danilo told me about Arthur calmly watching TV at home somehow relieved me a bit from my guilt. Now I was sure his requests for coffee and water were just a part of a test. Were it a test of generosity I just wouldn't pass it.

"No more news about the boys?"

"I must be going to the Sanctuary today and I'll bring you news."

Guilherme appeared on his horse later. He was curious to know if I had already opened the gifts, especially his. I thought it was impossible that Arthur still hadn't told him about the day before. He was happy to learn I had opened the plant, but disappointed to find out I hadn't opened the others. He got even more disappointed to find out I wouldn't let him in.

"I have already told all the boys no one comes in while your brother and Andrés can't come in."

He said nothing else and was asked nothing else. Mounted his horse and disappeared on the road. I went to the farm Taurinos, passing by the spikes on my fence and on the ground, obnoxious spikes that would bore even the soles of my shoes. This is no life. Literally, this is no life. In another moment of my life, I'd have laughed at this nonsense of my own. But today I was not prone to jokes or bullshit. My thoughts were with the two in the Sanctuary. It was there my thoughts aimed to when they wandered. I thought of how we could be going stargazing with all of the kids and live our lives in unity. Why so much separation after all?

I overheard Aparecida comment that it was Bruno's birthday on the 5th of july. Strange as it seemed, only Adriano, Guilherme, Anderson and Arthur were invited. I found it so weird. Bruno didn't seem to have a bad relationship with either Renan or Andrés. During the Tinnitus issue, Bruno was even accused of not being much of a helping hand for the a solution to the problem, but it was Guilherme who said it to him. It was ot Andrés nor Renan. It had been someone from his own group. So the reason why it happened was not that quarrel (that was not even something so serious in the end).

"I remember Adriano didn't go, right? We were here practically all day long, then there was even that story of Anderson being armed at the square when you and Duílio passed by, no?"

She remembered it perfectly. I recalled Renan was sad with a story he heard about Anderson, when the latter was not in his normal frame of mind, when there was something else in him that made him act that way. That Adriano tried to soothe and uplift him. When everything seemed settled down with the bell, the two take me to a place forbidden for me.

"I feel like a piece of trash polluting someone's beach", I told her, "never thought my presence in such a beautiful place could cause all this damage. The worst of all is to know I'll never be able to set foot in such a wondrous place again."

Aparecida seemed to understand at least a part of my dilemma. She said there were many beautiful places in Taurinos where there'd be no trouble going to. That master Danilo knew all of these places and many others. But I said this was not the real issue, it was to be like the foreigner that tries to adapt to the place they live and is organically refused by it. I felt dirty, polluting Taurinos' nature. In time, I would come to wash my hands every ten seconds, these healthy things that make an obsessive-compulsive a true obsessive-compulsive.

"Oh, for Mithra's sake, don't you even start! It'll be no good for you… How absurd!"

She said she was concerned. That Arthur was working on my fence and that he passed by the Taurinos to ask for water. He explained her he was dying for water and that I had no coffee or even water to give him.

"Miss Grisam, don't you think it's wrong to deny water to a child? At your party, the boys from the other side said they were all cast out by you, said they put on their Sunday best to go take you some presents. What is this for, is it what they are doing to Andrés and Renan?"

I didn't want to answer. I didn't want to admit to it. But what if it really were for that reason? It would be less for what the Celestial Gardener was doing to them than for preventing me to help or talk to them or even giving water to the two, this was what I told her. She understood me or seemed to. She kept in silence for a while.

"These kids have never come to visit me. The come to the farm Taurinos because they got meetings of the Society to attend, if memory serves me. Don't get me wrong, it's not because they had never come before. But because they are only coming now when this issue has just arisen. Don't you think it's weird? Now you come and tell me only Andrés and Renan were not invited to Bruno's party. Did they take me to the Sanctuary as a revenge for not being called?"

She kept in silence for longer. She never said whether she agreed or disagreed with my words. Duílio appeared in the kitchen and said he had just come from the Sanctuary, "Lord, I don't even want to see it when the mosquitoes start coming down on them, hope the tents hold them back out or the kids will have a hell of a time there… But it serves them fine to learn not to do nonsense like this."

I guess I'll never come to the end of the issue of how uncomfortable Duílio makes me with his medieval notions about reward and punishment. Life is to him a never-ending Spielberg film, with its heroes and villains. But he too found the story of Bruno's birthday to be weird, "these kids and their little quarrels and we always end up in the middle of this fucking mess." Though he synthesized the situation with few words, what he said helped nothing in finding a solution to this new issue with the Celestial Gardener. I told them the story of the present and what it was. Aparecida seemed curious about the plant and more curious to find out it had come from the Sanctuary. I told her what it was like from the moment Arthur came to my house to the moment I opened the gift. They were perplexed with it all. Aparecida told me Arthur had been in at least one more place than only at my house:

"He called us in the evening at the same time you said he was at your house. I know he was in his house because I heard his little sister Simone's voice in the background and television sounds too. He wanted to talk to Adriano."

That matched completely what master Danilo had told me earlier. I was sure of what experiencing that playful aspect of Arthur was. I explained to her what the aspects were and it only made her grow more confused. I had a hell of a work trying to convey that to her. I can't blame it on anyone for not understanding that thing, as we had been caught unaware under this whole shower of shit.