Year zero

Sitting at the porch in the afternoon. In a rocking chair and with my laptop beside me, gazing at the grit around my house. Thinking of Renan again. Thought I'd get used to loneliness little by little. Thought I'd already gotten used to loneliness. But loneliness is a stubborn companion and insists on staying with you sometimes even at a party, a celebration.

How many times among friends I'd fall prey to the same loneliness I feel today. I wondered if my friends themselves had ever felt that way. Not the loneliness of lack of companions but that of lack of identity to the same friends at least at that particular moment. When I hung out with friends of mine who had children and how they would talk about how smart, handsome, beautiful, intelligent (and even how nasty) they were. There was always a perceptible hint of pleasure of them for being mothers no matter how hard it had been for them to raise the little rascals.

While i found these things wonderful and felt happy for them, I couldn't help but nurturing a reverse feeling. Not jealousy, though it would be no surprise if it should occur. It was the loneliness of seeing myself in a situation where my work and my physical conditions would never allow me to have children whether natural or adoptive. I'd never have children to expose them to what I lived through in Santos and São Vicente and still live through in Taurinos. I opened Winamp in my laptop and let it play random.

"Loneliness is a beast, loneliness devours you. She is a friend of the hours, the first cousin of time. It makes our clocks go slow, causing our heart to beat out of rhythm. The loneliness of the stars. The loneliness of the moon. The loneliness of the night. The loneliness of the streets."

Loneliness, written by Alceu Valença in Mágico, 1984, Barclay/Polygram.

Far from random in the situation I'm in now. I made it play the next song, as Renan one day asked me to turn off a Macy Gray song, as my mother one day asked me to turn off a Baden-Powell song,

"I can't stand another lonely night like this. I can't stand it."

Lonely Night, performed by Hopeton Lindo in The Word, 1991, Greensleeves.

The selection was still light-years far from random. Some days not even music brings you comfort in this hell. I shut Winamp down and was lazy. Gazing at everything. Remembering the insanity of the past days. And how much I missed Renan. When I thought I had already gotten used to loneliness, he appeared to show me there was another life I could live, not only on my own as before. As the son I never had, he showed it to me so clearly. And went away when I thought I had found the way.

The sound of a horse in the distance. When horses pass by in the distance and their sound is heard clearly here, it means they will pass in front of my house and in front of the gate of the farm Taurinos. Both the farm and my house are on a secondary road that goes into the fields. This secondary road ends and begins on the main road in and out of Taurinos. If someone takes the secondary road either they want to stop on the farm Taurinos or at my house, because they are the two only things on this road. My house is well at the back of its lot, but it's no issue for any entity coming here. If their sound comes past the farm Taurinos they will fatally end up here, person or haunt.

And he fatally ended up here, person or haunt. The horseman was Arthur and thanks to Mithra wasn't in dungarees. Sun was already going low. He stopped in front of my house and showed me a white handkerchief. God only knows what it might be to show someone a white handkerchief. A goodbye? Peace? I wondered what it could be in the symbology of the lads here.

"Come in!", I shouted from the porch.

I found out it was good and old symbol of peace for them too. He tied his horse to the gate and came down my lot to my porch and couldn't help but gazing at the grit around him. He got on the porch, embarrassed, and we walked in the house. Arthur sat down with his back on the kitchen window and I was appalled to look at his face. The back-light from the window showed him to me as having a heinous face of a scarecrow with an even more heinous luminescent smile haunting me. I immediately suggested that we swapped places. He seemed to understand what went on and was astonished (and a bit more embarrassed too) to find out I could see this side of him in the back-light.

Offered him coffee. He politely refused. I told him the demand had come to an end and with it, the restrictions in my house. He turned it down just the same. I asked him if he had come only to scare me as the Heinous Scarecrow of Death and Horror and he laughed, embarrassed once again. He made a pause. I didn't know what to expect. He didn't know what to say.

"I've come to apologize for the fit of rage at Zé's yesterday. I wasn't very nice to you. But I won't lie and tell you I'm happy with you for what you did. But both on your side of the question and mine what has been done has been done."

"All right you've been forgiven I'm really used to this public humiliations at Zé's. Before you it was the Obscure Police", I knew it was the closest to an apology I'd get from him after what happened.

Arthur was in silence for a long while. Then he asked me if I knew what was going on. I answered that master Danilo and Andrés had told me about it.

"And Andrés told you the story of old", Arthur smiled.

I told him what I had learned from Andrés and asked him if that was the story of old.

"Yes. That one. And it is true, Miss Grisam. It happened at least fifteen thousand years ago and still it was created by you less than twenty days ago."

"And the Book of Origins was that mess because…"

"Because the Book of Origins is you."

"Well, it could only be, so messy and distorted when nothing matches anything… So let me guess. You die every fifty-two years crushed by a bull as Taurinos' Ancient Society plans the ceremony that will chase the Big One out of town. And it's been happening for fifteen or sixteen thousand years."

The lad had a serious expression. Asked me not to stare at him. Said I could even take it not seriously enough, but that what I said was true. I told him I was taking it seriously. But I didn't know whether or not I was numb at so many discoveries anymore. He argued it was no discovery.

"There's nothing in most of the sixteen-thousand-year traditions in town that you yourself haven't created since February. There is no time in Taurinos, at least no time as you knew it. Don't stare at me; try to give your eyes a bit of rest", and he went on, "it doesn't happen anymore because you decided to die on that day. You put an end to the Big One, the Law of the Bulls every fifty-two years. Life here is divided into two periods: before and after you. The year you know as 2009 is year zero to us Taurinians."

Renan dropped by nearly at the end of the afternoon. Said he had been missing his days here. I told him of my reflections before Arthur came. He heard me all serious. I saw a tear roll down his face and wiped it away with my thumb. After he heard me, Renan didn't know what to say except that he had been missing his days here. He hugged me. He was for some moments in my arms and then he sat down on the sofa, gazing at his boots.

"I remember you were crying when my parents took me home. I thought you were happy to see me go back home for real. Then you didn't go to your own party and Arthur said…"

"Master Danilo told me all about it, said you cried a lot during the party."

"Because only then I saw that you were not happy with me going home. I am young but understood that you got familiar with me as if you were my mother. And this is because I too got familiar with you as if I were your son. My mother and father are afraid of me. But I know deep in their hearts they love me."

"Course they love you, Renan. Don't be absurd!"

"But they are very afraid of me", he looked downcast, "and you don't."

"Who said I do not?"

He stared at me, surprised. I saw he didn't expect me to say that. But I thought he ought to. Was surprised to see him surprised.

"Lord, even you are afraid of me…"

"I'm not afraid only of you, Renan. I'm afraid of you, Andrés, Arthur, Adriano, Anderson, Bruno and your brother."

He was thoughtful for a while. Then asked me what I feared in them. I replied I never knew what to expect from any of them. He then asked me if I knew I created most of these behaviors in them without any control. I said I had been collecting opinions that said it was true. That Arthur had just told me the same with other words. I said it led to more questions than answers.

"If this is so how much freedom and free will can you afford? How much of you is really you?"

"What is a free will?", he frowned at me.

"There isn't "a" free will. There is only free will. It means to do something because you yourself wanted to, not because something or someone made you do it."

Frequently the mastery those children had of the elements or whatever they called these things here made me forget that, in the case of Renan, I was talking to a ten-year-old. In the same case, dressed in a different aspect, any of them could conduct a solemn session at the Mithraeum, for instance.

"How can you tell it's this free will and not another thing that made us do it?"

Who resists children's logic? Or their lack of logic? I thought I didn't have an answer, but answered anyhow.

"How can you tell it's another thing and not free will that made you do it?"

Renan was thoughtful for another while. Then, he looked around, stretched his neck as he did whenever he was angry or alarmed.

"Outsiders have got to town. I need to go, Miss Grisam , he asked me to shut my eyes and to not open the door until he was gone for real. I figured out what it was. Renan was a nightmare. My favorite nightmare, but a nightmare just the same.

An hour later, master Danilo showed up on his horse. The moths and other nocturnal little creatures had already started to land on the porch wall attracted by the light, casting weird and twisted shadows across the brick surface.

Tonight, looking at master Danilo, I can't help but thinking of Dr. Romeu, the therapist who initiated me in the world of the paranormal for better and for worse. I think this man has a lot to do with the other. As if master Danilo were made of my recollections of Dr. Romeu. A wise, experienced man someone I have always taken advice from.

"Good Mithra, the Police passed me by on the way, it was hell as usual."

"Yup, it's been an hour since he left my house."

"Holy mother of God! I still see everything spinning. Like a TV set with the image flickering like hell."

I had to laugh. He made me laugh a good lot. I told him the passage of Arthur's and Renan's visits earlier in the afternoon and what we talked about.

"I'm glad to learn the boy had at least a bit of sense and came to apologize, "sá" Stella."

"Yup, and he came and showed me a white handkerchief, proposing peace and stuff…"

Master Danilo found it weird; he frowned and stared at me for some time. Said Arthur showing me a white handkerchief had nothing to do with a proposal of peace.

"No, "sá" Stella, actually he meant he didn't come to attack you either physically or verbally, though that was what you deserved."

"Oh, how nice of him."

He was appalled at my account of seeing Arthur as a scarecrow in the back-light. Said he never saw that side of him but that he shouldn't appear like that when he came to apologize. I told him how he asked me not to stare at him. He said the boy should still be infuriated with me but admitted he had no right to treat me as he did at Zé's.

"So you saw this aggressive side in Arthur when the shadow hit his face. If you can see in the shadow, you can see what is concealed there. What people don't want you to see. Arthur most probably asked you to not stare at him because he didn't want you to notice all the time that he is still angry with you. Or because he didn't want to scare you, because it all amounts to just the same."

"And you say you never saw this aggressive side in him."

"No, thanks to the King Star. Because seeing it is a clear sign things are cursed in your house at least at that moment, what is already bad enough."

"So you think things were cursed in my house?"

"They were if you saw the scarecrow in Arthur's face… As they were when Renan tied his black horse to the column of your porch."

"If you've never seen the scarecrow thing, how could you describe it so well to me? Did Arthur tell you what it was like?"

"No. Arthur, Bruno or Guilherme need not tell me anything. I know how the Celestial Gardener operates. I'm what you usually call the guardian of traditions of the local mithraism."

And he went on to describe more or less what the two before him described. I questioned him as I questioned Renan.

"Is destiny to do things that are completely insane and random because I want it to happen involuntarily? Because I intentionally wanted it to happen involuntarily? So isn't there anything left of free will in people here, what they do is done just because I want them to?"

He was in brooding silence. He thought that things were coming down on us in chaotic fashion and I had to agree with him on this matter. Everything was beyond understanding, everyone came up with solutions that seemed not to lead us anywhere. But the fact it was chaotic was not evidence I involuntarily manipulated things in Taurinos. Maybe I had "just" set the wheel in motion (what was not a small thing by the way).

"I told you, you could have avoided all of this, "sá" Stella", he had a shady air on his face. I don't like to see master Danilo in this kind of mood. For moments he is only the only guiding light I can count on in this maze of madness Taurinos is. Seeing him in this mood is to see myself in the dark, with no hope of remission.

"Go where, my good friend? What if I returned to that broken down carcass of mine to die only to find myself here again anyhow? This is the Great Mystery even for you that is the the guardian of traditions of the local mithraism. Isn't the local mithraism a mystery religion, as Duílio said to me one day? Well I think that's the Great Mystery of Creation for Taurinos' Ancient Society to decipher. If they ever find any evidence of something where evidence is so hard to find. Because otherwise it is only a belief. And it solves no issues."

"I've already told you there are no beliefs in Taurinos. Only creations. But you're right, there's no way of knowing if it would have been any different than what it was. Among us there's the idea that you create all of these situations but can't control how you do it. But as you yourself say there's no proving or controlling it."

"It's like the world where I come from, master Danilo. No one knows if what they do is on account of free will or if a circumstance or entity makes them do it or even if it's destiny. I guess I have walked and fallen into much the same shit. The only difference is that here we know it was creation, not evolution."

He was in a moment's pause. The moths and other nocturnal little creatures were still on the porch wall attracted by the light, casting their usually weird and twisted shadows across the wall. The night followed on and with the night, the conversation.