Anywhere out of that hell

Andrés and Adriano showed up early in the morning. They had come to ask me about things that had happened downtown yesterday. Meire was still sleeping when they arrived. I was not in the mood of talking about those things. Knew well that the subject would easily derive to Anderson's initiation on the top of that mountain. That depressed me, but other than the vomit seizures caused by the mountains of graphic violence, the psyche of the boys seemed not to have been affected. Asked them if they had already had breakfast. They said they hadn't. That their parents were still sleeping. That they had been strange since the Initiation day. I said the black Sun had probably affected everyone in town.

"You could surprise your parents and wake them up with breakfast ready at least once a year. By the way, if your parents keep on sleeping on and on you'll die from starvation in the best good humor, won't you?"

"Nobody dies in Taurinos, Miss Grisam, thanks to you", Andrés reminded me.

"Worse still, there's not even death to abbreviate your sufferance."

Andrés was silent. I told them to help me prepare breakfast. They were extremely clumsy, but somehow we managed to set a decent table together. I told them of a solar eclipse I saw in 1994. Adriano told me he had been born just when I saw it. I felt awful on that day. Extremely sick. One can imagine a phenomenon like the one of the black Sun, derived from a fiendish kind of magic like the one that swallowed the blacksmith into the darkness. The things he was and will always be automatically forced to do.

"How did you like the Initiation ritual?"

"I didn't like it."

All of a sudden, his question reminded me of his clothes at the end of the ritual, still in pristine conditions. I asked him to tell me what happened in the inner ring. He questioned the objective behind me inquiry. Adriano was about to answer the question, but I asked him to be quiet. To let his brother answer that to me.

"Why are you asking me that? Why can't Adriano himself answer?"

"Why don't you answer that yourself?"

"All right, I'll tell you", the kid shrugged. And he told us something completely distorted from what had happened there. Adriano and I didn't recognize a speck of what he told us.

"Where were you during Anderson's initiation, Andrés?"

"Come on, I was… What is this question supposed to mean? Didn't you see me there, in the car, at Adriano's side?"

"Your eyes and your ears were somewhere else. You were there, standing still like a column within the outer ring, but saw nothing that happened within the inner one. Your eyes wouldn't burn because you didn't look away from the inner ring, but you "saw" and "heard" another part of Taurinos, anywhere out of that hell, didn't you? This helps explain why you had your clothes so clean when we left the top. You were as fresh as a flower then. All of us five, including your brother, only didn't shit in our clothes with all of that disgrace happening before us. You looked like you had just left the movies after watching a romantic comedy. This got me puzzled on the spot."

Andrés looked at his brother, ashamed. Adriano smiled and his smile turned into laughter that left his cadet brother more ashamed still.

"What a fine rascal! Andrés is a little rascal, this younger brother of mine!"

"Our physical presence there was enough, dammit! Even with the eyes open, you could've imagined a flag of Brazil instead of all of the shit you saw…", Andrés tried to justify himself.

"Funnily enough, I really thought a flag of Brazil was the best thing to represent all of the shit we saw happen up there", I theorized, trying hard not to laugh.

"And now you tell us! We should turn you in to the Obscure Police", Adriano scolded him, but deep inside feeling like laughing and he joked, mischievously, much to his cadet brother's despair, "by the way I'll call Anderson right now…"

"Save the call if you want to", said a familiar voice coming in from my living room, "how long has your lock been broken, Miss Grisam?"

Andrés changed colors. Anderson loomed at the kitchen door, in plain clothes.

"How long have you been there???", Andrés' question was a classic.

"Time enough. I'm not angry at you, Andrés. You didn't miss a big thing. You can relax."

"I wish I could relax as well", I interfered, "but a wave of nostalgia hit me, of the time the Police at least knocked on our door before they kicked in."

Andrés and Adriano were quiet now. I offered the newcomer some coffee too. He accepted the coffee and apologized for having walked in without asking for my license to. Said he didn't come as a policeman. Said he saw the lock broken and came to talk and try to find out who'd have broken into my house. I went to the door with him to see in more detail. It closed but would never lock. There was a plain sign of a small avulsion on the door. Plain at that moment when I finally paid attention to it. How long would it have been like that? Now I remembered I never really locked the door even with all that had happened to me, when I arranged to see Renan at my porch at night, for instance.

"It was the Police", said Adriano all of a sudden.

"What do you mean? You accusing me or Renan of having broken into Miss Grisam's house?", roared Anderson.

"Hey, wait there, it was the Police from Santos, where Miss Grisam lived, Anderson. This lock has been like this since my father and I built the house."

"How do you know it was the Police?", inquired the blacksmith.

"I saw it when they were breaking into the house. "Sá" Meire came with them."

"Stella, who's down there with you?", Meire's voice came from upstairs.

"No problem, it's just the sons of Duílio and the naughty policeman from yesterday, Meire. Remember that policeman that passed us by at Zé's and greeted only Duílio? So this is him.", I shouted from the kitchen, making Anderson blush a little bit.

Meire loomed at the kitchen door.

"I wanted to thank you, naughty kid", she said looking Anderson in the eyes; the latter turned his eyes to me, puzzled, "for saving my life."

She hugged Anderson and kissed him on the top of his head. The Conselheiro brothers giggled. Anderson went redder still. How cute. I asked — only son and all — how many times that little round thing had been kissed or caressed in life in this whole mean little town.

"Hell, no, "sá" Meire; I'd never let you die", he spoke embarrassed, his cheeks were red as those of a country boy that has been stroked unexpectedly "but it doesn't mean I don't hate you and Miss Grisam for getting me to enter the Obscure Police before the time I needed to at least prepare myself for hell. It's only because I would leave even my father dying to come to your aid as you're a true friend of Miss Grisam. It's only because I have been created for this. It doesn't mean I don't hate you and Miss Grisam. If you're stroking me, you're stroking someone who hates you. And I can't hate you because I'm going to spend my whole life protecting Miss Grisam. Even so I hate her. You see, I just don't know what to do."

"You can't be being serious", said Meire, astonished, glancing at me as if she was in search of an explanation about what she had kissed on the head.

"Yes, he can, Meire. Anderson is all he's saying he is."

"I hate Renan because he transformed me into this thing I am right now. What you saw at the square. What you saw on the top of the mountain. The same as that thing "sá" Meire saw in the forest. The very idea of being at Renan's side is disgusting. I hate him with all of my forces. But I can't hate Renan; I have to give away each and every drop of my blood to protect my partner (and still go on without a drop of blood in my body anyhow), as he has got to go to the deepest of hells for me. Who can ever live this way? And, being that we are Immortals, who can't?"

His eyes looked empty. No one else dared to say a word. He went on, "when I sliced that guy with the axe you have no clue how pleasant it was to hear him scream for pain. You have no clue how painful it was to hear him scream for pain. The affliction of tearing off the top of his skull to make a cup and drink his blood…"

"He sliced what??? Drank what???", Meire couldn't believe she had heard what she had heard. I motioned to her so as to calm her down.

"Didn't you want to learn so badly what went on on the top of the mountain on Sunday?", I challenged her severely, "so this is precisely what he is telling you now. You wanted so badly to hear, now listen to him. Now bear with us."

"As for the second guy, when Renan torn his escrotum off and stuck it entirely into the guy's mouth to choke him, I was proud of how decided he really was. Of how strong his action was to punish him, to give him a lesson that'd serve him for the Eternity."

Meire started backing off from him, little by little. He followed her with his eyes.

"Yes, "sá" Meire, better keep your distance. If you find me in the night, Renan and me, we are the same apparition with that enormous drake bill on our faces and the number eight lying on our foreheads that you saw in the forest. You'll only tell me apart from Renan on the horse because I'm taller than him. Better keep your distance."

And then, in an outburst:

"Want to see what I look like when I'm riding with him at night? Want to see what the Obscure Police did to me?"

Andrés and Adriano were quick to rise from their chairs, "we think it's time we went back home… we don't want to disturb your talk."

"Anderson, I forbid you. You're in my house."

Anderson was silent for a while. Then he said he'd never appear to her in those conditions if she didn't want him to. But in case she wanted to, he'd be able to show her.

"You became like him?", Meire inquired him, all but scared.

Anderson nodded at her and sniffed.

"The Sun went black and transformed me."

Meire glanced at me. She charged me with the talk on the "eclipse" and why I didn't tell her what happened in fact. I replied she still hadn't poked her nose in such decisive way in the plot and wouldn't believe me anyhow. And I advised her not to go deep, because she herself might end up trapped here as I was and for the very same reason: learning too much about the town. Se refused to believe me and I said this was more like a theory of mine that shouldn't be taken so literally. But that I had already had a testimony of what imagination can create. Taurinos was for me such testimony.

Anderson told Meire all about the ritual (and he told Andrés too, since on his very peculiar way he wasn't present there) and I saw the crescent feeling of horror developing inside of her. I thought of how old she got in a few minutes of talk.

"What about that car at the square. what did you do to make the girl go screaming like that?"

Anderson was surprised at the question. He had supposed she had seen everything and asked me about it. I told him she was not able to see what was going on from her position at the table. Besides, she didn't know what to expect from him. Andrés was interested; he apparently hadn't "seen" it happen. Adriano only raised his eyebrows.

"I pulled off her boyfriend's head with my whip. Weren't it for the work of removing the car from town, I'd have her killed too, that fucking whore. Such a whore she was she wanted to throw her boyfriend's body off the car, as if it was trash. Not that it was not trash to me, but I thought he'd mean something to her. But I was wrong, who'd mean something to such a whore? I was very polite to her. What she really deserved was a spit on the face. I wasn't going to do any fucking thing, but the son of a bitch was going to shoot. I didn't want to kill him, but I never regretted it, because I was not built to regret anything. Now I got to protect the town, whether or not I want to. I have done it since the beginning, when I lent Renan the weapons, haven't I? So now I got to do this, but I hate do this. I haven't got a will of my own, when I stop to pay attention, presto, I have already done it, it has happened again. I'm fucked up for the whole of the Eternity."

We kept on talking about the lock for some more time after Anderson spoke his heart out; after Meire had managed to regain control over herself. I didn't expect her to understand why things had to be like that in Taurinos, but I did expect her to hold her astonishment back a bit more, what was extremely difficult (it was hard for me let alone for her). Meire was curious about the lock subject, went to see the broken lock. Said it had been the Police from Santos. She said she herself had taken them there. Adriano glanced at Anderson, who glanced back at his friend and apologized to him.

"On the phone, you said you were feeling weird. Not that it was news to me that you were feeling weird, but this time the way you worded it made me all worried. And I was right. You said you were off to another plan or something to that effect. That it was how you felt at the very least."

The kids looked at me. There was a moment of mortal silence around us all. I denied what she said. I clearly rememebered what I had said to her and what she had said to me. Or didn't I?

"No, Meire; you started by saying you were not angry with me and that I shouldn't be so hard on you because of the talk we had about the Mexican boy. You said that my frankness was… cutting like a knife. Yes, cutting like a knife, that's what you said. So I told you I was coming to Minas Gerais on the same day and we would not see each other for some time. This is all."

"Oh it all did happen, Stella. It really did. But you never said you were coming to Minas Gerais. As a matter of fact, you told me very clearly that you thought you were going to die. That you had never felt before what you felt in that moment. Then I tried to tell you I was going to your house to get you and take you to hospital, but there was no more talk. Only the background sounds coming from your neighborhood as if the phone had never been hung up. It was a lot of work to get a policeman to come to your house with me and break into your house to rescue you. One of them is one of my acquaintances and he risked a lot to do it. Because if he got caught he'd be sacked from the Police, you know. He got his partner and came, it was a hell of a delay, but we did go. We have to understand the fellas, it's their bread and butter. When we got to your house it was not hard to break into, this is why there is almost no visible damage to your lock as you can see."

But how could I have talked to her? I had talked to Duílio one day before she called me. If I talked to Duílio on the day before, I was already in a coma. How could Meire ever have a conversation on the phone with me when I was already in a coma?

"I have no clue how the time passed for you or how you mixed everything on your mind, Stella. What I know is what I'm telling you."

I glanced at the boys. Anderson was astonished, the Conselheiro brothers were astonished. As if they were listening to the description of their own birth. And they were. As if they were older children watching the images of their own ultrasonography. And they were. Unaware, Meire was telling them her own version of the Day of Creation. But Meire took notice of the children's bewilderment, astonished faces at all that shouldn't surprise them any longer. I thought it was the hard surprise of the moment of creation when the primitive chaos is finally left behind. As the kids, I shouldn't be surprised myself. But I was on the top of my astonishment too.

Greetings from a dead man | Mintaka, Alnitak and Alnilam

Radio Universal: Obscure Police