by Jerry
I feel now that I can think clearly, go back and understand what has happened from the moment I set foot in the City.
And still, a pure, distilled smell, the smell of a young creek, of roses and grass—the smell of the pure and only truth—comes from the lips of the woman who talks to me. Whilst the man smells of mould, of old dust—the smell of fear.
Where is Ra? Did Ra walk to the Temple? Did Ra make the move? Yes, undoubtedly yes, otherwise he’d be here with these people. Ra knew what he was doing; he wouldn’t be afraid to stand behind his decisions.
The thought of Ra choosing the City and the Temple is warming and comforting. It is the additional voice saying that it is the right decision, the knowledge that I won’t be there alone, that I’ll be there with Ra, and Ra will know what to do.
I feel weak-willed. I’m supposed to be able to make decisions on my own. I’m no longer the age when I went after my brother wherever he led me. But in reality, I realise, I am simply afraid of death. I’m afraid of death, and there’s no-one to tell me that my decision won’t lead me to it. At any age, one does not want to make such decisions on one’s own.
***
The days crawl by slowly. The family brings me food. The head of the family walks in from time to time and talks to me. He believes in what he says. I feel that he wants to protect his family, but I also feel the fear coming off him, like the vapours rising from a rod of scalding hot iron standing in the middle of an ice desert. And I can feel his crumbling grip on his family, his desire to protect, twisted into a suffocating, consuming desire to freeze in place. He’s seen too many changes in his life and he doesn’t want to see more. His eyes are blind to the light, and when he looks at it directly all he can feel is pain.
In his plans, he escapes from the City with his family, or he destroys the City and puts an end to its evil. He wants my help—and understands that he won’t have it. I eat the food he gives me—which isn’t his food anyway, it’s the food the City provides him—and I keep silent. I’m not him. I can see the light.
And I have no family to protect here. There is no-one to bear the burden of my decision but me.
From time to time I hear him shouting outside at his wife or his eldest son.
He would’ve preferred it if I hadn’t come. He hoped to find in me a partner, a friend—but found nothing. He put his last strength into trying to teach me his truth; he wanted so much for somebody to help him hold the reins, and now that he understands I am not the man for the job, he can no longer hold the reins himself. He hasn’t got much time left.
I’m in no hurry. I know that the City will provide me with my moment. The woman is with me in my dreams, and she’s in no hurry either.
***
About a month passes until a youth appears in the door. He looks about fifteen, his hair impeccably dishevelled, and he wears the same white, sterile clothes as his parents.
“Hi,” says the youth. “I’m Mark.”
“I know,” I answer, not really sure why I answered that way. I think I sound much more important than I truly am.
The youth sits down on the floor in front of me. He’s silent for some time, and I understand that he wants to say something very important for him, something he’s been building in himself for some time now, that presses on his throat from within, trying to get out—but he doesn’t manage to release it.
“Speak up,” I say in the calmest voice I can manage and I smile—or try to, at least; I’m not sure of the result. “I don’t bite.”
The youth raises his eyes and looks into mine.
“Father . . .” he says slowly. “Father is . . . we are . . .” He’s searching for words and cannot find them. He’s in shock, for he had a speech ready, polished and refined, but it’s hiding away beyond his reach, forcing him to face it on his own.
Suddenly he bursts into tears. “I don’t want it no more!” he shouts. “I can’t! Can’t! Father’s a coward . . . he’s a coward and he forces all of us to be afraid with him, but I can’t anymore . . .”
And I understand: Mark also has an orchestra. Mark also knows how to lose himself in a timeless dance with the woman with the perfect face. He wants to go to the Temple and he doesn’t believe his father at all—but there’s nothing he can do. He’s scared.
And I understand why he’s here. He wants me to help him. All this time there was nobody who could truly help him.
“You . . . you believe me, right? You must’ve . . . you must’ve . . .” Mark feels uncomfortable continuing the sentence. The sudden blush reveals that what he’s trying to say is equal to him to saying you must’ve slept with her; you know how it is.
Yes, I know how it is.
The desperate hope in his eyes finishes the most important part for him—he wants me to help him escape. He wants me to help him get to the temple.
“Father will hold you here forever,” says Mark. His face is red and wet but he doesn’t notice. His tears soak into the white fabric of the shirt, giving it a grey shade. “He won’t let you go. But if I help you, you—”
Mark suddenly halts—not of his own will. His eyes grow wide in astonishment and I notice a streamlet of blood appearing between his lips and flowing down his chin.
Mark collapses on his side and turns back, and in the entrance there stands a small boy, about five years old, holding in his outstretched hands a silent-model pistol. A good model, I didn’t even hear the shot.
“I heard it all!” says the boy victoriously, the pistol shaking slightly in his hands. “I heard it all! I’ll tell on you both to daddy!”
“You . . . you took . . . father’s gun?” Mark whispers. I see the torn wound in his back, and a puddle of dark blood is spreading over the floor. Rich, dark red over the pure, sterile white. Mark lies down, his eyes staring at the ceiling. He coughs blood, breathing slowly and heavily. I don’t think he’ll live.
Well, hello there, little Taiho.
There’s no time to waste. His parents must have heard his joyful cries and will be here any moment.
I approach him carefully, stepping slowly, my hand reaching forward. “Everything’s okay,” I say, mustering all the peace of mind that I have. “Mark was a bad boy, you did everything well. Now give uncle the gun and everything will be okay . . .”
“No,” says Taiho, shaking his head, his mane fluttering in the cool air.
I continue approaching, reaching my hand for the pistol. “Come on, Taiho, it’s all okay now. You can give uncle the gun and uncle will give the gun to daddy . . .”
“But . . .” mumbles Taiho. He’s less sure of himself now. He makes a hesitant half-step backwards.
I can see the pistol is close enough for me to grab but I realise that Taiho will not give it up willingly—not any time soon, at any rate.
I make a quick half-step forward and reach my hand for the gun, snatching it from Taiho’s hands.
The air between us blazes up in a flash of white. I have the pistol in my hand, and before I can take in the pain I hit Taiho’s cheek from the side and downwards with the handle of the pistol. I can hear his jaw snapping like rotten wood, I feel the warmth of his blood on my hand and shoulder and I see his small body thrown sideways against the wall.
And then the pain hits. It hits into my hip like a gigantic hammer, and then it digs in, deep into my body, up my guts and down my leg, crawling like worms of rusted wire, gnawing at me from the inside. I fold in half, pressing my left hand against my side, feeling the warm blood seeping through the wound.
I step outside on failing legs and see the mother and father running towards the place. On their faces, I can see a look of pure, distilled terror spreading.
“Don’t come any closer!” I shout, but my voice breaks into a wet rasp. I cough, and viscous pink spittle bursts from my mouth and flows down my chin. I raise the pistol towards them with my right hand. My hand shakes like a boat in stormy waters, but the couple freeze in their place. Still pointing the pistol at them, I step backwards careful
ly, my bare feet barely keeping from slipping.
“Don’t come any closer!’ I shout once again. I think I’m shouting. I’m not sure if the words ever reached my mouth.
The world begins expanding and shrinking around me, spinning, waves of heat and coldness hit my body, shaking the entire world. I feel I’m about to vomit all of my inner organs.
My legs continue to drag me backwards. I realise the couple won’t come after me. They have more important things to do. Not to mention that I . . .
No. Not to think about it.
The orchestra plays a requiem. I can see the woman. She is smiling a sad smile at me and our dance is dark.
“Come to the Temple,” she whispers in my ear.
“I’m coming.”
I’m walking, I’m faltering, I’m crawling—I’m going to the Temple. “Here I come.”
The world turns into an endless black strip, my ears ring in a requiem by a thousand instruments and I no longer want to hear it. I’m cold, I feel my whole body shaking like a leaf in the wind, and still heavy drops of sweat pour down my forehead, stick to my eyebrows, drip down my nose. My eyes sting from the sweat.
“Come to the Temple,” dances the woman’s voice around me, and I notice that this time she dances while holding long red ribbons in her hands, twisting round her in magnificent curves. The ribbons encircle me, enwrap me. We dance to the sounds of the orchestra’s requiem.
The world wobbles like drum skin onto which thousands of insane children pour their madness, but through the wobbling I can see the gates of the Temple. Triangular glass doors open and welcome me inside. I enter an elongated room with high walls.
The dance becomes faster, animated, excited.
My legs can’t hold me any longer and I fall, sit on the side, supporting myself with my right arm. I realise that I’ve lost the pistol somewhere along the way.
Although the room is empty, I can feel a presence in it—a colossal presence, strong, sure of itself. But a presence of what? What awaits me on the other side of the Temple, on the other side of the dream?
“Are you here, Ra?” I whisper.
The woman smiles and kisses me on my forehead. I see lights coming on above me, and there’s a low hum of metallic creatures coming to life, preparing.
And then I hear the glass doors opening behind me. I turn around and see Lia standing in the doorway. She’s crying and her lips are trembling—and the whole world is shaking around me. The pain in my side suddenly becomes more real than I’d have ever thought possible, bursting with a thousand suns of boiling glass.
“What . . .” I try to ask her, but my lips only move weakly.
“He can’t hold me any longer,” she says in a quavering voice. “There’s nothing that can hold me . . .”
And I understand that in fact she’s saying, there’s no more Mark and Taiho to hold me.
“I’ve come to the Temple,” she says, and I hear her sobs becoming weaker, calmer. Her eyes close.
My right hand trembles under the weight of my body and I lie down on my back.
“I’ve come to the Temple,” my voice plays to the perfect woman.
“You’ve come to the Temple,” her voice caresses, and she hugs me with her entire body, with all of her eight legs.
The requiem ends on a high note.
2012
BODIES
Juanfran Jiménez
“The international division of work means that some countries specialize in winning and others in losing.”
Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano
I
Purgatory was a waiting room without magazines. Padovani, “the Indian,” checked the wall clock again. He wondered why no one published paper magazines anymore, yet clocks like that one were still analog. In Europe, maybe electronic books on a chain would be there to entertain people fleeing from hell. He ground his teeth.
Three other men, all much younger, also endured the waiting room. Two looked like they missed a bottle, and not exactly to read the label. The third didn’t stop staring at him. He wore a new suit generously lent to him by someone two sizes fatter. Padovani smiled. The other man barely blinked. Probably dead with fear, he told himself, a victim or executioner, but in any case inexperienced. Practically a boy.
If Padovani, an Amerindian, had raised any of his sons—in his defense, he at least tried with two of them until their respective mothers left him—he would have liked to teach them the art of disguise and trickery. The younger you start learning something, the better.
The loudspeaker called George Bartolomé. That was the name on his fake passport, so he stood up and tried to walk naturally. He couldn’t avoid stumbling a little, but that was normal: less than an hour ago they’d made a hole in his head to install the network implant.
He left the waiting room and walked down the hall. He still wasn’t safe. The man in the loaned suit or any of the men he had encountered during the medical tests could have been an assassin for Sink-Tooth, or a police informer, or both. He hadn’t seen a single familiar face: they were all too young. Anyway, he was glad to finally reach the security post at Customs. Another step in the right direction, the one that would take him out of the country and could save his life.
“Is this the first time you exchanged yourself with a European citizen, Señor . . . Bartolomé?”
Padovani had already filled out an infinitely long form with the appropriate lies—starting with his age—that answered those questions. It was the same paper that the Europol officer held with two fingers that weren’t quite as thick as the neck of a boa. To answer “Can’t you read?” wasn’t an option.
When the Indian was 20 years old, which for him was almost like prehistory, he had spent some time in Madrid. Immigration laws were already tough back then, but you could still enter the Old World if you had enough money.Who knows if I have some grandchild kicking around the corners of Gran Vía right now, Padovani thought.
“The first time,” he answered.
It was the only truth on the form. He’d never made an exchange, not with a European or anyone. That’s why he had a fresh scar on his head and still felt a little dizzy. He made an effort to pay attention to the police officer’s explanation, who had put a contract from FarmaCom on the table and was reading the most important clauses aloud. Now I’m the one who doesn’t know how to read, the Indian thought.
“I remind you, Señor Bartolomé, that your special visa is strictly temporary and lasts one month. You may not leave the internment center at any time, or else you will be detained and expelled ahead of time.” He tapped his finger on a paragraph in the contract. “In addition, you will not receive your payment.”
The Indian widened his eyes and tried to pretend that one thousand five hundred euros meant a lot to him. The officer set the papers aside and turned toward the computer screen.
“If you know a European citizen, you may ask for scheduled visits in the internment center. Do you wish to do so, Señor Bartolomé?”
The Indian had his own plans for visiting people in Europe. Specifically, one person whose name was not unfamiliar to the police. In any case, he would prefer to go to meet his old friend himself and not face-to-face in jail. Padovani pretended to be confused.
“I don’t know anyone, sir.”
The police officer marked a box on the screen, then left his seat, which squeaked, possibly in relief, to accompany him to the vacating room. It was smaller than Padovani had imagined, and a panicky feeling grew when the officer shut the door and pointed to a gray cloth chair that must have been acquired in an auction at some bankrupt dump. Padovani took a tissue from his pocket and tried to wipe off the grime before he sat down. He wasn’t surprised to see the police pull on some latex gloves big enough to put over his head.
“Are you allergic to any medicine?”
He answered no. He hadn’t taken much medicine in his life. On the other hand, he had experienced sporadic consumption of almost all the recreational drugs in
existence and was still alive, which could be taken as a vote of confidence for his resistance to chemicals.
“This is a pill for neuronal vacating.” The officer held it out so he could study it. “It’s a pharmaceutical authorized by the European Commission.”
In a monotone, the officer recited a series of legal stipulations. He must have spent years repeating that same text out loud. He didn’t care anymore if his listeners were paying attention. Padovani licked his lips. He was very close, but that droning would never end. He began to get nervous.
He tried to concentrate on not showing his nervousness and listening to the officer’s explanation. In spite of its name, the pill—whose components would be the property of FarmaCom even when they had been assimilated into his body, Clause 375.c—did not vacate the brain. They were actually used to improve neuronal plasticity until it exceeded human limits. The hardware and protocol of the IPv12 network did the rest of the work: codification, secure transport of the cerebral electrochemical map, reconfiguration of synapses. But the blessed pill was key to letting the rest of it happen. Without it, without the biological element, digital exchange of personalities was not possible. It was something Padovani would pay close attention to when he was finally in Europe.
“Do you need a glass of water to swallow the pill?”
The Indian almost grabbed it from his hands. His mouth was dry, but the game had been delayed for too long.
“Not necessary, sir. I’ll take it rough.”
The officer smiled for the first time. His teeth were so white that he seemed to be wearing a tooth guard. Padovani felt the pill move slowly down his throat. If it had been necessary, he would have pushed it with his fingers into his stomach. He wanted to shout for joy. But he still had to hide his euphoria for a while. How long? He still felt nothing in his head.
“When. . . .” he began to say. At that moment someone knocked on the door. The Indian clung to the chair to avoid jumping. Fortunately, the officer seemed annoyed by the interruption. He went to the door and turned a lock in the handle.
