The Prison

by Stefano Pastor

  “Is it leaving?” I asked, I was incredulous.

  “So what?” Sandra said. “You should be happy with it.”

  Instead, I was very confused. I didn’t think it would have been that easy. The first time it appeared after a week. When I saw the rainbow again, I ran to check it. I found a second pot. The fact made me suspect a lot. I didn’t dare getting close to it. I remained there to keep it under control and I seemed to see movements a couple of times. I forbad my kids from playing in the fields and we locked up inside the house. I had told Sandra part of the truth, that I didn’t find that pot but actually stole it from a leprechaun, and that it now wanted it back. That went on for three months, that cursed rainbow didn’t want to leave. Then, suddenly, it disappeared. It gave up. We were free, free to spend our gold.

  We looked at it going away, further and further, without ever turning back. If he had noticed us, he clearly ignored us. In the end, it disappeared in the tall grass.

  “It’s over!” I incredulously mumbled, and then I looked at Sandra, imploring. “It’s gone, let’s head back home.”

  But her look wasn’t any good. “It didn’t look any dangerous.”

  “Didn’t you see what it did to me!” I exclaimed, I was shocked.

  She was thoughtful. “Why were you so scared of it?”

  Her tranquility only made my anxiety rise. “Don’t you know the tale? The golden pot at the end of the rainbow? The leprechauns getting revenge on anybody that has tried to steal it?”

  “So, what? It’s just a tale.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  I didn’t know what to say anymore. When I tried to turn to the house, she stopped me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “But it left!”, I moaned. “It’s not necessary anymore!”

  “It’s still not ours. You have to return it.”

  “Whom to? It’s not here anymore, it left!”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s still not ours.”

  She dragged me to where the pot was just a moment ago. There was so much gold, scattered on the ground, it must have fallen when the leprechaun poured the pot. I placed the one I was holding on the ground, then I couldn’t resist and started filling my pockets with all that abandoned gold.

  At that moment, Sandra said something that froze me. “Where’s the corpse?”

  I looked at her, shocked. “What do you mean?”

  “Where did you bury it?”

  “How does it matter?”

  “It may be better that his friend knew it’s dead, so that it will stop looking for it.”

  “But then it will want to avenge him!” I screamed.

  That didn’t seem to interest her. “I’d rather know.”

  I had no choice, I started searching and found the spot, even if I would have rathered not finding it, because the ground was a bit moved. “What now, should I bring the pot here?”

  Sandra handed me a ridiculous, pink, plasticky gardening shovel. “Dig.”

  “Are you crazy? It must be rotten!”

  “You were the one to kill it. Stop complaining and start digging. It has to see it.”

  I snorted.

  It was easier than expected, because I didn’t bury it that deeply. Sandra looked at it, perplexed. “What’s that?”

  It was a metal box that once contained cookies, I couldn’t find anything else that was about its size. “A coffin”, I answered, I was offended.

  I knew what she wanted from me, but I had no courage to do so. “Is it really necessary…” I started, but she tapped on my shoulder to convince me to go on.

  I removed the lid and heard her holding her breath.

  I was also stunned, I couldn’t understand. “It’s untouched!”, I mumbled. “It hasn’t changed at all!”

  Well, it was still so ugly, but that was its appearance. It wasn’t rotten, as it was to be expected five years after the burial. Was it the box that protected it? Even its smell was lightly musky, but not unpleasant.

  Sandra’s words made me jump. “Are you sure it’s dead?”

  What an absurd question, it was in a coffin, wasn’t it?

  “Why did you kill it?” she asked.

  I didn’t have the answer she would have wanted. “It wasn’t me. I only want that gold, that’s all.”

  “You’ve never been interested in money. You don’t even know what to do with it.”

  “It wasn’t me that day. I wasn’t myself.”

  It could have seemed like a pitiful attempt to defend myself, but I was telling the truth. Something transformed me every time I got close to that pot.

  Sandra gave me the carbine, and bent over on that improvised coffin, leaving me once again with my mouth open. Her fingers touched the creature. “It’s soft”, she said, almost amazed. “It’s not cold at all.”

  “It has to be dead”, I found myself repeating. “It can’t be any other way. It’s dead.”

  “Then why isn’t it rotten?”

  “How am I supposed to know!”

  She then did something incredible. So absurd that it made me jump backwards, horrified. She grabbed that corpse with her hands.

  It was disgusting, soggy and slimy, I felt an impulse to vomit rising inside. “What are you doing?”

  She had a weird voice, it was almost sweet. “It seems it’s just sleeping.”

  The anxiety accelerated my heart beat. “Let it go! Put it down, immediately! It’s dead, it’s all over by now. You can’t go back!”

  She was smiling. “In the end, it’s not that ugly. Don’t you think so too?”

  I had no intention of even looking at that thing, I tried to keep as far as possible from it.

  She pointed at the pot. “They live in there”, she said.

  I snorted. “Imagine if they live there! They just keep an eye on their gold! They protect it from thieves!”

  She shook her head. “I don’t really look like they have any interest in gold, it even threw it away.”

  “But…but…”

  “It has to be their home”, she continued with determination. “Have you seen how they carry it with themselves?”

  “But….”

  I didn’t really know what to say. Anyway, I couldn’t see what difference it would have made at that point.

  Sandra then did something even more absurd. With grace, how unusual for her, she laid the corpse inside the pot.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed, in an almost effeminate voice.

  She smiled again. “Don’t you think it’s right? I put it back where it was supposed to be. This is its pot, isn’t it?”

  “But…but…”

  I had no more arguments to retort.

  Sandra’s look got sadder for a moment. “You disagree, right? You still want it. You don’t care about what you’ve done, what we’ve become. You still want that gold.”

  I was forced to bow my head, that was a heavy blow. “No…I…but…but it’s dead…it doesn’t need it anymore…”

  “And do we need it?”

  I shook my head. I then looked again inside the pot. “What now? Are we going to bury it?”

  The smile reappeared on my wife’s face. “Do you realize it’s right? That it has to be done this way?”

  I nodded, full of shame. “Forgive me”, I mumbled. I then added: “It’s that gold’s fault. It’s all its fault. I wasn’t like this before. You were also different.”

  She did not deny that. She handed me the shovel. “Widen that pit.”

  I hesitated. “Didn’t you want his friend to know it’s dead? It can bury him by itself, if he cares that much.”

  A moment of doubt. “Are you going to leave it here? Like this?” She furrowed her forehead. “Are you serious about it, or are you going to come back for the pot?”

  I jerked. “No, no, I swear! It’s over! Never again…”

  She cut to the chase. “Throw away all that you put in your pockets.”

  I did that, it was so painful. I made a small pile o
n the ground, and looked at it with nostalgia. “But he didn’t want it, he didn’t care about it, you even said it yourself…”

  “Help me move it”, Sandra said, while grabbing the pot from a side. She pointed the spot. “There, where the other one was.”

  I should have said it was useless, that we were wasting our time, that it wouldn’t have done any good, but obeying was easier.

  We picked it up together, even if it was heavier now. But when my eyes saw what was inside, I let it go and stepped back, screaming.

  The pot fell, as Sandra couldn’t hold it by herself. She looked at me, confused. “What’s wrong?”

  Two eyes had just looked at me, from inside the pot. Two yellow, malicious eyes. “It’s alive!” I screamed. “That thing is alive!”

  She also backed up, fear was stronger than curiosity this time. “What do you mean? Didn’t you kill it?”

  “I hit it!” I screamed. “I hit it over and over, until it stopped moving!”

  “But was it dead? Are you certain it died?”

  “It didn’t move! What else could it have been?”

  Nobody dared getting closer, but our eyes were fixed on the pot. The orange light that was coming from it seemed more and more alive, or was it just our imagination?

  It then happened, suddenly, and we both screamed. A hand appeared, on the pot’s border, but it wasn’t really an hand. Then, little by little, the rest of the body came out.

  “What’s happening? What does it mean?” I screamed.

  It clearly wasn’t dead. It has never been. But I buried it, he remained below the ground for five years! “Was it in hibernation?” I dared.

  The creature kept coming out, then fell from the pot with a slimy noise. It didn’t seem at its best. It looked confused, fuzzy. It immediately turned to me and those malicious eyes appeared again. It started making sharp and irregular noises.

  “It wants to kill me!” I screamed.

  Sandra didn’t seem to think so. “It may just be insulting you. It has all the reasons to do so, I’d say.”

  The creature started going around its pot, voicing all its disapproval, then it suddenly stopped worrying about us and started digging in the ground. We kept looking at it with our mouths open.

  When the hole was wide enough, it buried the pot, covering it with terrain to the top, and went back inside it when it was done.

  Yet again, I looked at Sandra, confused. “What does it mean?”

  Before she could even answer, a golden nuggets rain hit us. They were coming from the pot, they were being shot like missiles. I was more than sure that the creature wanted to hit me, in fact, Sandra wasn’t even touched.

  I couldn’t resist, and I immediately kneeled to pick them up. Sandra started laughing.

  I stayed just like that, confused, with all those golden nuggets in my hands. “What’s wrong?”

  She kept laughing. “It’s not gold! It has never been!”

  Of course it was gold, as pure as it gets. We sold kilos of it and nobody ever complained.

  She pointed at the pot. “It’s alive! It has always been alive!”

  I still couldn’t get what she was saying.

  She got more explicit. “It’s not a pot, that’s the creature!”

  “And what about the leprechaun?” I asked, I was confused.

  “There’s no leprechaun and no golden pot at the rainbow’s end. They’re the same thing! That pot and the leprechaun are the same thing.”

  It made no sense. “It’s its house, yeah, but…”

  “No, it’s not a house, I was also wrong. Or maybe it is, but it’s not as you think. It’s a shell, the shell that protects it, just like a snail.”

  I shook my head. “Snails don’t detach from their shell.”

  “This one does. Temporarily, at least when it has to move. It can detach, but only for a short amount of time.”

  “How can you say…”

  “It wanted to get back inside its shell! It was trying to get back inside when you were taking it away, that’s why it was mad! It absolutely had to get back inside.”

  I frowned. “You mean…that I didn’t kill it? That it…drained, just like a toy soldier at the end of its charge? That it had no more strength? That putting it back inside was enough to restore it?”

  “That seems to be the case.”

  “But…but…what is it?”

  “I have no idea, but it’s alive. That shell is alive.”

  “How do you deduce that?”

  Her smile became malicious. “From what you’re holding in your hands.”

  “The gold?” I asked, perplexed.

  “It’s not gold”, she repeated. “Haven’t you understood it yet? Yet you saw that they don’t care about it, it’s got no use.”

  “So what?”

  “It regenerates, you say. Every day, new gold is formed. Day by day, forever.”

  Disappointment was on her face, but I still couldn’t get it.

  “How can you not get it! It’s not gold! What does every living being produce, every day, incessantly, for all their life time?”

  I swallowed.

  “Excrements, my dear! Those thigs that you’re holding are excrements!”

  I shook my head. I didn’t care much about those being excrements, it was still gold, and was worth a fortune. Something else was making me anxious. “That’s why you say it’s alive? Because of what it produces?”

  “It can’t be a shell. Shells don’t make excrements; don’t you think so?”

  I looked at her, again. “How is it possible? How did we not notice? It has been in our hands for years.”

  “How could have we noticed? It wasn’t complete, a part was missing.”

  “But they can’t be…excrements! It does not eat! What would it have eaten, in all these years?”

  The smile left her face for a moment. “It must have found something.”

  I couldn’t get it. “What?”

  “Us!” she mumbled. “Didn’t you notice? Didn’t you notice how much we’ve changed since we took it? What have we become?”

  “It…it…”

  “I don’t know what it has eaten, but it has taken something from us. We once weren’t like that. Greedy, possessive, mean. It changed us! It has taken something from us!”

  What she was saying was terrible, but I couldn’t deny that it was the truth. I changed, we had both changed ever since we brought that pot in our farm. We were afraid that anybody could have taken it from us. We locked ourselves out of the world, prisoners in our same house.

  I went back looking at the pot. “What now? What do we do now?”

  No answer was necessary. The orange light that was coming from the inside changed, it started to pulse, and then suddenly it lifted towards the sky, and the rainbow appeared. It made a perfect arc, a sparkling, colorful circle, and fell not too far from us, in a nearby field.

  I immediately understood. “The other one is there? The one that attacked me? Did it move there?”

  Sandra was looking at that pulsating light, fascinated, she was smiling once again. “The other one, that one is a female”, she pointed out.

  “Eh? How can you say so?”

  “She was different, smaller, and…” She didn’t end the sentence, then sniggered. “Call it feminine intuition.”

  I was still incredulous. Yet, in those five years that we kept the pot, it has never produced any rainbow. “Are they communicating? Is this what you’re trying to say? Through the rainbow? Is that what it’s for?” I asked her, proud of myself for getting it.

  She made a weird laugh. “I actually think they’re fucking.”

  She left me stunned.

  “She waited for him for five years”, she mumbled. “She looked for him for five years. She has never given up. Yeah, it has to be love, it can’t be anything else.”

  It was a weird effect, watching that beautiful rainbow. Its colors seemed to be dancing. It made me feel different. That inexhaustible hunger
that had dominated my life ever since I’ve been the pot’s owner was now gone. Sandra also seemed completely different.

  “Let’s leave them alone”, Sandra said. “Let’s give them a bit of privacy. I think they really deserve it.”

  And just like that, we got back home and… gosh we found ourselves in bed, even if it was just the morning. And it was an unforgettable Sunday, who cares about golden nuggets.

  And what about our leprechauns? You bet, they fuck, they fuck just like mandrills, and in just a while, all our farm was surrounded by rainbows. We counted more and more every morning.

  And what about me? Well, I don’t have much time for fishing now. After all, somebody had to take on the duty to keep clean, to clear the fields of all those useless excrements!

  September 2010

  LITTLE MOUSE

  Translation by Wilo Guitarz

  Little Mouse hated his cage.

  From what he could remember, it had always been there. He had to have been born inside it, from whom he couldn’t remember. He had no memory of ever having had a mother, nor siblings.

  There was that turd, and no one else.

  Well, until he came, the Talking Cricket. He had said he was a Cricket, Little Mouse didn’t even know what that meant. It was obvious that he could talk.

  At first, he didn’t know what words were either, but Cricket had taught him. He was a very wise animal, he knew so many things.

  He knew there were other things beyond that cage. He’d even seen them. There was what he called the world, with trees and houses, and many roads, and people. A lot of people, so many.

  People were different from them, another race, Cricket said. But he didn’t have to worry, because he would never see them.

  Except the turd, of course.

  According to Cricket, it wasn’t respectful to call her that, but Little Mouse thought it appropriate. He knew everything about turds, his cage was full of them since that turd (the person!) almost never cleaned it.

  Cricket had told him that he belonged to her, that he had to accept it, he even said it was best this way, that the outside world was ugly, but Little Mouse didn’t believe him. If it was so bad, why did Cricket always have that dreamy tone every time he spoke about it?