Fantastic Metropolis

In the months of the Angry Sun a strange wind blows, a deadly wind that comes from the north; they say its touch is icy, deadly, capable of stopping a man in his place, of freezing his gestures, of blowing out his life, his will, as if he were nothing more than a frail, helpless candle. That wind, which no one has named yet, whistles in anger across our roofs, crying out in pain when the sharp metal edges tear apart its ethereal skin. The wind blows for days on end, and then it’s gone, as mysteriously as it had appeared. And during those days, during those ours of feat and fight, we close ourselves inside our huts, cutting off all communications among the groups, tough we keep the family by our side. We shouldn’t be blamed, it is the wind that forces us. The fear forces us. Under the threat, we discover how much our family matters to us, and we deny the world, we deny each other: having to bear the knowledge of our frailty: finding out we could die any second, and that no one could help us, neither could we help them. We pray that either their shouts wouldn’t be heard, or that they be soon forgotten and be lost in the crowd of our daily, tormented thoughts. We pray for so many things: such is the size of our weakness. I, myself, pray not to hear her name again, when the wind blows - because her name is in the wind.

Liiiiiiiiisssssssssaaaaaaaaaa…

“Come on, wake up! Daydreaming again?”

It was the hollowing call of Peter, the white bearded giant, strong as a mountain. He was the family leader: on his shoulders lay our lives. They should call you Atlas, I often thought.

The women help tight to the kids, shrunken against a corner of the room. They kissed the children frequently, a mindless, instinctive ritual, wrapping their arms around them like walls. Their wet lips, which resembled shells, kissed urgently the little faces as if saying You’re here You’re still here You’ll always be here. And the children, enchanted by the wind but indifferent to all that kissing, looked up. They always looked up, when the wind blew, trying to look the enemy in the eyes, mute, steady, trembling with fear but also with wonder. “You want to be like the wind”, I’ll write when I find myself in another place, far from this one, far from the center of memory and regret, “you want to be strong and fearless, walk for miles without effort, bend mountains as you pass.” And then I tried to follow their gaze, but the roof was so low, so dark, and it shook with such violence in the uneven fight. I saw how frail was the shield that protected me from certain death. I returned my gaze to the earth.

There was a strange silence amidst all that banging, an island of peace and dark devotion that was our nucleus, our hut and its three or four open rooms, our little universe that had no privacy as the world around us had no life. A silence that some of us, the weaker ones, tried to stop with witty remarks and swift laughs, uncertainty in their voices, full of fear. But the situation had no mercy, allowed no distractions, and we had to stay there, listening to the storm, like dumb animals.

And the Angry Sun shone upon us its fierce rage. The bloody sphere entered through the shutters, through the watch holes, colouring with anguish and death the little faces, the mother’s kisses, the slow breaths of the men. We had to use all our fuel to keep the hut warm, so we had almost none to spare to light the place - and so, it was the light of that pompous star, that red giant, that baptized us in its strange sacrament.

“Wake up, man! I told you, we’ve got things to do!”

It was time to act, to save the soul in a corner of the mind and let the body be its master. To act, as methodically as a mother kisses her son: but we kissed life, kissed it full on the lips, for all of us. Using organic glues, cellular automata fibres, nanobot gels or the true simplicity of a welding iron, we mended the fractures in the ceramic walls, the stress points in metals. Sometimes we found the flaws using more worn out instruments… like our hands. In those hands the family trusted their lives. It was as if the hands themselves were aware of the responsibility they held. And only if it was possible or if there was time did we confirm with other instruments, the real ones.

During the work the men muttered “It’s almost done almost done” but it was not the work they meant. It was the wind that was almost done, almost gone through, putting an end to those days of fear and hiding. Their eyes never left the monotonous walls of the hut, they were believers worshipping a god, amending things, holding another panel against the east wall because the wind was blowing stronger there. In their silent mutter we heard our prayers. Almost. Another minute, just one more, another one; another hour, again another hour; another day. And then the world would go back to sleep. Though it had no life, it had nothing but ice and emptiness and us, it would harm us no further. We would be able to walk its ground and hear it sleeping.

The worst thing was that they remained intact: I would tell the tale, with my literary delivery, as if this were no more than fiction, a fantasy dream. If they didn’t remain intact, perhaps the fear would not be so great, perhaps we would manage to hold out. But nothing was damaged in them. Their hands, held against the body, had such a normal way of being there, the skin so perfect, the gesture so natural, the hair held upright as if by a light breeze. The clothes, finely drawn, were full of real wrinkles that time and use had placed there. And the faces had the sombre look of knowledge, resignation and despair. The detail that only high technology could fabric; but such technology hadn’t been applied, nor the persistence of a meticulous artist. Only a price was required, the highest that could be paid. And then the hands had stopped, the bodies had stopped, time had stopped for that garden of statues, surrounded by the remains of a broken-down hut. The eternal garden of our memory flowers. And we couldn’t even touch the frozen fingers, the cheeks that the sun kept rosy. We couldn’t caress the petals of those flowers for fear of damaging them, of knocking down the statue which we dreamed might return to life, return to life.

If only I had been more convincing… if she had remained in my hut just that one time… if only I had been strong and put aside her resolution to be with her family. If only I had loved her enough. All those ifs fell from my mouth into the cold air, crystals of impossibility, and they were taken by the wind, the wind took with it my desires and regrets and blew them across the world, filled the desolate planet with them, turning it into stone, into a statue, into a silent, everlasting legacy.

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“Still Memories” originally appeared in Non-Events on the Edge of the Empire, published by Simetria in 1996. Translated from the Portuguese by the author.