Findesferas Part 6
Juan
'Ooohhh Atyrá, place of love and lauuuughter…' Juan was in ultimate boredom mode, inventing a song without knowing where it was going.
'Land of hope and justice, we will meet lots of soldiers and carry Paraguay to victoreeeeee!'
If Matías were with him he would say ‘Oh, come on, Juan! If you’re going to start that crap at least make an effort to get it rhyming. The tune will have to go as well, it’s no good.’
'Um… Ooohhhh Atyrá… Ok. Let's try… Atyrá's where I live, I live there all the day.'
Atyrá was on the brain because it was right in front of him, along the tree-lined streets, there within the hour.
A pleasant breeze kept him away from madness, and he sauntered along the street listening to the birdcall.
He came up to the city entrance. A broken, soot-clogged sign had been hanging up by two strings, but one of them had broken and the sign swung around in the breeze, obscured by the dirt:
"BIENV IDO A YRA
dad limp , sal able y pr uctiva”
Welcome to Atyrá, a clean, wholesome and productive city.
Atyrá used to be the cleanest city in the whole country, but it didn’t look that way anymore. Little houses were caked in thick soot, the pavements black and dirty. The warmth of the streets could be felt through the ever-thinner soles of Juan’s boots. The air was as thick as in Ypacaraí, but this did not feel like a city going about its business. There was no one around. Dead. So much for finding other soldiers and getting back to it. Juan was relieved. One day alive, another day alive. He gravitated towards the church, the highest building around, not saying a word. There was a scent of flowers and dry grass drifting up from the house gardens, friendly and familiar. With no flag atop the church to signify safety, he couldn’t relax yet. Juan spotted a man patrolling the roof, and hid himself in the shade of the tree. Another man appeared on the roof. They waved to each other. They were striking up a friendly conversation, talking away for some time, and Juan began to feel less threatened, but still he observed from his hiding place. One of the men on the roof looked puzzled, and Juan shuddered when he pointed directly at where he hid behind the tree.
'Shit! What do I do?' said Juan to himself, so used to having his brother by his side to give him advice, 'I'll stay here for a while… but they clearly know I'm here, he pointed right at me…but I'm going to wait… how will that help? I could…'
’Hey!’ shouted one of the men from the roof, ‘I can see you, there’s no point in hiding. You’re a soldier, right?’
Matías would have stood up and walked into the street. Juan would have to be his own Matías for now.
'Yes, I'm fighting for Paraguay. I came here because the rest of my troop died, and I lost my brother. I'm looking to get back out there.'
'You're fighting for Paraguay? But which side?'
'Which side are you on?'
'…I can't remember.'
'Well when you do, I'm fighting for that side.' They were both getting lightheaded from the need to keep shouting to each other.
'Nice try. You'll have to meet the field marshal first, he'll decide what to do with you.'
'The… the field marshal's here? Can you take me to him?'
'No need. He's probably coming to you now. For your own good, do not let him see your back. If he decides that you’re okay, see you later.’ The man reduced his volume as he spoke, such that the “later” was addressed to someone not two inches from his face. He turned around and disappeared over the brim of the rooftop. The other man on the roof had his arms crossed. He was smiling and shaking his head. He had been doing so for the whole conversation. He started whistling two notes, over and over, like a lullaby. There was a loud rumbling from the top of the street, the sound of a chainsaw or an engine, but how was this possible? The sound turned into a noise which grew to cacophonous proportions as a train of strange wooden carts with what looked like furnaces on top came round the corner, and the sound reverberated through the ground and shook the trees. On the carts were a huge number of soldiers, steely-eyed and serious browed, but haggard looking: all the fat had been chiselled out of them. The petals that gave off such a pleasing smell shook back and forth and began to fall to the floor. A portly man was posing on the front of the first cart, in Napoleonic attire, arm raised in salute. As the train approached, Juan returned to the tree trunk for support, slinking down, hands pressed against his ears, pushing the arms of his glasses into the sides of his head, eyes fiercely closed.
'Welcome!' growled the portly man. Black smoke puffed out of the many furnaces, a fierce heat glowing inside. The sound was insidious. It wheedled through Juan's hands and shook his eardrums. The train of carts stopped right in front of his feet, and the man peered down at him.
'Oh yes, a new soldier yes, is that what's happening is it? How many of you is there, young man?'
'Just me.'
'Right then. Paraguayan?'
'Yes.'
'For which side?'
'Paraguay.'
'It's like that is it?'
The man stared at him, drinking in his unflinching features, Juan desperately trying not to twitch as the marshal looked him up and down as if to say ‘Who do you think you are?’ He held onto a wooden pole on the cart and leaned dangerously off the front, about to fall, bringing himself closer to Juan, the rest of the soldiers looking straight ahead, not noticing what was happening.
Juan was close enough to smell whisky on the man’s breath as he said ‘Good. Just how we like it here. Splendid! One more is it? Fantastic! Then we’ll be two hundred and one, why not? I think it a fine number!’
He hopped off the cart and grabbed Juan’s hand in his, shaking it vigorously. Juan was shocked, dusted off his trousers with his free hand and squinting out the sunlight through his glasses.
'My name is Juan. Nice to meet you sir.'
'Juan! Fine name indeed for a fine gentleman. I'm the field marshal, and these are my soldiers.'
The marshal continued to shake Juan’s hand, beaming his smile.
'Right, hop on a cart and we'll take you back to the base. Oh and do make sure and meet my family, we've got my mother Juana, brother Venancio and my sisters Inocencia and Rafaela back there, love them dearly so I do, get yourself acquainted young man.'
'His family were with him? With all these soldiers?' thought Juan. He doubted the marshal's mother was a fighting woman, and thought it a bit dangerous to take civilians along.
The marshal jumped up onto his cart and nodded at one of his soldiers to start up again. The soldier tugged on a lever and the furnace blazed hotter. Another soldier was at the back of the cart, pulling with all his strength on a lever to change the direction, and the sound of the furnace made the effort heard. The marshal now shielded his eyes from the sun and peered around, like a brave captain on the front of a ship, fit for painting. One by one, the carts started to turn around, and by the way the soldiers looked at Juan, he didn’t feel like jumping onto any of the carts. He tried to see how far the connected carts stretched back, then snapped his gaze back to the marshal in case he had accidentally shown the man his back. He started to get nervous until the last cart turned around, and he noticed the space left for him, jumping on without great difficulty.
As the cart began to shift, Juan adjusted his balance, and embarrassingly grabbed at one of the soldiers to steady himself over a particularly large bump in the road. Behind him were large cages, like those of a travelling circus show for the prisoners of war. A chain of people sat in a semi-circle in the first cage, staring up at him meekly. Juan caught the eyes of an older woman, and jerked his head away, not wanting to engage. What were they, Argentinian? They didn’t look like Brazilians. He spied at them out of the corner of his eye. The marshal was quizzing him about his allegiance, so they could be rogue Paraguayans, but… wait, there were… three women, one man… meet my… mother, brother… They looked about the right age…
'Are you the marshal's family?' said Juan. The mother smiled at him.
'Yes dear, that's us. What's your name, son?'
She had a thin, wrinkly face, kind eyes, grey hair flat and dragged down. In her traditional Paraguayan dress, delicate lace but dirt-stained, she looked like a doll, tired and small on the floor of the cage.
'I'm Juan.' He withstood the impulse to offer her his hand through the bars.
'Nice to meet you, Juan.' The rest of the family looked glumly at the floor, ashamed.
'So… are you all imprisoned?'
'That's right.'
'Why is that?'
'My son thinks we've been conspiring against him, but…' she was obviously pained, 'He's our family, I'm…' she composed herself, rolled her shoulders back and sat up straight.
'I was so proud of him.'
The last of Juan’s boldness was drained from all the new interactions, so he nodded at the family, and slowly turned around to face the direction of the train, thinking about how easy it would for him to fall out of favour with the marshal.
Findesferas
Two large grey circles elegantly overlapped a little like a colourless Venn diagram. The doorway was a rounded lower case m shape: then he had arrived. Juan was about to enter the captain’s office, meet the man who ran this whole vast ship of unknowable proportions, father of the nervous chattery girl who blabbered away their lunch hours, but unbeknownst to him, sang their praises in her free time. It would be great to have the captain on his side, but Juan was already resigned to his meek impression on men of that… importance, those men who were men and not some pale spirit in the body that could biologically be indentified as a man, for that was Juan, and people tended to see it. What they didn’t often see were the other qualities he had to offer, deep compassion and a sparkling emotional sensitivity, but men who were men didn’t want these things, so they thought. Men who were men conquered things and ate big chunks of meaty things, they couldn’t find space for the qualities of Juan, so he thought. But as the Venn slid apart, and Juan gingerly paced through the ‘m’, he was entering the domain of a man who was to be of great importance in the shaping of Juan.
There was a heady scent of strong aftershave, which made Juan question the last time he had even smelled anything on the ship: cold, industrial extractor fans whisked away any trace molecules of odour in every room. There were none here, which heightened the pleasantness of the captain’s smell. Blinding strip light filled the room, but the bulbs were nowhere. The light blasted the captain’s back, and his felt uniform looked like a painting in the harsh contrast. His salt and pepper pomaded hair was pulled into a rigid short ponytail, and as he swung around and the artificial gravitational force acting on his wide chest had a second delay on the turn, before swinging notably like a pendulum, Juan wrinkled his nose to think of the word ‘corpulento’, a word so fitting yet so unpleasant, because it reminded him of cuerpo, corpse.
Juan was met with a beaming smile and an overzealous handshake: ‘Ah, so here’s the man! Here he is! A pleasure my man, a pleasure to meet you!’
Juan accepted the handshake with one hand and gingerly pushed his glasses up his thin, sharp nose. ‘Yes, it’s… it’s nice to meet you too, sir.’
The handshake stopped, the captain froze. ‘Sir… Sir! Oh, I like that. Yes, you’ll go far my dear boy, you’ll go far…’ he strode over to a stainless steel cabinet, and started moving some objects around in it, unseen to Juan. ‘So tell me. What’s your situation? Who’s here with you?’
Juan’s hands fell into a loose clasp behind him. ‘Well, it’s just myself and my sister-in-law, Octavia.’
'Sister-in-law,' the captain was talking into the cabinet, clinking some glasses together, 'and where's the brother?'
'In Paraguay, with the rest, fighting the good fight and all that', said Juan, with a recognition of how trite the story was beginning to sound, but not without a familiar tinge of sadness. The captain emerged once again, with a whiskey glass half-full of a thick black liquid on ice. Juan thought it strange that he hadn't been offered a drink, but at the look of it he wasn't all that thirsty anyway.
The look on the captain’s face was of that intense stern consideration that is sometimes seen in the faces of older gentlemen, an exaggerated perplexity out of respect for the complicatedness of someone’s situation. ‘Yes, well it’s true, we’re all making sacrifices. Just me and Juliana here, very lucky we can spend so much time together… Unless she’s with you and Octavia, then she isn’t to be disturbed.’
'That's actually why I wanted to meet with you. You don't happen to know where she is?'
'Of course I do! I saw her yesterday, don't you worry about her, she can't stay away from you, she'll be back before long.'
'Oh? We always got the impression we were boring her, I don't know why she would want to hang out with us, don't think we're very cool…'
'No, no, she's told you that so she isn't embarrassed. She's very fond of you both, always telling me “They get it, they totally get it.”’ The totally was drawn out in an Americanised manner, illustrating that the captain himself did not “get it”. The room was taking on a strange odour, like dust, rubber and burning plastic, and as a result Juan was trying hard to maintain his look of soft politeness, nose twitching a bit too much.
'Well, that's very kind of her to say. Very insightful girl is Juliana, packed full of ideas.'
'She is that, yes, but they do seem to spill out of her. Got no focus. Never found an outlet for it all back on the planet. I don't fret about it too much though, I know she'll be put to good use soon.'
'No doubt.'
Small talk on The Findesferas was a very different deal. There was no weather to discuss after all, and everyone ate pretty much the same thing apart from Juliana. All the hobbies a person could have were limited too, so talk had to get bigger and faster. The most common form adopted was “future kindness”: someone would speak about his or her plans for the future, and the listener would say nothing about the hopelessness of having a plan at all. People became much closer on the ship very quickly. It was… Juan made the connection with the odd smell in the room and the swirling of the captain’s thick crystal tumbler, and saw him drinking in the smell before taking a murky sip.
'Do you mind me asking… what is that you're drinking?'
Absent-mindedly, the captain let out a ‘Hm?’ then eyes lit up with a ‘Oh, it’s um… it’s crude oil, Juan.’
Perhaps it was a bit early to get this man’s sense of humour? Or was it an old man drink Juan was unfamiliar with?
'Crude oil, sir?'
'Yes, you know, crude oil.'
'But isn't… I mean it isn't… should you be…? Isn't that bad for your health? In fact I'm pretty sure you'll die if you keep drinking that.'
The captain strode round his desk of glass and steel, bolted to the floor, look on his face like he was holding in a snicker, strode round to stand not a foot away from Juan.
'Juan, my boy, don't you worry about me!' He raised his eyebrow haughtily. 'You know, my wife used to bathe in the stuff like Cleopatra, and take it from me, it kept her mighty young.' Craning over the desk, he articulated very slowly, 'I'll die when the oil does.' One of those winks where the cheek pulls up to meet the eyebrow.
'Right, sir, well… you know yourself. Pleasure to finally meet you. Best get back to Octavia, she'll be wondering where I am.'
'Do that, Juan, you head back. Great to get a little chat on the go. You and Octavia are welcome to drop by here when you can. I do have a lot of duties, mind, but I'll make space for friends of Juliana. There's a lot on my mind you know.' His eyes narrowed, 'I'm thinking of some ways we can help each other out. Do come back soon.'
'I… I will do, captain. Goodbye for now.' Juan was confused about the etiquette, gave an awkward staggered half-bow and tried not to turn around for as long as possible as he side-stepped back towards the circular door, and when he heard the swishing sound of the two metal circles sliding open on either side, he turned away and headed out. He could still here the clinking of the ice in the glass of crude oil, and feel the captain's eyes like burning lasers on the back of his head. There was still room for surprises in The Findesferas, it seemed.
Juan went back to his room. He tried to write but came up short every time. He felt too guilty, and re-read the same stanza over and over, trying to make some sense of the words, scratching his pencil across the scrap paper so many times that it became silvery with long holes torn through it. Without knowing he had been holding his breath, Juan released a large gasp and slouched down, head touching the paper on the desk. The door slid open, and there she was. He held his finger to the person at the door so that they dared not break his inspirational streak, He raised his head and turned in surprise and embarrassment to see Octavia there, large grey streak imprinted on his forehead. She would definitely not stand for such an action. Luckily for him, she was on a peacekeeping mission.
'Hello, Juan, good to see you're getting back into poetry.'
'Well, once you get over the eternal loneliness, bleakness, darkness of space, there's actually a lot of beauty to it. And if not, there's still the bleak dark things to write about.' He smiled kindly, and deftly readjusted his shirt collar, which had slipped into his v-neck as the result of hours of sitting in a slovenly spine-crunching position. Such was the physical price of inspiration.
Octavia noticed a small note on thick cream paper sitting on the desk beside Juan, and picked it up:
You can’t ever save me. Clear your head, for your own sake. You can do it.
J
She frowned, turned it over.
167…3…9
'What's this?'
Juan snatched it back from her, ‘Oh don’t worry about that.’
She bowed her head a little, brushed the hair on the back of her head. It was no good, she was too curious now. 167…3…9.
'How have you been?' she asked.
'I guess… bored. Quite bored.'
'Me too. What's going on with us, Juan? Why can't we talk about this?'
He tried to pose cross-legged in the chair while he thought about it, but his legs didn’t fit, so he dropped one to the floor, and it was sort of comfy, but now he felt committed to it.
'I think because… what we did was awful.'
'That could be it.'
The other leg dropped.
'I-I know that perhaps um… you and Matías were having, um, y'know, marital difficulties but… that didn't give me the right to-'
'What do you mean?' She came closer, curious, leaning on the desk.
'I saw how sad you were, but I thought maybe she's sad because she didn't end things properly with him…'
'I don't know. Part of me was glad to leave him behind. We never had to have a big discussion. Nobody ever dreams that they'll be the ones to get divorced, but maybe it would have been for the best. I couldn't stand thinking that he thought everything was okay, that we'd get back together if we both survived.'
'We both became so alone so quickly, it makes sense that we would sleep together. I saw how sad you were, and I didn't know how else to comfort you.'
'So what will we tell Matías if we see him again?'
'The truth.'
'Will he… Will he forgive us?'
'That I don't know, but I believe he has to. We're husband and wife, and you his brother. That always means something. But you know that even before the war started, Matías and I weren't very happy together. I'm not excusing myself, but we were in need of repair. We never gave each other enough attention. I didn't know what to do about it. But now I think we needed some time apart. And I feel embarrassed that it has taken this distance, and this time for me to realise that, that I would put those things between both of us, to this extent, to avoid dealing with it. I'm either childish, or I've forgotten how worn down I was towards the end of it, but I can't believe it took a world war and millions of miles for me to admit it.'
It gave Octavia pleasure to consider that she would at least see Matías again.
Juan was hit with such a profound sadness and a longing to give his brother a hug, convince himself that he never slept with Octavia, that he had always been loyal to him. His eyes started to water.
'I thought so. Anyway, we're both adults. We can hold on to this for now and sort it out when what happens… happens.'
Juan snickered at the way she had put the uncertainty of their situation, another mystery to shove somewhere in his swirling head to torment him at night.
’You know that I love you both so much.’ Octavia placed a hand in his shoulder, which was quivering with his stuttering breaths.
'I know what you're thinking, but I still believe that you're a good brother, that we can still be good friends. We're all adults, we get to decide that.'
'You really think so?' Juan's tone was almost whining, 'But but you don't think there's a way we don't need to tell him?'
‘I… I think I’m pregnant, Juan.’
Matías
Time had lost Matías on his journey across the broken roads and dry fields, the sad looking ditches, the little dark streams, empty cities and towns, past the crumbling houses, forgotten flowers, fields of hay and dead soil, the nameless forests filled with black trees, as if the world around him was lost, and he rediscovering it, for who knows what purpose. Of course, without time, Matías had no reference to know how long this went on for, but it caught up with him again, eventually, and it was after such a gap in movement of the world that when he met his own emotions, it was pure relief alone that spread through him in a ruby fire when he found the enemy encampment, in the same place he’d been travelling all along: nowhere.
The dark air was enveloping and cool blue droplets of mist danced around in wide swirls with the passage of Matías through the night. He was etched out of the low crepuscular light like black construction paper on purple acetate.
Matías’ heart sank as he heard a dry crackling, and thought that the spirits were bolting through the woods for him, breaking twigs underfoot. Was he to have no rest? When was the sacrifice to end, was he to be punished for how he treated Juan so soon, for once in his life not staying silent and pushing onwards, one time only one time? The spirits were cruel… When he saw the glowing wisps of red ash rising up above the trees, and knew the sound to be a bonfire, he did not get the release he desired. His brief flirtation with the imaginary arrival of those who might hand him his fate served to alert him to how unhappy he was. And of course, bonfires meant soldiers, and not always the good guys.
As he gingerly approached on feet of balletic softness, beneath the crackle of the fire came the guttural tones of Portuguese. Enemies. But enemies meant resources, and so far from anything, the soldiers could be part of his salvation. Creeping nearer still through the orange barcode of the firelight cutting through the trees, he saw a large basket, like an old picnic box, but so close to three soldiers. He wondered if he could he sneak away with their food, and how had they managed to set up a base camp here, undetected, right in the middle of the country. Matías had stumbled upon the answer: as he got nearer still, he saw that it was the basket of a hot air balloon. Yes, the wily bastards were using coal to fire hot air balloons! Ragged looking things in their hundreds, thin bubbles of pastel cloth all sagging over each other, which upon closer inspection turned out to be women’s blouses sewn together in a coarse stitch. Matías thought of a city of cold semi-nude Brazilian women, waving goodbye to their floating husbands with one arm, covering their breasts with the other.
There was an argument between soldiers, which crackled louder than the bonfire, some two hundred yards ahead. Matías crouched down, lowering his head and slicking back his mist-studded hair, delicate ballet feet moving silently in soft, weathered boots across the sand. ‘Santa mãe de Deus!’ exclaimed one of the swaying shadow puppets by the fire, guttural inflection with a hint of jesting, holy mother of God. He was to use their incurable loudness for cover, creeping gently towards the nearest blouse-laden basket, his escape, curling his slender fingers over the rim of the basket and dragging it hush, hush on the shifting sand and gradually out of… a lull in the voices. Careful. Duck down behind the weave. Peek through. Stop breath. Sparking fire and… spark spark of the chat again. Gradually out of sight….
Matías inspected the basket. There was indeed a little device like a colander, filled with coal. He bit the red felty cloth of his sleeve and frayed the edge and ripped off a decent length of the material, burying it into the little container of coal. Fishing out his once trusty lighter, he squinted and with one eye tilted the plastic to and fro, fine well remembering it was empty and broken, and with his other hand grasping about his pocket as if playing with a bowl of flour, rolled his fingers across a wayward match. He flicked his thumbnail across the tip to light it, the one useful occasion for that trick he’d learned as a teenager hanging out in parks at night, and set fire to his piece of sleeve. ‘My god this is a stupid idea.’
The coal burned as he thought how long it took for balloons to inflate. He’d seen them as a child, but his perception of time was distorted by impatience. The soldiers shouted! They’d seen that the balloon was missing and started scoping out the forest, but Matías wasn’t far away. What to do? The air began to rise up into the balloon and Matías gasped a little at his own stupidity: in the night it was a giant lightbulb. He began to drag the basket in the opposite direction from the enemy camp, any distance was good, but another shout! He heard boots on soil, fast, bolting towards him, then a group of men appeared through the trees, running as a pack, Matías couldn’t see how many there were, but the balloon started to lift, he jumped in and faced the running men, it rose up but no! One of the men grabbed his arm and pulled him over the edge of the basket as it started to go up and up, then another man, grabbing his foot, he was suspended in the air, a human chain between soldier and basket, he shook his boots off, another man jumped up and dug his nails deep into Matías’ ankle and he screamed out, as the balloon rose further his fingers loosened over the basket edge, this was it this was it, but he drew his leg up sharply and the soldier lost grip on his ankle, he was free! But his arms were rigid aching beams, still he had to get back in the basket, he brought his shoulders up once, but his arms loosened and he slumped back down, and again, up, and convinced it used the last of his strength he kicked his feet at the bottom of the basket to swing himself over and to the inside where he lay, collapsed, exhausted, soldiers still shouting, tears running down his face.
That was it, he thought. That was exactly how close he needed to come to death to realise what an idiotic and pigheaded mistake it had been, leaving Juan behind.
Octavia
'Paulo hi, I was wondering if you wanted to come round to my house for some tea later?'
'Well I'm working all day and then-'
'Don't you normally finish at nine?'
'You want me to come round after curfew?'
'It's just for a chat. I'm sure you don't get a chance to socialise much, what with working all day.'
She gave him a playful pat on the shoulder, as she’d done so many times, but he looked back blankly.
'Well, it was only a thought', she said, playing with a strand of her hair and looking away, 'See you later then.'
She turned around and walked briskly, hoping that he wouldn’t-
'Octavia?'
'Yeah?'
'I-I'll see what I can do.'
Oh god, she thought, well maybe it won’t work. How could the Pombero know what she was thinking? Maybe Juan and Matías could fend for themselves anyway, or maybe… Maybe she could offer herself. No, no! She could never do that, her poor son. Something needed to happen, and soon.
Paulo arrived that evening, in a crisp white shirt and with combed hair, as well she expected, her expert combination of leaning-in, laughter pitch and flirtatious nudges here and there had done the trick they always did, her only trick.
'I'm so happy you could make it. Come in and sit down. Glass of water?'
'Please.'
So she came and they sat on the couch with a glass of water each, that neither had the intention of drinking. She placed hers on the table, leaned back and brushed her silvery hair out of her face, smiling, little broken creases pulled into her skin in the corner of her lips with such a delicate beauty that was not lost on Paulo. He felt the familiar young man tingle at the slightest recognition of such signals, thought he’d found the perfect time.
Indeed, that smile, the way she flicked him on the shoulder and leaned her weight towards him so that the couch folded them in together, he could be forgiven for leaning in to kiss her, but so sharply did she turn away, no, no, not again, she thought, surely this isn’t what I am… Then she blurted it out: ‘Kuarahy Jára, come and take your cigars and rum’, and looked shamefully to the floor, praying it wouldn’t work, but praying harder that it could be over.
Paulo thought ‘Some expression I don’t get, she’s forgotten how much younger I am. Well then… I don’t know why I’m here.’
'Why is it so dark tonight?' he said, twisting the glass of water around in his hands, eyes not leaving the dark ripples on the surface. Because he knew, because he was getting closer, and the purple line on the horizon started to dim and the grey wiry clouds grew darker. The pale light of the flickering living room bulbs using up the last of their allocated juice snuffed out, the white of the houses outside turned grey then black as the darkness closed in on the room, on Paulo, the reflection on the glass extinguished, the dull sheen of his glistening face sucked away.
All the sound left and the air was suddenly so dry that Octavia itched at her arms, turning her head from Paulo. All the light outside was gone, then she heard a soft knocking on the glass, and jerked her head up to see those two shining white eyes again, and she bent over, panting, clutching at her stomach.
'What is it Octavia? What's going on?'
The Pombero tapped his calloused little fingertips on the glass, waiting to come in.
Octavia spread out her hands, taking her skull within her fingers, and thinking of the spider, plugged her thumbs into her ears so all she could hear was the rumbling of her own blood. Don’t look, don’t look and you’ll have them back again, don’t watch and you can forget all about it, don’t look and-
Paulo placed a hand on her shoulder and she jumped.
'Is everything okay? What's happening to you?'
'Paulo this was a mistake- you have to go, now!'
'Are you sure you're okay?'
'I'll be fine I'm sorry, look, please you have to go now, leave!'
He stood up, the tapping at the window stopped, there was sound again, of the birds and crickets, but the eyes were still there for a moment, then the slow blink came, and nothing.
'Octavia, you don't need to worry: I won't bother you again.'
All the sadness that he had was in those eyes. He bowed his head and left for the still night.
Octavia lay back on the couch, ‘Oh god did that really happen did I invite him over and I ruined it that was it, was my chance.’
Octavia went up the stairs to Ana’s room, where she had been pacing around then sitting down, trying out breathing exercises, anything to control the panic, dreading when Octavia would come.
She turned to Octavia.
'Is it over?'
Octavia whimpered, huge round tears pooling in her eyes, she pressed a hand to her mouth and shook her head, with a muffled ‘I couldn’t do it oh god I couldn’t do it!’
Ana ran over to her and clutched her close to her chest.
'It's okay, dear, really it's okay, I'm so sorry I ever put you through that. You did the right thing, you have no reason to feel ashamed.'
There they stood in the dark room crying, two huddled shapes in the night.
'So what happens now? What happens to the twins?'
'What will happen is a fate that we've been putting off for too long.'
'He'll really kill them for his brothers oh god Ana then you must know that this is my fault alone, if they die you have me to blame.'
She nodded her head, lip quivering, looking to the floor.
'Octavia, this was not our doing. You were brave, in a way that no one could ask of you. I protected them for as long as I could, but if this is the way it needs to be, it's time for us to accept that.'
'I can't believe it. I can't believe it!'
'Shh, it's okay. It's the way that it is.'
'But… we were good people Ana, were we not? Why is this happening?'
'It's the way that it is.'
