Bottom of the Sky

by Rodrigo Fresán

  And, of course, they’re lying.

  They say all of this suspecting that I don’t believe them, but to believe is an order and I shall obey.

  So I nod and I don’t say that Lieutenant George Clooney (who, of course, was completely crazy) was the first to fall and that we were all struck by a black wind, that came out of nowhere and blew over us and extinguished our fire and made us burn like we’d never burned before.

  We start to go extinct sweetly, as if falling asleep. Some of us, even, adopt the custom of going to die on the mountain where we built the spaceships for the invasion, the spaceships that never lifted off, bound for Earth, and that now were almost part of the landscape, as if they’d always been there, from the beginning of time until the end of time.

  And, reaching this point, I always loved that oh so human, oh so primitive, oh so childish custom of wondering “What time is it?” or “What day is it.” And immediately responding with the most absurd of abstractions. With numbers.

  And feeling oh so satisfied.

  Four days later, I wake up in a military hospital in the Green Area in Bagdad (enough with the whole Grynarya thing) and this is as far as my attempt to pass all this off as a science-fiction novel—as something that took place on another, faraway planet—goes.

  Now I’m someone else.

  I’ve changed.

  I’m far from home, indeed.

  And, in a way, on another planet.

  But it’s another planet that is on this planet.

  Here I am.

  There you are. There you were. We found you. All of you. Living in a world with conditions ideal for our survival and, at the same time, so different from our own. So much more fun.

  “THEY’RE CALLED LIBERTY FRIES, BITCH!!!” screams the soldier in the bed next to mine. The soldier who is strangling the poor nurse who had the bad idea of offering him french fries with his hamburger.

  The soldier is missing his legs and he’s hanging off the poor girl’s neck. The soldier’s arms are covered with tattoos and the nurse’s face is starting to acquire that same blue-ink color when three military police officers come in and hit him over the head one and two and three times until the poor lunatic falls back and lets her go and drops from the bed to the floor, but still doesn’t lose consciousness though he’s completely lost his mind. They stick him with a couple syringes and wheel him out on a stretcher, like a giant baby, while, in sweet voices so he stops crying, they explain to him that the thing with liberty fries is no longer current. They tell him that they’re called french fries again and that the French are our friends again and that everything is fine and then, outside, something—a car, a woman, a child, all three at once—blows up.

  Everything blows up.

  So much funnier . . . And, yes, we were brought up with the contemplation of our endless sunsets. We learned to chart stories and myths in the patterns of their colors. Calm and gentle fables where almost nothing happened. Just a slight shift, a soft burst of violet on yellow lasting several centuries. But with you it was so different, so much happened in your stories. And the things that happened were so absurd that, suddenly, we could talk or think of nothing else.

  And, yes, of course, we were still vanishing.

  In the bed on the other side of me, there’s a soldier named Kowalski.

  I’ve always wondered why there’s always a soldier with the last name Kowalski. In books, in movies, in television shows, in real life. I wonder if all those Kowalskis might belong to the same family or a secret brotherhood. A hidden and occultist tribe dedicated exclusively to the production of Kowalski-brand soldiers. Pilots, marines, Special Forces, whatever you want and whatever you need. For high in the sky or the depths of the oceans or the most impenetrable jungles: we’ve got a Kowalski for you.

  The fact that the soldier in the bed next to mine is named Kowalski, also, calms me. Because—statistically speaking—Kowalskis don’t end well; while those in their vicinity almost always live to tell the tale, to recollect with cup or glass in hand, years later, in a bar or at a party or alone in front of a mirror, the great guy who was Seymour or Mark or Johnny or even Jerzy Kowalski.

  And—I have to say it—this Kowalski is my second Kowalski. My first Kowalski wasn’t a classic Kowalski. The classic Kowalski is the one who dies in your arms asking you, when you make it home, to visit his girlfriend and his mother and deliver them a bloodstained letter or a broken watch or a kiss. The classic Kowalski is, also, the one who falls, wounded, and orders you—because his rank is higher than yours—to “Go on alone, don’t worry about me.”

  But this war is strange, different.

  All wars have become different and strange since Vietnam, because in one way or another all wars still are Vietnam, someone said that once, and they were right.

  Which means that the Kowalskis are no longer what they were.

  Which brings me back to my first Kowalski: we found him wandering among the dunes, his uniform in tatters, blond hair and blue eyes and an idiot smile and repeating over and over: “Draw me a sheep . . . Draw me a sheep . . .”

  What is essential is not invisible to the eyes. What is essential is what is visible. What is essential is to never stop watching. Ever. And so, before long, we took the liberty of interfering, of making certain modifications.

  And, reaching this point, maybe I should ask your forgiveness.

  But it wouldn’t be sincere.

  We would do it all again.

  Again and again.

  How do you put it?

  Ah, yes: “The show must go on.”

  This Kowalski—my second Kowalski, here in the hospital—isn’t in great shape either: hands bandaged, face red with burns and blisters, pupils white.

  “Chemical weapons?” I ask.

  Kowalski lets out a sigh that wants to—but can’t—be a chuckle. “Chemical weapons” has become, at this point, like saying “Mission accomplished.”

  “No. Mirage. Or I think that’s what it was . . .” he answers.

  I don’t need to ask for an explanation. Kowalski wants to talk. It’s not easy for him. The words come out intermittently. His sentences are short. But, still, he has a story and he needs to share it with someone, to pass it along before it’s too late. To give it up the way someone gives up a puppy so it can live somewhere else. And he barks but doesn’t bite:

  “We were out there . . . Somewhere in the desert . . . No idea what we were doing . . . Not knowing what we’re doing is what we’re the best at doing . . . You know . . . A small patrol . . . About ten men . . . Two vehicles . . . Then we saw something . . . At first we thought it was a group of Bedouins . . . Or something like that . . . Sand people . . . About twenty of them . . . We told them to put their hands up . . . But nothing . . . They came up to us slowly . . . And suddenly we saw . . . And here comes the really funny part. They weren’t men . . . I mean, yes, they were men, so to speak . . . But they were made of snow . . . No, they weren’t snowmen . . . They were men of snow . . . There in the sun . . . Not melting . . . We all saw them . . . And we looked at each other and couldn’t believe it . . . We got up close to them . . . I took off my gloves and touched them . . . They were cold . . . They were cold like snow . . . And they seemed to give off a faint glow . . . And it was like they were buzzing . . . We lost our shit . . . All of us . . . We took off our uniforms . . . Started to play . . . Like kids . . . Snowball fight . . . We took the men of snow apart . . . Some of us tasted the snow . . . And it was the best snow we’d ever eaten . . . Or drank . . . Later, back at base, nobody believed us . . . They put us under observation . . . We started getting sick . . . High levels of radiation, apparently . . . Don’t worry . . . They’ve already determined that it’s not contagious . . . But I’m the last one left . . . I’m sure I don’t have much time . . . But, if you asked me if I’d do it again . . . Or if it was worth it . . . Well . . .”

  “Well,” is the last word that Kowalski says. All of a sudden the room is full of nurses an
d doctors.

  “He’s fried! Like liberty fries!” the soldier in the other bed starts shouting.

  That soldier isn’t named Kowalski.

  I don’t remember his name.

  And, yes, the obvious question for all of us—who had everything, wanted for nothing—was what was it that attracted us to you, what seduced us?

  And the answer is easy.

  The answer is that you had something we never had.

  The answer is that substance you call snow. We couldn’t stop staring at the snow the way all of you can’t stop staring at a painting, a sculpture, a work of art.

  The snow, the snow, the snow . . .

  They’ve sent us to guard a museum, but they’ve made it clear that, in the event of looting, we shouldn’t intervene. Only open fire in self-defense, a crackling voice tells us, a voice that walks and talks. A walkie-talkie voice.

  It’s a strange order.

  It’s another strange order to be added to an increasingly long list of strange orders.

  There are four of us. Two teams. Snipers.

  My good marksmanship has led to this promotion and I don’t entirely understand what it entails. But my comrades look at me with respect, as if they were looking into the infallible eye of a machine. There exists, it seems, an instantaneous sniper mystique that consists, primarily, in speaking little and in monosyllables. And we move in twos. Sniper and spotter. The latter aims the eye and the former aims the bullet. The former pulls the trigger as soon as the latter provides the perfect criteria for hitting the target: atmospheric conditions, distance to the target, possible last minute variables.

  Sometimes we switch roles.

  Or switch partners with some other team.

  So we don’t get bored.

  So there we are, it’s night and, all of a sudden, we start to hear a rising hum approaching from the horizon. The glow of torches lights up the night and hundreds of people advance down the avenue toward where we’re stationed. We ready our weapons, but the mob passes by and goes up the museum stairs and tears down the doors and goes inside shouting. It seems like the end of one of those movies where the hunter becomes the hunted. We watch the scene through infrared goggles, but we don’t need them because, from our position, we can clearly see and track the movement of the torches along the stairs and hallways of the museum. “Pac Man,” someone says, the other sniper’s spotter. I don’t know him, I don’t know his name, but—though it’s characteristic newbie humor, a humor that soon disappears—I have to admit that he’s right: little lights running around behind windows and, every so often, one of the windows explodes and someone falls into the emptiness and someone else laughs from a balcony watching them fall. Soon, a column of smoke begins to rise from one of the internal courtyards and we can hear gunshots and, this really is strange, dance music. It’s clear that they’re having an unforgettable party inside. We report what’s happening to the command center, but they tell us not to worry, that everything is fine and under control. Under and control are the two words I’ve heard the most since I got here, the two sounds whose meaning I’ve seen embodied the least in the reality of this time and space.

  But, I suppose, it doesn’t matter.

  I suppose that this thing about under and control is a personal issue, my problem. And that also, in a way, it’s under control.

  At sunrise, the museum invaders start to emerge. They’ve got the look of people who have spent not one night but multiple millennia shut inside. Like they’d turned, in a few short hours, into museum pieces. Into museum pieces that aren’t particularly valuable, but still worthy of being exhibited.

  The first ones to emerge are still holding torches, now gone out, useless, but they refuse to put them down. They’ve become an extension of their arms. We watch them run away.

  Then, around midday, the whole thing gets even stranger.

  I see a man emerge dressed in the golden robes of an ancient king, martial and ominous, his friends bowing before him and not, it doesn’t seem to me, in jest or mockery.

  I see another man emerge, without any pants and with a scroll hanging out of his ass.

  I see another emerge carrying two mummies, one over each shoulder, that crumble as soon as the sun touches them. The mummies turn to dust when the light strikes them and the man tries to hold on, to wrap his arms around them; but, like the sand of the desert, the sand of the mummies slips through his fingers.

  Dear mother, wherever you are: today I saw something I never thought I’d see in my life. Today I saw dust turn to dust.

  Really.

  I see things—too many things—that I don’t want to see and know I’ll never forget. If I live to tell all this, in a few years, I’ll wake up from a nightmare screaming and in bed next to someone who, I hope, will love me for who I am and not for who I might have been. Someone who will ask me what I was dreaming and I’ll answer, like a person getting up in front of the class to recite the lesson: “I dreamed what I always dream: mummies crumbling under the blinding sun of Iraq.”

  But now, no doubt, a lot more has to happen before that.

  And, all of a sudden, one of the museum walls is coming down and a tractor pushes out through the hole, dragging an enormous statue behind it: the effigy of a god with the head of a man and the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle, passing right in front of my position. One of those ancient and combo-mix gods. Gods greater and more powerful than men because they were able to take the best parts of the best animals for their own bodies. And it looks at me. And I think I see, in its eyes of blind stone, an infinite sadness.

  The man driving the tractor sees me look at it and looks at me and smiles the whitest of smiles and blows me a kiss with his hand and shouts: “Allah is great!”

  Soon I will cross the desert. Soon I will make the pilgrimage to the mountain of the spaceships. Soon . . .

  Desert nights are full of sounds. In the darkness, the white desert sounds like a green jungle. In the darkness, you hear all the noises made by all the desert animals invisible by day. At night, all the desert animals come out to see us. And to talk among themselves about what they see.

  There are four of us.

  Two sniper teams.

  Two snipers and two spotters who can become two spotters and two snipers.

  Names do not interest us.

  We don’t need them. Our gear is already too heavy to weigh it down with first and last names.

  We are, yes, the best of the best.

  We’ve heard what people say about others and we’ve heard what people say about us.

  We are only deployed on big occasions.

  So, they summoned us to a meeting in a Bagdad basement.

  They showed us maps and photographs. Blurry photographs, but still, I knew I was on the right path.

  They told us our mission was to take out The Unmaker.

  “Deactivate him.”

  They told us that The Unmaker was responsible for all of it. For the towers and for everything else.

  One of the spotters or snipers interrupted and said that he thought that the person responsible was someone else, that guy who sent messages from a cave and . . . First, they ordered him to be quiet. Then they explained to him—to all of us—that no, that wasn’t the case. That that other man was nothing but a façade. A curtain. One of the many curtains concealing the individual who was truly responsible for all of it. Someone who called himself The Unmaker.

  Then they made us listen to some recordings. Sounds and noises. And a voice reciting a countdown in a too-perfect English.

  “That’s him,” they told us.

  Then they put us on a helicopter.

  And dropped us out in the desert.

  Here we are.

  You don’t know, you’re not aware, of how lucky you are and have always been.

  You don’t know what an immense privilege it is to have stories to tell.

  Those first nights in that desert, we told each other our stories. They all started
the same, we coincided on our first words, modifying that introduction of meetings for alcoholics or addicts or whatever: “I’m Special Forces and I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m doing here and . . .”

  To begin with, under the first moon, we all lied.

  We all claimed that we signed up just days after the towers came down, riding the crest of a frenzied wave of patriotism. But by the second night we were already telling different stories. In war, almost immediately, you tell the truth and dispense with lies, because nobody wants to die lying, in the name of a lie invented in offices on the other side of the world. There’s nothing more instantly superstitious than a soldier in combat. Soon, everything is omens and signs and portents and conjurations that, you think, can only be neutralized by telling the truth or what you think is the truth.

  So, surrounded by the possibility of death, we take turns telling the stories of our lives.

  “Well . . . I was always intrigued by those theories of gods as extraterrestrial astronauts. The pyramids. You know . . . So it occurred to me that it was the quickest and easiest way to come see all of that. The ruins. I never had enough money. And the truth is, I didn’t think all of this would last so long. Or that Egypt was closer,” says Sniper 1.

  The three of us look at him the way you look at something you don’t entirely understand.

  “Ah . . . Well, my grandpa worked on building the atomic bomb. They say my father died aglow, radioactive, and that he thought he was an extraterrestrial, that he’d been replaced by a being from another planet, like in that old movie . . . the one where those pods came from space and turned into human replicas, remember? One day they came and took him away and we never saw him again,” says Spotter 2.

  “I was born in New Mexico . . . You know, near that site where the flying saucers supposedly crashed . . . and, hey, have you noticed that we’re all into science fiction?” says Spotter 1.

  He says it in a very thin voice, the voice of the boy he once was and, in a way, still is: the boy who not long ago promised himself, that when he was grownup, he would get a job where he could say things like “Alpha-Tango-Foxtrot” all the time.