The Relic

by Francisco Angulo

  She quickly put her hand to her mouth to cover it as she realised someone could have heard her.

  “Of course, I think I could make a living working as a detective”, she thought.

  It was the first time she chased someone and it happened to be a boy!Hemust have made quite an impression to have provoked this type of reaction.

  Well now what? She had his address, but how would she get to talk to him?

  Hundreds of ideas inundated her head, hundreds of plans, but she immediately discarded them for being too absurd. Anyway, it was very different to chase a guy at a safe distance to make sure no one would suspecther than to create a situation that prompted a conversation with him. The truth is that most people do not even consider this, and not because they are very bold and immediately engage in conversation with the first person they meet. In fact, it’s easy to find couples who are very dissonantnot only physically but also psychologically. Most people tend to pair with individuals of their surroundings, and very often from young, selecting them from among the group of friends where one finds oneself at the age of fifteen or sixteen.

  But, of course, María was not a conformist. She was a person who seriously believed in love and she would find her beloved even if she had to turn the world upside down.

  About Elías

  THE SEIZURES grew more violentwith time. At first, doctors thought it was a case of food poisoning, nothing too serious. But they became increasingly more frequent. For as long as my memory can recall, I've always suffered these attacks. I remember that once when I was little andafter having one of them, I was diagnosed with measles by the doctor. What left him quite intrigued was that not too long after that first episode, the same thing happened again and my mother asked him:

  How many times can one expect to suffer from measles?

  Well, only once, really.

  It’s the fifth time you tell me this child has measles.

  The seizures occurred mostly when I was sleeping away from home so I gradually started associating events. That’s why today I never sleep away from home and I cannot go on vacation anywhere.

  They were very diverse –others could have thought I was dying of any disease, really. There was usually high fever accompanied by rashes all over the body, vomiting and dizziness that became so intense that made it impossible for me to walk or even to stand up. The symptoms were worse the farther I got from home so, in one occasion, I had to run away from a hospital where they wanted to admit me into. Of course I knew that if I didn’t return home the symptoms would get worse. It was a simple misunderstanding. I was simply away from home and I started to feel ill. I could not go back because I had a few errands to run downtown. The dizziness accelerated at a rate faster than usual, and then next thing I knew I could hardly stand up. I couldn’t think clearly, my head was clouded by incessant visions. Then when I tried to walk I realised that my limbs were numb and I could barely move. I’m not sure how I managed but I walked about fifty yards - the longest fifty yards of my life -, that separated me from a train station. I had never been too worried about dying. Anything would have beenbetter than to endure this barrage of dreams and nightmares that repeatedthemselves endlessly in my head.

  When I arrived at the station I looked like a junkie, I could barely keep my balance, I had vomited and urinated on myself. Fortunately, those who were waiting at the station did not seem to worry about the way I looked and offered to help me nonetheless. I was very surprised because it was the first time in a big city that I've seen people worry about what happens to others. They called an ambulance and took me to the hospital.

  People are afraid to go into a cemetery but that’s something I never understood. In cemeteries everything is quiet, very often there are magnificent gardens where one can walk around and read the beautiful inscriptions engraved in the tombstones. In hospitals, on the other hand, one can truly feel and even smell death. Death resides in hospitals. Emergency rooms arenothing but large hallconstantly receiving moribund people.Only a few minutes in that room is all it takes to changeone’s perception of life. It is there that you realise how fragile life is, how people die and just disappear. Who were these people? What had they done in life? Nobody cared. You could just simply watch the light in their eyes extinguish. Hospitals are cold, you feel sick just by walking throughtheir doors. They subjected me to all kinds of tests that felt like an absolute torture. I was put tubes through the nose and into the stomach and they injected serum in them at high pressure. While a doctor drew my blood, another took my blood pressure and yet another oneasked me all sorts of questions. After all this and finally realising I was not under the effects of any drugs, they took me to a room where they performed one of the most tortuous tests – I got a camera tube stuck through my mouth to look inside my stomach. Nothing they did made me feel any better and they were unable to find any physical cause for what was happening to me. I knew the longer I spent away from home, the worse I’d feel so I said to the doctor:

  Could you please agree to a voluntarydischarge?

  I don’t advise you to go home in this condition but if you want to go I cannot hold you back.

  Then I thought she was implying that nothing would happen if I left on my own so I grabbed the catheter that was connected to my arm and supplied the serum and pulled it out of my vein. As a result, blood began to drip from my arm. I applied pressure to the wound with my hand and quietly got out of bed. There were three nurses and four doctors in the hospital emergency room. At the back of the room there was a security guard. I got up and walked away barefoot with a kind of gown they had earlier given me in the hospital. Then, I heard a voice saying:

  He’s running away! He’s running away!

  I looked back and saw all of them chasing after me. Then, I started running through the halls of the hospital until I reached a crowded waiting room where people gaped at me in shock. I jumped into the crowd through a row of seats, and finally I noticed the exit door at the back of the room – an automatic door with infrared sensor that quickly opened as I approached. It was dark outside. I could hear the siren of an approaching ambulance and the noise of the traffic. I left the hospital and observed it from a distance - in the darkness of the night it had the appearance of an island lit in the middle of nowhere. It was cold and I walked barefoot through the road, with that gown -it was not pleasant at all. The dizziness came and went, making me collapse occasionally. I ended up lying on the floor puking,trying to exterminate from my mind that incessant tangle that bombarded my brain, thatnonsensical mesh of fragments, images and dreams that barely allowed me to think clearly for just a few seconds.

  With great effort, I managed to push them away - or at least ignore them for a brief moment -, stand up and walk (although more than walk, I practically crawled on the pavement). The situation was desperate and I thought I had finally reached the end. I collapsed on the floor. Who would have thought? What an absurd way to die! Although I guess in real life that’s how it happens. People don’t really die fighting a battle or heroically trying to save someone from being scorched by flames. I guess in real life, people die of a poorly cured cold, a coma, or more usually a heart attack caused by stress, other than traffic accidents, which are one of the most common causes of death today. Anyway, while it really wasn’t the way I thought I’d die, that didn’t really matter much now. I almost felt relieved because the nightmareswould finally come to an end. Then, a blinding light appeared before me. Is this the light so many people talk about? I wondered. I had the feeling I was being pulled towards it. The next thing I remember is finding myself in the back of a taxi and the taxi driver's voice saying to me:

  Is this the right way?

  Yes, yes, it’s here.

  I guess I had unconsciously guided him to my house because we were right on its doorstep. I peered at the taxi driver: he was a young man of roughly the same age as me, wearing a chequered shirt that seemed to be made of the same fabric as tablecloths, those tablecloths with little blue and w
hite squares. He was large. It amused me, I thought it was almost comic how he looked embedded inside the car. It was a big car but the driver’s size made it seem small as if he was driving one of those pedal cars for children. I was able to see his face through the central mirror of the car. It was a friendly, familiar face with dark eyes and agleaming, light look, like a child laughing.

  Mouse?

  Without even knowing how, I found myself asking again:

  Mouse, is that you?

  Sir, I think the medication is making you talk nonsense. We have arrived. I see you don’t have any money, that’s fine, you can pay me another day.

  I thanked him, and just as I put a foot down on the ground, I felt an intense heat raising up my leg and encompassing my whole body. I immediately felt energised, strong and healthy, and felt that everything that had happened until this moment was like an absurd and remote dream, now forgotten. I climbed the steps to the front porch of my house. I knocked so that they would open it for me. My mother opened the door and asked what had happened to me. I told her I needed to sleep and that in the morning I would tell her everything. I opened the door to my room and threw myself on the bed as if I were a springboard diver. Then, I fell into a deep sleep thattransported me to my kindergarten years. I was a kid again and I was in kindergarten with Mouse. It was a strange dream, it felt totally real except that I could not interact in it. The dream was simply a repetition of everything I had lived so many years ago. There were crisp, clear images of a white light, just like the light that filters through the windows when the summer sun has spent a few hours in the sky. I felt joy at seeing that short, chubby kid again. He was just like a tiny little round meat ball but had some good qualities - he was quiet and never fought with anyone, even when other children were instigating him constantly.

  Many kids have the urge to show they are stronger than others since very little and to prove it, they target the weakest. I was quite the coward but, because I was a lot taller than most other kids no one dared bully me, and I took advantage of this circumstance to make sure no one bulliedMouse either. Suddenly, the scenes changed around on me and placed me in Mouse’s farewell. It was a sad day and although it was late spring and the weather was superb, I knew I would never see my friend again. Mouse's mother prepared sweets and also colourful hats for all made of paper. We celebrated his farewell as if it was a birthday party. Mouse's father had been promoted and now they had to move cities to pursue his new job in a new place.

  All of us children sangthe ducklingssong the teachers had taught us. Everyone was happy except Mouse and me because although Mousewas not very sharp, he realised that this was a farewell and we’d probably never see each other again. When the party finished teachers told us to say good bye to Mouse. I waited to be the last.I couldn’t really bring myself to say goodbye. I had become very fond of that tiny little fellow because, at the end of the day, he was the only one who listened to me during the long siesta hours. I went and whispered to him:

  Mouse, don’t worry about anything. If any children try to bully you, don’t worry, before you know it you’d have grown up and they won’t be able to do anything.

  Then his mother arrived. She picked him up and told him to bid the teachers farewell. I remember him walking away with his mother and how he looked at me with those bright eyes as he walked away. I didn’t cry at that moment. I guess as kids we are very strong but as we get older we become weaker, because now I do cry when I remember these scenes.

  Normally I'm aware that I'm dreaming.I feel something alike to sitting and watching TV. On many occasions I cannot differentiate reality from dreams because these are so real that it’s impossible to appreciate any differences. On other occasions, dreams are like watching a movie, I merely observe knowing that what I am seeing is a dream I cannot participate in. I see myself acting but cannot do anything other than watch the events and have no control over them. I realised I was dreaming, but it was a peaceful sleep and I loved seeing Mouse again, so I never wanted to wake up. I didn’t want to wake up but began to feel the weight of my face on the pillow and to hear my own breathing which, sounded louder by the moment and prevented me from continuing my conversations in the dream.

  When you get older and live in a city, you start working on any rubbish job for the sole purpose of getting enough money to buy yourself some treats, starting then a vicious circle impossible to stop–you work to live and end up living to work, not realising that the only thing we achieve is making us feel unwell, and that the more we fill our life with material goods, theemptier we’ll feel. One forgetswhat it was like to be a child, the satisfaction felt by simply jumping in a puddle and not needing anything else to be happy. As you get older, first the mind and then the body begin to atrophy, because all you think about is getting more money and working more and more hours, without any illusion, forgetting what you knew as a child.

  Many simply save their money and spend it escaping from their own lives for just a few days. I never understood people who claimed to have travelled the world. In my mind it seems far too complicated. I need years to discover my three square metre world - everything in this small space is totally different and I often feel overwhelmed just thinking about the diversity in a forest.Why then go to the other side of the world, if I need thousands of years to contemplate the wonders of a small forest right here? The same thing happens with people - each person is an immense world. I think you can spend your entire life with another person and after an eternity together, you might not completely know them. How are you then supposed to know everyone in a town or a city? Why would I go to meet people across the world when I hardly know anyone in my own city?

  Travel agencies multiply quickly, offering people the opportunity to escape from their own lives for a short period of time and for a small fee they can pay in instalments, and then they forget they took a holiday because they were stressed at work and had to work all year long to pay for these trips.

  The Relic

  A LONG boat ride finally transported me to the place they called the New World. There I was placed in a new mission built with the goal to educate and Christianiseindigenous populations.

  In the centre of the town there stood a small chapel made of mud walls and a thatched roof where the Relic was always kept illuminated by the flame of the candles.

  As the aboriginal elders had their own set of beliefs and a culture deeply rooted in the depths of their souls, they had difficulties converting them to Christianity so they used every method available to indoctrinate them. It was a long process that generally consisted in gradually gaining the trust of the younger ones so that these then convinced their parents about what was good and what was not. This tested the patience of the oldest, and finally one night they stormed out of the mission taking the Relic as a trophy.

  It was then that I saw again “Hazel Eyes”’ children, people with pure hearts untouched by greed and avarice. They were good peopleofwhom “Hazel Eyes” would have been proud of. After all that time, they continued with rituals that worshipped the earth and encouraged respect for all living beings. They only hunted out of necessity and after hunting down their prey, they venerated and thankedit for feeding them. Everything in nature was magical for them and worshipped the wind god, the raven god, the sun god and everything that made up the world.

  They continually thanked the gods with festivities –they danced around the fires every night, danced to the songs and the sound of drums. They danced endlessly, disguised as animals, to enter a trance in which they imagined to be those animals, flying like an eagle or running like a puma.

  The avarice of the men that came from old Europe ended with all of them. Even today there are historians who propose theories about why they disappeared. Some historians say they lost because the lack of saddles in their horses gave them a disadvantage, others say it was the firearms that gave the conquerors the victory. There are many other theories that always highlight the intellectual prowessof Europeans, but the t
ruth is that from the very first moment, the descendants of “Hazel Eyes” were lost, because besides loving the world around them, they were humanists and never wanted the death of their enemies. So the reason we defeated them is not that we were more intelligent but because we were a lot more violent.