We Are the End

by Gonzalo Garcia

  ‘All, uhuh, all this white powder’s making me nervous,’ @RealNicolasCage says on Twitter. On #Snowggedon, people are sharing pictures of Jesus crying blood and of crucified snowmen, of Amazonian tribes failing to make winter jackets out of snakeskin and tree leaves. #Repent is trending. Tomás starts watching a video of a guy reacting to a video of an avalanche off of Machu Picchu. ‘Oh my God,’ he says, ‘oh my God, it could have been us, my God, it could have been us.’

  Someone comes into the office and Tomás bangs his head on the desk trying to get up. It’s Anna, standing by the door. He pretends to be looking for something on the rug and finds a staple and shows it to her. The guy on the video is still reacting.

  Oh – ma – God. Get out of there people,

  get out. Like, it’s a fucking avalanche. My God, they’ve

  never seen an avalanche before.

  ‘Found it,’ Tomás says. ‘Only one left. Have to use everything now, what with all the funding cuts and all…’

  ‘I just came to tell you that your sister’s on the line,’ she says, looking at the staple. ‘And yes, I’m still waiting for the papers.’

  I’m shocked. Just too shocked. Oh my god,

  not the parrots, please don’t take the parrots.

  ‘I was just grading the papers actually. You’ll get them real soon.’

  ‘OK, but what should I tell your sister?’ she asks.

  ‘Just put her through, I’ll finish marking them right after,’ he says, still on the floor.

  Tomás looks at her but she just stares at the staple and sighs.

  Look at them, they’re so lost, My God, they don’t know where

  to fly to.

  Like, so cruel. Why nature? Why?

  He turns off the video and gets up to take the phone, line 2 blipping red.

  ‘Namaste,’ she starts.

  ‘What?’ he asks, even though he heard.

  ‘Namaste, asshole.’

  ‘Hi, what’s—’

  ‘Dad’s dead.’

  7

  Evasive Manoeuvres

  When planes crash they do so in bulk. No one can fucking explain it. One goes down in the Atlantic. POOF. Another in the Pacific. POOF. In Russia, China. POOF POOF. Check online: planecrashinfo.com. The graphs will show spikes. The causes vary, sure, between military, weather, engine malfunction, a pigeon on the runway, a radar gone black. Like parts of a terrible orchestra, all the planes and airports in the world agree to throw melody out the window and the world nods, we nod, dead, we say, no survivors, they died quickly, without pain. But like the build-up of a strings arrangement, the fear of a key change lasts for fucking ages.

  He wanted to be buried in Graneros. Out of all places, he chose the place that’s already buried. Graneros, the town where people pay to see evangelical rappers go on about the power of faith, where people either work at the coffee and cereal factory or become junkies. His dad had been one of those kids once, and he had worked at the factory.

  It’s a warm sunny day, which makes going to a funeral feel wrong. There’s a pleasant breeze rustling the leaves in the trees and the smell of coffee has taken over the plaza. This town never changes. People still play cards and stare at others who are doing the same while sitting on the threshold of their rotting doors. The abandoned houses (abandoned forever) look the same too, maybe a few more vines breaking out of their glassless windows. It snowed here last week, and despite the news last night mentioning sinkholes and mudslides and death and falling roofs in the southern tip of Chile, the short train in Central Valley between Santiago and Graneros worked as it always did (late, hot and overcrowded), and no one was even talking about the snow on the one-hour ride. Eva had once said that people in Chilean towns in the middle of nowhere (which is Santiago-speak for not-Santiago) were small-minded, unlike Parisians who had had to adapt to the great shifts in modern history. ‘Having a little mind is not about knowledge,’ she’d said when he’d told her she sounded like her friends at French book club. ‘It’s about understanding that everything we do has an impact on everyone else.’ She didn’t explain what ‘everything’ or ‘impact’ meant, but he’s glad he didn’t ask because, although she loved his mum and dad, she’d felt out of place in Graneros. ‘I fucking hate it, she’d said, ‘and I hate that fucking train.’ And even with last week’s snow, the narrow canals are as dry as they’ve ever been, and dust shines on the skin. His family always loved this place. ‘It’s simpler, much simpler over there,’ his dad used to say, ‘and there are no Argentinians.’ Eva came with them on a daytrip once too. She said it was charming, which is what people say about old places where there’s nothing to do. He agreed.

  He’s sweating. He can’t wait to take off his fucking suit and tie but he’s finally dressed for a funeral at an actual funeral. He lights up a cigarette that he knows he doesn’t want. With the heat, the smoke makes him dizzy but he inhales it anyway. He can see the church, a crowd gathering in front and stray dogs barking and pissing on its walls. In the park facing the church, there are boy scouts putting up tents to the whistle of an old man dressed like a child. He shows them how to snap together metallic skeletons.

  He looks up at the clear sky and wonders what it must be like to fall from it on a plane, to know that you’ll die in just a few seconds, that your body will be suddenly crushed into impossible, unrecognisable shapes. His dad had been caught in the snowstorm. He must have… People on TV always go on about moments before death, the white light and the tunnel and the film reel of your life and all that bullshit, when it must be fear, pure fear, no deeper than the first time you speak out in public at school, but far shorter. Tomas hopes his dad didn’t suffer, and he’s real glad he never learnt to fly. Though considering how much safer planes are than cars, maybe he… The boy scout leader sounds the whistle and the kids destroy their tents, and start over.

  He walks over to the church, which after the last earthquake is held up by a mere ten to fifteen wooden poles placed diagonally against the walls. Everyone who is attending the funeral appears to be wearing colourful Nepalese trousers, just like Angela’s, and people he’s never met before stare at him and shake their heads. And then there’s his extended family; his cousins from Punta Arenas who dress like hippies anyway because they own a poncho stall in the Chilean Patagonia, and Aunt Memé-the-Deaf from San Fernando, who has refused to wear her hearing aid ever since Uncle Pato passed away, so she has no idea what’s going on and just frowns at everyone because she – like Tomas – came dressed for a funeral. He hasn’t seen any of them for years despite their invitations, so they now avoid Tomás in a corner, unsure of who should apologise first, and for whose loss. There’s a cotton candy van giving out swirls of pink to one side next to a statue of a saint all white with bird shit on its head, and there’s a shirtless man in swimming trunks sweeping pigeons away.

  The one thing he and Eva indisputably shared (yes – everything else was relative) was their hatred of hippies, although they hated them for very different reasons. One of their first dates had been at a circus: The Nail Brothers, famous for using medieval objects (random objects with spikes) in their stunts. It started with one of the Nails jumping from a high-as-fuck trampoline into an open iron maiden (Iron Maiden playing in the background, of course). Fake blood splashed out once it was sealed shut. The front row ended up with red faces. The Splash Zone, they called it. The crowd cheered when the Nail Brother emerged from the chamber unharmed.

  The four brothers all looked the same. Eva said she wouldn’t have known if they actually sacrificed an artist at the start of every show and she laughed and held one of Tomás’s thighs. A second Nail Brother jumped and she tightened her hand and Tomás got a half-boner as the blood splashed out. Anyway, why is he thinking about half-boners and blood and how does it all relate to hippies? Well, after the iron maiden jump and the magician who lynched and quartered his young assistant, a yellow Volkswagen van drove in through the curtains. Two hippies jumped out while it was still in mo
tion. They had Indian feathers knotted to filthy dreadlocks, face paints, fake splifs in their mouths (probably real splifs), long loose trousers, sandals and they ended every clause with ‘dude’ or ‘bro’ (pronounced ‘bra’) and they were meant to be clowns. They ruined the whole medieval thing and no one gave a damn. Yes, it was Angela who got them the tickets and yes, these two assholes were her friends. After juggling knives and making each other jump through fiery spiky hoola hoops, they bowed and turned to the crowd. At which point, everyone started looking at each other. No one likes being picked. Ever. People secretly wished they didn’t exist, that they were dead, that the Nail Brothers were all dead, that the circus would catch fire, that performance arts in general would catch fire – anything but get picked. The spotlight flicked through the audience.

  Eva whispered into his ear. It was the first time she had done so. She would later do it again and again.

  ‘Aren’t these kinds of people the worst?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but why do you say that?’ he whispered back.

  ‘It makes me uncomfortable, this whole hippie fashion thing, like wearing feathers and stuff. It’s like disrespectful, you know, and it’s not like we don’t have our own indigenous people, who don’t even dress like this at all, and…’

  ‘I hate that it’s a fashion, I’ve nothing against fashion but I hate, I don’t know, I hate outfits. These douchebags are outfits. It’s too perfect, perfectly ‘crazy’, perfectly ‘random’, perfectly ‘peaceful’ and ‘loving’,’ he said, using both hands as quotation marks. ‘But it’s all so fucking fake.’

  ‘Too perfect?’ she asked and the spotlight stopped on them and perfectly lit their faces.

  People clapped as one of the hippies came up to them. Eva downed the piscola she was not supposed to have. She was quite drunk by this point.

  ‘Don’t let them take me,’ she joked, ‘or I might fall down the stairs.’ She grabbed him with both hands on his wrists, but the hippie arrived and took her hands away from Tomás. That bastard was handholding with Eva before Tomás ever did. Eva smiled and walked down (slowly) into the dirt pit. More clapping. Tomás didn’t clap. That was his first failure. The fucking hippie just took her and put her in the van. He locked it. It was supposed to be funny that nothing happened, that they did nothing apart from lock her up, because trapping people, no, kidnapping people for no reason whatsoever is pointless and therefore hilarious because hippies too are pointless, so ‘random’, and therefore hilarious. The spotlight was still on him. They were waiting for him to react. He saw Eva looking at him from the driver’s seat. They were too far from each other for him to be certain about it, but he swears there was eye contact. He just waited. For. Ages.

  ‘Bra, dude, this guy sure is like a total bummer, man, a total bummer,’ one of the Brothers said, and people laughed with him, and they let Eva out, and she came back to him and the spotlight moved away, thank fuck, and he was ready for her to walk out on him for not doing anything, but instead…

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, without a trace of sarcasm. ‘It would have gone on for far longer.’

  They fucked for the first time that night. After he had gone down on her she gave Tomás a blowjob, but he could not keep the image of the yellow van out of his head. She looked at him, gave him the pleasure of eye contact, the only way of communicating through a blowjob, the pleasure of communication, and despite all of this he could only think of her trapped eyes in that yellow Volkswagen and the ring of burning hoola hoops surrounding it. Fuck hippies. Fuck outfits. Help us, the Nail Brothers had pretty much said. Help us do our thing. He didn’t help. But he came. He came hard in her mouth without telling her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as she spit it out onto his belly. She didn’t say anything but kept her eyes on him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again and then she looked away.

  And that is what Tomás is thinking about when his sister comes out of the church wearing an orange poncho and sandals.

  ‘Namaste, douche. Oh man, what’s up with you?’ she asks, looking over at the queue for cotton candy, where there are old people crying and fumbling with their rosaries and eating in silence.

  ‘Um, why is it so full of hippies? Did I get the date wrong or something?’

  ‘Didn’t you get my message? I tried calling you, but as always, you wouldn’t answer.’

  ‘What message?’

  She sighs. ‘I sent you the dress code for the funeral, dumbass. It’s what he would have wanted. Mum said he didn’t want a dark funeral. He wanted a party.’

  He looks at the people shaking their heads and whispering between themselves. Of course. Angela invited all her friends. All her fucking friends, and he’ll have to hear all about their fucking travels, their journeys (as they call them), get a job already, travelling without any money, get a job, and still somehow meeting the right people, just the right person at the right time, a simple love story, not a job, that lasts for as long as it takes them to cross whatever forest these kinds of people want to cross. And he’ll have to see them dance the hoola hoop just like they did when Lou Reed died, right in front of the Bellas Artes Museum. And there they are now, serving drinks to Aunt Memé who just stares back, and the Punta Arenas cousins are taking pictures of the hippies with their phones while the old people who aren’t queueing for hot dogs are standing stiff by the church doors. Tomás doesn’t know if he should talk to Angela’s friends, make up cheap sentences about how despite Dad’s death, and despite Mum now having to live alone until she dies too, Dad will always be present in his plastic toys and hell, he died doing something he loved. No one would say that. Even flying is really about coming back to ground. He can’t say that either. His sister comments on stories for a living and so she would comment on this one too. She’d tell Mum he didn’t mean it and she’d probably be right, but he isn’t sure.

  Alejandro, who calls himself The World’s Brother (if you really force the Spanish ‘J’ then you’re pronouncing his name as he does), is probably the worst of them all. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses and cargo shorts and his beard as a shirt. The beard has glitter on it. On the planet this guy’s from, that’s an acceptable thing. Angela used to date him because they had the same spirit animal, the rabbit, and because, according to her, his yellow Ferrari really did match the size of his cock (not the spirit animal). Tomás hates him, really fucking hates his guts, mainly because Eva liked him. She said that while Alejandro, Alejjjjjjjjandro, is certainly too rich to be a hippie, he at least tries to make others happy, like he really did go to that orphanage in Thailand that summer (and probably created more orphans in time for the summer after that). And he really did earn the embarrassing pictures of himself hugging poor children on his Facebook wall, and he truly did believe his own bullshit. ‘That’s the thing,’ Eva said, ‘I like people who have the balls to believe in their own bullshit. Even if they turn out to be hippies, though that makes it harder. If they really live their crap, if they are consistent, I like it. Do you?’ She asked him that with a smile, and he put a hand up and another on his heart, a scout promise, just like the kids are doing right now, and he said, ‘Yes, I really do believe in my own bullshit,’ and then they fucked like rabbits, no, like birds, still and quiet, because this was during a holiday outing and they were sharing a flat with his sister and Alejandro, and before Tomás and Eva could even start, they heard Alejandro do his signature loud moan (OHMMM–OHMMM–Ohm…) as he came, most likely over his sister’s ears (he said he loved HER EARS!) which, for a rabbit, are amazingly non-perceptive to the dangers of men out in the wild.

  Anyway, Alejandro broke up with his sister because he wanted to follow a colony of pumas down South, PUMAS, a bit like that crazy American asshole who wanted to become a bear, and film himself and his growth (‘internal growth,’ he said), from being a cub to a full-grown puma. Unlike the American bear guy, Aleja-fucking-jandro did not get eaten, though Tomás has had that dream before, where Alejandro screams and screams that his skin is being
ravaged and Tomás nods at the puma to continue and… His sister was so depressed she had to get Tomás to sit with her all day and night for a whole year. She said if he didn’t she’d jump off the balcony. Alejandro appeared on TV. Angela was a mess of tears and envy. He appeared on the national news. ‘Fuck him,’ she said. He was on CNN stroking pumas. Jesus – the balcony – ‘Please don’t leave me alone.’ And then, then he appeared one last time. He was on his way to the national tribunals for trying to sell puma cubs into an exotic animal black market ring in Valdivia. This time, his sister said nothing. Alejandro said he just wanted to give them better homes, you know? But the news added he was also on LSD. Angela turned off the TV. She made herself a cup of green tea. ‘I guess we can still be friends,’ she said, though everyone knows that a puma befriending a rabbit is only the stuff of YouTube legends.

  But here he is, with his new Jaguar convertible double-parked at the edge of the plaza, and he passes Tomás a sausage on a plastic fork as he walks by.

  ‘Thank you,’ Tomás says as he takes the sausage.

  ‘Brother, for you, any time,’ Alejandro answers, and smiles at Angela. She smiles back and takes a sausage too, the largest of them all, and bites on it real hard. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he adds with a bow that no one answers.

  ‘You’re serious,’ Tomás then whispers to Angela. ‘Isn’t this all a bit too casual? And what the hell is he doing…’