Tomás rolls his eyes and turns off the radio. He should have known this would happen. He should have kept playing music with Yiyo. Then maybe he too could have stopped believing in influences.
As he flicks his cigarette out the window someone knocks at the door. Tomás pulls out a pair of black jeans from the pile and when he puts them on he fills his right pocket with loose cigarettes. He opens the door and Matilde is standing there, wearing a black dress and an open motorcycle helmet.
‘Hi,’ she laughs.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘I brought you a helmet but it looks like you have that covered.’
‘Oh,’ he says, taking his ski goggles off and throwing them behind him.
‘Your flat’s still a mess,’ she says looking in.
‘I’ve been packing, getting things ready,’ he says grabbing his wallet and stepping into the doorway. ‘Let’s go.’
Downstairs, Matilde gets on her bike and hands Tomás a helmet hanging from one of the handles. It’s pink with green lightning bolts on the sides. Her motorcycle’s an old blue Vespa and it only has one mirror, the left one, and a pretty small space for him to sit on.
‘How do I sit here? Both legs to one side?’ he asks, putting on his helmet.
‘No, just spread your legs around me and hold on.’
‘Really? Are you sure? I’ve seen some people—’
‘Yeah, come on, just get on.’
He gets up on it and grabs her from the belly. She starts the bike and it begins to vibrate and sound like machineguns do in movies and he holds on harder as he slides down to the sides.
‘Shouldn’t you have two mirrors?’ he asks her.
‘Nah, don’t worry, that was the car’s fault, not mine. You can tell me if anything comes up from the right. Hold on!’
They start their way into the Kennedy Avenue where Matilde speeds her way, despite all the rain, between cars and lorries and buses.
‘Where are we going?’ he shouts.
‘We’re going to say goodbye.’
‘What? Who to?’
‘It’s a surprise! Hold on and be quiet or you’ll make us crash,’ she says, before passing between two taxis.
They hadn’t talked as they held hands last night, not about the rain, not about their upcoming plans, not about other people, not even about their hands. In fact, she had broken off the handholding as easily as she had grabbed onto him, and maybe things have changed beyond recognition here in Santiago, since touching someone, holding onto them, had always meant to Tomás some kind of promise, a lead up to going home and… But come on, none of that was ever true. She stood up and wiped her face with a smile and started her way back down to the lifts. Tomás stayed sitting down to see if she would wait but she didn’t. And maybe it was the noise of the rain taking hold of everything around them, making the scenery an indistinct late night TV static screen, or maybe she just wanted to be alone, but from there all the way down back to the town, it was as if he hadn’t been there at all.
From the motorbike the city is one large dimmer lamp, and it might be the helmet or the speed but all the lights look the same, faint and stretched all the way to the sky, red and purple amber rising up like thin and tall concrete trees that end in complete darkness. It’s funny that all it takes is the small engine from a Vespa bike, one girl, and the whole city just dies out.
Matilde turns away from the avenue and into little streets, and she cuts through traffic jams, people on pavements, even an old lady walking her dog. This is why Tomás will never drive. Eva said it would make him feel independent, just like her, and he told her that it wasn’t environmentally friendly and that for someone who claimed to care so much about global warming, she should have known better. But he knows better too, that the real reason for never learning to drive is that he’d feel like he’s bothering everyone he overtakes, that he’d always drive behind other people, that he’d always be so fucking boring.
‘You should be careful,’ he shouts to her.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve done this hundreds of times. Hold on!’
On the pavement she drives past kiosks and large crowds of people having dinner on small tables with umbrellas, old people playing chess with oversized pieces on black and white floor tiles, and a fried sopaipilla salesman with his trolley, and a guy taking a piss right in front of him. How does she do it? How do others do it to care so little, to just speed past everything? His problem, he thinks, has always been that he cares too much. Jesus, did he just think that out… But then again, he has so much to lose. He holds on tight and Matilde’s belly goes hard.
She turns and the little street opens to a broader one with stone tiles and the bike rattles until they stop at a traffic light.
‘We’re nearly there,’ she says.
‘OK,’ he answers, and he notices that there’s a moth standing still on Matilde’s back. How annoying it must be to be attracted to all the lights, to sit there and then wake up somewhere different, all because of a light. But then again, at night and at a distance everyone can look like a tree branch and he imagines her full of butterflies, none of them ever coming back home.
A young guy and girl at the traffic lights start throwing each other fire-lit torches and juggling them under their legs and behind their backs. Then, they walk up to car windows for change and when they get to Tomás, he says he’s sorry but the guy just stands there looking at him as if he’d said nothing at all so Tomás pretends to look for money in his pocket until the light turns green.
Tomás closes his eyes and a few minutes of driving pass and then, suddenly, they come to a stop and all the noise comes back.
‘We’re here,’ she says.
He takes his helmet off but they are nowhere in particular, just another side street in Santiago centre, and Tomás wonders whether, maybe, just maybe, she is as boring as he is.
She chains her bike to a lamppost, takes his helmet and puts it inside a box at the back. Walking to the end of the street, Tomás starts to hear someone playing a cueca, people shouting and laughing and he hopes her surprise, the whole reason they crossed half of Santiago, isn’t just another party.
But, as always, he’s right about the wrong things. They stand outside a large black double-door and Matilde rings the bell and it buzzes open. Inside, the music’s real loud and the tapping noises upstairs sound like microwave popcorn. They walk up a staircase, the handle lined with miniature plastic Chilean flags, upside down crosses and signs that say ‘Happy 18th of September’ even though it’s still only August. It’s dark upstairs, but Matilde walks into a corridor just as fast and stops at the end by another door.
‘Sounds busy,’ she tells Tomás.
‘Yeah, what is it?’
‘It’s a fonda party. I know it’s early but…’
She opens the door and it’s full of people and noise. Most in the crowd are goths all in black but there are also a few hipsters with black-framed glasses, beards and Nazi-youth haircuts. In the middle of the room, couples are dancing cueca, waving handkerchiefs and all (some even have their ponchos on), and they stomp on the floor and the crowd around them clap to the rhythm directed by an old dude playing guitar and singing on a stool on the stage in the corner, and another guy slapping a wooden box in between his legs. There’s also an older man with an accordion hanging from his neck, but he’s waving a glass of wine and shouting the song instead of playing.
In the middle, there’s a table with bottles of wine and pisco and chicha and Coke and plates of fried empanadas. Matilde walks up to the table and Tomás follows her. In all the parties of his youth, Tomás always somehow ended up alone by the drinks table. This is why he can now make perfect piscolas and even mojitos. Or at least he could, until he discovered that he had to pretend, like he’s sure most men do, to enjoy dancing and talking to strangers just so he could get laid, because people like to see that everyone likes the same things, that they are willing to give up their desires for the greater desire to have them. And s
o when Eva said they should dance at a party, that all her friends and their boyfriends were dancing, he just said ‘after you.’
He serves himself a heavy piscola and then makes one for Matilde but with less pisco.
‘Here, a light one for you, since you’re driving and all,’ he says.
‘Thanks,’ she says smiling, taking the bottle of pisco and pouring herself more until the Coke becomes almost transparent.
Tomás looks around to see if anyone’s smoking but no one is.
‘Can I smoke here?’ he asks Matilde.
‘Hm?’ she looks at him and then behind him where Jesús is standing and drinking Cristal from the bottle. She puts her drink on the table. ‘Hey Jesús! This looks awesome,’ she says, hugging him.
‘Thanks,’ he says, adjusting his Tarot card-inspired rings on his right hand.
‘Hey man,’ Jesús says to Tomás. ‘Didn’t know you’d come.’ He laughs and grabs his shoulder, balancing himself against him.
‘Hi, hi,’ Tomás says. ‘Can I smoke in here?’
‘Dude, it’s a Satanist party,’ Jesús says to him, taking Tomás’s piscola and downing it.
‘Does that mean yes?’
Jesús laughs and Tomás lights a cigarette.
‘If you could put some money in the bucket over there, that’d be great. The astronomer in Vicuña says he’ll soon find out exactly when the world will end so we need to keep raising funds.’
‘Sure, of course,’ Matilde says with a smile. ‘Where’s Lucas?’
Jesús laughs and turns to face the dance floor.
‘Look at him, just look at him. It’s like he’s doing the robot or something. He hasn’t stopped since he arrived.’
Matilde laughs because Lucas is dancing all stiff with an old goth who’s a real good dancer, but he still swings his handkerchief and stomps and his shirt’s half open and the sweat on his chest shines blue and red with the disco lights. Matilde and Tomás put some change in the bucket.
‘Why organise a fonda so early?’ Tomás asks Jesús as he makes himself another piscola.
‘Well, we want it all done by Christmas, right? And we’ll start selling shit,’ he shows Tomás his rings, ‘in October. The earlier you party the more money you make, and people give more when there’s a reason to party,’ he says between sighs, and then he goes to the dance floor and starts dancing in front of another dude with a tight necklace full of spikes. Matilde laughs too.
Tomás looks at Lucas doing the robot cueca. He will definitely get laid because if a girl stays with you while you look like that, then it’s a done deal. The song ends and everyone claps and Lucas gets a kiss. Even without any music he just keeps on dancing.
‘Oh – my – God,’ Matilde says, laughing harder.
Tomás downs his drink and gets another. Then, as always, he has nothing to talk about so he downs four piscolas more and he leans on the drinks table and neither of them say a thing. But then the guitars start a sad slower tune and the guy sitting on the wooden box starts playing a pan flute and then they sing:
A country I’m leaving with lost,
A country I’m leaving with lost.
When I sleep it appears to me,
In my dreams like an enemy.
As if in my chest there struck
A sea that gives into silence,
And to my eyes there looms past,
The life I just lived.
• • •
IDEAS BOOK P. 81:
A sports game. Isn’t it odd that they’re called sports games when really you’re binging on Doritos and What makes them so popular? What makes people buy pretty much the same game every year? Fifa 11, 12, 13, they will go on forever. But the box says it all. The last two years have featured Messi on the box art. They’re popular because unlike platformers and adventure games, they’re a constant reference to the real world. When you buy a Fifa game, you buy into corruption and tax avoidance becoming Messi, into his ability to make otherworldly plays and improbable pirouettes. You buy your way into becoming players that outperform you in every way.
And how will our version be any different? How will it change the game? Well, we’ll take the realism one step further. We won’t be able to afford official patents (it will be, after all, a ‘free’ mobile game) and so we’ll simulate school sports instead. It will only feature one mode: Career Mode. You will be given a random character with a set of random attributes (it has to seem random but really you’ll be a fat nerd with acne issues no matter what you do) and no one will like you. The taller, better-looking kids will never pick you for their teams. You will be everyone’s last choice. They will roll their eyes at you when no one else remains by the schoolyard wall. Your jersey is too tight (they only had up to XL) and you look like a fucking burrito, a burrito limping this way and that until they put you as goalkeeper, but only because you take up so much fucking space… And still the other team scores a goal, one where the ball hits you on the shins before going in, and you can’t hide it, because you got those red fat-people slap marks which take bloody ages to melt away back to skin colour. We could even use a remodelled version of Bimbo the elephant for the protagonist. It might save Jaime some time.
And then, just when you think things will never improve, a new kid arrives, a French kid, and SHIT THERE IS A GOD, this kid is twice your size, twice the Bimbo. He is so fat his steps leave a low hum echoing in the Andes, so fat your nerdy science classmates find him to be an interesting source of negative energy, a walking stellar devourer, a black hole with its own gravitational pull that is so strong the moon looks a little larger tonight, and shit you feel cool, shit you ARE cool. This is you:
You: THE SHIT Him: dookie
And no one makes fun of you anymore. The controls that at first seemed so stiff are now smooth extensions of yourself. You score goals. Your friends, FRIENDS, tell you that they’re going out for drinks after the game and they invite you, and fuck it, you go and you get hammered and all because of that fat fucking bastard that you now find yourself hating as much, no, MORE than your FRIENDS do, and you want him dead… And on the next game you shoot a real hard fireball shot to his face and connard! you burn him up, leaving behind only the puddle of goo that was his life.
And you turn around and everyone’s cursing at you in French, laughing at your fat feet full of ash.
• • •
And then the guitars get loud and the pan flute blasts high notes and Tomás can’t breathe, he can’t drink, and all the people moving about shining in frozen poses with the strobes of light, all of it makes him want to cry. But he doesn’t, because just at that moment, when the lyrics get repeated louder As if in my chest there struck and the dancers join in, A sea that gives into silence Matilde taps him on the shoulder and faces him with two paper napkins hanging from her hand. The life I just lived.
‘Let’s go,’ she says, and she takes his hand and walks straight into the middle of the crowd. He’s dizzy and she gives him a napkin and starts dancing in front of him so he starts swinging the napkin and stomping to what he believes is the rhythm, and he closes his eyes and hears the crowd shouting the lyrics and he feels light, so light he could disappear. And suddenly it makes sense to him that The End of the World is this, it is here starting already, a cueca always ending and everyone singing and dancing and then disappearing and then…
Matilde turns with her napkin behind her and then comes closer to him, smiling and looking at him. They switch places as soon as the singer shouts Vuelta! Turn! and everyone else does the same. Then, Lucas and Jesús come dancing next to them and Lucas hugs Matilde and Tomás is left dancing with Jesús, who also looks at him with a smile.
All four of them stomp their way through several songs, and then Tomás goes back to the drinks table to light another cigarette and have another piscola. He’s sweating and he wishes he could be home, naked and inside the tent. He looks at Matilde dancing with Jesús and Lucas, still clapping and singing and Tomás thinks that she’s beaut
iful, her black dress spreading out at the knees when she turns as if she had wings, and this is beautiful, this is what it’s like to be young.
After another cueca ends and two piscolas later, Matilde appears next to him.
‘Everything OK?’ she asks.
‘Yeah, I’m totally going to quit smoking after this.’
‘He’s wasted,’ Jesús says behind Matilde, who is also finding it hard to stand without swaying backwards.
‘I’ll never smoke again!’ Tomás shouts. ‘I’ll never be boring.’
Matilde and Jesús laugh.
‘Thank you for the surprise. But I’m going to have to go home,’ Tomás tells Matilde.
‘No, no, your surprise comes now. Let’s go. I just wanted to party one last time with them, to say goodbye, you know?’
‘I know!’ he says.
‘Let’s go,’ she says waving at Jesús, and she takes Tomás by the arm and they walk out of the room. The stairs are hard and Matilde walks slow next to Tomás, still holding onto him.
‘Thank you,’ he says, and when they reach the bottom, he leans towards her and tries to kiss her but she moves him into a hug instead.
‘Sorry,’ he says, now feeling so sober he could… ‘It’s just, the dark stairs, drunk, you know?’
‘It’s OK, don’t worry, I know.’
They come out of the house and the streets are empty and quiet and Tomás’s ears are ringing and his mouth’s real dry and he’s cold and tries to walk straight along the lines in the pavement.
They get to the Vespa and Matilde takes his helmet out of the box at the back and he puts it on. When he breathes out, he can smell the booze and it makes him sick. He swallows hard.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get there quickly. It’ll be worth it, I promise.’
‘OK,’ he says, concentrating on his swallowing.
He sits behind her and they tremble with the engine.
The darkened lights, the spots beaming past like shooting stars all silent and gold, the stone bridges arching over the Mapocho. He can hear it, he thinks, he can hear the river of shit, but it’s really just the fact that he knows it all too well, but he’s still surprised that at night it looks blue. At night it becomes a real river, that is, just like any other river.
We Are the End Page 26