We Are the End

by Gonzalo Garcia

  He gets to the bridge in Baquedano and ignores the river and the plastic windmill salesman offering him another windmill, I looked for you without knowing where to go, and he crosses over towards Bellavista. He can hear himself breathe over the music so he turns it up, The streets I walked randomly, the places I have been to, and keeps running towards the San Cristóbal Hill, and he crashes against a crowd of ceviche eaters out in a bar terrace, Let me come home with you so that I, and they shout things he can’t hear but none of it matters because the music makes anything that happens part of the same scene, the same story, and I’m going to take one step that takes me…

  He gets to Neruda’s house and the graffitied wall is filled with ‘Fármacos’ posters. Yiyo’s face is on some of them, but that’s fine, it was all meant to happen and he whispers Javiera Mena’s lyrics, going to take one step and crosses an empty stone fountain and gets to Eva’s violet house.

  He rings the bell. There’s a light on in one of the flats and he tries to look for moving silhouettes inside but he can only see a chair next to a lamp. He rings again, twice, three and four times but nothing, and then the radio dies out and the song ends and the world without music is so disappointing and quiet and he’s just another person in Bellavista, another dude looking for…

  He sits on the pavement opposite to wait and lights a cigarette, and just as he manages to turn the radio back on, a black SUV pulls over in front of him. A woman comes out to open the gates. She’s getting drenched and it takes Tomás a few seconds to understand that it’s Eva who’s smiling whilst she opens a door to somewhere he’s not yet been to, it’s her he’s not kissing, and that it’s him who she did not see.

  He can’t stand at first. He can’t call her. She’s changed so much, he thinks, without being able to point out any specific changes. Maybe it’s the hair, much shorter than it used to be. Or maybe it’s how much thinner she looks. Or it might just be the makeup. But it could just be the rain. Whatever it is, he can’t get up and he notices he dropped his cigarette into a puddle and he doesn’t have any more left and…

  Shit, he can get up! He gets closer to her but he still can’t… Is it even possible? Is it even her? He can’t yet see because the sky is fucking falling, the rain is heavy in the puddles, rivers forming at the edge of the pavement, and to see her, to really see her he has to hear her too, and ask her, is it really you? Is it… And only when she says yes and holds him and invites him into the house, and into the non-cream-coloured flat, and asks him if he’d please just stir those damn vegetables for the canard à l’orange and then asks him about his latest games, his latest stories, and she tells him about the holes of the Earth, the icy caves that reminded her of him all this time because they lead, well, they lead…

  And she steps besides her car after the lock-button makes him appear in its orange flash. The rain makes them both look like standing shadows, no, not shadows, because shadows live, and neither of them moves at all, not an inch.

  Tomás takes a deep breath and a step towards her. Even her shadow form is the best shadow form. His feet are soaking wet. His hair won’t stop dripping. He feels the weight of his jacket, getting heavier, heavier, heavier and what does his shadow even look like? He walks right up to her and he can finally see her eyes, the green eyes which remain calm despite everything. And so he remains calm too, but not for long, because he takes another few step towards her and now they are face to face and he can finally hear her breathing… Does she remember his breathing too? And it’s right now where Tomás wants to tell her about so many things and all at once: the dead bird at the office, the dead leaves of dead Serge stuck on repeat, the Satanists and The End of The World, his meaning to meet her all the way down in Antarctica, on a ship with as much hope as crew members, and his dad’s funeral, and then the second plane crash, the coffin crash, and his new friends, his new friend, his new… So much he finds it impossible to tell her about any of them.

  ‘Hi,’ he says instead.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks, dropping her handbag on the tiny rivers on the pavement. ‘I can’t believe it. I honestly can’t believe you sometimes.’

  ‘I never thought I’d…’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come. What are we meant to…’

  ‘Do you know, do you…’

  ‘You need an umbrella. This is ridiculous.’

  ‘But, wait, I mean, sorry, do…’

  ‘Tomás, how is this good for either of us?’

  ‘Well, it, you know, I still…’

  ‘No. Don’t say it. You can’t just turn up. What did you think would happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe, something, I don’t know.’

  ‘I… I’m speechless. You need to leave.’

  ‘But I think we should…’

  ‘Please, Tomás, please leave.’

  ‘But it’s been too long.’

  ‘Not long enough.’

  ‘When is that? How does that make sense?’

  She looks up at her window. He wonders if she ever looked up at his window. Did she ever see the HI – I HOPE YOU’RE WELL sign? He knows it’s stupid as hell, but he wishes he had it with him to show it to her.

  ‘Has it always rained this hard?’ she asks instead.

  ‘Sometimes harder. But, I wanted to…’

  ‘I need to go and get ready. It’s late. Tomorrow I’m…’

  ‘Why are you…’

  ‘Um… It was really not good seeing you. I don’t think you should come here again. Take care. Keep well.’

  Tomás can’t move again. He wants to move but he just can’t. What is it with the rain that once it has you, you almost forget that it’s falling? Is it perhaps that it is then you finally realise that it is water, only water, and that it falls just as violently on any floor, roof, person and animal? Does it take a storm for you to finally realise that none of it was really meant for you? But Tomás isn’t thinking about any of these questions. In fact, he isn’t thinking much at all. He can only repeat the final words. Keep well, keep well, keep… And then he turns round and heads towards the river of shit.

  Tomás is trembling and his hair drips. If this moment were a videogame it would be a bug, a game-breaking bug, in C++ it would be a dash, GAME OVER, Insert Coin… And no story would be able to save it.

  He picks up a cigarette from a puddle and tries to light it knowing that it won’t work. He takes his headphones off and sighs. He’s surprised by how life without a backing track has no drama, no opening tune to new situations and no tragic climaxes for an ending. It’s just small sounds: the birds and the wind through the tree leaves, the traffic always humming, and the banal percussion of breaking branches, steps on the pavement and the creaking wooden tiles of the old Bellavista bars. But that’s fine. Tonight, Tomás has no choice but to be a part of that city, the lifeless city, the real Santiago.

  He walks away from Bellavista and gets to the bridge in Baquedano again. He goes to the kiosk at the end of the bridge to buy some cigarettes.

  ‘Hey Tomás, how are we doing tonight, po’ huevon?’

  ‘Hey Matías, not good, not good at all.’

  ‘Oh, shame, shame. You know what my mother always said? When things turn to shit, buy expensive alcohol.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘Yes, always. Lucky for you I have very expensive alcohol.’

  ‘Can I just get some cigarettes?’

  ‘Of course. You know I have boxes of ten again if you’d like… Although, if I may say so myself, I recommend not getting those. I mean, imagine running out and not being able to give one to a lady at the disco. I wouldn’t want to be you, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Twenty will be fine, man. And no one says “disco” anymore.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you. And what do they say then? Here,’ he says, handing Tomás the packet.

  ‘I’m actually not sure.’

  ‘Disco it is then.’

  ‘Bye man.’ Tomás waves and walks to the centre of the brid
ge.

  He looks down and he remembers that he’s done this before, but he isn’t sure which part, because he should have predicted this would all happen and maybe new things from now on will seem like memories. Is this what happens when you turn old? Life should be counted in hours, in seconds, just so everyone could know how old he feels right now. The water under him swallows all the noises of the city and he’s glad he doesn’t have to hear any of it for as long as he stays there. Everything disappears at the bridge and even though he knows rivers erode the edges of their flow, he is sure that this one has stayed the same and will carry on changing nothing long after he’s gone.

  He starts his walk home and it feels like the longest walk he’s ever had to do. Then, when he gets to his corridor he can hear Jesús’s heavy metal playing through the door. He notices that his own door is open.

  ‘Fuck my life,’ he says, banging his head against it. The piece of cracked ceiling isn’t on his desk, the rug’s dry, and there’s no trash on the kitchen floor. And on his desk there’s a full French press with two coffee cups beside it. One of the cups is the naked woman cup he got at Abdul’s. The tent is still there and he tries to see if anyone’s inside. Nothing.

  ‘Hello?’ he says, lighting his way in with his phone.

  He hears someone walking in his room at the end of the corridor, so he gets the axe by the fridge and tiptoes his way to the noise.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouts.

  A girl screams in his room and then laughs.

  ‘What are you doing?! It’s me.’

  ‘Oh,’ Tomás says, putting the axe down by the door. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Matilde walks up to him.

  ‘I was with Lucas and Jesús. You weren’t answering my texts. So I knocked and noticed the door was open so I thought I’d fix your flat a little. Look, you have a bed now. Well, it’s still just half a bed. These manuals do not make it easy, huh? Want to give me a hand?’

  ‘Look, I’ve had the worst fucking… I need to be alone.’

  ‘Come on, give me a hand,’ she says with a smile, showing him her hammer.

  ‘I just want to sleep.’

  ‘That’s fine, but at least sleep on a bed tonight. Come—’

  ‘Please, leave. Leave. I didn’t ask you to do anything. Nothing fucking works. Nothing gets fixed. Get out. Have fun in New York. Just know that no one will give a shit about stories over there either. No one gives a shit about anything.’

  She lets the hammer fall and puts on her coat. She makes her way past the corridor and she doesn’t say a thing. At his door, Lucas and Jesús are waiting for her without coming in.

  Lucas gives him a long stare before they all disappear and he can lock the door, which he bangs his head against several times.

  He goes inside the tent and puts on his ski goggles and he’s glad he’s wearing them, because with them on he won’t have to know if he’s crying or not if he passes by his own reflection on the windows. He stays on the sleeping bag straight and starts his radio again but it’s playing Fármacos and for once he prefers to cope with the silence. The world has no echoes, no delay, no distortion and no release. It’s just streets in Santiago, and most nights they’re empty. His life is this, he thinks as he lies down on his side, it is this and nothing else.

  21

  One Day The Sun Sets

  It’s almost 5am and Tomás is sitting by his window smoking and drinking coffee. And even though he now has two coffee cups, he still drinks straight from the French press because washing the cups is too much of a hassle now that he’s so used to not having them around.

  Through the night, Tomás marked all the student papers he hadn’t even looked at and gave everyone higher marks than they deserved. He’s decided that he will go to the university to try and get his job back. He doesn’t have a plan as to what he’ll say or do when he gets there, but he’s hoping the high marks will prove that he was a good teacher and that they do not want to lose him. He needs it or he’ll have to live with his mum and see more of his sister and her fucking friends when they come back this week, and he can’t stand proving any of them right about the mess he… On his way out he’ll have to go through the bank and check what he needs to do to get that inheritance money, which should last him at least three months if the job falls through.

  Always so much to plan, so much to do, even during times that should be epilogues, the echoes of an ending, a few lines leading to absolutely nothing. But in real life this just doesn’t happen. And so he has a shower and shaves for himself and then waits by the window for the city to light up in sunrise. It doesn’t though, because it starts to rain AGAIN instead, and he can’t even see the mountains or the hills and it’s all blinking lights on rooftops and aeroplanes AGAIN appearing and disappearing through the clouds.

  He leaves his flat at 7am without his coat and when he’s locking his door he hears Lucas and Jesús opening theirs.

  ‘Hi,’ Tomás says.

  ‘Hey,’ they both say, frowning at him.

  ‘Off to the shop?’ Tomás asks, just to say something.

  ‘No,’ Lucas says, ‘we’re going to meet Matilde to say goodbye for the last time.’

  Jesús nods.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, tell her to—’

  ‘We have to get going.’

  Tomás nods with a sigh. Lucas and Jesús leave and Tomás waits by his door so as to not have to see them again downstairs.

  He then walks down and starts making his way to the metro. He looks around him in the street, watching out for black SUVs in the roads, and then checking people’s faces when he gets to the station. How is it that a single person could turn into the backdrop of a whole city? She could be anywhere, and he could miss her even if they were on the same wagon in the metro and he’d never know… And wherever he turns he has the sensation of having just missed her, as if it were his own lack of attention that’s keeping her hidden in the crowds.

  He looks up at the metro station names instead, even though he always takes the same line. This time, however, something bothers him. Jaime is in one of the metro ads lit up orange and green. People start getting off at Baquedano and he tries to look over the crowd at the ad and he forgets that he should also be leaving. The doors close and he reads it over and over on his way to the wrong station…

  On the poster, there’s an 8-bit rendition of Fran holding a pair of scissors in a dim-lit bedroom. Under that, Jaime’s signature appears by the App Store logo. How clever of him, Tomás thinks, for Jaime to finally come to terms with how bad a programmer he is. And Tomás isn’t referring to Jaime’s use of 8-bit graphics (which is just an attempt to grapple with the retro-loving douche mainstream going on right now). No, no, it’s the fact that he made a game about people so unfixable, a game about two bugs of humanity, so that any mistake in the coding would end up being poetic. The protagonist jumps and defies all laws of gravity? It must be how he feels. She won’t let go of the scissors? Of course she won’t, because that’s how she feels… Still, who knows, it might be a good game and he’s glad he didn’t have to come up with its story.

  He comes out of the metro one station later and decides to walk instead of taking another metro back. That way, he can also pass by the bank and see what’s up with his inheritance cash.

  As soon as he’s out of the station he can hear student protesters chanting on the streets and he starts to push through them and then starts running towards the bank. They jump and laugh and shout as if it weren’t raining at all, and most of them aren’t wearing coats either. One guy dressed in a penguin costume gives him a banner that says PENGUIN REVOLUTION – PRESENT, and Tomás takes it and keeps running.

  He goes inside the bank and shakes off the rain, but before he can reach the lobby, a guard stops him.

  ‘No protesters in here, huevón. Get out.’

  ‘I’m not protesting.’

  ‘Go play Che Guevara somewhere else.’

&nbs
p; ‘This isn’t mine,’ Tomás says, looking at the penguin with a Che Guevara T-shirt on his sign.

  ‘It is yours because you’re holding it. Hi ma’am,’ he says to a woman coming in.

  Tomás sighs and goes back out into the street but he can’t find anyone who doesn’t already have a banner, so he just throws it onto the pavement and a group of protesters start taking pictures of him and shouting.

  ‘Capitalist pigs in the bank, just like always!’

  ‘Terrorist!’

  ‘Banks always polluting everything!’

  ‘Don’t you have a mother?!’

  And Tomás sees the mob coming towards him so he goes back into the bank, which, like sunlight to vampires, instantly makes the hippies turn away at the door.

  ‘Welcome, sir,’ the guard starts again.

  ‘But you saw me a second ago.’

  ‘No, I saw a protester.’

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘The lobby is that way,’ the guard says, pointing inside. Tomás sighs and pulls out a ticket.

  When his number comes up on a screen on the wall, he walks up to one of the office counters with a young clerk dude with a yellow smiley badge pinned to his chest, just to the side of a skinny tie.

  ‘Um… Do you have some ID, please?’

  ‘Yes, here.’

  Tomás gives him his ID card.

  ‘Um… Thanks… So what can I do for you?’

  ‘I just wanted to ask if there’s been some attempt to deposit on my account recently. I’m expecting inheritance money from a cheque or something,’ Tomás answers, and the clerk keeps typing.

  ‘Um… OK.’

  Tomás wishes he could smoke here.

  ‘So?’ Tomás asks.

  ‘Um… Yeah… Nothing. It says it attempted deposit. But something failed somewhere. It’s procedures. The system. Computers. Something.’

  ‘Oh… But aren’t you managing the computer?’

  ‘Have you got it with you? The cheque?’ he asks.

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘Well, then I can’t help you then, can I?’