beatriz-olivalves

[beatriz-olivalves]

Flower Beds on Top of a Hill

He doesn’t really remember when everything went cold. It was a gradual process, though, so maybe that gives him a sort of excuse. Something like an afterthought, as if one would wonder about it after a long day of plain existence, not paying much attention to anything. 

What he does remember is feeling the unease that lingered in the air every time someone mentioned the rumors. It got worse whenever people would actually go out of their ways to talk about it, discuss it, or even argue over it. What started off as mere conspiracy whispers, which people wouldn’t even bat an eye at, then weighed down in the back of everyone’s minds in the form of desperate, hopeless wheezes. 

Aster remembers sitting by the TV in his living room and hearing the man in the news talk about the possibility of a new confrontation between nations Aster-doesn’t-care and Aster-can’t-be-bothered-to-make-an-effort-to-remember. It really was funny how, compared to how slow it took for the world to recompose itself and recover its slight sliver of hope of surviving, the people – or, should Aster say, the systems – of those two countries were so eager and fast to tear each other apart. 

Nuclear bombing was not something pleasant to be seen. Much lessen when it’s so close to home. Aster also remembers desperately grabbing his sister’s wrist and looking her straight in the eyes when he told her to flee to their parents’ house. Said it’d be safer for her there, all the way across the country. Aster remembers ignoring her claims about how it didn’t make any sense that he was sending her off when he had no intention of staying with them, but for some reason the urge to do so overcame any semblance of his critical thinking. Some nonsensical older-brotherly pride, he is now aware. He remembers receiving calls from the police after his hometown was bombarded, too. The lady over the phone spoke softly, as if she was afraid he would break after processing the news. She sounded like she might be crying, too, but maybe that was just the ringing in Aster’s ears, like air crackling with electricity. He remembers feeling empty, and he remembers being sick and staring at the remnants of yesterday’s dinner in the toilet seat. Aster remembers all of it. 

And maybe it’s good that he does. Perhaps it is the only thing that can ease his mind around the fact that he is now the only one left around. Maybe it’s good that in the last memories he has of his family, his mom, dad and sister look like real people. Healthy complexions. Functional limbs and organs. Eyes full of life. Aster reckons that he’d be more broken inside had his family been gone after exposure to the consequences of the nuclear bombs. Aster remembers telling himself to shut up, because that didn’t really matter anymore. 

If Aster let himself get back on his word from before, he does remember when everything got cold. It was around the time he started noticing the streets getting emptier. Turns out the first bombings were only the tip of the iceberg; soon after, everyone else got to feel on their skin the effects of greed, envy and thirst for power. Too bad there weren’t many people left to witness the world, much like humankind himself, crumbling to pieces. Desert streets weren’t something someone would ever dream of seeing in big cities like Wiley, and Aster knew that. Aster has started to think he didn’t know many things after all, though. 

Experiencing the death of an entire race had to be one of the most miserable things, Aster pondered one day, struggling to keep warm under all the blankets he owned and staring defeatedly at his small TV, which, with no electricity left in the country, no longer worked, not even to display static of a channel that was long ago taken off air because of the war. Aster remembers getting to the conclusion that being one of the last humans alive was also very humiliating, as if some greater force was out there, toying with his mind by showing how unimportant and ungrateful everybody had been one day. 

All Aster does is remember, as of now. Because that’s all he has left. 

Nuclear winter was a term he’d come up with to have something to call everything that was happening in the world. Or maybe it was just the country, he wouldn’t know. Nor would he survive traveling to find out. Or, he thought one day, it was maybe just Wiley, really. But Aster still doubts it to this day. He doesn’t think all the electrical storms, the acid rains, the brutal winds are all exclusive to good old Wiley. No, Aster knows at least half the globe is in shreds, not unlike Aster’s own mind. 

Eventually he had to leave his dorm, seeing as he couldn’t, for the life of him, keep himself warm, and lighting a fire inside a cramped studio apartment made up predominantly of wood wasn’t exactly the best of ideas. He was almost out of food, too, so there wasn’t much else to consider. 

Aster wandered around Wiley when the weather let him through, taking refuge whenever he could stop and think clearly about what the hell he would do next. He made it his motivation to keep going, finding ways to start fires with his bare hands, scavenging for medicine and antiseptics. Trying his damn best not to absolutely fall apart whenever he had to break into someone’s house and wipe their food cupboards clean while under the scrutiny of dead eyes that used to belong to people who breathed, cried and hyperventilated just like Aster. Robbing the gone and defenseless wasn’t something he ever planned on doing. 

Aster didn’t know why he was still there. Still doesn’t, if he’s being quite honest. It didn’t feel like being chosen by the deities to be a demonstration of power, of resistance, a whole god on Earth. It certainly did not make Aster feel special, either. To be dead must hurt, he figures, but to be the only one alive is no different than death itself, anyway. 

One day, after making it to a supermarket and getting his hands on every single item of clothing, blankets, medicine and food that was either not too long out of date or still okay-looking, Aster arrived at a massive building he recognized as being a unit of a famous chain of hotels. That was when he vaguely realized he must’ve crossed the border of the neighboring city. He didn’t know how long he had been in Lahey, but he guessed it couldn’t be that long. He couldn’t care less, either. 

After some good months walking around Wiley with nothing but the corpses of both people and the city as company, he guessed trying to give himself the slightest semblance of comfort wasn’t too much to ask for. The hotel in Lahey ended up being a true light at the end of the tunnel for Aster, and it was around sweeping dusty floors and figuring out how he would store his inventory – both brought from the outside and found in the hotel – that he started building his new routine. 

Time, as much as it was a social construct, could do terrible things to human judgment, which, if Aster stopped to really think about it, was also a social construct. He guesses it was given more importance since it was apparently more visible and insistent for the world. Aster remembers claiming to not one living soul that he would trade in a heartbeat  his ability to think straight – think at all – for having more time with his mom. But, now, all the time he had was spent moping around, investigating the infinity of the hotel rooms, crying quietly every time he came across unfortunate clients that didn’t have enough time (there it was again!) to perish at home with loved ones, or hated ones, or acquaintances, or strangers. Every single one who, once, had a life as well. Aster roamed the hotel corridors, the hotel kitchens, the hotel rooms, dragging his feet in a dance that lasted a little over two years. 

And, unsurprisingly, he was still alone. Aster still had all the time in the world to himself. 

Maintaining a sequence of actions was complex when the world was ending and one had nobody to share their frustrations with. Some days Aster woke up feeling almost normal, as if he was still able to feel anything other than aloneness and cold. Those days had him going up and down the stairs nonstop, or doing laps in the hotel pool, which was starting to get green and all gross, but it wasn’t like Aster was any better; he couldn’t remember the last time he saw his hands entirely clean. Running water was a luxury he reckoned he was only able to have access to because he was in the prestigious part of Lahey, but that didn’t mean he would waste it on unnecessary situations rather than save it for when he really needed it. 

However, there were also some days Aster couldn’t even muster up the courage to force his eyes open. He just let himself lie in his expensive king-sized bed, in what he figured was the biggest suite in the hotel, and regrettably existed. Aster would stare at the ceiling, unshed tears in his eyes, willing his covers to crawl on top of him, over his face, and just-

Just end it all. Because there were times Aster couldn’t remember what his favorite flavor of ice cream was. He couldn’t remember which of his dad’s cheeks carried this fine scar from running the razor blade over an inflamed ingrown hair repeatedly for years. One time, Aster choked on a sob because he couldn’t, for nothing that was most sacred in that forsaken world, remember his sister’s name. Aster can’t even remember, now. 

He would just suck it up and go back to sleep. Not like wallowing in his deepest sorrows would make any difference. 

About three months prior, Aster had found an analog watch inside the nightstand drawer of a fortunately empty room during one of his many expeditions. The watch, to his utter surprise, still worked perfectly, and he took finding it as a sign he should put a stopper on his idling. 

Aster started handling the watch as he would his newborn child, because now he could actually get a grasp on at least a bit of assurance that the world was, in fact, spinning. He’d found a stack of calendars in a house shortly after leaving his dorm, and had used almost three out of the fifteen or so he’d smuggled into his backpack, but, somehow, seeing the watch move its hands seemed like something magical, otherworldly even. Aster has really been the only one out there for almost three years now. 

He’s taken a liking to going to the terrace of the building these days. Religiously, every Friday afternoon he’ll get up there, wipe the acid snow from his favorite spot with a reserved rag he’d keep only for that, and sit down, wrapping his scarf tight around his neck carefully not to tangle it in his now long hair. Then he’ll answer to the skies’ callings and look up to stare at the stars. Aster had the impression they would start giving him explanations as to why everything happened so suddenly and so fast, why it all went wrong for him, in particular. But, just to make things new around Aster, he was wrong. And he got no answers whatsoever. 

Aster once remembered. He once remembered everything he deemed important enough for himself and for his family. Also the things that weren’t important at all. 

Aster misses simple things, too. He misses the taste of his grandma’s homemade pastries, the feeling of his best friend’s arms around his middle when she thought she’d done bad on one of her finals. What he misses most, some nights, is the feeling one gets on their hands or feet when they’re really cold but they manage to get warmed up, whether by clothing or pouring warm water over them. See, it’s not the finished product, when they’re nice and warm and cozy – although that feeling is also irrefutably appreciated in nuclear winter –, but the process in-between, when one can tell their hands are still cold, but touching them to other parts of the body reveals a latent warmth emanating from them. Like a reminder everything will eventually settle down and, unarguably, be okay.

Some Fridays he needs to force himself to look down from the sky, because it seems like he might never gather the courage to come back to reality from his daydreams. On nights like those, he presses his chest against the elevated edge of the building while standing on his tiptoes and just screams. Screams and cries and sobs and hiccups to his heart’s content. There was no one around to see him behave like an overgrown bratty child, after all, and that is precisely why he can’t control himself for what always felt like hours on end. 

Some other nights are lighter on his heart. He bids the stars goodbye, promising to be there again the following week, and proceeds to go back to his room on one of the highest floors. 

It is one of those tranquil nights when Aster finds himself absentmindedly humming a once familiar tune, one he used to be very fond of, but now he doesn’t remember its name or who it was by. Aster can’t remember many things nowadays. He’s been under the impression he’d had his 25th birthday some day prior, but then again, he doesn’t remember. 

The beat he reproduces matches his steps on top of the elevated edge of the terrace, which he has been used to climbing since some weeks ago. Aster stopped being scared of a lot of things lately, so he didn’t give it much thought. 

Aster mumbles a steady rhythm, gliding his eyes through the landscape: decadent, dirty, traces of an afterglow of proud grandness. The melody makes him blink furiously, overwhelmed with nostalgia of what once was and apparently would never be again. The flow of the song grows in a restless and insatiable crescendo, and Aster makes the mistake of looking at his watch, only to find that its hands are stagnant.

Just for a moment, he falters. And, in a split half second, his socked feet slip. 

It is while falling down a fifty-story high building that Aster lets himself wonder, for the very last time, why he was the one who was still there, why he was the one who was still breathing. He asks himself how insignificant it would feel to be the one human being resistant to prolonged exposure to radiation and die from falling off a building, only to realize that he does know exactly what it feels like. For he was – has been – the very last one left in this world, yet this is how he’s saying farewell to everything and everyone that has already left him long, long ago. 

And it’s like an accident.

Santo André, 24 de abril de 2020

Beatriz Moya de Carvalho Olivalves